This article aims at exploring some recent developments in Catholic Church's recent relationship with religious others. It does so by exploring the theological-anthropological sources behind Vatican II and some subsequent Papal teachings concerning the Church's mission of dialogue. Specifically, it discusses the notion of common origin, destiny and common humanity as sources for praxis-oriented and faith-based initiatives in a Christian-Muslim dialogue. This article is divided into three sub-sections. First, it considers the Catholic Church's renewed dialogue with non-Christian believers, (...) with particular focus on the theological-anthropological turn in recent Church teaching. Second, it examines the prospects and challenges of Christian-Muslim dialogue based on belief in God the creator and divine revelation, and human beings' response to divine manifestations in history. Finally, it considers some faith-based humanistic and dialogic initiatives that emerge from the Christian-Muslim confession of one creator God. The paper suggests that a theology of dialogue that understands the world and human beings as the realm of encounter, uncovering and necessitating the divine and the Church's activity in human history, can foster faith-based humanistic and dialogic initiatives between Christians and Muslims. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} In the course of the founding history of America, the American Sacred Ground has been a contested territory where people who do not share a single history or a single religious tradition have engaged in the common tasks of civil society to broaden the contours of (...) class='Hi'>religious pluralism in the US. This paper studies the post 9/11 phase of the public debate on America’s religious identity as the Muslim moment in the long-standing pilgrimage in American religious history towards participatory pluralism. It underscores the challenges that both Americans and American Muslims have had to face to help one another make sense of the startling religious diversity incurred by the 1965 immigration reforms. My contention is that, compared to the Jewish and Catholic experiences, it is only since 9/11 that American Muslims have carried through the traditional role of religious outsiders, abiding by the principles of the American Sacred Ground. (shrink)

The problem of corruption in Indonesia is like an unbroken chain. Since the 1998 reformation until now, many persons with corruption cases involving politicians or officials have been arrested and even imprisoned. Among those entangled in corruption are many Muslim politicians and religious leaders known to the public as having a high level of religiosity and a clean reputation. Ideally, these Muslim politicians will be at the forefront of guarding the nation’s anti-corruption morality. However, the reality is (...) different. This study explains the discrepancy of the relationship between religiosity and anti-corruption attitudes by Muslim politicians. This study relies on a qualitative approach with a descriptive analysis of the online media findings regarding Muslim politicians’ corrupt behaviour. The results of this study indicate that there is no correlation between religiosity and unethical behaviour. Politicians entangled in corruption come from all circles of political parties, socio-economic levels, intellectuals and various religious backgrounds. It means that other factors besides religious morality encourage a person to commit corruption, such as motives for power, high political costs, a hedonistic lifestyle, an incompetent law enforcement system and a deep-rooted culture of corruption.Contribution: Efforts to eradicate corruption in Indonesia need to be carried out in an integrated and comprehensive manner with various approaches. Thus, the goal to minimise the corruption behaviour in Indonesia can be achieved. (shrink)

Muslim legal culture is becoming more relevant to modern Ukraine, which can be explained, on the one hand, by the nature of Islam and, on the other, by the peculiarities of its current state in our country. After all, the internal logic of Islam, as a universal system that encompasses both religious and secular life, as one of the components of the awakening of Islam, involves recourse to Sharia, a strict adherence to which is an unmistakable criterion for (...) Muslims of deep religious faith. On the other hand, in addition to religious revival, in the lives of Muslims, social and economic, political, national and cultural problems need to be addressed and secular. It is secular relations that led to the formation of Muslim jurisprudence and its subsequent evolution. (shrink)

Muslim women and Muslim members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community face a specific form of dual subordination in relation to their gender and sexuality. A Muslim woman might seek solace from India's patriarchal religious judicial structures only to find that the secular system's patriarchal structures likewise aid in their subordination and create a space for new forms of such subordination. Similarly, a marginalized LGBT Muslim might attempt to reject an oppressive (...) class='Hi'>religious formulation only to come to find that the secular Indian state might criminalize a particular form of sexuality. This analysis explores how Indian laws "give meaning" to sexuality through the legal structures manifested by state and religious regulatory bodies and argues that both religious and state legal institutions need to be reformed to create a legal environment that furthers rather than inhibits a full realization of sexual rights. (shrink)

Protecting women and children is one of the core values of the Islamic legal tradition. In Muslim countries religious, constitutional, and legal frameworks obligate the state to take special measures to provide protection to women and children within families and in society. However, despite such provisions, post-divorce maintenance rights are not granted to women in Pakistan and Iran. Family law enacted in Pakistan and Iran still differs in form and substance from what has been mentioned in the primary (...) sources of Islamic law and from the previous articulations of early Islamic law scholars. Moreover, patriarchal notions of male authority are still sustained through law and judicial interpretations when it comes to the question of giving post-divorce maintenance to women. As a result in the absence of a welfare system divorced women are left in a vulnerable situation. Although in Iran, some financial compensation under the concept of Ujrat ul Misl is given to divorced women, but it remains unclear whether the right to Mata’at-ul-Talaq has been recognised under the family law. In Pakistan the law does not include any provision for giving women Ujrat ul Misl and Mata’at- ul -Talaq. Moreover in the absence of a welfare system, divorced Muslim women in both countries are left in a vulnerable situation. This article engages with plural normative sources and contemporary notions of human rights to make the case for family law reform and for awarding post-divorce maintenance rights to Muslim women in Pakistan and Iran. (shrink)

