1,720,986 research outputs found
Pluralism in Islamic Contexts - Ethics, Politics and Modern Challenges
No full textThis book brings together international scholars of Islamic philosophy, theology and politics to examine these current major questions: What is the place of pluralism in the Islamic founding texts? How have sacred and prophetic texts been interpreted throughout major Islamic intellectual history by the Sunnis and Shi‘a? How does contemporary Islamic thought treat religious and political diversity in modern nation states and in societies in transition? How is pluralism dealt with in modern major and minor Islamic contexts? How does modern political Islam deal with pluralism in the public sphere? And what are the major internal and external challenges to pluralism in Islamic contexts?
These questions that have become of paramount relevance in religious studies especially during the last three-four decades are answered as critically highlighted in Islamic founding sources, the formative classical sources and how it has been lived and practiced in past and present Islamic majority societies and communities around the world. Case studies cover Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, and Thailand, besides various internal references to other contexts
Moroccan Exceptionalism Examined: Constitutional Insights pre- and post-2011
Full text linkCompared to Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, Morocco's political development looks like an oasis of tranquillity. "Moroccan exceptionalism" is often drawn on as a positive status, the result of at least one decade of reforms implemented by the monarchy, long before the Arab Spring events. An alternative view is offered by some civil society movements inside the country and by the 20 February Movement, born amidst the waves of the Arab Spring, which are critical of this exceptionalism and call for more reforms. By making reference to the constitutional reforms undertaken by the country since 1908 and by assessing the most recent reform efforts, this paper argues that "Moroccan exceptionalism" is yet to go through the test of the implementation of what is often referred to as a "promising constitution" that should in its intentions pave the way for a genuine constitutional monarchy in Morocco. "Moroccan exceptionalism," as the paper concludes, is not the description of a "final" political situation; rather, it is merely "a phase" in the political life of a country undergoing transition. It is then the outcome of this "phase" that will determine whether "exceptionalism" takes on a positive or a negative meaning and whether the two contrasting narratives about "exceptionalism" can ultimately be reconciled
Pluralism within European Islam: Secularizing Theology, Sacralizing Modernity
No full textThis paper sheds light on the pluralism that characterizes the emerging European Islamic Thought. It argues that the reformed Islam that this thought advances challenges both the classical and conservative interpretations of especially Islamic law, and the irreligious feel and fear of some radical interpretations of secularism in Europe. This two-fold argument will be addressed only minimally (briefly). The contention here is more reflective. This reflection on the subject will be traced as follows. First, the paper puts European Islam in context. It argues that the latter is part of a long process of encounter with modernity, and is thus a version or interpretation of the idea of Islamic Renaissance (revival and innovation in Islamic diction).
Second, the paper summarizes four scholarly versions of the idea of European Islam. While it does not claim to be exhaustive and representative of the whole debate, it particularly presents the major ideas four Muslim intellectuals hold over what they consider the way both for Muslims to accommodate modern values and for the modern states to accommodate religious values. The scholars to be referred to are Bassam Tibi and his idea of “Euro-Islam,” Tariq Ramadan and his project of “radical reform,” Tareq Oubrou and his proposal of “sharia of the minority,” and Abdennour Bidar and his consideration of modernity as an “unprecedented event of the sacred.”
Third, the paper follows a triadic framework composed of three axes that grasp the comprehensiveness of a world religion like Islam in an attempt to conceptualize the idea of European Islam, based on the studied texts: world-society-individual axes. Following this comprehensive framework, I will be succinctly arguing that “this” European Islam humanizes revelation at the world axis, historicizes it at the social axis, and rationalizes it at the individual axis. It is at this stage that European Islam, as I read it, tries to establish itself on theological-political grounds. Finally, the paper concludes by raising three prominent challenges that this version of European Islam has to face
Abdolkarim Soroush: A Neo-Mu'tazilite that Buries Classical Islamic Political Theology
No full textThis paper contends that Soroush’s project launches a radically new direc
tion
in Islamic theology and politics (political theology) that builds on clas
sical
mysticism and rational theology (of the Mu.tazila).6 This argument will
be defended by introducing the studied scholar’s philosophy of religion,7 fol
lowing
three axes that, first, grasp the comprehensiveness of a world religion
like Islam, and, second, clarify the aspects of newness (or modernity) in the
project: world, individual, and society axes.8 The first two axes are substantially
theological, and the third axis is political. World axis introduces Soroush’s per
ception
of 1) God, 2) Revelation, and 3) the Prophetic mediation and wording
of the Quran, thus the link between what he calls “thick” and “thin” reality
