O mañá árabe

DAVID B. OTTAWAY

Outubro 6, 1981, estaba destinado a ser un día de celebración en Exipto. Foi o aniversario do maior momento de vitoria de Exipto en tres conflitos árabe-israelís, cando o exército desfavorecido do país atravesou a canle de Suez nos primeiros días do 1973 Guerra de Yom Kippur e enviou as tropas israelís en retirada. Ao fresco, mañá sen nubes, o estadio do Cairo estaba ateigado de familias exipcias que viñeron a ver como os militares pavoneaban o seu hardware., O presidente Anwar el-Sadat,arquitecto da guerra, observaba con satisfacción como homes e máquinas desfilaban diante del. Estaba preto, un correspondente estranxeiro recén chegado.De súpeto, un dos camións do exército detívose directamente diante do posto de revisión xusto cando seis avións Mirage rugían sobre a cabeza nunha actuación acrobática., pintando o ceo con longas estelas de vermello, amarelo, roxo,e fume verde. Sadat levantouse, aparentemente preparándose para intercambiar saúdos con outro continxente de tropas exipcias. Fíxose un branco perfecto para catro asasinos islamitas que saltaron do camión, asaltou o podio, e acribillaron o seu corpo de balas. Mentres os asasinos continuaron durante o que parecía unha eternidade rociando o posto co seu lume mortal., Penseime por un instante se chocar contra o chan e correr o risco de ser pisoteado por espectadores aterrorizados ou permanecer a pé e arriscarse a recibir unha bala perdida.. O instinto díxome que me quedara de pé, and my sense of journalistic duty impelled me to go find out whether Sadat was alive or dead.

Islam and the Making of State Power

Seyyed Valín reza Nasr

En 1979 General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, the military ruler of Pakistan, declared that Pakistan would become an Islamic state. Islamic values and norms would serve as the foundation of national identity, law, economy, and social relations, and would inspire all policy making. En 1980 Mahathir Muhammad, the new prime minister of Malaysia, introduced a similar broad-based plan to anchor state policy making in Islamic values, and to bring his country’s laws and economic practices in line with the teachings of Islam. Why did these rulers choose the path of “Islamization” for their countries? And how did one-time secular postcolonial states become the agents of Islamization and the harbinger of the “true” Islamic state?
Malaysia and Pakistan have since the late 1970s–early 1980s followed a unique path to development that diverges from the experiences of other Third World states. In these two countries religious identity was integrated into state ideology to inform the goal and process of development with Islamic values.
This undertaking has also presented a very different picture of the relation between Islam and politics in Muslim societies. In Malaysia and Pakistan, it has been state institutions rather than Islamist activists (those who advocate a political reading of Islam; also known as revivalists or fundamentalists) that have been the guardians of Islam and the defenders of its interests. This suggests a
very different dynamic in the ebbs and flow of Islamic politics—in the least pointing to the importance of the state in the vicissitudes of this phenomenon.
What to make of secular states that turn Islamic? What does such a transformation mean for the state as well as for Islamic politics?
This book grapples with these questions. This is not a comprehensive account of Malaysia’s or Pakistan’s politics, nor does it cover all aspects of Islam’s role in their societies and politics, although the analytical narrative dwells on these issues considerably. This book is rather a social scientific inquiry into the phenomenon of secular postcolonial states becoming agents of Islamization, e, de xeito máis amplo, como a cultura e a relixión serven ás necesidades do poder e do desenvolvemento estatal. A análise aquí baséase en discusións teóricas
nas ciencias sociais do comportamento do Estado e o papel da cultura e da relixión nelas. Máis importante, extrae inferencias dos casos obxecto de análise para sacar conclusións máis amplas de interese para as disciplinas.

