RSSTodas las entradas con etiquetas con: "musulmán"

El mañana árabe

david b. OTTAWAY

Octubre 6, 1981, estaba destinado a ser un día de celebración en Egipto. Marcó el aniversario del momento más grandioso de la victoria de Egipto en tres conflictos árabe-israelíes., cuando el ejército desvalido del país atravesó el Canal de Suez en los primeros días del 1973 Guerra de Yom Kippur y envió a las tropas israelíes tambaleándose en retirada. en un fresco, mañana sin nubes, El estadio de El Cairo estaba repleto de familias egipcias que habían venido a ver a los militares pavonearse con su hardware. En el estrado de revisión, Presidente Anwar el-Sadat,el arquitecto de la guerra, observó con satisfacción cómo hombres y máquinas desfilaban ante él. yo estaba cerca, un corresponsal extranjero recién llegado. De repente, uno de los camiones del ejército se detuvo justo frente a la plataforma de revisión justo cuando seis jets Mirage rugían sobre su cabeza en una actuación acrobática, pintando el cielo con largas estelas de rojo, amarillo, violeta,y humo verde. sadat se puso de pie, aparentemente preparándose para intercambiar saludos con otro contingente de tropas egipcias. Se convirtió en blanco perfecto para cuatro sicarios islamistas que saltaron del camión, subió al podio, y acribillaron su cuerpo a balazos. Mientras los asesinos continuaban durante lo que pareció una eternidad rociando el stand con su fuego mortal, Consideré por un instante si golpear el suelo y arriesgarme a ser pisoteado hasta la muerte por espectadores aterrorizados o permanecer en pie y arriesgarme a recibir una bala perdida.. El instinto me dijo que me quedara de pie, y mi sentido del deber periodístico me impulsó a ir a averiguar si Sadat estaba vivo o muerto.

La política estadounidense de Hamas bloquea la paz en Medio Oriente

Henry Siegman


Conversaciones bilaterales fallidas en estos últimos 16 años han demostrado que un acuerdo de paz en Oriente Medio nunca puede ser alcanzado por las propias partes. Los gobiernos israelíes creen que pueden desafiar la condena internacional de su proyecto colonial ilegal en Cisjordania porque pueden contar con Estados Unidos para oponerse a las sanciones internacionales.. Conversaciones bilaterales que no se enmarcan en los parámetros formulados por EE.UU. (sobre la base de las resoluciones del Consejo de Seguridad, los acuerdos de oslo, la Iniciativa de Paz Árabe, la “hoja de ruta” y otros acuerdos previos entre israelíes y palestinos) no puede tener éxito. El gobierno de Israel cree que el Congreso de los Estados Unidos no permitirá que un presidente estadounidense emita tales parámetros y exija su aceptación.. Qué esperanza hay para las conversaciones bilaterales que se reanudan en Washington DC en septiembre 2 depende completamente de que el presidente Obama demuestre que esa creencia es incorrecta, y sobre si las “propuestas puente” que ha prometido, si las conversaciones llegan a un punto muerto, son un eufemismo para la sumisión de los parámetros americanos. Tal iniciativa estadounidense debe ofrecer a Israel garantías férreas de su seguridad dentro de sus fronteras anteriores a 1967., pero al mismo tiempo debe dejar en claro que estas garantías no están disponibles si Israel insiste en negar a los palestinos un estado viable y soberano en Cisjordania y Gaza.. Este documento se centra en el otro gran obstáculo para un acuerdo de estatus permanente: la ausencia de un interlocutor palestino efectivo. Abordar las quejas legítimas de Hamas, y como se señaló en un informe reciente de CENTCOM, Hamas tiene quejas legítimas: podría conducir a su regreso a un gobierno de coalición palestino que proporcionaría a Israel un socio de paz creíble.. Si ese alcance falla debido al rechazo de Hamás, la capacidad de la organización para impedir un acuerdo razonable negociado por otros partidos políticos palestinos se habrá visto significativamente obstaculizada. Si la administración Obama no lidera una iniciativa internacional para definir los parámetros de un acuerdo israelí-palestino y promover activamente la reconciliación política palestina, Europa debe hacerlo, y espero que Estados Unidos siga. Desafortunadamente, no existe una bala de plata que pueda garantizar el objetivo de “dos estados que vivan uno al lado del otro en paz y seguridad”.
Pero el rumbo actual del presidente Obama lo impide absolutamente..