This article describes a new method of viewing a historical phenomenon based on its social significance. This method enabled the classification and analysis of a group in a context simultaneously and chronologically. Using historical phenomenology, the authors found a polarisation of Chinese Muslims' thoughts and practices in the Indonesian context. As an example, the technique of classification of Islamic thoughts is illustrated to discover Chinese Muslim figures' religious activities. This method allows an improved social investigation to probe deeply (...) into Chinese Muslims' formal religious life. The evaluation of the effectiveness of the new method is confirmed by the calculation of the polarisation of Chinese Muslim religiousness, leading to the fragmentation and diversification of Indonesian Chinese Muslims in the realms of politics, economic practices or Islamic rituals. New research results improve the understanding of how a social history of an ethnicity could grow and assimilate in a context. The assimilation could contribute to religious harmony in such a pluralistic country such as Indonesia and can be used for making better social decisions, especially related to the lives of minorities, who urgently need policymakers and stakeholders to accommodate the rights of those who are still in the process of gaining fairer recognition. CONTRIBUTION: Using historical phenomenology, this article tries to classify and study a group in a setting concurrently and chronologically. An in-depth social inquiry into the formal religious life of Chinese Muslims discovered a calculation of religious Chinese Muslims' polarisation, which led to the dispersion and diversification of Indonesian Chinese Muslims' politics, economic practices and Islamic rituals. New policy proposals can be made by evaluating religious polarisation. (shrink)

The roots of the formation of a post-Mongol political theology that situated Muslim emperors and sultans at the center of an Islamic cosmos are found in the Ilkhanid court in late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Iran. This article investigates the case of the short-lived rebellion of the Mongol governor of Rūm and Mahdi-claimant Temürtash. It demonstrates how the discourse of religious reform was recruited to translate and support the claims of non-Chinggisid commanders to the transfer of God’s (...) favor, thus opposing the Chinggisids’ heaven-derived exceptionalism. Exploring affinities with the Timurid appropriation of the mujaddid tradition a century later, the article argues that Temürtash’s rebellion signaled the early stages of the dispersion of a new political language that freed Muslim kingship from the restrictive genealogical and juridical Sunni models of authority. (shrink)

Religious freedoms of minorities in Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan are compromised due to structural issues as well as social and historical concerns. For instance, the abuse of the blasphemy law has led to minority communities facing threats and violence. And in a country where religious scholars are often absent from, if not against, discourses about human rights, the religious rights of minorities remain a secular and hence culturally unsound discourse. There is thus a need for (...) two parallel movements. One, an awareness within Muslim communities about the need to engage with religious freedoms, and hence the modern human rights regime, as an essentially Islamic process requiring reform from within. And two, the human rights structure also giving religion its due since religious freedoms are part of, and engender, many other rights as well. In this article, a case is made for this dual process, by exploring the work of scholars of Islam such as Abdullahi An-Na’im and Khaled Abou El Fadl as well as the insecurities of religious scholars in Pakistan who have reacted to human rights as a western agenda. (shrink)

The article argues that the growth of religious service provision directed at the Muslim diaspora in Europe has led to greater professionalization and pluralism within the Islam state in Muslim countries. Contemporary Muslim governments have claimed a monopoly over public prayer and religious education and have heavily invested in a network of infrastructure and services – the Islam state. The recent breakthrough of Islamist parties into governments in Turkey and across North Africa poses a challenge (...) to the continued ‘civilian control’ over religion. What will become of the enormous Islamic Affairs ministries that Islamist parties have inherited – the hundreds of thousands of public servants of state Islam across the region, the tens of thousands of mosques and thousands of religious schools? Liberals demand the abolition of the Islam state because it violates the separation of religion and state; Islamists detest it for its repressive qualities. Despite progressive liberalization, governments in the past decade have not sought disestablishment, and have instead increased the resources and policing of state-run religion. I draw on the experience of Muslim governments in the competitive field of state–Islam relations in European countries to explain the modest beginnings of reform of the official religion apparatus in Muslim-majority countries. (shrink)

This review of Irene Oh's The Rights of God focuses on women's rights in Islamic theory and practice. Oh suggests that religious establishments, and the texts they disseminate, often press believers to recognize and reject social problems, such as racial and gender discrimination. Islamic scholars and texts have played a more ambiguous role in efforts to recognize women's rights within Muslim states. Modernist intellectuals have used Islamic texts to support the advancement of women's rights, but members of the (...) more conservative religious establishment have typically curbed or rejected these efforts. Muslim women themselves have established various responses to the question of Islam's compatibility with women's rights. While some embrace the value and compatibility of both, others reject the propriety of either Western conceptions of rights, or the Islamic tradition, as harmful for women. Muslim reformers and feminists have much to learn from comparative studies with other faith communities that have undergone similar struggles and transformations. (shrink)

