As Above So Below. Christianity in the land of its birth

This conference centers the voice of indigenous Palestinian Christianity, Christianity in the land of its birth, and critically examines the modern Western movement of Christian Zionism that has reframed the Holy Land through political and apocalyptic ideologies.

Through history, theology, art, and film, we highlight the Arabic-speaking Christian traditions, Jerusalem iconography, and lived faith communities that embody Christianity’s original context. In contrast, we interrogate how Christian Zionism, emerging from Western colonial frameworks, has detached the faith from its indigenous roots and recast it as a geopolitical mandate. The gathering seeks to recover Christianity’s authentic presence in Palestine and challenge narratives that instrumentalize the land for colonization, imperialism and modern political agendas.

Activity led by les Mòniques 25/26 within the framework of the Week for Palestine

With the participation of Maria Qumran and Rasheed Jalloul

Maria Qumran is a Palestinian community organizer, educator, and multidisciplinary artist. Her artistic practice spans photography, poetry, and documentary cinema, exploring themes of home, body, memory, and longing through a decolonial queer lens. As a community organizer, Maria’s practice is rooted in liberatory pedagogy, decolonial cultural production, and queer imaginaries.

Rasheed Jalloul (Beirut, 1992) is an architect, artist, and composer whose work traverses space, sound, and language. Rooted in architectural thinking, his practice reframes memory through a decolonial lens, examining how physical and linguistic structures shape identity and its shifting cosmologies. Through performance, writing, composition, and design, he develops a mythology of domesticity and displacement in postwar contexts, drawing on Arabfuturism to imagine poetic and speculative geographies where form, voice, and narrative converge into a single transformative language.