Parting Thoughts LXV: Why Leisure Studies Needs a Vocabulary for the Sacred

This essay begins at a Cairo shrine, where weeping and laughter share a courtyard, and asks whether a specific, influential strand of leisure science that classifies visitor motivations into discrete categories has a vocabulary for experiences in which devotion and recreation are lived simultaneously. A substantial body of scholarship has examined religion and leisure, including leisure in Islamic contexts, religious leisure, and leisure as a form of spiritual coping. However, this literature has rarely conceptualized devotion and recreation as coexisting dimensions of a single leisure experience. This essay draws on a limited set of religious-tourism studies for empirical grounding, on classical and contemporary Islamic discussions of tarwīḥ an al-nafs, and on the shrine’s everyday life as an informal leisure infrastructure. On this basis, it argues that the Cairene shrine points to a comparatively underdeveloped Islamic and Global South register for understanding sacred leisure within this strand of leisure scholarship.