O FEMINISMO ENTRE O LAICismo E O ISLAMISMO: O CASO DE PALESTINA

Dr, Islah Jad

Eleccións lexislativas celebradas en Cisxordania e na Franxa de Gaza 2006 levou ao poder ao movemento islamita Hamás, que pasou a formar a maioría do Consello Lexislativo Palestino e tamén o primeiro goberno maioritario de Hamás. Estas eleccións resultaron no nomeamento da primeira muller ministra de Hamás, que chegou a ser ministra de Asuntos da Muller. Entre marzo 2006 e xuño 2007, dúas ministras de Hamás asumiron este cargo, pero a ambos lles resultou difícil xestionar o Ministerio xa que a maioría dos seus empregados non eran membros de Hamás senón que pertencían a outros partidos políticos., e a maioría eran membros de Fatah, o movemento dominante que controla a maioría das institucións da Autoridade Palestina. Un tenso período de loita entre as mulleres de Hamás no Ministerio de Asuntos da Muller e as mulleres membros de Fatah chegou ao seu fin tras a toma de poder por Hamás na Franxa de Gaza e a consecuente caída do seu goberno en Cisxordania, unha loita. que ás veces deu un xiro violento. Unha das razóns que se citou máis tarde para explicar esta loita foi a diferenza entre o discurso feminista secular e o discurso islamista sobre os problemas das mulleres.. No contexto palestino este desacordo adquiriu un carácter perigoso xa que se utilizaba para xustificar a perpetuación da cruenta loita política., a destitución das mulleres de Hamás dos seus postos ou postos, e as divisións políticas e xeográficas que imperaban nese momento tanto en Cisxordania como na Franxa de Gaza ocupada.
Esta loita suscita unha serie de preguntas importantes: debemos castigar ao movemento islamita que chegou ao poder, ou debemos considerar as razóns que levaron ao fracaso de Fateh no ámbito político? O feminismo pode ofrecer un marco integral para as mulleres, independentemente das súas filiacións sociais e ideolóxicas? Pode un discurso sobre un terreo común compartido para as mulleres axudarlles a realizar e consensuar os seus obxectivos comúns?? O paternalismo só está presente na ideoloxía islamita, e non no nacionalismo e no patriotismo? Que entendemos por feminismo? Hai só un feminismo, ou varios feminismos? Que entendemos por islam? – é o movemento coñecido con este nome ou a relixión, a filosofía, ou o sistema xurídico? Temos que ir ao fondo destas cuestións e consideralas coidadosamente, e hai que consensualas para despois decidir, como feministas, se a nosa crítica ao paternalismo debe dirixirse á relixión (fe), que debería limitarse ao corazón do crente e non permitirse tomar o control do mundo en xeral, ou a xurisprudencia, que se relaciona con diferentes escolas de fe que explican o sistema legal contido no Corán e os ditos do Profeta – a Sunnah.

O ACTIVISMO DAS MULLERES ISLAMISTAS NA PALESTINA OCUPADA

Entrevistas de Khaled Amayreh

Entrevista a Sameera Al-Halayka

Sameera Al-Halayka é membro electo do Consello Lexislativo Palestino. Ela foi

naceu na aldea de Shoyoukh preto de Hebrón en 1964. Ela ten unha licenciatura en Sharia (islámico

Xurisprudencia) da Universidade de Hebrón. Ela traballou como xornalista desde 1996 a 2006 cando

ela entrou no Consello Lexislativo Palestino como membro electo no 2006 eleccións.

Está casada e ten sete fillos.

Q: Hai unha impresión xeral nalgúns países occidentais que reciben as mulleres

trato inferior dentro dos grupos de resistencia islámica, como Hamás. Isto é certo??

Como son tratadas as mulleres activistas en Hamás?
Os dereitos e deberes das mulleres musulmás emanan en primeiro lugar da sharia ou da lei islámica.

Non son actos ou xestos voluntarios ou benéficos que recibimos de Hamás ou de ninguén

outra cousa. Así, no que a implicación política e activismo se refire, as mulleres xeralmente teñen

os mesmos dereitos e deberes que os homes. Despois de todo, as mulleres compoñen polo menos 50 por cento de

sociedade. En certo sentido, son toda a sociedade porque dan a luz, e levantar,

a nova xeración.

Polo tanto, Podo dicir que a condición da muller dentro de Hamás está en plena conformidade con ela

status no propio Islam. Isto significa que é unha compañeira completa en todos os niveis. Por suposto, sería

inxusto e inxusto para un islámico (ou islamista se o prefires) muller para ser compañeira de sufrimento

while she is excluded from the decision-making process. This is why the woman’s role in

Hamas has always been pioneering.

Q: Do you feel that the emergence of women’s political activism within Hamas is

a natural development that is compatible with classical Islamic concepts

regarding the status and role of women, or is it merely a necessary response to

pressures of modernity and requirements of political action and of the continued

Israeli occupation?

There is no text in Islamic jurisprudence nor in Hamas’ charter which impedes women from

political participation. I believe the opposite is truethere are numerous Quranic verses

and sayings of the Prophet Muhammed urging women to be active in politics and public

issues affecting Muslims. But it is also true that for women, as it is for men, activismo político

non é obrigatorio senón voluntario, e decídese en gran medida en función das capacidades de cada muller,

cualificacións e circunstancias individuais. Non obstante, mostrando preocupación polo público

asuntos é obrigatorio para todos os homes e mulleres musulmáns. O Profeta

dixo Muhammed: "Quen non mostra preocupación polos asuntos dos musulmáns non é musulmán".

