RSSAlle Einträge Tagged With: "Muslim"

Herausforderungen für die Demokratie in der arabischen und muslimischen Welt

Alon Ben-Meir

Präsident Bushs Vorstellungen, die Demokratisierung des Irak wird einen Dominoeffekt auf den Rest ofthe arabischen Welt, bringen Wohlstand und Frieden in der Region, und dass die Demokratie die panaceafor islamischen Terrorismus sind unbegründet sowie grob irreführend. Even a cursory review of the Arab political landscape indicates that the rise of democracy will not automatically translateinto the establishment of enduring liberal democracies or undermine terrorism in the region. Thesame conclusion may be generally made for the Muslim political landscape. Tatsächlich, given theopportunity to compete freely and fairly in elections, Islamic extremist organizations will mostlikely emerge triumphant. In the recent elections in Lebanon and Egypt, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood respectively, won substantial gains, and in Palestine Hamas won thenational Parliamentary elections handedly. That they did so is both a vivid example of the today’spolitical realities and an indicator of future trends. And if current sentiments in the Arab statesoffer a guide, any government formed by elected Islamist political parties will be more antagonistic to the West than the authoritarian regimes still in power. Außerdem, there are noindications that democracy is a prerequisite to defeating terrorism or any empirical data tosupport the claim of linkage between existing authoritarian regimes and terrorism.

Muslimische Amerikaner Mittelklassen und überwiegend Mainstream

Pew Research Center

Muslime stellen ein wachsendes und zunehmend wichtiges Segment des amerikanischen society.Yet es über die Einstellungen und Meinungen von thissegment der Öffentlichkeit aus zwei Gründen überraschend wenig quantitative Forschung. Zuerst, den USA. Census is forbidden by law from askingquestions about religious belief and affiliation, und, as a result, we know very little about thebasic demographic characteristics of Muslim Americans. Zweite, Muslim Americans comprisesuch a small percentage of the U.S. population that general population surveys do not interview asufficient number of them to allow for meaningful analysis.This Pew Research Center study is therefore the first ever nationwide survey to attempt tomeasure rigorously the demographics, attitudes and experiences of Muslim Americans. It buildson surveys conducted in 2006 by the Pew Global Attitudes Project of Muslim minority publics inGreat Britain, Frankreich, Germany and Spain. The Muslim American survey also follows on Pew’sglobal surveys conducted over the past five years with more than 30,000 Muslims in 22 nationsaround the world since 2002.The methodological approach employed was the most comprehensive ever used to studyMuslim Americans. Nearly 60,000 respondents were interviewed to find a representative sampleof Muslims. Interviews were conducted in Arabic, Urdu and Farsi, as well as English. Subsamplesof the national poll were large enough to explore how various subgroups of thepopulationincluding recent immigrants, native-born converts, and selected ethnic groupsincluding those of Arab, Pakistani, and African American heritagediffer in their attitudesThe survey also contrasts the views of the Muslim population as a whole with those ofthe U.S. general population, and with the attitudes of Muslims all around the world, includingWestern Europe. Schließlich, findings from the survey make important contributions to the debateover the total size of the Muslim American population.The survey is a collaborative effort of a number of Pew Research Center projects,including the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, the Pew Forum on Religion &Public Life and the Pew Hispanic Center. The project was overseen by Pew Research CenterPresident Andrew Kohut and Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life Director Luis Lugo. ThePew Research Center’s Director of Survey Research, Scott Keeter, served as project director forthe study, with the close assistance of Gregory Smith, Research Fellow at the Pew Forum. Manyother Pew researchers participated in the design, execution and analysis of the survey.