El islamismo revisitado

MAHA Azzam

Hay una crisis política y de seguridad en torno a lo que se denomina islamismo., una crisis cuyos antecedentes preceden mucho 9/11. sobre el pasado 25 años, ha habido diferentes énfasis en cómo explicar y combatir el islamismo. Analistas y formuladores de políticas.
en las décadas de 1980 y 1990 se habló de las causas fundamentales de la militancia islámica como el malestar económico y la marginación. Más recientemente, ha habido un enfoque en la reforma política como un medio para socavar el atractivo del radicalismo.. Cada vez más hoy, the ideological and religious aspects of Islamism need to be addressed because they have become features of a wider political and security debate. Whether in connection with Al-Qaeda terrorism, political reform in the Muslim world, the nuclear issue in Iran or areas of crisis such as Palestine or Lebanon, it has become commonplace to fi nd that ideology and religion are used by opposing parties as sources of legitimization, inspiration and enmity.
The situation is further complicated today by the growing antagonism towards and fear of Islam in the West because of terrorist attacks which in turn impinge on attitudes towards immigration, religion and culture. The boundaries of the umma or community of the faithful have stretched beyond Muslim states to European cities. La umma existe potencialmente dondequiera que haya comunidades musulmanas.. El sentido compartido de pertenencia a una fe común aumenta en un entorno donde el sentido de integración en la comunidad circundante no está claro y donde la discriminación puede ser evidente.. Cuanto mayor es el rechazo a los valores de la sociedad,
ya sea en Occidente o incluso en un estado musulmán, mayor será la consolidación de la fuerza moral del Islam como identidad cultural y sistema de valores.
Después de los atentados en Londres el 7 Julio 2005 se hizo más evidente que algunos jóvenes afirmaban su compromiso religioso como una forma de expresar su etnicidad. Los vínculos entre los musulmanes de todo el mundo y su percepción de que los musulmanes son vulnerables han llevado a muchos en muy diferentes partes del mundo a fusionar sus propios problemas locales con los musulmanes más amplios., haber identificado culturalmente, ya sea principal o parcialmente, con un Islam ampliamente definido.

Irak y el futuro del islam político

James Piscatori

Sixty-five years ago one of the greatest scholars of modern Islam asked the simple question, “whither Islam?”, where was the Islamic world going? It was a time of intense turmoil in both the Western and Muslim worlds – the demise of imperialism and crystallisation of a new state system outside Europe; the creation and testing of the neo- Wilsonian world order in the League of Nations; the emergence of European Fascism. Sir Hamilton Gibb recognised that Muslim societies, unable to avoid such world trends, were also faced with the equally inescapable penetration of nationalism, secularism, and Westernisation. While he prudently warned against making predictions – hazards for all of us interested in Middle Eastern and Islamic politics – he felt sure of two things:
(a) the Islamic world would move between the ideal of solidarity and the realities of division;
(b) the key to the future lay in leadership, or who speaks authoritatively for Islam.
Today Gibb’s prognostications may well have renewed relevance as we face a deepening crisis over Iraq, the unfolding of an expansive and controversial war on terror, and the continuing Palestinian problem. In this lecture I would like to look at the factors that may affect the course of Muslim politics in the present period and near-term future. Although the points I will raise are likely to have broader relevance, I will draw mainly on the case of the Arab world.
Assumptions about Political Islam There is no lack of predictions when it comes to a politicised Islam or Islamism. ‘Islamism’ is best understood as a sense that something has gone wrong with contemporary Muslim societies and that the solution must lie in a range of political action. Often used interchangeably with ‘fundamentalism’, Islamism is better equated with ‘political Islam’. Several commentators have proclaimed its demise and the advent of the post-Islamist era. They argue that the repressive apparatus of the state has proven more durable than the Islamic opposition and that the ideological incoherence of the Islamists has made them unsuitable to modern political competition. The events of September 11th seemed to contradict this prediction, yet, unshaken, they have argued that such spectacular, virtually anarchic acts only prove the bankruptcy of Islamist ideas and suggest that the radicals have abandoned any real hope of seizing power.

