RSSArchive for February, 2010

TRAVELS AMONG EUROPE’S MUSLIM NEIGHBOURS

جوست Lagendijk

ژان مارینوس WIERSMA

“A ring of friends surrounding the Union [], from Morocco to Russia”.This is how, in late 2002, the then President of the European Commission, رومانو پرودی, described the key challenge facing Europe following the planned enlargement of 2004. The accession process had built up momentum, and the former communist countries of Central Europe had been stabilised and were transforming themselves into democracies. EU membership was not directly on the agenda for countries beyond the enlargement horizon, با این حال. How could Europe prevent new dividing lines forming at its borders? How could the European Union guarantee stability, security and peace along its perimeter? Those questions were perhaps most pertinent to the EU’s southern neighbours. از آنجا که 11 سپتامبر 2001, in particular, our relations with the Islamic world have been imbued with a sense of urgency. Political developments in our Islamic neighbour countries bordering the Mediterranean could have a tremendous impact on European security. Although the area is nearby, the political distance is great. Amid threatening language about a ‘clash of civilisations’, the EU quickly drew the conclusion that conciliation and cooperation, rather than confrontation, constituted the best strategy for dealing with its southern neighbours.

Islamic Banking and the Politics of International Financial Harmonization

کریستین اسمیت

In the mid-1970’s, the Arab Gulf made a dramatic entrance onto world financialmarkets. In one year, oil prices quadrupled, precipitating the fastest transfer of wealth inthe twentieth century. Many Gulfis who previously had no dealings with financialinstitutions had their first introduction to banking. It quickly became apparent howeverthat there was a tension between the institutions and norms underlying Western financeand the prevailing belief amongst many Gulfis that earning interest is forbidden by Islam.Throughout the Gulf, and particularly in Saudi Arabia, religiously observant individualschose to leave their money in non-interest bearing accounts rather than contraveneIslamic law.This cultural difference opened up the space for entrepreneurs to mediate betweenthe global system and local beliefs and customs. The result was the creation of Islamicbanks: financial intermediaries that offer services similar to those of conventional banks,but through financial instruments legally structured to comply with Islamic religious law(Shariah). The entrepreneurs behind this institutional innovation have been able to createa profitable niche for themselves amongst the religiously conservative populations of theGulf. Beyond their marketing advantage, they have likewise used demands for paritywith conventional banks to receive government contracts, and the desire of foreigninvestors to present a “local” face on their business to market themselves for jointventures. Their advantages are not strictly economic, با این حال, as my research into theIslamic finance industry in Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE has shown.

زنان, work, and Islam in Arab societies

یوسف این

Arab societies are currently in a state of confusion. Problems of underdevelopment,inequity, institutional deficiencies, and illiteracy are rampant (Arab HumanDevelopment Report, 2002). Arabs seem to be in a futile search for a new identity ina world that is transforming: power structures are shifting, societal expectations arechanging, and male-female relations are developing. The Arabs seem to yearn for anew identity that does not displace them from their roots, and at the same timeconnects them to the future; the search seems incessantly fruitless. Even non-Arabsseem to be confused about the issue. Vivid movie images mostly portray the Arab maleas a primitive, fanatic, brutal, lunatic, vicious, and splendidly prosperous individualwhile the Arab woman is portrayed as a belly dancer or whore, a veiled submissivemember of a luxurious harem, or a speechless oppressed character with no identity(Boullata, 1990). The political developments of the past few years did not help bringabout a better image. The rise of Islamic activism, end of the cold war, Huntington’s“clash of civilizations” supposition, and the events of 11th September only reinforcedthe bewilderment and confusion.In addressing the notion of women’s participation in the business and politicalarenas in Arab societies, conflicting remarks are brought forward. Some refer to therole of culture and the prevailing religion in the area – Islam and interpretations ofIslam – as possible reasons for such lack of participation (El-Saadawi, 1997; Mernissi,1991). اسلام, it is asserted, is not merely a set of beliefs and rituals but is also a socialorder that has an all-pervading influence on its followers (Weir, 2000). This essayattempts to present varying discourses pertaining to women’s work and how it isimpacted by interpretations of Islam. We present current discourses from variousviewpoints including Muslim scholars on the one hand and active feminists on theother hand. We address the disagreements that exist in the camps of the religiousscholars in their interpretations of religious texts impacting women and their work. Inaddition, we tackle the feminist discourse pertaining to the role of Islam, orunderstandings of Islam, in their participation and development.