Ademais, As mulleres islamitas palestinas teñen que incorporar todos os factores obxectivos sobre o terreo

ter en conta á hora de decidir se participar en política ou involucrarse no activismo político.


MULLERES IRANÍAS TRAS A REVOLUCIÓN ISLÁMICA

Ansiia Khaz Allii


Pasaron máis de trinta anos do triunfo da Revolución Islámica en Irán, aínda queda un number of questions and ambiguities about the way the Islamic Republic and its laws deal with contemporary problems and current circumstances, particularly with regard to women and women’s rights. This short paper will shed light on these issues and study the current position of women in various spheres, comparing this to the situation prior to the Islamic Revolution. Reliable and authenticated data has been used wherever possible. The introduction summarises a number of theoretical and legal studies which provide the basis for the subsequent more practical analysis and are the sources from where the data has been obtained.
The first section considers attitudes of the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran towards women and women’s rights, and then takes a comprehensive look at the laws promulgated since the Islamic Revolution concerning women and their position in society. The second section considers women’s cultural and educational developments since the Revolution and compares these to the pre-revolutionary situation. O third section looks at women’s political, social and economic participation and considers both quantative and qualitative aspects of their employment. The fourth section then examines questions of the family, o relationship between women and the family, and the family’s role in limiting or increasing women’s rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Women in Islam

Amira burghul

Despite major consensus amongst a large number of philosophers and historians that the

principles and teachings of Islam caused a fundamental change in the position of women

compared to the prevailing situation in countries in both East and West at the time, and despite

the agreement of a large number of thinkers and legislators that women during the time of the

Prophet (PBUH) were granted rights and legal privileges not granted by man-made laws until

recently, propaganda campaigns by Westerners and people with a Westernised perspective

consistently accuse Islam of being unjust to women, of imposing restrictions on them, e

marginalising their role in society.

This situation has been made worse by the atmosphere and conditions prevalent across the

Muslim world, where ignorance and poverty have produced a limited understanding of religion

e as relacións familiares e humanas que ocluen a xustiza e un modo de vida civilizado, particularmente

entre homes e mulleres. O pequeno grupo de persoas ás que se lle concederon oportunidades

adquirir unha educación e as habilidades tamén caeron na trampa de crer que conseguir a xustiza

para as mulleres e aproveitar as súas capacidades depende de rexeitar a relixión e a piedade e

adoptando un estilo de vida occidental, como resultado dos seus estudos superficiais do Islam por unha banda

e o efecto dos desvíos da vida no outro.

Só un número moi reducido de persoas destes dous grupos conseguiron escapar e despedirse

os seus mantos de ignorancia e tradición. Estas persoas estudaron a fondo o seu patrimonio

e detalle, and have looked at the results of Western experiences with an open mind. They have

distinguished between the wheat and the chaff in both the past and the present, and have dealt

scientifically and objectively with the problems which have arisen. They have refuted the false

charges made against Islam with eloquent arguments, and have admitted to concealed flaws.

They have also re-examined the sayings and customs of the Infallible Ones in order to

distinguish between what is established and holy and what has been altered and distorted.

The responsible behaviour of this group has established new directions and new ways of dealing

with the question of women in Islamic societies. They have clearly not yet tackled all problems

and found final solutions for the many legislative gaps and deficiencies, pero puxeron o

base para a aparición dun novo modelo para as mulleres musulmás, que son á vez fortes e

comprometidos cos fundamentos legais e efectivos da súa sociedade.

Co triunfo da Revolución Islámica en Irán e a bendición dos seus líderes, que é o

principal autoridade relixiosa para a participación das mulleres e a súa efectiva política e social

participación, o ámbito para un forte debate sobre as mulleres no Islam ampliouse significativamente.

O modelo de mulleres musulmás en Irán estendeuse aos movementos de resistencia islámica no Líbano,

Palestina outros países árabes e mesmo o mundo occidental, e como resultado, propaganda

as campañas contra o Islam diminuíron en certa medida.

