Turkey Is No Model for Muslims

In this age of confrontation, the secular Turkish model has been seen as a bridge between Islam and the West as well as the link between Europe and Asia. Now that model faces the most severe test in its history. How the current crisis is settled will frame future relations between Islam and the West no less than the events of 9/11.     

Autocracy vs. Democracy

In this age of confrontation, the secular Turkish model has been seen as a bridge between Islam and the West as well as the link between Europe and Asia. Now that model faces the most severe test in its history. How the current crisis is settled will frame future relations between Islam and the West no less than the events of 9/11.     

The Third Wave: Muslim Migration to Europe

In this age of confrontation, the secular Turkish model has been seen as a bridge between Islam and the West as well as the link between Europe and Asia. Now that model faces the most severe test in its history. How the current crisis is settled will frame future relations between Islam and the West no less than the events of 9/11.     

A Union of Civilizations

In this age of confrontation, the secular Turkish model has been seen as a bridge between Islam and the West as well as the link between Europe and Asia. Now that model faces the most severe test in its history. How the current crisis is settled will frame future relations between Islam and the West no less than the events of 9/11.     

The Limits of Democracy,or “Seizure of the State From Within”

In this age of confrontation, the secular Turkish model has been seen as a bridge between Islam and the West as well as the link between Europe and Asia. Now that model faces the most severe test in its history. How the current crisis is settled will frame future relations between Islam and the West no less than the events of 9/11.     

Turkey's Admission to Europe Would Defeat Jihadists

In this age of confrontation, the secular Turkish model has been seen as a bridge between Islam and the West as well as the link between Europe and Asia. Now that model faces the most severe test in its history. How the current crisis is settled will frame future relations between Islam and the West no less than the events of 9/11.     

Don't Disarm Secularism

In this age of confrontation, the secular Turkish model has been seen as a bridge between Islam and the West as well as the link between Europe and Asia. Now that model faces the most severe test in its history. How the current crisis is settled will frame future relations between Islam and the West no less than the events of 9/11.     

The Two Souls of Turkey

In this age of confrontation, the secular Turkish model has been seen as a bridge between Islam and the West as well as the link between Europe and Asia. Now that model faces the most severe test in its history. How the current crisis is settled will frame future relations between Islam and the West no less than the events of 9/11.     

Islam and the West in world history

Rejecting the thesis that Islam and the West are on a collision course, this article examines the nature of their relations over the centuries and concludes that, although convergence between them is not likely, grounds for mutual tolerance and co-existence have always existed and can, in future, exist. Understanding that proprietary liberalism is not the only model for democracy is a necessary first step in the assessment of the long-term prospects for stable relations between Islam and the West. In this article intellectual, social, economic and political trends are examined, the causes of tensions and conflicts between the two sides are analysed, the nature of the contemporary Islamist project is identified, and the possibilities for effective dialogue between mainstream tendencies in both the West and the Muslim world are assessed.     

The Identity of Turkey: Muslim and secular

Abstract

This article analyses the rise of political Islam in Turkey in the context of the akp's tenure in power with reference to complex social, economic, historical and ideational factors. It aims to answer one of the key questions, which has wider implications for the West and Islamic world: ‘having experienced the bad and good of the West in secularism and democracy’, as claimed by Samuel Huntington's ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis, is Turkey in transition from a secular to an Islamic state? The article first questions Turkey's ‘bridge’ or ‘torn-country’ status and then explains the akp's ambivalent policies towards religious and identity issues in relation to the increased public visibility of Islam and a ‘performative reflexivity’ of ‘Muslim-selves’. It concludes that the real issue at stake is not the assumed clash of secular and Muslim identities but the complex of interdependence between Islam, secularism and democratisation in Turkey.     

Politically Engaged Muslims in Malaysia in the Era of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (2003–2009)

Long regarded as an embodiment of tolerant Islam and peacefully co-existing with modernisation within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, Malaysia unexpectedly aroused much attention as a potential breeding ground for Muslim radicals in the aftermath of catalytic events which pitted the West against the Muslim world. Malaysian Muslims are said to be susceptible to Middle Eastern-originated radicalism, as exemplified in interlocking transnational contacts and agendas sowed between increasingly globalised Muslim networks adept in exploiting latest trappings of modernity. This article urges readers to engage in deeper reflection on the local dynamics of Malaysia's Islamisation process, in order to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of challenges posed by politically engaged Muslims in Malaysia. It is argued that, belying the regime's profession of a progressive Islam known as Islam Hadhari, Malaysia under Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's Premiership witnessed an abrupt escalation of inter-religious tension which not only threatened to disrupt communal harmony and nation-building, but also posed a security risk. The origins of such instability could arguably be located to the peculiar manner in which politically-laden Islam is applied by the regime, in particular by its home-nurtured Islamic bureaucracy.     

Christians and Muslims in Nineteenth Century Liberia: From Ideological Antagonism to Practical Toleration

Liberia was established, among others, as a Christian nation that would spearhead the spreading of the gospel to the black continent. This endeavor had the potential to bring about a collision between the Liberian settlers and the other imported monotheistic religion that had already been proselytizing in large areas of West Africa for centuries, namely Islam. This article analyzes the process by which the harsh reality defeated the Christian enterprise, turning the initial ideological antagonism into practical cooperation. It also discusses the initiative to formalize the relations between the two religions within a political framework and the reason for its failure. Relying on available sources, the article traces the penetration first of Islam, and later, in the nineteenth century, of Christianity into Liberia, and analyzes the consequences of the encounter between these religions.     