This paper is a comparative study of two northern Nigerian Muslim societies (the Ebira in central Nigeria and the Hausa in the North-west) in which the youths contested religious traditionalists in the 20th century and in the process brought about transformation in their societies. In the religious sphere, which was hitherto considered an affair of the elderly, the youth have equally come to assume a dominant place, especially in their assertive activist posture. In these two case studies, (...) the youths have managed to assume leadership in religion and subsequently have used religion to transform and redefine their roles and status in the societies in a manner that challenged the existing norms. That could be seen as a tradition in the religious convention of the northern Nigerian area that occurs repeatedly through this period. In the 19th century, the Shehu Usmanu Danfodiyo and his cohorts in their youthfulness championed a reform and transformation that continue to inspire other reforms to date in the region. Religious actors in the contemporary Muslim societies of Nigeria are young men and women. It is important to note that these youths are people who possessed both Islamic and Western education and often have international networks and connections, largely through the educational institutions they have attended and/or literature they have studied. Among the Ebira, for instance, the youth subscribed to the religion of Islam, and converted their parents who largely professed African traditional religion to Islam. In Hausaland on the other hand, the youth, unlike the elderly, subscribed to “modern” rather than the “traditional” Islam that the latter do. In both cases therefore, the young engaged the elderly in a struggle to change their conception and practices of Islam. The process has had a tremendous impact on the relationship between the groups in an atmosphere being somehow defined or determined by the young adults in the two northern Nigerian societies being examined. (shrink)

The recent wave of rebellions in the Middle East, commonly referred to as the “Arab Spring,” has stirred up a revival of scholarly interest in the phenomenon of political reform in the Arab world and Muslim-majority states in general. Speculation on the causes of revolution, the provenance and function of political authority, and the means for reshaping or refashioning the existing political or social order had a rich legacy in medieval and early modern Arabic political thought. Islamic history (...) itself provides examples of reforms and revolts that can be seen as antecedents to events associated with the Arab Spring as well as with religious conflicts in Northern Nigeria and Sudan. Thus, a study of the past can.. (shrink)

Article is devoted to research of the views of the Algerian philosopher and Muslim intellectual Mālik Bin Nabī (1905-1973) and reviews his sociological, cultural, historical and philosophical ideas. In his works Mālik Bin Nabī was writing about human society, paying special attention to the reasons for the decline of Muslim civilization and raised the issue of the degree of necessity, ways and forms of perception of its achievements. The author points to the complex approach of the thinker to (...) the problems of the civilizational revival of the Muslim world in the context of the phenomenon of nahda ( al-Nahda ), the main problem of which was and remains the problem of relationship with Western civilization. According to M. Bin Nabī, both in political and social aspects, Nahda is conceptually connected with the Muslims’ search for their own identity and a way out of the crisis generated by long centuries of colonization. In its broad socio-cultural context al-Nahda implies an authentic way for Arabs to meet modernity and constitutes one of the main concepts aimed at achieving a way out of the crisis and a genuine revival of the Muslim world. He sees the ways of solving this problem through the expression of the social values of Islam, arising from the moral and ethical foundations of the Islamic religion, which, in his opinion, affect the restoration of Muslim identity in all realms of existence of the global universe. The thinker proposes a way for the productive revival of the Muslim world based on a harmonious synthesis in line with the merging of the achievements of Western philosophical rationalism and the Islamic religious heritage. In addition, in order to unite the efforts of the Afro-Asian peoples in the face of colonialism, the cultural and economic expansion of the West and the true revival, ultimately, of all the peoples of the East, M. Bin Nabī developed the concept of Afro-Asianism, in which he puts forward the tasks of a globalist scale, pursuing again revival goals. According to the ontological differentiation of M. Bin Nabī, present in the ratio of man, time, space, it has an Islamic basis. This aspect can play an important role in both positive and negative reorganization of the world by man. This situation is directly related to the issue of what meaning people give to the world, as well as the level of their responsibility for that. (shrink)