Islamofobia y delitos de odio antimusulmanes

JONATHAN Githens-Mazer

ROBERT MBE LAMBERT

The perils of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime threaten to undermine basic human rights, fundamental aspects of citizenship and co-existing partnerships for Muslims and non- Muslims alike in contemporary Europe. Routine portrayals of Islam as a religion of hatred, violence and inherent intolerance have become key planks for the emergence of extremist nationalist, anti-immigration politics in Europe – planks which seek to exploit populist fears and which have the potential to lead to Muslim disempowerment in Europe. Sections of the media have created a situation where the one serves to heighten the unfounded claims and anxieties of the other – such that politicians from Austria to the Britain, and the Netherlands to Spain, feel comfortable in using terms like “Tsunamis of Muslim immigration”, and accuse Islam of being a fundamental threat to a “European way of life”. While in many cases, the traction of this populist approach reflects an ignorance of Islamic faith, practice and belief, there are many think-tanks which are currently engaged in promoting erroneous depictions of Islam and Muslim political beliefs through unsubstantiated and academically baseless studies, and a reliance on techniques such as ‘junk-polling’. Prior to researching Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime in London, we worked with Muslim Londoners to research the contested notion of what is widely termed by academics and policy makers as “violent radicalisation” (Githens-Mazer, 2010, Lambert 2010). To a large extent it was that prior research experience that persuaded us to embark on this new project. That is to say, there is an important link between the two areas
of work which we should explain at the outset. Since 9/11 Muslim Londoners, no less than Muslims in towns and cities across Europe, have often been unfairly stigmatised as subversive threats to state security and social cohesion, sometimes characterised as a fifth column (Cox and Marks 2006, Gove 2006, Mayer and Frampton 2009). We do not suggest that this stigmatisation did not exist before 9/11, still less do we argue that it revolves solely around the issues of security and social cohesion, but we do claim that the response to 9/11 – ‘the war on terror’ – and much of the rhetoric that has surrounded it has played a significant part in increasing the public perception of European Muslims as potential enemies rather than potential partners and neighbours.

Raíces del nacionalismo en el mundo musulmán

Shabir Ahmed

The Muslim world has been characterised by failure, disunity, bloodshed, oppression and backwardness. At present, no Muslim country in the world can rightly claim to be a leader in any field of human activity. En efecto, the non-Muslims of the East and the West
now dictate the social, economic and political agenda for the Muslim Ummah.
Por otra parte, the Muslims identify themselves as Turkish, Árabe, African and Pakistani. If this is not enough, Muslims are further sub-divided within each country or continent. Por ejemplo, in Pakistan people are classed as Punjabis, Sindhis, Balauchis and
Pathans. The Muslim Ummah was never faced with such a dilemma in the past during Islamic rule. They never suffered from disunity, widespread oppression, stagnation in science and technology and certainly not from the internal conflicts that we have witnessed this century like the Iran-Iraq war. So what has gone wrong with the Muslims this century? Why are there so many feuds between them and why are they seen to be fighting each other? What has caused their weakness and how will they ever recover from the present stagnation?
There are many factors that contributed to the present state of affairs, but the main ones are the abandoning of the Arabic language as the language of understanding Islam correctly and performing ijtihad, the absorption of foreign cultures such as the philosophies of the Greeks, Persian and the Hindus, the gradual loss of central authority over some of the provinces, and the rise of nationalism since the 19th Century.
This book focuses on the origins of nationalism in the Muslim world. Nationalism did not arise in the Muslim world naturally, nor did it came about in response to any hardships faced by the people, nor due to the frustration they felt when Europe started to dominate the world after the industrial revolution. Bastante, nationalism was implanted in the minds of the Muslims through a well thought out scheme by the European powers, after their failure to destroy the Islamic State by force. The book also presents the Islamic verdict on nationalism and practical steps that can be taken to eradicate the disease of nationalism from the Muslim Ummah so as to restore it back to its former glory.