Islam and Attitudes toward U.S. Policy in the Middle East: Evidence from Survey Research in Lebanon

This study examines the impact of religious orientation on attitudes toward U.S. Middle Eastern policy among Muslim Lebanese. The data came from a stratified random sample, consisting of 262 Sunni and Shi'i respondents of both genders, conducted in the Greater Beirut area during February and March of 2002. Consistent with the literature about Islamism, the present analysis reveals an empirical distinction between personal and political dimensions of religion in Lebanon. Specifically, support for political Islam is associated with unfavorable attitudes toward U.S. policy in the region, but personal religiosity is unrelated to attitudes toward foreign policy. The study findings contribute in clarifying the debate that has been raging since the September 11 attacks, pitting Islam against the West and associating Islam with political violence.     

Australia's Handling of Tensions between Islam and the West under the Howard Government

This article examines the impact of international conflicts involving the Muslim world upon Australia's multicultural society by studying the Howard government's responses to tensions between Islam and the West since September 11. Specifically, it surveys the Howard government's participation in the ‘War on Terror’, other aspects of Australia's foreign and security policies, including the relationship with the United States, the emergence of immigration and refugee flows as national security issues, and the subsequent impact of all this on multiculturalism and in particular on Australia's Muslim community. At a broader level, the article challenges the argument that foreign policy is inconsequential for social policy, intercommunal, inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations. The internalization of the ‘War on Terror’ has reinforced a negative portrayal of Islam and Muslims in Australia by blurring the dividing line between ‘Islam’ on the one hand and ‘extremism’ and ‘terrorism’ on the other. The evidence suggests that government statements and policies, more generally had provoked apprehension amongst a wide cross-section of the Australian Muslim community. A major finding of this article is that unless care is taken, it is not inconceivable that the hitherto harmonious relationship between Muslims and other sections of Australia's community could be unnecessarily endangered.     

Memories of Nehemia

This article is both a biographical sketch of the career of Nehemia Levtzion and a reminiscence. Levtzion grew up in Israel during the period of its founding. He early chose to study Islamization in Africa and became the leading interpreter of the history of Islam in West Africa. Though often called on to assume administrative responsibilities in the Israeli educational system, he maintained a commitment to scholarship. The small conferences he held in Jerusalem over the years often involved a re-thinking of basic problems in the history of Islam in Africa and in the larger Muslim world. He was particularly interested in processes of conversion and the dynamics of change. Though he described many varieties of Islam and different levels of Islamization, he never accepted the notion of a distinctively Africa Islam. He saw instead processes that were similar throughout the Muslim world.     

Breaking New Ground in Pagan” and “Muslim” West Africa

Nehemia Levtzion had a long and distinguished career as an interpreter of Islam in West Africa, and some of his earliest contributions have the greatest value. This article explores first, the continuing significance of Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa (1968), an analysis of communities and states set in the “pagan” Middle Belt of Ghana, and second, a forgery of Arabic documents with important political implications for the jihad and state of Hamdullahi created in the Middle Delta of Mali, in “A Seventeenth Century Chronicle of Ibn al-Mukhtar” (1971).     

Whole Soyinka and the Poetry of Isolation

This paper provides a glimpse of Islamic scholarship in Mirriah, Niger Republic, at a particular point in time, 1974–1975, before some of the latest currents of religious unrest erupted in West Africa. Through interviews with local scholars, it examines the degree to which they participated in a West African “core curriculum” shared with other Islamic scholars across the Sahel. It also explores the history of the malamai class in Mirriah, noting significant ties to the Bornu empire. Both the ruling dynasty and Mirriah itself also exemplify the process of “becoming Hausa”: people of diverse origins have come to define themselves as Hausa, adopting the Hausa language and the religion of Islam.     

Anatomy of a Riot: The Social Imaginary,Single Women,and Religious Violence in Niger

This article asks us to rethink the models that have conventionally represented the coming of Islam to Africa: that of a pre-established entity, given from the outside, coherent, monadic, unity, like an already formed identity. Using Lacanian challenges to conventional notions of identity, this article contests the above version of Islam, viewing it as an incarnation of the imago: always there, always obeying the logic of a model of transmission into Africa as a reception from abroad. The conventional representation of its irruption into Africa has always involved the misrecognition of an identity as a pre-existent, already-whole form, wait ing to be born, presumably in complete unity. What this model ignores is that the language and form of what it came to recognize and name as Islam were already there, and that the Islam that formed its newlyconscious sense of self was grounded in the same act of misrecognition as characterizes the mirror stage, that is, the stage at which the subject comes to state: “This is who I am.” In order to rethink the identitarian model, this article evokes the figure of the dead father, the “McGuffin” on which turns the drama of Hampaté Ba’s Wangrin and Sembène Ousmane’s Faat Kine. In both works, the act of exhuming the father’s body takes on a degree of fantastical importance because it situates the struggle between two competing mirror stage tendencies: narcissism and aggression, tendencies around which all forms of subject-identity formation take place.     

Islam and Toleration: Studying the Ottoman Imperial Model

This article explores the relationship between religion and politics in the context of the recent debates on Islam and religious fundamentalism. I argue that too much attention is paid to the theological issues of Islam, and that we should rather focus on the historical conditions that tend to produce religious tolerance or intolerance. I use the Ottoman Empire as an example of a polity that succeeded in maintaining religious and ethnic toleration for the tremendous diversity it encountered within its frontiers. I analyze the specific relationship between the Ottoman state and Islam, the subordination of religion to the state, the dual role of religion as an institution and a system of beliefs as well as the intricacies of the millet system. I conclude that the particular relationship that was forged between religion and politics during the first four centuries of the empire promoted religious openness and toleration.