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Reforma Islámica

Adnan Khan

El primer ministro italiano, Silvio Berlusconi se jactaba tras los hechos de 9/11:
“…debemos ser conscientes de la superioridad de nuestra civilización, un sistema que ha garantizado

bienestar, respeto a los derechos humanos y – en contraste con los países islámicos – respeto

por los derechos religiosos y políticos, un sistema que tiene sus valores comprensión de la diversidad

y tolerancia…Occidente conquistará a los pueblos, como conquistó el comunismo, incluso si

significa un enfrentamiento con otra civilización, el islámico, atrapado donde estaba

1,400 hace años…”1

y en un 2007 informe que declaró el instituto RAND:
“La lucha en curso en gran parte del mundo musulmán es esencialmente una guerra de

ideas. Su resultado determinará la dirección futura del mundo musulmán”.

Construyendo redes musulmanas moderadas, Instituto RAND

El concepto de 'Islá' (reforma) es un concepto desconocido para los musulmanes. Nunca existió en todo el

historia de la civilización islámica; nunca se debatió ni se consideró. Una mirada rápida a lo clásico

La literatura islámica nos muestra que cuando los eruditos clásicos sentaron las bases del usul, y codificado

sus reglas islámicas (fiqh) solo buscaban la comprensión de las reglas islámicas para poder

aplicarlos. Una situación similar ocurrió cuando se establecieron las reglas para el hadiz., Tafsir y el

lenguaje árabe. eruditos, pensadores e intelectuales a lo largo de la historia islámica dedicaron mucho tiempo

comprender la revelación de Allah: el Corán y aplicar las aleyas sobre las realidades y acuñar

principios y disciplinas para facilitar la comprensión. Por lo tanto, el Corán siguió siendo la base de

El estudio y todas las disciplinas que evolucionaron siempre se basaron en el Corán.. Los que se convirtieron

herido por la filosofía griega, como los filósofos musulmanes y algunos de entre los Mut'azilah

se consideró que habían dejado el redil del Islam cuando el Corán dejó de ser su base de estudio. Así para

cualquier musulmán que intente deducir reglas o entender qué postura se debe tomar sobre un particular

emitir el Corán es la base de este estudio.

El primer intento de reformar el Islam tuvo lugar a principios del siglo XIX.. A la vuelta de la

siglo la Ummah había estado en un largo período de declive donde el equilibrio global de poder cambió

del Khilafah a Gran Bretaña. Los crecientes problemas envolvieron al Khilafah mientras Europa Occidental estaba en

en medio de la revolución industrial. La Ummah llegó a perder su comprensión prístina del Islam, y

en un intento de revertir el declive que engulle a los Uthmani (otomanos) algunos musulmanes fueron enviados a la

Oeste, y como resultado quedaron heridos por lo que vieron. Rifa'a Rafi' al-Tahtawi de Egipto (1801-1873),

a su regreso de París, escribió un libro biográfico llamado Takhlis al-ibriz ila talkhis Bariz (El

Extracción de Oro, o una visión general de París, 1834), alabando su limpieza, amor al trabajo, y por encima

toda la moralidad social. Declaró que hay que imitar lo que se está haciendo en París, abogando por cambios en

la sociedad islámica desde la liberalización de las mujeres hasta los sistemas de gobierno. este pensamiento, y a otros les gusta,

marcó el comienzo de la tendencia de reinvención en el Islam.