The end of the eighteenth century was a transformational period for the Muslim communities in the Russian Empire and their relationship with the tsarist state. One of the major figures to emerge out of this context was the reformer Abu Nasr Qursawi. A controversial religious scholar, he put forward a sweeping reform of the Islamic scholarly tradition that was influential among these communities into the twentieth century. Nathan Spannaus presents the first detailed analysis of Qursawi's reformism, both (...) in its contours and broad historical setting, addressing issues of modernity, secularity, tradition, and intellectual history. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the concept of applied Islamic ethics, the facts, its challenges, and its future. I aim to highlight some of the deep-rooted issues that Muslims have faced historically and continue to experience today as they apply religious guidance to their daily lives. I consider the causes and rationale behind the current situation and look beyond to suggest ways in which this may evolve, calling for a radical reform. Muslims throughout the world are experiencing a (...) deepening crisis of identity and confusion about their faith's principles and practices. I suggest how improvements might be achieved, in order to gain more coherence and understanding. This approach recognizes the importance of inviting an in-depth, deliberate analysis of relevant dialogues between religious experts of the text (scholars) and practitioners, those working at the grassroots. This approach remains faithful to the fundamental principles of the Islamic sources but also considers our present context. I recommend a shift in authority from scholars alone to a more inclusive, critical engagement of practitioners. Through this more comprehensive methodology of applied Islamic ethics, I suggest that Muslim communities, organizations, and individuals can remain faithful to their religious principles while, at the same time, actively participating in and contributing to our evolving societies. While I recognize that this will be a long process, I am confident that with applied Islamic ethics, the current feelings of confusion, self-doubt, and even apathy, given the previous failed processes of adaptation and reform, will give way to a new confidence in knowing how to address contemporary challenges. (shrink)

In response to Pascal's famous wager argument for adopting Christian belief, Denis Diderot noted that ‘An Imam could just as well reason this way’. In this article, I will show how Diderot's observation about Pascal's argument can legitimately be made about Alvin Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology (RE) and its use in defending the rationality of Christian belief. Plantinga's RE can, with some minor adjustments, easily be adopted by Muslims. I shall argue that an Islamic analogue of Plantinga's Christian RE presents an (...) undercutting rationality defeater for Christian belief for those reflective Christians who adopt Plantinga-style religious epistemology. I call this defeater the ‘Diderot Objection’ to Plantinga's RE. As part of my discussion, I will consider how Plantinga attempts to respond to this sort of objection and will show why his response runs into difficulties. (shrink)

Eco-Islam is often discussed from a theological perspective, but there are hardly any studies on the activist’s practices, their experiences and reasoning. In order to fill this gap and to emphasise the importance of studying lived religion, this article presents three interviews with young Eco-Islam activists in Germany. By using the method of cultural analysis, the author compares, summarises and abstracts their statements and activities, so that a comprehensive configuration is revealed. Cultural analysis focuses on cultural constellations and tries to (...) think historical, social and biographical components together. To understand the Eco-Islam activist’s perspectives at a deeper cultural level, the author firstly represents a thick description of the statements and activities of her three respondents. Afterwards, she scrutinises the actors’ practices and processes by applying the dimensions of belief, practice and community on their everyday life and performative action. At last she filters three related themes on a cultural constellational level. Contribution: In this article, the author simultaneously highlights the implicit connections of eco-Islamic Activism to aspects of Othering and empowerment, aspects of (re-) interpretation of religious norms and aspects of transgressing environmental activism and the idea of an Islamic community. (shrink)

It is possible to talk about many reasons that determine the direction of religious publications in the first quarter of the Republic, both in terms of content, style and method. While some of these factors came into play or became stronger with the Republic, an important part of it has a history that goes back to Ottoman modernization. The decline of the Ottoman state, which started on the battlefields, caused serious land losses. This regression damaged the self-confidence of Muslims (...) and spread the idea that salvation would be possible with a Western-style modernization. In this context, the obligatory relations with the Western world, which were established with the feeling of backwardness, were not limited to the military, political and cultural fields, but also spread to the religious field. For this reason, while Ottoman scholars and thinkers sought ways out through political and administrative reforms, they had to discuss the current understanding of religion and the religion-world conception formed in this direction. It has been especially emphasized that Islam does not prevent progress, encourages scientific and technical developments, and is compatible with the principles of reason and logic in terms of content. It is also known that the emphases in this manner maintain their vitality in the texts written both in the last period of the Ottoman Empire and in the Republic of Turkey. On the other hand, this approach, which was not possible to develop independently of the positivist and materialist understanding of science formed in a determinist framework of the West, also affected the field of creed along with the practical and moral issues of Islam. This situation continued and strengthened when it was transferred to the republican period. Because the founding cadres of the republic, who sought a secular and positivist ground, defended the idea that the religious field in general and the creed in particular should not conflict with the scientific understanding of the period. Expressed in the context of the present study, the political center thinks that there are compulsory fixed laws within the framework of cause-effect relationship in nature and that no effect is possible outside of these laws. In response to this attitude, the issue of miracles has been used in religious publications to express situations that go above the laws of nature, on the one hand, it has been tried to be discussed without prejudice to the attributes and actions of Allah. On the other hand, this discussion was conducted without giving the impression that Islam contradicts modern science. Discussing the issue under the influence of the secular and positivist framework drawn by the political center and Western intellectuals makes the issue a worthwhile subject to investigate. Because, in the period of the New Ilm-i Kalam, the restrictive attitude of the founding cadres accompanied the rational and scientific interpretations about the possibility of miracles. This situation significantly determined the content and style of the texts written during the period. In these circumstances, I believe that it is important to point out the points of conflict and reconciliation in the grounding of a religious issue such as a miracle. In this direction, while the current study covers the years 1924-1960 in terms of time, it is a study that especially includes the publications of the Presidency of Religious Affairs and Ankara University Faculty of Theology as a source. The date 1924, which was determined as the starting date, is important both for the establishment date in terms of the Presidency of Religious Affairs and for the abolition of the caliphate and the taking of some important decisions such as the Law on Unification of Education. On the other hand, the date of 1960 points to a coup date and some fractures in the political sense. During the study, I included the sources published by both the Presidency of Religious Affairs and the Faculty of Theology of Ankara University, as well as other sources directly related to these sources. In addition to this time and resource restriction, it was also referred to important texts written before 1924 and after 1960 when appropriate. (shrink)

