149,783 research outputs found

    Islam and the New Political Landscape: Faith Communities, Political Participation and Social Change

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    In this paper we consider the forms of democratic participation that revolve around issues of religious faith and Islam. The context of such work is one in which a concern with the levels of participation in the political institutions of Western Europe and North America feature prominently in both journalistic and academic debate. The paper speaks to debates that are concerned with the efficacy of specific forms of participation. In doing so we argue that we need to think carefully about the forms of social action that constitute participation in the democratic process. We also need to think precisely about definitions of the political with which people engage. If we take the political as a domain in which the ethical settlement of society is contestable the sorts of mobilisation around faith communities that this paper describes are clearly a form of political participation. Yet the paper argues that the reasons many become involved in these forms of social organisation in contemporary East London is precisely because they are seen as less complicit with mainstream political institutions of the British state

    Conversion of African Americans to Islam : a sociological analysis of the Nation of Islam and associated groups

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    'Conversion of African Americans to Islam: A Sociological Analysis of the Nation of Islam Associated groups' is an empirical study of the religious experience of people who had/have distinctive features in terms of race, ethnicity and historical experience. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate how African Americans' (AAs) conversion experience in general, and the Nation of Islam associated groups' conversion in particular, differ from the studies of recruitment and conversion in the sociology of religion and New Religion Movements (NRMs). More specifically, their recruitment and conversion experiences to Islam diverge from those who converted to mainstream Islam. The study investigates how AAs' historical experience, soci-economic difficulties and the racism they encountered shaped and influenced their religious understanding. Research methods involved participant observations, a survey questionnaire, interviews, conversations, personal communications and correspondence. To collect ethnographic data eleven months field research was conducted mainly in the Chicago area and on two short visits to Detroit, and three years continued communications with Muslim officials and academics in the area. During the field research and afterwards through personal communication 181 survey questionnaire responses were received, and 23 Muslim officials, academics and ordinary Muslims were interviewed through semi-structured, unstructured interviews, conversation and correspondence. The thesis begins with a brief history of Islam and Muslims in general and the African American Muslims (AAMs) in particular. More emphasis is given on the historical development of the Nation of Islam (NOl). Then in Chapter III, discussions of schisms in the history of the NOT are examined from sociological perspectives of social and religious movements. In Chapter IV I aimed to formulate my own perspective to analyse and study the conversion experiences of AAMs to Islam. I used a multivariate approach, considering selectively widely held conversion and recruitment theories in the sociology of the religion. I consider in Chapter V the predisposing conditions for AAMs that influence their decision-making to join in the NOT, for example, political and nationalistic sentiments and socio-economic deprivations. In Chapter VI I have applied different terms to describe their religious experiences, such as conversion, alteration and reversion. I have analysed further their encounters with the NOT, the methods of recruitment they used and their major motives for joining the NOT and converting to Tslam. In the concluding chapters (Chapter VII VTTT) I describe the different responses of AAMS to Islam following the death of Elijah Muhammad. It is found out that the Islamic appeal has polarised. While Farakhan's NOT appeared to continue the tradition and style of the old NOI with the emphasis on nationalistic and socio-economic factors, Tmam W. D. Mohammed's community turned more to the religious and spiritual aspects of Tslam. These different approaches led to a polarisation of the appeal of Tslam to AAMS. This thesis contributes to knowledge in four key areas; the sociology of religion and religious movements, the sociology of social and nationalistic movements, religious and Islamic studies

    Pengaruh Pendidikan Agama Islam Dalam Keluarga TerhadapAkhlak Remaja di Desa Pergulaan Kecamatan Sei Rampah Kabupaten Serdang Bedagai

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    Pendidikan agama merupakan bagian yang sangat penting dalam pendidikan karena berkaitan dengan sikap dan nilai, termasuk etika dan agama. Oleh karena itu, pendidikan agama juga menjadi tanggung jawab keluarga, masyarakat dan pemerintah. Pendidikan Islam Dalam Keluarga adalah upaya orang tua mengajarkan dan membimbing anaknya untuk memahami dan mengamalkan ajaran-ajaran agama Islam dan menjadikannya sebagai pedoman hidup, baik untuk pribadi, keluarga dan masyarakat. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode penelitian Kuantitatif dengan metode riset lapangan dengan corelation research, adapun jumlah populasi yang terdapat pada penelitian ini sebanyak 251 remaja dengan sampel yang diambil 15% yaitu sebanyak 37 remaja yang dijadikan sampel. Hasil pengujian ini menunjukan pendidikan agama Islam dalam keluarga secara parsial berpengaruh positif dan signifikan terhadap akhlak remaja, hal ini menyatakan dari nilai t hitung > t tabel (11.008 > 1,68957). Sedangkan dari hasil Koefisien determinasi variabel pendidikan agama Islam sangat kuat mempengaruhi akhlak remaja dengan nilai yang dihasilkan sebesar 77,6 %