(i.e., otherworld, and this-world). Individual axis presents major concepts in
his philosophy of religion (like “essentials” and “accidentals,” “minimal” and
“maximal” religion, “master” and “slave” values), and the role of reason in the
individual’s “experiential religiosity.” The third axis, society axis, which is the
most political, condenses his views on “pluralist society,” “positive and negative
pluralism,” “this-worldly fiqh,” “objective ethics,” and his concept of “religious
democracy” that results from his theological approach. A biographical sketch
precedes this work
Religija i politika u Maroku: islamska, islamistička i post-islamistička dinamika
Full text linkThis paper aims to map the terrain of religion and politics in modern and contemporary Morocco. Seeing the chronological and intellectual diversity within Moroccan religious thought and politics, this paper proposes three major historical periods to facilitate approaching the topic: the pre-/ colonial, the colonial, and postcolonial times. The first pre/-colonial period is hybrid; it coincides with the rise of the first generation of the Moroccan Nahda renewal, before the colonial period, although it lived into the colonial period and played important roles in it for liberation. I mark this with the “Islamic” label, since Islam was the only common identity marker for any project of renewal in an intellectually “homogeneous” society. As to the colonial period, this Islamic identity became stronger since the colonial administration tried to weaken this identity and the social fabric and its related institutions, be they religious brotherhoods, religious endowments, or Sufi orders; at a certain moment in 1930, the colonial administration played on linguistic differences to divide and rule, and in another occasion, in 1953–1955, it tried to dethrone the nationalist Sultan and replace him with a docile one. Here, again, the “Islamic” identity marker of society and politics was further emphasized as a force of unity, thus the label of Nationalist Islam in this stage, despite the variety of currents within the nationalist movement. As to the postcolonial period, it is a phase in which the modern debates over the format of the nation state, the place of religion in politics, democracy, liberalism, socialism, and secularization become part of Moroccan thought and politics. Thus, three major labels are used to describe the variety of political Islams in society: the Ultra-Orthodox Islam, the Orthodox Islam, and Critical Islam. And since they all share Islam as an identity but interpret it differently, I borrow the term from Asef Bayat to call this period the “post-Islamist” period, since the actors with the Islamic label are multiple, and no one single trend or project manages to win to enforce its Islamist interpretation on society and political stakeholders. More importantly, this diversity of interpretations is what saves the “Islamic” from rigidity and turns it into its fluidity of pre-modern times, i.e. to the “Islamic” as a lived spirituality and moral compass, as a theocentric way of life, in a forthcoming post- Islamist society, a secular world and neoliberal economies.Ovaj rad nastoji da mapira teren religije i politike u modernom i savremenom Maroku. S obzirom na hronološku i intelektualnu raznovrsnost u marokanskoj religioznoj misli i politici,
ovaj rad predlaže tri glavna istorijska perioda kako bi se olakšao pristup temi: pre-/kolonijalno, kolonijalno i postkolonijalno vreme. Prvi, pre/-kolonijalni, period je hibridni; on se poklapa sa usponom prve generacije obnove marokanske Nahde, pre kolonijalnog perioda, iako
je postojao u kolonijalnom periodu i igrao važnu ulogu za oslobođenje. Ovo označavam oznakom „islamski“, pošto je islam bio jedini i zajednička jedinica identiteta za svaki projekat obnove u intelektualno „homogenom“ društvu. Što se tiče kolonijalnog perioda, ovaj islamski
identitet je ojačao nakon što je kolonijalna administracija pokušala da oslabi ovaj identitet i
društveno tkivo, kao i institucije povezane s njim, bilo da su to verska bratstva, verske zadužbine ili sufijski redovi; u jednom trenutku 1930. kolonijalna administracija je koristila jezičke razlike kako bi podelila i vladala, a drugom prilikom, 1953–1955, pokušala je da svrgne
sa trona nacionalističkog sultana i zameni ga poslušnim. Ovde je, opet, „islamski“ identitetski
marker društva i politike dodatno naglašen kao snaga jedinstva, odnosno oznaka nacionalističkog islama u ovoj fazi, uprkos raznovrsnosti struja unutar nacionalističkog pokreta. Što
se tiče postkolonijalnog perioda, ovo je faza u kojoj moderne debate o obliku nacionalne države, mestu religije u politici, demokratiji, liberalizmu, socijalizmu i sekularizaciji postaju deo
marokanske misli i politike. Dakle, tri glavne oznake se koriste za opisivanje raznolikosti političkih islama u društvu: ultra-ortodoksni islam, ortodoksni islam i kritički islam. Budući da
svi oni dele islam kao identitet, ali ga različito tumače, pozajmljujem termin od Asefa Bajata
da ovaj period nazovem „postislamističkim“ periodom, pošto su akteri sa islamskom etiketom višestruki, te ne postoji jedan trend ili projekat koji uspeva da pobedi i ujedini islamističku interpretaciju društva i političkih delatnika. Što je još važnije, ova raznolikost tumačenja
spasava „islamsko“ od rigidnosti i pretvara ga u njegovu fluidnost pre-modernog vremena,
odnosno u „islamsko“ kao življenu duhovnost i moralni kompas, kao teocentrični način života, u budućem post-islamističkom društvu, sekularnom svetu i neoliberalnim ekonomijama
Taha Abderrahmane’s Trusteeship Paradigm: Spiritual Modernity and the Islamic Contribution to the Formation of a Renewed Universal Civilization of Ethos