Articulating the possible limits or shortcomings of the international human rights movement, David Kennedy highlights the fact that Human Rights discourses distract attention away from the economic realm and towards a re-entrenchment of the individual's relationship with the state and the negotiation of political and procedural rights. Even in a country like Malaysia that is credited as an economic and development miracle, the human rights discourse has distracted attention away from the underlying problems of ethnic and economic stratification and directed (...) energy and resources towards the realization of personal and political "Rights" that will not be capable of being exercised in a meaningful way without economic redistribution. Furthermore, the Human Rights discourse has been transplanted in the context of a religious identity debate, which has both shaped and limited its discursive boundaries, as well as its ability to articulate and realize demands. The combination of the limitations of Human Rights discourse with its operation within the religious identity debate has meant that the liberal reformers in Malaysia have been severely limited in their ability to implement meaningful changes. Consideration of the women's rights movement in Malaysia aptly demonstrates that way that rights discourses have compromised the success of liberal reformers. (shrink)

Wallace, Meg Review of: Muslim women reformers: Inspiring voices against oppression, by ida Lichter, Prometheus Books 2009.

Writing about Moses Maimonides is a humbling challenge especially in the form of a very short introduction. Such a larger-than-life subject resists reductive interpretation in virtually all his works and in his person. Maimonidean scholarship abounds as do books about him written for the reading public in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Hebrew. Until recently, academic monographs and articles tended to focus strictly on Maimonides' biography, rabbinical works, philosophical oeuvre, communal endeavors, or his medical writings separately. Comprehensive studies on (...) Maimonides are apt to follow this model by devoting chapters to each of these discreet subjects. This very short introduction to Moses Maimonides draws on Maimonidean scholarship in each of his areas of experience and literary activity. It follows current trends in research which present an integrated view of Maimonides as a rabbinic scholar without peer, a philosophically minded deep thinker, religious reformer (who thought of his life's project as restoring the authentic meaning and details of the written and oral Torah), communal leader, physician, and scientist who moved seamlessly between specialized, private and public Jewish and Muslim spheres. Indeed, his written works traverse multiple disciplines and discourses, employ several linguistic registers, voices, and literary genres, and address various audiences. Accordingly, this book organizes Maimonides' thinking and writings thematically by way of suggestive "chapter headings" to use one his catch phrases in The Guide of the Perplexed (although not in the sense of enigmas and puzzles to be deciphered) and puts his works into dialogue with one another intertextually. (shrink)

This book asks what it means to be Muslim, yet not pious, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Though Islam is often represented in terms of either daily devotion, such as prayer and fasting, or abandonment of faith, there are many who turn away from tradition without departing from Islam. J. Andrew Bush offers us a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, one that invites questions about divine texts and rejects easy answers about political or sectarian identities. Exploring the (...) lives of irreligious Muslims, Bush highlights the paradoxes of their ethical orientation. While profoundly averse to many aspects of Islamic traditions, irreligious Muslims nonetheless harbor attractions to other aspects--such as Sufi poetry. Exploring this complex weave of attraction and aversion, Relating to Islam in Kurdistan provides intimate portraits of irreligious Kurdish Muslims in everyday life and the historical conditions that have allowed such paradoxical religious orientations to appear very ordinary in contemporary Kurdistan. Whether readers approach the book as Muslims with a commitment to Islam, or as Muslims with ambivalence to Islam, or as non-Muslims who bear their own forms of certainty or ambivalence about Islam, the book will open to the door to thinking about the relationship between commitment and ambivalence in Islamic traditions. (shrink)

How do ordinary Muslims deal with and influence the increasingly pervasive Islamic norms set by institutions of the state and religion? Becoming Better Muslims offers an innovative account of the dynamic interactions between individual Muslims, religious authorities, and the state in Aceh, Indonesia. Relying on extensive historical and ethnographic research, David Kloos offers a detailed analysis of religious life in Aceh and an investigation into today's personal processes of ethical formation. Aceh is known for its history of rebellion (...) and its recent implementation of Islamic law. Debunking the stereotypical image of the Acehnese as inherently pious or fanatical, Kloos shows how Acehnese Muslims reflect consciously on their faith and often frame their religious lives in terms of gradual ethical improvement. Revealing that most Muslims view their lives through the prism of uncertainty, doubt, and imperfection, he argues that these senses of failure contribute strongly to how individuals try to become better Muslims. He also demonstrates that while religious authorities have encroached on believers and local communities, constraining them in their beliefs and practices, the same process has enabled ordinary Muslims to reflect on moral choices and dilemmas, and to shape the ways religious norms are enforced. Arguing that Islamic norms are carried out through daily negotiations and contestations rather than blind conformity, Becoming Better Muslims examines how ordinary people develop and exercise their religious agency. (shrink)