THE ISLAH MOVEMENT: Islamic Moderation in War-torn Somalia

عبدالرحمان M. عبداللهی


The growth of Islamic movements has been attracting greaterinterest over the last three decades, in particular after the 9/11 attack on US targets and the subsequent declaration of the GlobalWar on Terrorism. Many factors have contributed to this growth; oneof the major causes has been the failure of the post-colonial statesin many Muslim countries and the attractiveness of the oppositionalIslamic approach as an alternative. These movements took various2courses to realize their agendas and formulated differentmethodologies and strategies because of the diverse conditions andenvironment in which they have grown and are operating2. Forinstance, some movements in dictatorial regimes or in Muslimcommunities under foreign occupation or those living as amarginalized minority may resort to violence as the only availablemeans of political expression. از سوی دیگر, movements in thedemocratic environment usually participate in the democraticpolitical process and implement successful social programs3. In theSomali context, Somali students in the Arab World universities in1960s had been interacting with different Islamic groups, embracedsimilar ideas and gradually formed comparable movements. Inparticular, two main organizations have become more prominentsince the 1980s; namely the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Islah(reform) Movement (1978) and the neo-Salafia associated al-Ittihad(Islamic Union) Movement (1980) and its successive offshoots .

BETWEEN THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

آنتونی BUBALO

گرگ FEALY

Against the background of the ‘war on terror’,many people have come to view Islamism as amonolithic ideological movement spreading from thecenter of the Muslim world, the Middle East, toMuslim countries around the globe. To borrow aphrase from Abdullah Azzam, the legendary jihadistwho fought to expel the Soviet Union fromAfghanistan in the 1980s, many today see all Islamistsas fellow travellers in a global fundamentalist caravan.This paper evaluates the truth of that perception. Itdoes so by examining the spread of two broad categoriesof Islamic thinking and activism — the morepolitically focused Islamism and more religiouslyfocused ‘neo-fundamentalism’ — from the MiddleEast to Indonesia, a country often cited as an exampleof a formerly peaceful Muslim community radicalizedby external influences.Islamism is a term familiar to many.Most commonly itis used to categorize ideas and forms of activism thatconceive of Islam as a political ideology. Today, a widerange of groups are classified as Islamist, from theEgyptian Muslim Brotherhood to al-qa‘ida.While sucha categorization remains appropriate in many cases,Islamism seems less useful as a label for those groupsthat do not see Islam as a political ideology and largelyeschew political activism — even if their activism sometimeshas political implications. Included in this categoryare groups concerned primarily with Islamic mission-IV Be t w e e n t h e G l o b a l a n d t h e L o c a l : اسلام گرایی, the Mi d d l e E a s t , a n d Indonesiaary activity, but it would also include a group such asal-qa‘ida whose acts of terrorism are arguably drivenless by concrete political objectives than religious inspiration,albeit of a misguided form. This paper thereforeuses the term ‘neo-fundamentalist’, developed by theFrench scholar Olivier Roy, to describe these groups andwill study the transmission of both Islamist and neofundamentalistideas to Indonesia.

Reform in the Muslim World: The Role of Islamists and Outside Powers

شبلی Telhami


The Bush Administration’s focus on spreading democracyin the Middle East has been much discussed over the past several years, not only in the United Statesand Arab and Muslim countries but also around theworld. In truth, neither the regional discourse about theneed for political and economic reform nor the Americantalk of spreading democracy is new. Over the pasttwo decades, particularly beginning with the end of theCold War, intellectuals and governments in the MiddleEast have spoken about reform. The American policyprior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 also aimedto spread democracy in the Arab world. But in that case,the first Gulf War and the need to forge alliances withautocratic regimes were one reason talk of democracydeclined. The other reason was the discovery that politicalreform provided openings to Islamist political groupsthat seemed very much at odd with American objectives.The fear that Islamist groups supported democracy onlybased on the principle of “one man, one vote, one time,”as former Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejianonce put it, led the United States to backtrack. Evenearly in the Clinton Administration, Secretary of StateWarren Christopher initially focused on democracy inhis Middle East policy but quickly sidelined the issueas the administration moved to broker Palestinian-Israelinegotiation in the shadow of militant Islamist groups,especially Hamas.