No full textThis paper synthetically introduces “trusteeship paradigm” of Taha Abderrahmane (b. 1944), a leading philosopher of language, logic, ethics and metaphysics in the Arab-Islamic world. The core of his argument is that the four entities of revelation, reason, ethics and doing (or practice) are neither separable nor antagonistic to each other in the Islamic philosophy he aims at re-grounding; their centripetal force is essentially ethical. Islamic philosophy is primarily ethical. It is only this ethical force that can regenerate the politico-philosophical awakening of the Arab-Islamic world in particular, and can contribute to the formation of a pluralist civilization of ethos in general. Otherwise put, Abderrahmane envisions an ontological-epistemological revisionary revolution in the Arab-Islamic tradition to overcome what may be referred to as “classical dichotomous thought” that dominates some classical and contemporary Islamic thinking as well as much of the Greek heritage and Western modern thought. This ethical revolution is summarized in what he has developed as trusteeship paradigm (al-iʾtimāniyyah) or trusteeship critique (al-naqd al-iʾtimānī), a paradigm the heart of which is a theory of ethics that overcomes dichotomies like religion vs. politics, divine vs. secular, physical vs. metaphysical
Translation for an Open World
No full textModern Intellectual Trends is a peer reviewed book series that includes monographs, edited volumes, critical editions (for text from the pre-print age) in the original languages and scripts, and annotated translations on intellectual history from the 18th century to the present. The coverage includes philosophy, theology, hermeneutics, mysticism, views and debates on science and the so-called occult sciences, political thought, gender, legal theory, nahḍa studies, postcolonial studies, and adjacent areas, i.e. in intellectual history in the broadest sense. The series welcomes transregional and transcultural contributions.
The series will be open for publications on modern thought from the global south, with a special focus on the Middle East (Arab world, Turkey, Iran), but also the Balkans, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, as well as the Muslim diaspora. Submissions in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other non-Western languages, will also be considered, in addition to English, French, and German
Tareq Oubrou’s Geotheology: Sharia of the Minority and the Secularization of European Islamic Thought
No full textThis article introduces the work of the French imam-theologian Tareq Oubrou as a prominent voice of the emerging “European Islamic thought”. It argues that the imam uses Islamic classical jurisprudential devices (such as fatwas), contemporary hermeneutics and critical thought, and personal communion with the divine (spirituality) to renew the understanding of God, Man, and the Qura'n in the European context. In so doing, he (1) “relativizes” shari'ah law by emphasizing the questions of ethics and meaning, (2) “minoritizes” Islam as a religion in a pluralist liberal milieu, and (3) “localizes” its norms, “nationalizes” religious authority, and “institutionalizes” its manifestations. His work is synthesized in this article in three concepts: (1) “geotheology,” (2) “shari'ah of the minority” which are Oubrou's own terms/concepts, and (3) “European Islam”
Modern Arab-Islamic Scholarship on Ethics: A Reflective Contextualization
No full textWhile various Arab-Islamic modernist projects have targeted particular issues as the starting points for reforms, like politics and political authority, education, public culture, religious thought and institutions, some other projects have taken ethics as the starting point for any possible renewal, be it theoretical or practical, political or intellectual. This chapter contextualises this discussion, following this outline: first, it refers to the place of ethics in modern and contemporary Arab-Islamic reformist thought since the so-called renaissance (nahda) of the late 19th century, passing by the generation of scholarship of the first half of the 20th century, and reaching the new trajectories of thought in the second half of the 20th century, or the generation post-1967; general reference to classical works on ethics is made here, too; second, four major reflective notes on the trusteeship paradigm of Taha Abderrahmane as a modern robust theory of ethics are made, firstly, for clarifications of the scope of the paradigm, and secondly for opening new paths of reflection and research around the issue of ethics and modernity; finally, a summary of the book content is presented
Arab Mediterranean Islam: Intellectual and Political Trends
No full textThis chapter reflects on the Arab world as a representation of the ‘Mediterranean Islam’ and outlines the intertwining territories between theoretical and practical Islam of mostly the vital period of the twentieth century, with references to pre-and-post this era. This chapter describes how Arab Mediterranean Islam aspires for change based primarily on its own tradition, without neglecting the importance of modern socio-cultural and political challenges that impact revisiting this tradition and its re-appropriation. It ultimately shows how it is internally plural and diverse, and also conflictual. To facilitate this task of presenting a complex mosaic of Arab Mediterranean Islam in limited space, I will adopt a typology of Islam that is as comprehensive as possible: (1) Ultra-conservative or Salafi Islam, (2) conservative or orthodox Islam, and (3) progressive or critical Islam. Within each of these types other sub-types emerge, where needed, for ease of picturing the plurality of the phenomenon under study. The chapter ends with a brief reflective closure on ‘Mediterranean thinking’, closing in so doing the opening reflections on the same point
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