La democracia en el pensamiento político islámico

Azzam S. Tamimi

Democracy has preoccupied Arab political thinkers since the dawn of the modern Arab renaissance about two centuries ago. Since then, the concept of democracy has changed and developed under the influence of a variety of social and political developments.The discussion of democracy in Arab Islamic literature can be traced back to Rifa’a Tahtawi, the father of Egyptian democracy according to Lewis Awad,[3] who shortly after his return to Cairo from Paris published his first book, Takhlis Al-Ibriz Ila Talkhis Bariz, en 1834. The book summarized his observations of the manners and customs of the modern French,[4] and praised the concept of democracy as he saw it in France and as he witnessed its defence and reassertion through the 1830 Revolution against King Charles X.[5] Tahtawi tried to show that the democratic concept he was explaining to his readers was compatible with the law of Islam. He compared political pluralism to forms of ideological and jurisprudential pluralism that existed in the Islamic experience:
Religious freedom is the freedom of belief, of opinion and of sect, provided it does not contradict the fundamentals of religion . . . The same would apply to the freedom of political practice and opinion by leading administrators, who endeavour to interpret and apply rules and provisions in accordance with the laws of their own countries. Kings and ministers are licensed in the realm of politics to pursue various routes that in the end serve one purpose: good administration and justice.[6] One important landmark in this regard was the contribution of Khairuddin At-Tunisi (1810- 99), leader of the 19th-century reform movement in Tunisia, who, en 1867, formulated a general plan for reform in a book entitled Aqwam Al-Masalik Fi Taqwim Al- Mamalik (The Straight Path to Reforming Governments). The main preoccupation of the book was in tackling the question of political reform in the Arab world. While appealing to politicians and scholars of his time to seek all possible means in order to improve the status of the
community and develop its civility, he warned the general Muslim public against shunning the experiences of other nations on the basis of the misconception that all the writings, inventions, experiences or attitudes of non-Muslims should be rejected or disregarded.
Khairuddin further called for an end to absolutist rule, which he blamed for the oppression of nations and the destruction of civilizations.

Cultura política islámica, Democracia, y Derechos Humanos

Daniel E. Precio

Se ha argumentado que el Islam facilita el autoritarismo., contradice el

valores de las sociedades occidentales, y afecta significativamente importantes resultados políticos
en las naciones musulmanas. Como consecuencia, eruditos, comentaristas, y gobierno
Los funcionarios apuntan con frecuencia al "fundamentalismo islámico" como el próximo
amenaza ideológica para las democracias liberales. Esta vista, sin embargo,, se basa principalmente
sobre el análisis de textos, teoría política islámica, y estudios ad hoc
de países individuales, que no consideran otros factores. es mi argumento
que los textos y tradiciones del Islam, como los de otras religiones,
se puede utilizar para apoyar una variedad de sistemas políticos y políticas. País
estudios específicos y descriptivos no nos ayudan a encontrar patrones que ayuden
Expliquemos las distintas relaciones entre el islam y la política en todo el mundo.
paises del mundo musulman. Por eso, un nuevo enfoque para el estudio de la
Se requiere una conexión entre el Islam y la política..
yo sugiero, a través de una evaluación rigurosa de la relación entre el Islam,
la democracia, y derechos humanos a nivel transnacional, que demasiado
se está poniendo énfasis en el poder del Islam como fuerza política. yo primero
utilizar estudios de casos comparativos, que se centran en factores relacionados con la interacción
entre grupos y regímenes islámicos, influencias economicas, divisiones étnicas,

y desarrollo social, para explicar la variación en la influencia de

Islam en la política a través de ocho naciones.

