Corona and the Closure of the Shrines: Reinterpretation in the Face of Denial of Access to the Sacred Place

Although the pilgrimage to holy places is a spiritual experience at the first glance, it is full of materialistic, embodied, and emotional components. With the outbreak of coronavirus in late 1398, to prevent the spread of the disease, holy places and mass rituals in most parts of the world, as well as Iran, were closed for an unknown period. This situation created an experience that was unprecedented in the collective memory of contemporary Iranians. These conditions severely questioned the boundaries of the sacred concept and the scope of the sacred agency. Considering that such an event and experience has not been studied in sociological studies of religion in Iran, the present study, relying on the phenomenological approach of material manifestations of religion, aimed to explore the experience of the pilgrims. In this article, in addition to presenting the typology of positions against the closure of the shrines, the emotional experience and cognitive exposure of pilgrims to this prohibition is described.