A aparición de movementos islámicos salafistas como os talibáns en Afganistán e similares

Salafi movements in Saudi Arabia and North Africa, and their fanatical way of treating women,

have provoked nervous onlookers fearing an Islamic resurgence into launching new propaganda

campaigns accusing Islam of inspiring terrorism and being backwards and unjust towards

women.

smearcasting: How Islamophobes spread fear, bigotry and misinformation

FAIR

Julie Hollar

Jim Naureckas

Making Islamophobia Mainstream:
How Muslim-bashers broadcast their bigotry
A remarkable thing happened at the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) nominations in February 2007: The normally highbrow and tolerant group nominated for best book in the field of criticism a book widely viewed as denigrating an entire religious group.
The nomination of Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within didn’t pass without controversy. Past nominee Eliot Weinberger denounced the book at the NBCC’s annual gathering, calling it ‘‘racism as criticism’’ (New York Times, 2/8/07). NBCC board president John Freeman wrote on the group’s blog (Critical Mass, 2/4/07): ‘‘I have never been
more embarrassed by a choice than I have been with Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept…. Its hyperventilated rhetoric tips from actual critique into Islamophobia.’’
Though it didn’t ultimately win the award, While Europe Slept’s recognition in the highest literary circles was emblematic of a mainstreaming of Islamophobia, not just in American publishing but in the broader media. This report takes a fresh look at Islamophobia in today’s media and its perpetratrators, outlining some of the behind-the-scenes connections that are rarely explored in media. The report also provides four snapshots, or “case studies,” describing how Islamophobes continue to manipulate media to in order to paint Muslims with a broad, hateful brush. Our aim is to document smearcasting: the public writings and appearances of Islamophobic activists and pundits who intentionally and regularly spread fear, bigotry and misinformation. The term “Islamophobia” refers to hostility toward Islam and Muslims that tends to dehumanize an entire faith, portraying it as fundamentally alien and attributing to it an inherent, essential set of negative traits such as irrationality, intolerance and violence. And not unlike the charges made in the classical document of anti-Semitism, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, some of Islamophobia’s more virulent expressionslike While Europe Sleptinclude evocations of Islamic designs to dominate the West.
Islamic institutions and Muslims, of course, should be subject to the same kind of scrutiny and criticism as anyone else. For instance, when a Norwegian Islamic Council debates whether gay men and lesbians should be executed, one may forcefully condemn individuals or groups sharing that opinion without pulling all European Muslims into it, as did Bawer’s Pajamas Media post (8/7/08),
“European Muslims Debate: Should Gays Be Executed?
similarmente, Os extremistas que xustifican as súas accións violentas invocando algunha interpretación particular do Islam poden ser criticados sen implicar á enorme diversidade da poboación de musulmáns en todo o mundo.. Despois de todo, os xornalistas lograron cubrir o atentado de Oklahoma City por Timothy McVeigh–un partidario da secta racista da identidade cristiá–sen recorrer a afirmacións xeneralizadas sobre o “terrorismo cristián”. Así mesmo, os medios de comunicación cubriron actos de terrorismo de fanáticos xudeus–por exemplo o masacre de Hebrón levado a cabo por Baruch Goldstein (Extra!, 5/6/94)–sen implicar a totalidade do xudaísmo.

O totalitarismo do islamismo yihadista e o seu desafío a Europa e ao islam

Basso Tibi

When reading the majority of texts that comprise the vast literature that has been published by self-proclaimed pundits on political Islam, it is easy to miss the fact that a new movement has arisen. Ademais, this literature fails to explain in a satisfactory manner the fact that the ideology which drives it is based on a particular interpretation of Islam, and that it is thus a politicised religious faith,
not a secular one. The only book in which political Islam is addressed as a form of totalitarianism is the one by Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism (2003). The author is, con todo, not an expert, cannot read Islamic sources, and therefore relies on the selective use of one or two secondary sources, thus failing to grasp the phenomenon.
One of the reasons for such shortcomings is the fact that most of those who seek to inform us about the ‘jihadist threat’ – and Berman is typical of this scholarship – not only lack the language skills to read the sources produced by the ideologues of political Islam, but also lack knowledge about the cultural dimension of the movement. This new totalitarian movement is in many ways a novelty
in the history of politics since it has its roots in two parallel and related phenomena: first, the culturalisation of politics which leads to politics being conceptualised as a cultural system (a view pioneered by Clifford Geertz); and second the return of the sacred, or ‘re-enchantment’ of the world, as a reaction to its intensive secularisation resulting from globalisation.
The analysis of political ideologies that are based on religions, and that can exert appeal as a political religion as a consequence of this, involves a social science understanding of the role of religion played by world politics, especially after the bi-polar system of the Cold War has given way to a multi-polar world. In a project conducted at the Hannah Arendt Institute for the application of totalitarianism to the study of political religions, I proposed the distinction between secular ideologies that act as a substitute for religion, and religious ideologies based on genuine religious faith, which is the case in religious fundamentalism (see note
24). Another project on ‘Political Religion’, carried out at the University of Basel, has made clearer the point that new approaches to politics become necessary once a religious faith becomes clothed in a political garb.Drawing on the authoritative sources of political Islam, this article suggests that the great variety of organisations inspired by Islamist ideology are to be conceptualised both as political religions and as political movements. The unique quality of political Islam lies is the fact that it is based on a transnational religion (see note 26).