FE ISLÁMICA en AMÉRICA

JAMES A. BEVERLEY

AMÉRICA COMIENZA UN NUEVO MILENIO COMO UNA DE LAS NACIONES MÁS RELIGIOSAMENTE diversas de todos los tiempos. En ningún otro lugar del mundo tantas personas, a las que se les ofrece una opción libre de la influencia del gobierno, se identifican con una gama tan amplia de comunidades religiosas y espirituales.. En ningún otro lugar ha sido tan variada la búsqueda humana de significado. En América hoy, hay comunidades y centros de culto que representan a todas las religiones del mundo.
El paisaje americano está salpicado de iglesias, templos, sinagogas, y mezquitas. Los zendos budistas zen se sientan junto a los tabernáculos pentecostales. Judíos jasídicos caminan por las calles con swamis hindúes. Lo más asombroso de todo, Se han producido relativamente pocos conflictos entre las religiones en Estados Unidos.. Este hecho, combinado con un alto nivel de tolerancia de las creencias y prácticas de los demás, ha permitido que Estados Unidos produzca personas de buena voluntad listas para tratar de resolver cualquier tensión que pueda surgir. La serie Faith in America celebra la diversa herencia religiosa de Estados Unidos.
Personas de fe e ideales que anhelaban un mundo mejor han creado una sociedad única donde la libertad de expresión religiosa es una nota clave de la cultura.. La libertad que Estados Unidos ofrece a las personas de fe significa que no solo las religiones antiguas han encontrado un hogar
aquí, pero que nuevas formas de expresar la espiritualidad también han echado raíces. Desde enormes iglesias en grandes ciudades hasta pequeñas comunidades espirituales en pueblos y aldeas., la fe en Estados Unidos nunca ha sido más fuerte. Los caminos que han recorrido las diferentes religiones
La historia estadounidense es solo una de las historias que los lectores encontrarán en esta serie.. Como todo lo que la gente crea., la religión está lejos de ser perfecta. Sin embargo, su contribución a la cultura y su capacidad para ayudar a las personas son impresionantes, y estos logros se encontrarán en todos los libros de la serie. Mientras tanto, la conciencia y la tolerancia de los diferentes caminos que toman nuestros vecinos hacia la vida espiritual se ha convertido en una parte cada vez más importante de la ciudadanía en los Estados Unidos.
Este Dia, Más que nunca, Estados Unidos en su conjunto pone su fe en la libertad: la libertad de creer.

Partes islamistas : volviendo a los orígenes

Husain Haqqani

Hillel Fradkin

How should we understand the emergence and the nature of Islamist parties? Can they reasonably be expected not just to participate in democratic politics but even to respect the norms of liberal democracy? These questions lie at the heart of the issues that we have been asked to address.
In our view, any response that is historically and thus practically relevant must begin with the following observation: Until very recently, even the idea of an Islamist party (let alone a democratic Islamist party) would have seemed, from the perspective of Islamism itself, a paradox if not a contradiction in terms. Islamism’s original conception of a healthy Islamic political life made no room for—indeed rejected—any role for parties of any sort. Islamist groups described themselves as the vanguard of Islamic revival, claiming that they represented the essence of Islam and reflected the aspiration of the global umma (community of believers) for an Islamic polity. Pluralism, which is a precondition for the operation of political parties, was rejected by most Islamist political
thinkers as a foreign idea.
As should be more or less obvious, the novelty not only of actually existing Islamist parties but of the very idea of such parties makes it exceptionally difficult to assess their democratic bona fides. But this difficulty merely adds another level of complication to a problem that stems from the very origins of Islamism and its conception of the true meaning of Islam and of Islam’s relationship to political life

Conversos alemanes al Islam y sus relaciones ambivalentes con musulmanes inmigrantes