La oposición siria

Joshua Landis

Joe Pace


Durante décadas, EE.UU.. política hacia Siria ha estado con la mente centrada en el presidente de Siria, Hafiz al-Asad, de 1970 a 2000, seguido por su hijo Bashar. Because they perceived the Syrian opposition to be too weak and anti-American, EE.UU.. officials preferred to work with the Asad regime. Washington thus had no relations with the Syrian opposition until its invasion of Iraq in 2003. Incluso entonces, the Bush administration reached out only to Washington-based opponents of the Syrian regime. They were looking for a Syrian counterpart to Ahmad Chalabi, the pro-U.S. Iraqi opposition leader who helped build the case for invading Iraq.
Washington was not interested in engaging Islamists, whom it considered the only opposition with a demonstrated popular base in Syria. As for the secular opposition in Syria, EE.UU.. embassy officials in Damascus considered them to “have a weak back bench,” without a popular constituency or connection to Syrian youth.2 Moreover, contact between opposition members and embassy officials could be dangerous for opponents of the regime and leave them open to accusations of treason. For these reasons, the difficult terrain of opposition figures within Syria remained terra incognita.

La política y la promesa de los diálogos entre civilizaciones

M. A. Muqtedar Khan

In response to Harvard Professor SamuelHuntington’s now infamous argument predicting afuture full of clashes between civilizations, the world’sliberals responded with a call for a civilizational dialogue.After 9/11, this call for a dialogue betweenIslam and the West has become even more urgent.The philosophical assumptions behind these dialoguesare not too difficult to discern. Islam and themodern West share a common Abrahamic traditionand their foundational sources; Islamic law and philosophyand Western enlightenment philosophy havecommon roots—Hellenistic reason and Biblical revelation.The two civilizations have a common past anda common future, particularly in the light of strongeconomic relations between the West and the Muslimworld and the growing presence of Islam in nearlyevery Western society.Because the future of the two civilizations is inseparable,any clash will be devastating to both, regardlessof the asymmetry of power. A clash between Islamand the modern West would be like a collisionbetween the present and the future for both. Islam isintegral to the future of the West and Islamic civilization’sreticence toward modernity is untenable.Eventually, the Muslim world will have to modernize,democratize, and recognize that its future, too, isinterdependent. Neither the West nor the Muslimworld can imagine a mutually exclusive future.

Tendencias Actuales en la Ideología de los Hermanos Musulmanes Egipcios

Dr.. Israel Elad Altman

The American-led Middle East reform and democratization campaign of the last twoyears has helped shape a new political reality in Egypt. Opportunities have opened up fordissent. With U.S. and European support, local opposition groups have been able to takeinitiative, advance their causes and extract concessions from the state. The EgyptianMuslim Brotherhood movement (MB), which has been officially outlawed as a politicalorganization, is now among the groups facing both new opportunities and new risks.Western governments, including the government of the United States, are consideringthe MB and other “moderate Islamist” groups as potential partners in helping to advancedemocracy in their countries, and perhaps also in eradicating Islamist terrorism. Couldthe Egyptian MB fill that role? Could it follow the track of the Turkish Justice andDevelopment Party (AKP) and the Indonesian Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), twoIslamist parties that, according to some analysts, are successfully adapting to the rules ofliberal democracy and leading their countries toward greater integration with,respectively, Europe and a “pagan” Asia?This article examines how the MB has responded to the new reality, how it has handledthe ideological and practical challenges and dilemmas that have arisen during the pasttwo years. To what extent has the movement accommodated its outlook to newcircumstances? What are its objectives and its vision of the political order? How has itreacted to U.S. overtures and to the reform and democratization campaign? How has itnavigated its relations with the Egyptian regime on one hand, and other opposition forceson the other, as the country headed toward two dramatic elections in autumn 2005? Towhat extent can the MB be considered a force that might lead Egypt toward liberaldemocracy?

Musulmanes estadounidenses de clase media y mayoritariamente convencionales

Centro de Investigación Pew

Muslims constitute a growing and increasingly important segment of American society.Yet there is surprisingly little quantitative research about the attitudes and opinions of thissegment of the public for two reasons. Primero, the U.S. Census is forbidden by law from askingquestions about religious belief and affiliation, y, as a result, we know very little about thebasic demographic characteristics of Muslim Americans. Segundo, 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, Francia, 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. Por último, 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.