Islam, Islam político e América

introspección árabe

Is “Brotherhood” with America Possible?

khalil al-anani

“there is no chance of communicating with any U.S. administration so long as the United States maintains its long-standing view of Islam as a real danger, a view that puts the United States in the same boat as the Zionist enemy. We have no pre-conceived notions concerning the American people or the U.S. society and its civic organizations and think tanks. We have no problem communicating with the American people but no adequate efforts are being made to bring us closer,” said Dr. Issam al-Iryan, chief of the political department of the Muslim Brotherhood in a phone interview.
Al-Iryan’s words sum up the Muslim Brotherhood’s views of the American people and the U.S. government. Other members of the Muslim Brotherhood would agree, as would the late Hassan al-Banna, who founded the group in 1928. Al- Banna viewed the West mostly as a symbol of moral decay. Other Salafis – an Islamic school of thought that relies on ancestors as exemplary models – have taken the same view of the United States, but lack the ideological flexibility espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood. While the Muslim Brotherhood believes in engaging the Americans in civil dialogue, other extremist groups see no point in dialogue and maintain that force is the only way of dealing with the United States.

Notes on the Isocratic Legacy and Islamic Political Thought: The Example of Education

JAMES MUIR

An unfortunate feature of human history is the tendency for religious differences and con icts to nourish themselves with the poisonous brew of ignorance and prejudice. While much can sometimes be done to reduce prejudice, it seems to me that scholars and educators ought to be primarily concerned with the more fundamental and enduring goal of reducing ignorance. One’s success in reducing ignorance—including one’s own—will depend upon one’s motives.
The study of Islamic educational philosophy may be motivated by current practical concerns: the desire of British Muslims to have Islamic schools, whether funded privately or by the state, is one topical example. From the perspective of educational philosophy, con todo, such a motive is exceedingly narrow, circumscribed by the concepts and categories of the local political disputes of the moment. For those motivated by a desire for knowledge and understanding of a tradition outside their own, it is most doubtful that any study of Islamic philosophy restricted by current practical concerns can be at all productive. There is no simple correspondence between knowledge and “relevance.”
There must, con todo, be some connection between two traditions of thought and practice if there is to be a point of departure, and a point of entry, which allows the scholar to step from one tradition to another. The legacy of Isocrates may constitute one such point of departure, which will help us to understand the relation between two traditions, the classical Greek and the Islamic. The dominance of the Isocratic legacy in Western education is well established and widely known among historians, classicists
and political philosophers, although awareness of it has only just begun to surface among educationists.2 Similarly, the Isocratic legacy to education (and the rich tradition of Arabic Platonism in philosophy) has in uenced Islamic thought, though in ways that are
still not yet well understood. The intention of this paper is to suggest that a modiŽ ed form of the Isocratic educational tradition is a fundamental component of Islamic political thought, a saber, Islamic educational thought. This general wording of the intention of this paper in terms of Islamic political thought may give rise to a misunderstanding. Islam, of course, is regarded by its adherents as a uniŽ ed and universal system of belief and behaviour.

Liberal Democracy and Political Islam: the Search for Common Ground.