Esra Ozyurek

“I would never have become a Muslim if I had met Muslims before I met Islam.” I heard these words over and over again during my yearlong ethnographic research among ethnic German converts to Islam in Berlin.1 The first time, it was uttered by a self-declared German imam who had converted to Islam while trying to convert Arabs and Turks to Christianity. The second time, the speaker was a twenty-five-year-old former East German woman who came to Islam through her Bosnian boyfriend, whose family never accepted her. The third time, the comment was made by a fifty-year-old man who converted to Islam about thirty years ago after meeting Iranians who came to Europe to collect money and organize for the Iranian revolution. After that I stopped counting. Although all of the several dozen German converts I talked to (and the dozens of converts whose narratives I read on the internet) claim that they embraced Islam in a context of significant personal relationships with Muslims,2 a substantial portion of German Muslims are quite discontented with born Muslims, especially those of immigrant backgrounds. This paper is an attempt to comprehend the paradoxical feelings of love and hate for Islam and Muslims that many German Muslims experience. My aim in exploring this issue is to understand what it takes to be a (supposed) Islamophile in a political and social context that is highly Islamophobic.

BIBLIOGRAFÍA SELECCIONADA SOBRE ISLAM Y DEMOCRACIA

Salinas Sarsar

Alexander Keller

Democracy is highly promoted and sought these days but its principles are hard to practice and protect. Once secured, sin embargo,, it generates real life in human communities. Its sunrises provide energy to freedom and growth to civil society and culture, while its sunsets store energy to sustain deliberative citizenship and liberty and bridge past accomplishments to future aspirations.
Sin embargo, what do we mean by democracy? Are there perfect democratic societies around the world? Are democracy’s rays likely to shine on all landscapes? Is Muslim culture hospitable to deepening democracy’s impact? Do Muslims have a different understanding of democracy? If democracy is the preferred goal, how can democracy’s supporters move democratization forward in Muslim countries?
What we know is that no “one model fits all environments” exists. The journey of democracy is a “generational initiative” that must carefully consider internal and external dynamics. If Muslims, like others, wish to promote democracy, then they can detect their country’s place on the democratic terrain and determine how best to improve their practices and standing at home and abroad given their culture, historical experiences, resources, and vision for the future.
This select bibliography is designed to help all those interested in understanding the link between Islam and Muslims on the one hand and democracy on the other. It consists of over 100 entries, divided among books, articles, presentations, and reports; government sources; and institutes and organizations.

Hermandad Musulmana en Jordania

The Islamic movement in Jordan came to international attention in thewake of the April 1989 disturbances and the subsequent November 1989 parliamentary elections. These developments highlighted the movement’s political clout and raised the spectre in the West of an Iranian-style Islamic revolution in Jordan, fuelled by radical Islamic movements such as those of Egypt and the Maghrib. While various political trends competed for influence during the months prior to the elections, the Muslim Brotherhood had a clear advantage; its infrastructure in the mosques, the Qur’anicschools and the universities gave it a ready-made political base. The leftistand pro-regime groups, on the other hand, had to create de facto politicalparties—still legally banned—and to build their organizational base almostex nihilo, or to transform a clandestine infrastructure into an overt politicalone. There should have been very little surprise, por lo tanto, when the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist candidates won a windfall of 32 of the 80seats in Parliament.Politicization of Islam is not new in Jordan.1 Since the foundation of the Emirate of Trans jordan by ‘Abdallah, Islam has served as one of the building blocks of regime legitimacy and of nation-building. The genealogy of the Hashemite family as scions of the Prophet’s tribe was an important source of legitimacy for its rule in Syria, Iraq and Jordan, as it had been inthe Hijaz. The ideology of the “Great Arab Revolt” was no less Islamic than it was Arab, and the control of Jerusalem after 1948 was interpretedby the regime as an Islamic responsibility and not only an Arab one.2King ‘Abdallah and his grandson Hussein, took care to present themselvesas believing Muslims, appearing at rituals and prayers, performing the pilgrimage to Mecca and embellishing their speeches with Islamic motifs.3The status of Islam in the Kingdom was also formalized in the Jordanian constitution (1952) by stipulating that Islam is the religion of the kingdom and that the king must be a Muslim and of Muslim parents. ley islámica(Shari‘a) is defined in the constitution as one of the pillars of legislation in the kingdom, while family law is in the exclusive hands of the Shari‘a courts.