Religious Reflection Scales yield cross-cultural data suggesting that religious traditions have potentials to integrate intellect with faith. This investigation extended analysis of that possibility to Sunni Muslim university students in Malaysia and also examined the hypothesis that Islamic commitments to knowledge promote religious openness. Faith and Intellect Oriented Religious Reflection correlated positively and predicted openness. The Truth of Texts and Teachings factor from the Religious Schema Scales essentially assesses a form of fundamentalism and displayed (...) direct linkages with religious openness as well. Ilm factors from the Ummatic Personality Inventory correlated positively with religious openness and mediated associations of Islamic Religious Reflection with other constructs. Quest as a presumed index of religious openness proved to be incompatible with sincere Muslim commitments. These findings supplemented previous Muslim, Christian, and Hindu data in confirming the potential openness of religious traditions. (shrink)

Modernity believed that processes of secularization and rationalization are universally applicable. What is taking place in the 21st century, however, suggests that the reverse, a process of de-secularization, is becoming the hallmark of the present age. In the case of Islamic civilization, in which law is shari'a, the challenge to secularization takes the form of a process of shari'atization. This is not the traditional or inherited shari'a, restricted to civil matters and to a penal code, but an invented shari'a, one (...) which also claims to be a constitutional law. Moreover, the constructed shari'atized constitutional law, in conflict with secular constitutionalism and appearing to offer no middle way, has been universalized to engender an international conflict between secularization and de-secularization. Since, for most Muslims, Islam without shari'a is unthinkable, this article examines the potential for religious reform of the shari'a in the direction of cultural change, freedom and democratic constitutionalism. (shrink)

The present article reveals insufficiently studied aspects of Islamic Mysticism (Sufism) in Russia’s Volga-Ural region at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century in the context of modernization in late imperial Russia. A special attention is paid to the analysis of the contribution made by pedagogue, Sufi and scholar Khalil Rahimov to moderate Muslim reformism. He led extramural polemic with outstanding Russian Muslim reformists on the ways of development of the Muslim community, the (...) role of Islamic Mystical tradition (Sufism) in the life of Muslims. He criticized their religious and philosophical teachings and views on the issues of faith and reason, the adaptation of scientific achievements and cultural models of advanced countries. Khalil Rahimov believed that Muslim education, culture and society should be developed without undermining the foundations of religion. Alongside the research, the article provides a Russian annotated translation of excerpts from Khalil Rahimov’s book “Himayat al-awliya’ min ihanat al-agwiya’” [The Protection of the Saints from the abuse of erring men]. (shrink)

Previous research indicates that spirituality expressed in tradition-specific terms may initiate, invigorate, and integrate Muslim religious commitments, suggesting a 3-I Model of Religious Spirituality. In a test of this model, Islamic seminarians, university students, and office workers in Iran responded to Muslim Experiential Religiousness, Religious Orientation, and mental health scales. The tradition- specific spirituality of MER displayed correlation, moderation, and mediation results with Intrinsic and Extrinsic Personal Religious Orientations that pointed toward initiation, invigoration, and (...) integration effects, respectively. MER also clarified the ambiguous implications of the Extrinsic Social Religious Orientation. These data most generally confirmed the heuristic potential of the 3-I Model. (shrink)

The focus of this examination is on Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History, particularly the final chapters in which, among other things, Hegel posits that no change in legal freedoms can be expected without the liberation of conscience and that it is illusory to expect the revolution to succeed if it is not preceded by religious reformation. It is an attempt to critically rethink Hegel’s views on reformation, revolution and history in the light of modern religious, theological, (...) philosophical, political, scientific and cultural theses and research. The philosophy of history is observed as something of a key to understanding Hegel’s philosophical ideas. At the same time, his brilliant insights are reimagined in the context of the contemporary revival of the phenomena of religion/faith. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical examination of two recent American Supreme Court verdicts, Masterpiece Cake Shop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission and Trump v Hawaii. In Masterpiece the Court ruled against the state of Colorado on grounds that religious bias on the part of state officials undermines government’s authority to enforce a policy that might otherwise be constitutional. In Trump the Court ruled in favor of an executive order severely restricting immigration from seven countries, five of which are (...) class='Hi'>Muslim majority. Both verdicts raise important issues concerning fairness and religious freedom. After examining some of the central legal issues in these verdicts I offer a critical assessment of the legal arguments, focusing on how political value judgments played a crucial role in determining the legal outcomes. (shrink)