Priorities of The Islamic Movement in The Coming Phase

یوسف القرضاوی

What Do We Mean By Islamic Movement?

By “جنبش اسلامی”, I mean that organized, collective work, undertaken by thepeople, to restore Islam to the leadership of society, and to the helm of life all walksof life.Before being anything else, the Islamic Movement is work: persistent, industriouswork, not just words to be said, speeches and lectures to be delivered, or books andarticles are indeed required, they are merely parts of a movement, not themovement itself (Allah the Almighty says, Work, and Allah, His Messenger and thebelievers will see your work} [Surat al-Tawba: 1 05].The Islamic Movement is a popular work performed for Allah’s sakeThe Islamic movement is a popular work based mainly on self-motivation andpersonal conviction. It is a work performed out of faith and for nothing other thanthe sake of Allah, in the hope of being rewarded by Him, not by humans.The core of this self-motivation is that unrest which a Muslim feels when theAwakening visits him and he feels a turmoil deep inside him, as a result of thecontradiction between his faith on the one hand and the actual state of affairs of hisnation on the other. It is then that he launches himself into action, driven by his lovefor his religion, his devotion to Allah, His Messenger, the Quran and the MuslimNation, and his feeling of his, and his people’s, neglect of their duty. In so doing, heis also stimulated by his keenness to discharge his duty, eliminate deficiencies,contribute to the revival of the neglected faridas [enjoined duties] of enforcing theSharia [Islamic Law] sent down by Allah; unifying the Muslim nation around the HolyQuran; supporting Allah’s friends and fighting Allah’s foes; liberating Muslimterritories from all aggression or non-Muslim control; reinstating the Islamiccaliphate system to the leadership anew as required by Sharia, and renewing theobligation to spread the call of Islam, enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrongand strive in Allah’s cause by deed, by word or by heartthe latter being theweakest of beliefsso that the word of Allah may be exalted to the heights.

فراتر از اسلام گرایی

احسان ییلماز


With the increased international prominence of Turkey and its successful and internationallyrespected AK Party government, the Academia’s attention has focused on the Turkish Islamistexperience. Turkey had already been seen as an almost unique case as far Islam-state-secularismdemocracyrelations were concerned but the recent transformation of Turkish Islamism coupledwith the global turmoil in the post-9/11 world has made the Turkish case much more important.While Turkish Islamists’ recent transformation that has brought about their rise to the power hasbeen applauded at home and abroad, there are relatively very few studies that analyze theirtransformation by taking into account the unique experience of Turkish Islamism starting from the18th & 19th centuries’ Ottoman secularization, Young Ottomans of the 1860s and the Ottomanconstitutionalism and democracy. علاوه بر این, some dynamics that affected the change in theTurkish Islamists’ Islamic normative framework have not been analyzed in detail. بدین ترتیب, this studyendeavors to analyze the main factors behind the newly emerged tolerant normative framework ofthe AK Party leaders who were formerly Islamists. After showing that there are good historicalreasons arising from the Ottoman experience of secularism and democracy and arguing based on abrief theoretical discussion of the plurality of Islamisms, it argues that the Turkish Islamism hasalways differed from the other Islamist experiences. از این رو, in this study, a detailed evaluationof the Turkish Islamist experience starting from the Young Ottomans is undertaken. سپس, thispaper attempts to show that Islamic groups’ physical and discursive interaction has been a crucialfactor in the Turkish Islamism’s transformation. Main premise of this paper is that the Gülenmovement has been the most influential factor that has helped the AK Party leaders to develop amore tolerant normative framework and to eventually jettison their Islamism. It is of coursedifficult to establish casual relationship between two social phenomena but one can underscorecorrelations. As the main hypothesis is that the Gülen movement has been the most influentialfactor in the normative transformation of the former Islamists’ mental frameworks and theirreligio-political worldviews, this paper provides a comparative discourse analysis betweenFethullah Gülen’s and Islamists’ ideas on several issues that have been relevant for both Islamismand newly-emerged post-Islamism. To identify these relevant issues (secularism, pluralism,democracy, rule of law, nationalism, state, اسلام گرایی, religiosity, the other, borders and dialogue),the paper provides a brief theoretical discussion of Islamism and post-Islamism that will also helpthe reader to understand the fundamental differences between Islamism and the Gülenian thought.