AUF DER VERFOLGUNG DER LEGITIMITÄT

Hesham Al-Awadi
Am außergewöhnlichen Morgen des 11 September 2001, Ich war zufällig im Londoner Büro des Muslim
Brüder, die Interviews für diese Studie führen. Die Gesichter aller im Büro spiegelten die schockierende Szene von Flugzeugen wider, die in die Türme des World Trade Centers in New York krachten.
Obwohl die Identität der Täter zunächst unklar war, es gab schon früh Befürchtungen, dass radikale Islamisten von Al-Qaida beteiligt sein könnten. Den Brüdern im Büro waren die möglichen Auswirkungen eindeutig unangenehm. Wenn tatsächlich Islamisten involviert wären, ein solches Ereignis würde sicherlich die Befürchtungen der Amerikaner erhöhen, und des Westens insgesamt, gegen Islam und Muslime, und würde Huntingtons Vorstellung vom „Kampf der Zivilisationen“ mehr Glaubwürdigkeit verleihen..
Inmitten dieser legitimen westlichen Ängste, die deutlich sichtbare Trennlinie zwischen gemäßigten und radikalen Islamisten würde verwischt oder irrelevant. Dies würde nicht nur als schwerwiegende Fehlhaltung der Vereinigten Staaten und des Westens gegenüber dem hochentwickelten islamistischen Phänomen gelten, aber es würde autoritäre arabische Regime ermutigen, alle Islamisten wahllos zu unterdrücken, auf der Grundlage der Möchtegern-Weisheit, dass
„Alle Islamisten sind potenziell gefährlich“.
Ägyptens Präsident Mohammad Hosni Mubarak gehörte zu den arabischen Führern, die bereits Zwangskampagnen gegen Islamisten gestartet hatten, sowohl Gemäßigte als auch Radikale, seit Anfang und Mitte- 1990S. Seine Kampagne erreichte ihren Höhepunkt in 1995, wann 95 zivile Islamisten, die Mitglieder der Muslimbruderschaft waren, wurden gestellt
vor Militärgerichten, angeklagt, einer illegalen Organisation anzugehören und sich zum Sturz der Regierung verschworen zu haben.

Demokratie schützt sich vor sich selbst?

Ebru Erdem

Studies on government in Muslim societies and in the Middle East in particular have mostly focused on authoritarianism. They sought to answer why authoritarianism is the most often observed regime type, and why it persists. Recent work has looked at the role of elections and elected bodies under authoritarianism, explaining why they exist and what purposes they serve (Blaydes 2008; Lust-Okar 2006). The goal of this paper is to shift the spotlight onto the judiciary, and to the political role of high courts in Muslim societies with different levels of authoritarianism.Judiciaries and the judicial processes in Muslim societies have not caught much scholarly attention. Much of the work in this area has revolved around Shari’a. Shari’a law, incorporation of the Shari’a into western style judicial systems and legal codes, conflicts between western and Shari’a inspired codes of family law, and especially the impact of the latter on women’s rights are some of the extensively studied topics concerning the judicial processes in these societies. Auf der anderen Seite, work on judiciary as a political institution in the Muslim world is scarce, notable exceptions being Moustafa (2003) and Hirschl (2004). Judiciaries may take different institutional forms, be based on different legal traditions, or vary in the level of independence they enjoy, but they are still a political institutions.Why study the judiciary in the Muslim World? Is a focus on the judiciary meaningful given the dominance of the executives in countries with authoritarian regimes? The justification for a focus on the judiciary has different dimensions. From a rational choice-institutionalist perspective: if an institution exists, there must be a reason for it, and we think that investigating the raison d’être of the judiciaries will provide interesting insights about political processes and executive strategies. From an institutional-design perspective, the shape that an institution takes2is related to the strategies of the actors negotiating over that institution, and we would like to use the observed variance in judicial institutions and powers across countries and time periods to learn about different aspects of political bargains that scholars have studied in other political realms. From a democratic development perspective, the establishment of the checks and balances is central to a functioning and sustainable democracy, and we would argue that studying the judiciary is central to understanding the prospects towards establishment of rule of law and a credible commitment to democracy (Weingast 1997).