Mostapha Benhenda

This paper seeks to establish a dialogue between democratic and Islamic political theories.1 The interplay between them is puzzling: por exemplo, in order to explain the relationship existing between democracy and their conception of the ideal Islamic political
réxime, the Pakistani scholar Abu ‘Ala Maududi coined the neologism “theodemocracy” whereas the French scholar Louis Massignon suggested the oxymoron “secular theocracy”. These expressions suggest that some aspects of democracy are evaluated positively and others are judged negatively. Por exemplo, Muslim scholars and activists often endorse the principle of accountability of rulers, which is a defining feature of democracy. On the contrary, they often reject the principle of separation between religion and the state, which is often considered to be part of democracy (at least, of democracy as known in the United States today). Given this mixed assessment of democratic principles, it seems interesting to determine the conception of democracy underlying Islamic political models. Noutras palabras, we should try to find out what is democratic in “theodemocracy”. To that end, among the impressive diversity and plurality of Islamic traditions of normative political thought, we essentially focus on the broad current of thought going back to Abu ‘Ala Maududi and the Egyptian intellectual Sayyed Qutb.8 This particular trend of thought is interesting because in the Muslim world, it lies at the basis of some of the most challenging oppositions to the diffusion of the values originating from the West. Based on religious values, this trend elaborated a political model alternative to liberal democracy. Broadly speaking, the conception of democracy included in this Islamic political model is procedural. With some differences, this conception is inspired by democratic theories advocated by some constitutionalists and political scientists.10 It is thin and minimalist, up to a certain point. Por exemplo, it does not rely on any notion of popular sovereignty and it does not require any separation between religion and politics. The first aim of this paper is to elaborate this minimalist conception. We make a detailed restatement of it in order to isolate this conception from its moral (liberal) foundations, which are controversial from the particular Islamic viewpoint considered here. Por suposto, the democratic process is usually derived from a principle of personal autonomy, which is not endorsed by these Islamic theories.11 Here, we show that such principle is not necessary to justify a democratic process.

On the American Constitution from the Perspective of the Qur’an and the Madinah Covenant

Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad

This paper is by no means an exhaustive comparison of the American Constitution with the Qur’an and the Madinah Covenant. Rather, it explores the kinds of insights that a comparison between these two documents may suggest. Accordingly, the constitutional topics selected are those in which the author or the commentators on earlier drafts perceived an assessment within the Islamic sources.4 This paper should be taken as an invitation for future studies with more systematic comparisons. In addition to rational inference from the text of the Qur’an and of the Madinah Covenant, I shall draw on the views of the Prophet’s Companions as recorded in the leading Hadith books. Analogously, the views of the Founding Fathers of the American Republic on constitutional
matters are articulated in The Federalist Papers.We shall begin by reviewing the Madinah Covenant, and then evaluate the Constitution’s goals as expressed in the preamble. After that, we shall explore a variety of topics in the main body of the text that lend themselves to the examination proposed here. En particular, these are the roles of the branches of government according to the separation of powers, the role of elections in determining the next head of state, the penalty for treason, the existence of the slave trade and racism, the republican form of government, the provisions for amending the Constitution, religious tests, and the Bill of Rights. finalmente, we consider the Madisonian arguments on how the Constitution may be considered a model for avoiding fitnah.
The Madinah Covenant That Muslims attach great significance to their organization as a political community can be seen in the fact that their calendar is dated neither from the birth nor the death of the Prophet, pero desde o establecemento da primeira organización política musulmá na cidade-estado de Medina en 622. Antes da fundación de Medina, os árabes non tiñan estado para “establecer xustiza, asegurar domésticos
tranquilidade, prever a defensa común, promover o benestar xeral, e conseguir as bendicións da liberdade …” O costume daquela era que os que eran demasiado débiles para protexerse convertíanse en clientes dun protector (wali). Mahoma, el mesmo orfo, criouse baixo a protección do seu tío Abu Talib.
Despois da morte do seu tío en 619, Mahoma recibiu unha invitación das tribos árabes de Yathrib para gobernar alí. Unha vez en Yathrib, fixo un pacto con todos os seus veciños, se aceptaran o Islam ou non. Incluso os xudeus que vivían na periferia da cidade subscribírono.