The future of Islam after 9/11

منصور Moaddel

There is no consensus among historians and Islamicists about the nature of theIslamic belief system and the experience of historical Islam, on which one couldbase a definitive judgment concerning Islam’s compatibility with modernity. Nonetheless,the availability of both historical and value survey data allow us to analyzethe future of Islam in light of the horrific event of 9/11. The key factor that woulddetermine the level of societal visibility necessary for predicting the future developmentof a culture is the nature and clarity of the ideological targets in relation towhich new cultural discourses are produced. Based on this premise, I shall try toilluminate the nature of such targets that are confronted by Muslim activists inIran, مصر, and Jordan.

ISLAMIC MODERNITIES: FETHULLAH GULEN and CONTEMPORARY ISLAM

فرگوسن Caki

The Nurju movement1, being the oldest moderate Islamist movement which is probably peculiar to Modern Turkey, was broken into several groups since Said Nursi, the founder of the movement, passed away in 1960. At the present time, there are more than ten nurcu groups with different agendas and strategies. Despite all their differences, today the Nurju groups seem to acknowledge each other’s identity and try to keep a certain level of solidarity. Theplace of the Fethullah Gulen group within the Nurju movement, با این حال, seems to be a bit shaky.Fethullah Gulen (b.1938) split himself, at least in appearance, from the overall Nurju movement in 1972 and succeeded in establishing his own group with a strong organizational structure in the 1980’s and the 90’s. Due to the development of its broad school network both in Turkey and abroad2, his group attracted attention. Those schools fascinated not only Islamist businessmen and middle classes but also a large number of secularist intellectuals and politicians. Although it originally emerged out of the overall Nurju movement, some believe that the number of the followers of the Fethullah Gulen group is much larger than that of the total of the rest of the nurju groups. Yet, there seems to be enough reason to think that there was a price to pay for this success: alienation from other Islamist groups as well as from the overall Nurju movement of which the Fethullah Gulen group3 itself is supposed to be a part.

فکر مترقی در اسلام, جامعه مدنی و جنبش گولن در زمینه ملی

Greg Barton

فتح الله گولن (born 1941), or Hodjaeffendi as he is known affectionately by hundreds of thousands of people in his native Turkey and abroad, is one of the most significant Islamic thinkers and activists to have emerged in the twentieth century. His optimistic and forward-looking thought, with its emphasis on self development of both heart and mind through education, of engaging proactively and positively with the modern world and of reaching out in dialogue and a spirit of cooperation between religious communities, social strata and nations can be read as a contemporary reformulation of the teachings of Jalaluddin Rumi, Yunus Emre, and other classic Sufi teachers (Michel, 2005آ, 2005b; Saritoprak, 2003; 2005آ; 2005b; Unal and Williams, 2005). More specifically, Gulen can be seen to be carrying on where Said Nursi (1876-1960), another great Anatolian Islamic intellectual, left off: chartinga way for Muslim activists in Turkey and beyond to effectively contribute to the development of modern society that avoids the pitfalls and compromises of party-political activism and replaces the narrowness of Islamist thought with a genuinely inclusive and humanitarian understanding of religion’s role in the modern world (Abu-Rabi, 1995; Markham and Ozdemir, 2005; Vahide, 2005, Yavuz, 2005آ).