    The Concept of Land Ownership in Islam and Poverty Alleviation in Pakistan

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    Land ownership—in its ethico-legal and historical manifestations, reflects the importance of being a politico-economic institution. In the process of its development, it includes various heterogeneous elements of different systems of ownership. With the growth of the Ummah, the principles of laws of ownership represent and embody the relations, rights and duties to form the general law of obligations at the state as well as individual level. This is the case of economic and legal theory, regarding the ownership of land with implicative infrastructure to build social welfare institutions of Islam. It is generally and basically have been ordained that according to the teachings of Islam, Real ownership belongs to Allah Almighty. Man being the vicegerent holds property in trust for which he is accountable to him in accordance with the clearly laid down economic philosophy of Islam. Ownership of man is a concept alien to Islam as it belongs to Allah Almighty only.

    Political Instrumentalisation of Islam, Persistent Autocracies, and Obscurantist Deadlock

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    The empirical literature has established a strong link between the fact of being a Muslim-dominated country and indicators of political performance and democracy. This suggests the possible existence of a relation between religion, Islam in this instance, and societal characteristics. Bernard Lewis and others have actually argued the case for such a relation, pointing to aspects of the Islamic religion and culture that make the advent of democracy especially difficult. These arguments fall into the general idea of the Clash of civilisations put forward by Samuel Huntington. In this paper, we discuss this sort of argument and show that there is a systematic misconception about the true nature of the relationship between Islam and politics: far from being merged into the religious realm, politics tends to dominate religion. Because of the particular characteristics of Is-lam, namely, the lack of a centralised religious authority structure and the great variability of interpretations of the Islamic law, there is a risk of an obscurantist deadlock in the form of a vicious process whereby both the ruler and his political opponents try to outbid each other by using the religious idiom. This risk looms particularly large in crisis situations accentuated by international factors.

    Mustapha, T., Islam in Ghana

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    T. Mustapha gives presentation on Islam in Ghana. In his presentation he discusses the history of Islam and Christianity in Africa.The Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library acknowledges the generous support of the National Endowment for Humanities - Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Implementation Project Grant in supporting the processing and digitization of a number of its major archival collections as part of the project: Spreading the Word: Expanding Access to African American Religious Archival Collections at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library.</em

    Understanding the stages of conversion to Islam : the voices of British converts

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    This thesis analyses data provided by face to face interviews with a sample of British converts to Islam to find out how and why they came to convert, and what were the repercussions of their conversions. The work is placed in the context of the predominantly post-Christian British society in which they had spent the greater part of their lives and the existence of a sizeable community of British Muslims. Influential studies of the psychology and sociology of religious conversion are reviewed and applied to the data. These tend to leave a series of loose ends and fail to pin down the causes or reasons for the conversions. The encounter and reaction with a proselytising group, a key finding in many previous studies, is found to be lacking in the evidence of the current sample of converts. A need is found to broaden the analytic approach. A holistic academic framework is found that both enables the researcher to analyse the conversions as a process through time and allows for further fields of study to be incorporated in the analysis. Thus the stage model for analysing the conversion process proposed by Lewis Rambo (1993) is employed, with a minor modification. Rambo's stage model permits the researcher to include in the study the insights into the human predicament offered by classical Islam. Literature based on and including the Qur'an and sunnah is reviewed. This provides a way of linking together some of the factors previous researchers have considered significant in the conversion process. The degree of interaction with Muslims prior to conversion varied enormously. In all cases there had been some contact but it is not found possible to state that such contact was necessary for the conversions to take place. The Islamic concept of hidayah is proposed as a unifying concept that can account for the disparate factors and apparently random coincidences identified as having been factors in the conversion processes. The Islamic concepts of tawheed and fitrah also contribute to a unifying view of the conversion phenomena. It is found that the common factor in the 'interaction' and 'commitment' stages of conversion is not immersion in a group of people, but interaction with a book, the Qur'an. This proves to be the pivotal element in all the conversions in this study. The post-conversion experiences of the converts as they became members of the Muslim ummah are found to be broadly similar in that they had been unprepared for the differences between their view of Islam, based mainly on the original texts, and that of the mainly South Asian Muslim community which included a history of cultural accretions. The success of their socialisation with the South Asian Muslim community varied a little from person to person, language and culture being the main stumbling blocks, but major differences were found that related to the gender and ethnicity of the converts. Their relationships within the non-Muslim community continued with some modifications. Little evidence is found that social problems, linguistic and cultural barriers, or what the future might hold, had, or would, deflect the converts from their faith. This may be because they all came to Islam through the Qur'an. It is therefore suggested that research into the psychological effect the Qur'an has on its readers would shed further light on the phenomenon of conversion to Islam