Muslims in the U.S. are increasingly looking to integrate into its society while trying not to lose their identity as Muslims. They find themselves in a dilemma when it comes to the issue of congratulating and even partaking in the festivals of non-Muslims in the U.S. This issue has gained prominence and momentum after the event of 9-11, in which the Muslims wanted to show and prove their tolerance and acceptance towards others while trying to hold onto and maintain the (...) core principles of Islam. For this reason, this topic is a hotly debated issue in the U.S. and the West in general and a cause of division and confusion amongst Muslims. However, in order to justify their position and feel that they are following the teachings of Islam, they turned to the Islamic scholars, both in the West and the Muslim world, regarding the permissibility or prohibition of congratulating and partaking in non-Muslim festivals. This paper employs a qualitative methodology to analyse the fatāwā of permissibility and its effects on the Muslims living as minorities in the U.S. This qualitative method will give readers an insight, through a questionnaire that was conducted by the researchers, into how the Muslims in the U.S. perceive the issue of congratulating and/or partaking in the religious festivals of the non-Muslims. (shrink)

The general subject of the book is the re-discovery of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed by the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement in Germany of the nineteenth and beginning twentieth Germany. Since this movement is inseparably connected with religious reforms that took place at about the same time, it shall be demonstrated how the Reform Movement in Judaism used the Guide for its own agenda of historizing, rationalizing and finally turning Judaism into a philosophical enterprise of ‘ethical monotheism’. The (...) study follows the reception of Maimonidean thought, and the Guide specifically, through the nineteenth century, from the first beginnings of early reformers in 1810 and their reading of Maimonides to the development of a sophisticated reform-theology, based on Maimonides, in the writings of Hermann Cohen more then a hundred years later. (shrink)

The contemporary Qur’anic studies have been marked by amazing development. Various methods and approaches to understand the Qur’an are offered by the scholars. One of the prominent figures in this field is Nashr Hamid Abu Zayd. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943–2010 M) is a highly controversial contemporary thinker. He is an Egyptian scholar who is accused of being apostate, because of his theory of qur’anic hermeneutic (the textual of Qur’an). This is reflected in his stances towards contemporary religious discourse (...) and the approach to reading religious texts, especially the Quran, which requires reading according to a hermeneutic mechanism. His books ‘Naqd al-Khitab al-Dini (Criticism of Religious Discourse)’ and ‘Al-Takfir fi Zaman al-Takfir (Thinking in the Time of Atonement)’ caused a great uproar in the early nineties of the last century. Abu Zayd was accused of criticising atheists because of their stances on the text. Therefore, this study aimed to discuss Abu Zayd’s position on contemporary religious discourse and his new approach to reading religious texts, and also aims to discuss why Abu Zayd’s theory has been string up Islamic world and ending by his expulsive from his native country. To deal with this problem, this article discusses Abd Zayd’s biography and some cultural framework of his people. The methodology of Qur’anic hermeneutic is the least his. Having examined the topic, the author finds that Abu Zayd believes that modem literary theory and criticism denote the way to understand and interpret the Qur’an ‘objectively’. The contribution of this research is discussing Abu Zayd’s contemporary religious discourse and his new approach to reading religious texts. Contribution: The contribution of this research is discussing Abu Zayd’s contemporary religious discourse and his new approach to reading religious texts. (shrink)

The book discusses some major 21st century trends, issues and challenges of Islamic intellectual tradition vis-à-vis the contributions, academic outpouring and approaches of some prominent contemporary Muslim scholars of the Indo-Pak subcontinent within the broader context of 'reformism' and through the lens of 'reformist thought'. It highlights some of the major currents and trends of Islamic thought by focusing on South Asian Muslim thinkers and their contributions to modern Islamic religious and intellectual thought. Set against the background (...) of the tradition versus modernity debate, it addresses perennial themes pertaining to Islamic primary sources and engages in legal, socio-political and gender aspects through the writings of select thinkers of the subcontinent. The book is expected to benefit the students and scholars of Islamic Studies, South Asian Studies and allied subjects in assessing vernacular perspective on current religious, socio-legal and political discourses. (shrink)

Early modern Protestant scholars closely engaged with Islamic thought in more ways than is usually recognized. Among Protestants, Lutheran scholars distinguished themselves as the most invested in the study of Islam and Muslim culture. Mehmet Karabela brings the neglected voices of post-Reformation theologians, primarily German Lutherans, into focus and reveals their rigorous engagement with Islamic thought. Inspired by a global history approach to religious thought, Islamic Thought Through Protestant Eyes offers new sources to broaden the conventional interpretation of (...) the Reformation beyond a solely European Christian phenomenon. -/- Based on previously unstudied dissertations, disputations, and academic works written in Latin in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Karabela analyzes three themes: Islam as theology and religion; Islamic philosophy and liberal arts; and Muslim sects (Sunni and Shi‘a). This book provides analyses and translations of the Latin texts as well as brief biographies of the authors. -/- These texts offer insight into the Protestant perception of Islamic thought for scholars of religious studies and Islamic studies as well as for general readers. Examining the influence of Islamic thought on the construction of the Protestant identity after the Reformation helps us to understand the role of Islam in the evolution of Christianity. (shrink)