POLITICAL ISLAM and the West

JOHN L.ESPOSITO


At the dawn of the 21st centurypolitical Islam, ormore commonly Islamicfundamentalism, remainsa major presence in governments andoppositional politics from North Africato Southeast Asia. New Islamic republicshave emerged in Afghanistan,ایران, and Sudan. Islamists have beenelected to parliaments, served in cabinets,and been presidents, prime ministers,and deputy prime ministers innations as diverse as Algeria, مصر, اندونزی,اردن, Kuwait, لبنان,مالزی, پاکستان, and Yemen. At thesame time opposition movements andradical extremist groups have sought todestabilize regimes in Muslim countriesand the West. Americans have witnessedattacks on their embassies fromKenya to Pakistan. Terrorism abroadhas been accompanied by strikes ondomestic targets such as the WorldTrade Center in New York. In recentyears, Saudi millionaire Osama binLaden has become emblematic of effortsto spread international violence

Arab reform bulletin

Arab reform bulletin

Ibrahim al-Houdaiby

Muslim Brotherhood Guide Mohamed Mahdi Akef’s decision to step down at the end of his first term in January 2009 is an important milestone for the largest opposition group in Egypt for two reasons. First, whoever the successor is, he will not enjoy the same historical legitimacy as Akef, who joined the Brotherhood at an early stage and worked with its founder, حسن البنا. All of the potential replacements belong to another generation and lack the gravitas of Akef and his predecessors, which helped them resolve or at least postpone some organizational disputes. The second reason is that Akef, who presided over a major political opening of the group in which its various intellectual orientations were clearly manifested, has the ability to manage diversity. This has been clear in his relations with leaders of the organization’s different currents and generations and his ability to bridge gaps between them. No candidate for the post seems to possess this skill, except perhaps Deputy Guide Khairat al-Shater, whose chances seem nil because he is currently imprisoned.

Islam Is Our Politics

Rupe ماجول

 The author examines the ideological history of the Muslim Brotherhood from its genesis in 1928 until 1953, the date Egypt declared itself a republic after 70 years of British domination. He treats this history as a case study and
employs Gramscian theory to interpret his ®ndings. He then applies analytic generalization to the resulting observations to determine how his research might amplify Gramsci’s ideas. سرانجام, he argues that the Brotherhood pro-duced an Islamic ideology that expands Gramscian thought pursuant to national governance, cultural criticism, formal education, and military defense.
  
   

 

         

WORKING PAPERS

مصطفی کامل السید

Since September 11, the entire world has been acutely aware of the violent, terrorist face of political Islam. the network of organizations we most frequently think of as al-Qaeda represents a serious threat to the United States, other Western countries, governments of Muslim countries, and ordinary Muslims who abhor violence and would like to pursue their lives in peace. Because of the horrors violent Islamist groups have perpetrated and are unfortunately likely to continue perpetrating, there can be no debate about how the world should deal with them. they need to be tracked down and dismantled and their members brought to justice. To be sure, this will not be easy in practice, but it is clear what the world must strive to do.It is much less obvious how the international community should deal with the other face of the Islamist movement, the nonviolent face that Mustapha Kamal Al-Sayyid discusses in this working paper. this side is represented by political movements that acknowledge that they are inspired by Islamic principles and yet claim that they want to attain their goals by peaceful means, competing for power democratically with non-Islamist political parties. this side of the Islamist movements is often ignored in current debates, but it is important and becoming ever more so. the electoral victory by the Justice and Development Party in Turkey in November 2002 is one sign of the growing importance of this face of Islamism; so is the open repudiation of violence by one of Egypt’s most important and heretofore most radical Islamist movements. the reasons for this repudiation are explained in four recently published and as yet untranslated books that Mustapha Al-Sayyid discusses in this paper.this more moderate face of the Islamist movements poses a major policy dilemma for the international community. Should the claims of nonviolence by these movements be believed and thus the movements be accepted as legitimate participants in democratic politics? Have such groups really changed their goals, abandoned the idea of building an Islamic state ruled by shari’a, and accepted democracy? Or are they simply seeking to take advantage of the democratic political space that exists in some Muslim countries to win power and then impose a political system that denies democracy and the respect of human rights? به عبارت دیگر, have such movements simply embraced democracy as a tactic for obtaining power, or are they truly willing to accept pluralism and the protection of individual human rights as a permanent feature of the political system?Like the similar questions that were once asked about Communist parties that appeared to abandon their revolutionary agenda in favor of democratic politics, these are issues that can never be settled once and for all in the abstract but can only be answered as organizations continue to evolve in response to political circumstances. Mustapha Al-Sayyid’s paper cannot tell us how far these Islamist groups now embracing nonviolence and democratic politics will go in their transformation. It does tell us, با این حال, about the changes taking place in some Islamist movements and about the growing importance of the other face of Islamism.