reclamando el centro: Islam político en transición

John L. Edwards

In the 1990s political Islam, what some callIslamic fundamentalism,” remains a major presence in government and in oppositional politics from North Africa to Southeast Asia. Political Islam in power and in politics has raised many issues and questions: “Is Islam antithetical to modernization?,” “Are Islam and democracy incompatible?,” “What are the implications of an Islamic government for pluralism, minority and women’s rights,” “How representative are Islamists,” “Are there Islamic moderates?,” “Should the West fear a transnational Islamic threat or clash of civilizations?” Contemporary Islamic Revivalism The landscape of the Muslim world today reveals the emergence of new Islamic republics (Irán, Sudán, Afganistán), the proliferation of Islamic movements that function as major political and social actors within existing systems, and the confrontational politics of radical violent extremists._ In contrast to the 1980s when political Islam was simply equated with revolutionary Iran or clandestine groups with names like Islamic jihad or the Army of God, the Muslim world in the 1990s is one in which Islamists have participated in the electoral process and are visible as prime ministers, cabinet officers, speakers of national assemblies, parliamentarians, and mayors in countries as diverse as Egypt, Sudán, Turquía, Irán, Líbano, Kuwait, Yemen, Jordania, Pakistán, Bangladesh, Malasia, Indonesia, and Israel/Palestine. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, political Islam continues to be a major force for order and disorder in global politics, one that participates in the political process but also in acts of terrorism, a challenge to the Muslim world and to the West. Understanding the nature of political Islam today, and in particular the issues and questions that have emerged from the experience of the recent past, remains critical for governments, policymakers, and students of international politics alike.

EL AUMENTO DE LA "democracia musulmana”

Gobernador Nasr

Un fantasma recorre el mundo musulmán. Este espectro es especialmente maligna notthe y muy discutido espíritu de extremismo fundamentalista, ni siquiera la esperanza de fantasma conocido como Islam liberal. Instead, the specter that I have in mind is a third force, a hopeful if still somewhat ambiguoustrend that I call—in a conscious evocation of the political tradition associated with the Christian Democratic parties of Europe—“Muslim Democracy.”The emergence and unfolding of Muslim Democracy as a “fact on the ground” over the last fifteen years has been impressive. This is so even though all its exponents have thus far eschewed that label1 and even though the lion’s share of scholarly and political attention has gone to the question of how to promote religious reform within Islam as a prelude to democratization.2 Since the early 1990s, political openings in anumber of Muslim-majority countries—all, admittedly, outside the Arabworld—have seen Islamic-oriented (but non-Islamist) parties vying successfullyfor votes in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malasia, Pakistán (beforeits 1999 military coup), and Turkey.Unlike Islamists, with their visions of rule by shari‘a (ley islámica) oreven a restored caliphate, Muslim Democrats view political life with apragmatic eye. They reject or at least discount the classic Islamist claim that Islam commands the pursuit of a shari‘a state, and their main goaltends to be the more mundane one of crafting viable electoral platform sand stable governing coalitions to serve individual and collective interests—Islamic as well as secular—within a democratic arena whosebounds they respect, win or lose. Islamists view democracy not as something deeply legitimate, but at best as a tool or tactic that may be useful in gaining the power to build an Islamic state.

INSTITUCIONES POLÍTICAS Y MOVILIZACIÓN MUSULMANA

SARA SILVESTRI

En Europa, y la mayoría del mundo occidental, presencia musulmana en la publicsphere es un fenómeno reciente que caracterizó la última década del 20thcentury y ha marcado profundamente el comienzo de la 21. This visiblepresence, which amounts to something between 15 y 20 millionindividuals, can best be analysed if dissected into a number of components.The first part of this chapter illustrates where, when and why organisedMuslim voices and institutions have emerged in Europe, and which actorshave been involved. The second part is more schematic and analytical, inthat it seeks to identify from these dynamics the process through whichMuslims become political actors and how they relate to other, often incompeting political forces and priorities. It does so by observing theobjectives and the variety of strategies that Muslims have adopted in orderto articulate their concerns vis-à-vis different contexts and interlocutors.The conclusions offer an initial evaluation of the impact and of theconsequences of Muslim mobilisation and institution-formation forEuropean society and policy-making.