Islamic Perspectives on the Principles of Biomedical Ethics presents results from a pioneering seminar in 2013 between Muslim religious scholars, biomedical scientists, and Western bioethicists at the research Center for Islamic Legislation & Ethics, Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies. By examining principle-based bioethics, the contributors to this volume addressed a number of key issues related to the future of the field. Discussion is based around the role of religion in bioethical reasoning, specifically from an Islamic perspective. Also considered (...) is a presentation of the concept of universal principles for bioethics, with a response looking at the possibility (or not) of involving religion. Finally, there is in-depth analysis of how far specific disciplines within the Islamic tradition -- such as the higher objectives of Sharia (maqāṣid al-Sharī'ah) and legal maxims (qawā'id fiqhīyah) -- can enrich principle-based bioethics. (shrink)

The analysis of the situation in the Muslim environment shows that at present the process of forming a religious network in Ukraine has largely taken place. The vast majority of communities are under the jurisdiction of three spiritual centers - the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Crimea, the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Ukraine, the Spiritual Center of the Muslims of Ukraine. In addition, there are communities that do not belong to any of these three centers. (...) From time to time they try to unite. So, today, no spiritual center represents all Muslims of Ukraine and cannot formally and officially speak on their behalf. (shrink)

. This article seeks to outline how a Muslim believer can deflect a defeater for Islamic belief put forward by Erik Baldwin and Tyler McNabb. In doing so, it aims to reject the suggestion that an Islamic religious epistemology is somehow antithetical to a model of Reformed epistemology which is not fully compatible with Plantingian. Taken together with previous work on Islam and RE, the article not only aims to provide reason to think that Baldwin and McNabb’s proposed (...) epistemic defeater for Islamic belief isn’t problematic, it also seeks to show how the concerns raised by Baldwin and McNabb over a Plantingian model of RE in Islamic milieu, are no longer tenable. (shrink)

The founding will of the Republic of Turkey, after challenges that they had to go though in a new country, have entered into a new state and feverish efforts to build a new society. The victories which were won in the battlefield must be crowned with a strong state and community structure that will not have to face the same problems again. The first and most important thing to be done for this is to provide the construction of the national (...) identity which is the fundamental basis of the indivisible integrity of the state with the country and nation by implementing some changes that have been discussed within the intellectual point of view since the Tanzimat reform era. Just as history, language, mythology, culture, science and education became the means of this purpose, the religious institution was tried to be organized to serve this basic purpose. It is certain that religious arrangements will meet greater challenges than other revolutions. The aim of the study is to provide a better understanding of the basic intention behind the arrangements that the founding staff of the republic are trying to implement in the religious field in terms of language. The main purpose of the revolutions in the Turkishization of the language of religion is the concerns about the construction of a solid national identity. The aim of the study is to provide a better understanding of the basic intention behind the regulations that the founding staff of the republic were trying to implement in the field of language-specific religion. (shrink)

The endowment of religious, charitable, and educational enterprises by the establishment of trusts in land, the income from which could be devoted to such uses, was an immensely popular form of pious expression in both medieval Christendom and the Islamic world. The motives for, and applications of such endowments differed markedly, however, between the two religious cultures. The endowment of prayers and masses for beneficiaries, living and dead, exemplified the sacramental and sacerdotal quality of pre-Reformation Christianity. This ritualistic (...) and ecclesiastical use of endowments in Latin Christian Europe and the Orthodox East, a use dependent on the existence of a sacramental system and an institutional church, contrasted sharply with the broader application of the Muslim waqf, by means of which pious individuals and groups sponsored a wide variety of charities, explicitly life-oriented and quite unconnected with a corporate clerical establishment. The infinite multiplication of private acts of charity by devout Muslims manifested the moralistic bent of Islam, which aspired to recast society according to the norms of the Qur'an and sacred law. The contrasting uses to which the two religious systems put the gifts and legacies of the faithful reflected the operation of fundamentally different religious premises, whereas the institutionalization of these premises in a shared legal fiction, the trust, assured their enforcement in society and life. (shrink)

The pluralistic philosophy of religion of Abdolkarim Soroush, whose neo-rationalist thought represents a genuine epistemological turn within Muslim reform discourse, is the central issue in this paper. Abdolkarim Soroush, as a contemporary Muslim thinker, brings a completely new understanding of the issue of religious pluralism and by incorporating analytical philosophy, contemporary hermeneutic tradition and Sufi metaphysics, contributes to the creation of a characteristically distinct philosophy of religion within the Muslim intellectual circle. Issues of expansion and (...) contraction of religious knowledge, as well as the expansion of prophetic experience, are inseparable elements of his philosophy of religion. (shrink)