پل ساختمان دیوار

الکس گلنی

از زمان حملات تروریستی 11 سپتامبر 2001 در خاورمیانه و شمال آفریقا انفجار مورد علاقه اسلام گرایی غیرمذهبی رخ داده است (منا) منطقه. تا همین اواخر,تحلیلگران به طور واضح روی آن دسته از بازیگرانی که در پایان خشونت طیف اسلام گرایی فعالیت می کنند متمرکز شده اند, از جمله القاعده, طالبان, برخی از احزاب فرقه ای در عراق و گروه های سیاسی با بال های مسلح مانند حماس در سرزمین های اشغالی فلسطین (OPT)و حزب الله در لبنان, این واقعیت را مبهم کرده است که سیاست های معاصر در سراسر منطقه MENA توسط مجموعه ای بسیار متنوع تر از جریانات "جریان اصلی" اسلامی هدایت و شکل گرفته است.. ما این گروه ها را تعریف می کنیم که درگیر مشارکت و یا درگیری برای مشارکت در پروسه های سیاسی قانونی کشور های آنها هستند و در استفاده عموم از خشونت ها از اهداف خود در سطح ملی آگاه شده اند., حتی در مواردی که آنها بر علیه یا سرکوب شده تبعیض قائل هستند. این تعریف شامل گروه هایی مانند اخوان المسلمین در مصر می شود, حزب عدالت و توسعه (حزب عدالت و توسعه) در مراکش و جبهه اقدام اسلامی (IAF) در اردن. این جنبش ها یا احزاب غیر خشونت آمیز اسلامی اغلب نمایانگر بهترین سازمان یافته ترین و محبوب ترین عنصر مخالفت با رژیم های موجود در هر کشور هستند, و از آنجا که موجبات توجه سیاستگذاران غربی به نقشی که آنها می توانند در ارتقاء دموکراسی در منطقه بازی کنند ، افزایش یافته است.. با این حال ، به نظر می رسد که بحث در مورد این موضوع در مورد این سوال که آیا مناسب است با این گروه ها ارتباط مستقیمی و رسمی تر برقرار شود ، متوقف شده است, این نگرش تا حدودی با عدم تمایل به توجیه مشروعیت گروه هایی که ممکن است دیدگاه های ضد دموکراتیک در مورد حقوق زنان داشته باشند مرتبط است., کثرت گرایی سیاسی و طیف وسیعی از موضوعات دیگر. این همچنین ملاحظات عمل گرایانه در مورد منافع استراتژیک قدرت های غربی در منطقه منا را منعکس می کند که به نظر می رسد با افزایش محبوبیت و نفوذ اسلامگرایان مورد تهدید قرار می گیرند.. از طرف آنها, احزاب و جنبش های اسلام گرایانه ، نسبت به روابط نزدیک با آن دسته از قدرت های غربی که سیاست هایشان را در منطقه به شدت محاصره می کنند ، تمایلی آشکار نشان داده اند., نه تنها از ترس از چگونگی واکنش رژیمهای سرکوبگرانه در درون آنها. این تمرکز پروژه بر جنبشهای سیاسی غیر خشونت آمیز اسلامی نباید به غلط تفسیر شود بلکه حمایت ضمنی از برنامه های سیاسی آنها. تعهد به استراتژی مناسب تر برای تعامل با احزاب اصلی اسلامگرایانه ، خطرات و مبادلات قابل توجهی را برای سیاستگذاران آمریکایی و اروپایی شمالی دربر خواهد داشت.. با این حال, ما این موضع را اتخاذ می کنیم که تمایل هر دو طرف برای مشاهده تعامل به عنوان مبلغ صفر "همه یا هیچ چیز" بازی کمکی بوده است, و در صورت بروز گفتگوی سازنده تر در مورد اصلاحات در خاورمیانه و شمال آفریقا ، باید تغییر یابد.