Egipto: Antecedentes y EE. UU.. Relaciones

Jeremy M. Fuerte

In the last year, Egyptian foreign policy, particularly its relationship with the United States, hasbenefitted substantially from both a change in U.S. policy and from events on the ground. TheObama Administration, as evident in the President’s June 2009 speech in Cairo, has elevatedEgypt’s importance to U.S. foreign policy in the region, as U.S. policymakers work to revive theArab-Israeli peace process. In choosing Cairo as a venue for the President’s signature address tothe Muslim world, Egyptians feel that the United States has shown their country respectcommensurate with its perceived stature in the Arab world.At the same time, continuing tensions with Iran and Hamas have bolstered Egypt’s position as amoderating force in the region and demonstrated the country’s diplomatic utility to U.S. foreignpolicy. Based on its own interests, Egypt has opposed Iranian meddling in the Levant and in Gazaand has recently expanded military cooperation with Israel in order to demonstrate resolve againstfurther Iranian provocations, such as arming Hamas or allowing Hezbollah to operate on Egyptiansoil. Por otra parte, Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (Diciembre 2008 to January 2009) highlighted theneed to moderate Hamas’s behavior, attain Palestinian unity, and reach a long-term Israel-Hamascease-fire/prisoner exchange, goals which Egypt has been working toward, albeit with limitedsuccess so far.Indications of an improved bilateral relationship have been clearly evident. Over the last sixmonths, there has been a flurry of diplomatic exchanges, culminating in President Obama’s June2009 visit to Egypt and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s trip to Washington in August 2009,his first visit to the United States in over five years. Following President Obama’s June visit, thetwo governments held their annual strategic dialogue. Several months earlier, the United Statespledged to expand trade and investment in Egypt.Despite the appearance of a more positive atmosphere, inherent tensions and contradictions inU.S.-Egyptian relations remain. For U.S. policymakers and Members of Congress, the question ofhow to simultaneously maintain the U.S.-Egyptian strategic relationship born out of the CampDavid Accords and the 1979 peace treaty while promoting human rights and democracy in Egyptis a major challenge with no clear path. As Egyptian opposition figures have grown more vocal inrecent years over issues such as leadership succession, corruption, and economic inequality, andthe regime has subsequently grown more repressive in its response to increased calls for reform,activists have demanded that the United States pressure Egypt to create more breathing space fordissent. The Egyptian government has resisted any U.S. attempts to interfere in its domesticpolitics and has responded harshly to overt U.S. calls for political reform. Al mismo tiempo, as theIsraeli-Palestinian situation has further deteriorated, Egypt’s role as a mediator has provedinvaluable to U.S. foreign policy in the region. Egypt has secured cease-fire agreements andmediated negotiations with Hamas over prisoner releases, cease-fire arrangements, and otherissues. Since Hamas is a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and calls forIsrael’s destruction, neither Israel nor the United States government directly negotiates with itsofficials, using Egypt instead as a go-between. With the Obama Administration committed topursuing Middle East peace, there is concern that U.S. officials may give a higher priority toEgypt’s regional role at the expense of human rights and democratic reforms.

La promoción de la democracia en Oriente Medio no es una calle de sentido único

Marina Ottaway

The U.S. administration is under pressure to revive democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East,but momentum toward political reform has stalled in most of the region. Opposition parties are at lowebb, and governments are more firmly in control than ever. While new forms of activism, such as laborprotests and a growing volume of blogging critical of government and opposition parties have becomewidespread, they have yet to prove effective as means of influencing leaders to change long-standingpolicies.The last time a U.S. administration faced such unfavorable circumstances in advancing political reformswas over 30 years ago, when the Helsinki process was launched during the Cold War. That experiencetaught us that the United States needs to give reluctant interlocutors something they want if itexpects them to engage on issues they would rather not address. If Washington wants Arab countriesto discuss the universal democratic principles that should underpin their political systems, it needs to beprepared to discuss the universal principles that should underpin its own Middle East policies.

BETWEEN THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

ANTHONY Bubalo

GREG 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. Este Dia, 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 : Islamismo, 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.