Islam e democracia liberal

Robin Wright
Of all the challenges facing democracy in the 1990s, one of the greatest lies in the Islamic world. Only a handful of the more than four dozen predominantly Muslim countries have made significant strides toward establishing democratic systems. Among this handfulincluding Albania, Bangladesh, Xordania, Kyrgyzstan, Líbano, Mali, Paquistán, and Turkeynot one has yet achieved full, stable, or secure democracy. And the largest single regional bloc holding out against the global trend toward political pluralism comprises the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa.
Yet the resistance to political change associated with the Islamic bloc is not necessarily a function of the Muslim faith. Por suposto, the evidence indicates quite the reverse. Rulers in some of the most antidemocratic regimes in the Islamic worldsuch as Brunei, Indonesia, Iraq, Omán, Qatar, Siria, and Turkmenistanare secular autocrats who refuse to share power with their brethren.
En xeral, the obstacles to political pluralism in Islamic countries are not unlike the problems earlier faced in other parts of the world: secular ideologies such as Ba’athism in Iraq and Syria, Pancasila in Indonesia, or lingering communism in some former Soviet Central Asian states brook no real opposition. Ironically, many of these ideologies were adapted from the West; Ba’athism, for instance, was inspired by the European socialism of the 1930s and 1940s. Rigid government controls over everything from communications in Saudi Arabia and Brunei to foreign visitors in Uzbekistan and Indonesia also isolate their people from democratic ideas and debate on popular empowerment. In the largest and poorest Muslim countries, moreover, problems common to [End Page 64] developing states, from illiteracy and disease to poverty, make simple survival a priority and render democratic politics a seeming luxury. finalmente, like their non-Muslim neighbors in Asia and Africa, most Muslim societies have no local history of democracy on which to draw. As democracy has blossomed in Western states over the past three centuries, Muslim societies have usually lived under colonial rulers, kings, or tribal and clan leaders.
Noutras palabras, neither Islam nor its culture is the major obstacle to political modernity, even if undemocratic rulers sometimes use Islam as their excuse. 1 In Saudi Arabia, for instance, the ruling House of Saud relied on Wahhabism, a puritanical brand of Sunni Islam, first to unite the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula and then to justify dynastic rule. Like other monotheistic religions, Islam offers wide-ranging and sometimes contradictory instruction. In Saudi Arabia, Islam’s tenets have been selectively shaped to sustain an authoritarian monarchy.

Islam and the New Political Landscape

back, Michael Keith, Azra Khan,
Kalbir Shukra and John Solomos

IN THE wake of the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 setembro 2001, and the Madrid and London bombings of 2004 e 2005, a literature that addresses the forms and modalities of religious expression – particularly Islamic religious expression – has flourished in the penumbral regions that link mainstream social science to social policy design, think tanks and journalism. Much of the work has attempted to define attitudes or predispositions of a Muslim population in a particular site of tension such as London or the UK (Barnes, 2006; Ethnos Consultancy, 2005; GFK, 2006; GLA, 2006; Populus, 2006), or critiqued particular forms of social policy intervention (Bright, 2006a; Mirza et al., 2007). Studies of Islamism and Jihadism have created a particular focus on the syncretic and complex links between Islamic religious faith and forms of social movement and political mobilization (Husain, 2007; Kepel, 2004, 2006; McRoy, 2006; Neville-Jones et al., 2006, 2007; Phillips, 2006; Roy, 2004, 2006). Conventionally, the analytical focus has spotlighted the culture of Islam, the belief systems of the faithful, and the historical and geographical trajectories of Muslim populations across the world in general and in ‘the West’ in particular (Abbas, 2005; Ansari, 2002; Eade and Garbin, 2002; Hussein, 2006; Modood, 2005; Ramadan, 1999, 2005). In this article the emphasis is different. We argue that studies of Islamic political participation need to be contextualized carefully without recourse to grand generalities about culture and faith. This is because both culture and faith are structured by and in turn structure the cultural, institutional and deliberative landscapes through which they are articulated. In the case of the British experience, the hidden traces of Christianity in the formation of the welfare state in the last century, the rapidly changing cartography of spaces of the political and the role of ‘faith organizations’ in the restructuring of welfare provision generate the material social context determining the opportunities and the outlines of new forms of political participation.