    Bradford's Muslim communities and the reproduction and representation of Islam

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    This thesis studies the creation of Bradford's Muslim communities, in particular the impact of migration on Islamic identity. To this end it begins by mapping the contours of Islamic expression in South Asia, especially the development of distinct maslak, discrete schools of Islamic thought and practice. These were, in part, a response to the imposition of British imperialism in India. The settlers from South Asia also came from a variety of areas, with their own histories, regional languages and cultures. The ethos and character of Islam, which is shared by different sects, is studied unselfconsciously at work in the establishment of Muslim communities in Bradford, generating separate residential zones and a network of businesses and institutions, religious and cultural, developed to service their specific needs. The leadership, resources and ethos which the different maslak could draw on, and the institutions they created to reproduce the Islamic tradition in the city are explored and the extent to which these connect with the new cultural and linguistic world of young British Muslims. Attention is then focused on the education, status, functions and influence of the 'ulama, critical carriers of the Islamic tradition in this new context. The role of the Bradford Council for Mosques is examined both as a bearer of the Islamic impulse to unity, transcending the regional, linguistic and sectarian differences, and as an emerging authority, locally and nationally. The study concludes by exploring the challenges facing Muslims - youth, gender, intellectual tradition, and da'wa, invitation to Islam - as British expressions of Islam struggle to birth

    Sectarian influences within Islam in Britain with special reference to community

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    Although much is heard from the Media of the Muslim `community' in Britain, the latter is in fact far from presenting a united front. There are divisions between generations and ethnic origins, and a diversity of religious practice and doctrine. There are many different religious groups at work that originate from the subcontinent, and reflect this wide range. Organisations like Young Muslims UK, Tabligh-i Jamaat, and schools of thought represented by the Deobandis and Barehvis, to name but four, play a vital role in the life of many Muslims. They both link them back to their roots in the subcontinent and influence the direction that Islam will take in Britain. The Muslim population in Britain is approaching two million. It is involved in a process of redefining itself as a minority in an alien culture. For the older generation the conflict has been cultural, their own ethnicity being under seige from the values of the receiving culture. Islam becomes an important ally of ethnic identity. For many Muslims born in Britain, however, the process is more complex. Their parents' values can seem as strange, or even stranger, than the values of the receiving culture. For this increasing percentage of the population, their religion can offer an identity. Stimulated by Islam's global revival and the West's reaction to it, some Muslims are attempting to discover a faith stripped of cultural accretions which are considered to be unlslamic. In the process they hope to find the universal Islam which can be practised in any environment. They feel that this is the key to establishing a successful British Islamic community. The ideal of ammah has always been central in Islam, but now becomes an important concept in the development of Islam in Britain. There are several questions to be considered: To what degree does an unmrah exist? What is its form? How is it likely to change? What effect will it have on the development of Muslims seeking a more localised identity in Britain? Within this context, what will be the effect of the various organisations and schools of thought at work amongst Muslims? To what degree will they shape the development of Islam in Britain? Are they free from 'cultural accretion' or are they firmly rooted in idiosyncratic local expressions of the faith? Will Islam in Britain be moderate, or strongly revivalist in nature under their influence? Are they unifying or divisive forces? Can they hope to resolve traditional differences and work together in the new environment of Britain? In spite of the increasing interest in the Muslim presence in Britain, very few major works have looked at the influence of these various groups in the context of these questions. I know for myself that I could have used this kind of study when working for my M. A. in Religious Studies, and I know of many students in the same position. I feel that this study will therefore contribute not only to the study of Islam but also to the study of the various minority faiths found in Britain

    The ‘Forbidden Fruit’:Islam and Politics of Identity in Kosovo and Macedonia

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    This paper depicts the interplay of religion and politics, as well as of external and internal actors among Albanian communities in Kosovo and Macedonia. It argues that Islam has never been allowed into the political space, despite occasional attempts to politicize it and utilize it for political and nationalist expediency. This relative absence of Islam from the political sphere is due to a specific social and political context, as well as to a specific historical experience. However, one can depict a higher presence of Islam among Albanians in Macedonia, for reasons related to their position as a minority within an Orthodox majority country that is undergoing a process of reaffirmation of religion as an essential pillar of an emerging Macedonian national identity
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