The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam

Dr. Muhammad Iqbal

As a cultural movement Islam rejects the old static view of the universe, and reaches a dynamic view. As an emotional system of unification it recognizes the worth of the individual as such, and rejects bloodrelationship as a basis of human unity. Blood-relationship is earthrootedness. The search for a purely psychological foundation of human unity becomes possible only with the perception that all human life is spiritual in its origin.1 Such a perception is creative of fresh loyalties without any ceremonial to keep them alive, and makes it possible for man to emancipate himself from the earth. Christianity which had originally appeared as a monastic order was tried by Constantine as a system of unification.2 Its failure to work as such a system drove the Emperor Julian3 to return to the old gods of Rome on which he attempted to put philosophical interpretations. A modern historian of civilization has thus depicted the state of the civilized world about the time when Islam appeared on the stage of History: It seemed then that the great civilization that it had taken four thousand years to construct was on the verge of disintegration, and that mankind was likely to return to that condition of barbarism where every tribe and sect was against the next, and law and order were unknown . . . O
old tribal sanctions had lost their power. Hence the old imperial methods would no longer operate. The new sanctions created by
Christianity were working division and destruction instead of unity and order. It was a time fraught with tragedy. Civilization, like a gigantic tree whose foliage had overarched the world and whose branches had borne the golden fruits of art and science and literature, stood tottering, its trunk no longer alive with the flowing sap of devotion and reverence, but rotted to the core, arrasada polas tormentas da guerra, e unidos só polas cordas de costumes e leis antigas, que pode romper en calquera momento. Había algunha cultura emocional que se puidese introducir?, reunir á humanidade unha vez máis na unidade e salvar a civilización? Esta cultura debe ser algo dun novo tipo, pois as vellas sancións e cerimoniais estaban mortos, e construír outros do mesmo tipo sería o traballo
de séculos.’O escritor procede entón a dicirnos que o mundo necesitaba unha nova cultura para ocupar o lugar da cultura do trono., e os sistemas de unificación que se baseaban na relación de sangue.
É incrible, engade, que tal cultura debería ter xurdido de Arabia xusto no momento en que máis se necesitaba. Ahí está, con todo, nada sorprendente no fenómeno. The world-life intuitively sees its own needs, and at critical moments defines its own direction. This is what, in the language of religion, we call prophetic revelation. It is only natural that Islam should have flashed across the consciousness of a simple people untouched by any of the ancient cultures, and occupying a geographical position where three continents meet together. The new culture finds the foundation of world-unity in the principle of Tauhâd.’5 Islam, as a polity, is only a practical means of making this principle a living factor in the intellectual and emotional life of mankind. It demands loyalty to God, not to thrones. And since God is the ultimate spiritual basis of all life, loyalty to God virtually amounts to man’s loyalty to his own ideal nature. The ultimate spiritual basis of all life, as conceived by Islam, is eternal and reveals itself in variety and change. A society based on such a conception of Reality must reconcile, in its life, the categories of permanence and change. It must possess eternal principles to regulate its collective life, for the eternal gives us a foothold in the world of perpetual change.

reforma islámica

Adnan Khan

The Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi boasted after the events of 9/11:
“…we must be aware of the superiority of our civilisation, a system that has guaranteed

well being, respect for human rights andin contrast with Islamic countriesrespect

for religious and political rights, a system that has its values understanding of diversity

and tolerance…The West will conquer peoples, like it conquered communism, even if it

means a confrontation with another civilisation, the Islamic one, stuck where it was

1,400 years ago…”1

And in a 2007 report the RAND institute declared:
“The struggle underway throughout much of the Muslim world is essentially a war of

ideas. Its outcome will determine the future direction of the Muslim world.”

Building moderate Muslim Networks, RAND Institute

The concept of ‘islah’ (reform) is a concept unknown to Muslims. It never existed throughout the

history of the Islamic civilisation; it was never debated or even considered. A cursory glance at classical

Islamic literature shows us that when the classical scholars laid the foundations of usul, and codified

their Islamic rulings (fiqh) só buscaban a comprensión das regras islámicas para

aplicalos. Unha situación semellante ocorreu cando se estableceron as regras para o hadiz, tafseer e o

Lingua árabe. Académicos, pensadores e intelectuais ao longo da historia islámica pasaron moito tempo

comprender a revelación de Deus - o Corán e aplicar o ayaat sobre as realidades e acuñadas

principios e disciplinas para facilitar a comprensión. Polo tanto, o Corán segue sendo a base

estudo e todas as disciplinas que evolucionaron foron sempre baseadas no Corán. Os que se converteron

afectado pola filosofía grega como os filósofos musulmáns e algúns de entre os Mut'azilah

consideráronse que abandonaron o redil do Islam xa que o Corán deixou de ser a súa base de estudo. Thus for

any Muslim attempting to deduce rules or understand what stance should be taken upon a particular

issue the Qur’an is the basis of this study.

The first attempt at reforming Islam took place at the turn of the 19th century. By the turn of the

century the Ummah had been in a lengthy period of decline where the global balance of power shifted

from the Khilafah to Britain. Mounting problems engulfed the Khilafah whilst Western Europe was in

the midst of the industrial revolution. The Ummah came to lose her pristine understanding of Islam, e

in an attempt to reverse the decline engulfing the Uthmani’s (Ottomans) some Muslims were sent to the

oeste, and as a result became smitten by what they saw. Rifa’a Rafi’ al-Tahtawi of Egypt (1801-1873),

on his return from Paris, wrote a biographical book called Takhlis al-ibriz ila talkhis Bariz (O

Extraction of Gold, or an Overview of Paris, 1834), praising their cleanliness, love of work, and above

all social morality. He declared that we must mimic what is being done in Paris, advocating changes to

the Islamic society from liberalising women to the systems of ruling. This thought, and others like it,

marked the beginning of the reinventing trend in Islam.