Osama bin Laden and Guerrilla War

Is Osama bin Laden just an evil person or is he a thoughtful, determined adversary with a well-planned strategy? This article outlines how bin Laden, as a mujahideen fighter in the Soviet Afghanistan War, became familiar with Mao's protracted guerrilla concept, and how he later proclaimed its significance in developing his Jihad warfare strategy.     

Nihilism in Political Chaos: Himmler,bin Laden,and Altruistic Punishment

Achieving cooperation in the midst of political chaos is difficult, yet possible if under‐stood within the context of facilitating conditions. These conditions are found within Germany after World War I, and portions of the contemporary Islamic world. Increased unity of the Palestinians since the onset of the current intifada, immense popularity of the name "Osama" since the events of September 11, and the extraordinary level of cooperation within Germany prior to and during World War II are examined. Altruistic punishment--costly to individual perpetrators of atrocity and without material gain for them--is used to explain this high level of cooperation. Where unity is deeply desired, self-sacrifice in the furtherance of a morally justified cause, however perverse, can increase the level of cooperation. The political views and experiences of Heinrich Himmler and Osama bin Laden, as well as those of their intellectual mentors, are offered to substantiate the importance of altruistic punishment as a progenitor of cooperation within politically chaotic settings.‐     

Islam and power legitimation: instrumentalisation of religion in Central Asian States

How can Islam play multiple and contradictory roles as a source of violence and peace, and a marker of identity differences and national unity? This study argues that religion, as a system of beliefs, manifests itself through discourses, which not only render intelligibility to religious practices and beliefs but also serve as the instruments of social control and regulation. An infinite variety of organizational and ideological differences within Islam presents the possibility for instrumentalisation of religion by stakeholders interested in accomplishing distinctive political aims connected to political legitimation. The study offers an empirical analysis of instrumentalisation of Islam by governments of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and uses this evidence for developing a framework linking various discursive representations of religion to their political uses.     

Islam and the United States: streams of convergence,strands of divergence

This article identifies four historical phases of relations between Islam and the Western world, as led by the United States. The first phase was a convergence of values coinciding with a divergence of empathy. The second phase reversed the order – Islamic and Western values diverged, but intercommunal relations became closer. The third phase is after September 11 when intercommunal relations once again diverged while differences between Western and Islamic values were greater than ever. The futuristic fourth phase of Islam's relations with the U.S.‐led Western world is when the power of the new American Empire is circumscribed, Western values become less libertarian, and Islam reconciles itself to modernity.     

Regions of Risk: Western Discourses on Terrorism and the Significance of Islam

Terrorism is a word that everyone across the globe has become familiar with in the wake of the events of 11 September 2001. The rhetoric about these events, however, is more than mere commentary seeking to understand the cause of or apportion blame for such attacks and forms part of a much wider western discourse invoked to describe unfamiliar cultures and landscapes. In fact, terrorism is only the most recent in a long line of dangerous conditions that have come to represent how certain areas of the non-western world are usually imagined and subsequently depicted as regions of risk. This article argues that "tropicality," "development," and "vulnerability" form part of one and the same essentializing and generalizing cultural discourse with "terrorism" that historically denigrate large regions of the world as disease-ridden, poverty-stricken, disaster-prone and terrorist-spawning.‐     

The Ascendance of Political Islam: Hamas and consolidation in the Gaza Strip

This article outlines the means by which the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas has developed and implemented a consolidation of power strategy that is inexorably driving it to a state of increasingly authoritarian control in the Gaza Strip. It discusses the factors that have driven Hamas in terms of power seeking as primordial to all radical Islamist movements or as a result of or response to other factors outside its control. The article highlights the concurrent demise of the Fatah organisation in the Gaza Strip as the largest and most visible symbol of secularism. It then reflects on the role of external, including international, actors in accelerating consolidation tactics following the Hamas ‘takeover’ of power from the Fatah-dominated institutions of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in June 2007. The article aims to demonstrate that Hamas' control in Gaza is an important signpost in terms of developing Islamism in the Middle East region.     

Transforming Islam among Roma communities in the Balkans: a case of popular religiosity

In recent decades, numerous popular shrines devoted to saints have emerged in Romani settlements, usually in urban areas. At first sight, these shrines and the veneration of saints are reminiscent of the cult of saints and tombs common in regional Muslim traditions and beyond, and possess particular local features. A detailed analysis of this local case shows new meanings and forms the “wider” tradition gains under new conditions. This paper explores the way the regional Muslim tradition of worshiping holy sites is localized and elaborated within popular religious practice of certain Romani communities in the Balkans. Specifically, it focuses on the contestation of the issues of authenticity and marginality of this vernacular practice in order to reveal the peculiarity of images and meanings Islam gains at the intra-confessional level in a quite heterogeneous social and cultural environment. The material discussed in this paper was collected during ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2011 and 2014 in Serbia, Macedonia, and Kosovo.     

Hidden in the Household: Gender and Class in the Study of Islam in Africa

The household, if understood in a dynamic multi-status, multi-generational, multi-cultural, “gendered” way, can provide a conceptual framework for reinterpreting practices, processes, and patterns of Islamization in Africa. This framework contrasts with the one privileged in literature that focuses on the agency of traders, clerics and chiefs in public institutions. It reminds us that they “lived Islam” next to their mothers, wives, sisters, and slaves in households. This preliminary exploration of women and slaves usually seen as marginal to Islamization is intended to challenge extant perceptions: women and slaves were not only “recipients” of Islam but its agents. In their households, they shaped how Islam was lived by all around them. So instead of looking only at the history of more public Islamic people and places, addressing attention to the household and its changing nature over time may allow us to see a different face of Islam and different process of Islamization.     

Localized Islam(s): interpreting agents,competing narratives,and experiences of faith

This special issue investigates contemporary transformations of Islam in the post-Communist Balkans. We put forward the concept of localized Islam as an analytical lens that aptly captures the input of various interpreting agents, competing narratives, and choices of faith. By adopting an agent-based approach that is sensitive to relevant actors’ choices and the contexts where they operate, we explore how various groups negotiate and ultimately localize the grand Islamic tradition, depending on where they are situated along the hierarchy of power. Specifically, we outline three sets of actors and narratives related to revival of Islamic faith: (1) political elites, mainstream intellectuals, and religious hierarchies often unite in safeguarding a nation-centric understanding of religion, (2) foreign networks and missionaries make use of open channels of communication to propagate their specific interpretations and agendas, and (3) lay believers tend to choose among different offers and rally around the living dimension of religious practice. Contributions in this issue bring ample evidence of multiple actors’ strategies, related perspectives, and contingent choices of being a Muslim. Case studies include political debates on mosque construction in Athens; political narratives that underpin the construction of the museum of the father of Ataturk in Western Macedonia; politicians’ and imams’ competing interpretations of the Syrian war in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Albania; the emergence of practice communities that perform Muslim identity in Bulgaria; the particular codes of sharia dating in post-war Sarajevo; and veneration of saints among Muslim Roma in different urban areas in the Balkans.     

Refugees,Islam, and the State: The Role of Religion in Providing Sanctuary in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Malaysia has a mixed track record in providing Muslims with refuge, yet it increasingly lays claim to being an Islamic country. This article charts a history of the refugee engagement Malaysia has had based mainly on a shared regional and/or shared religious affiliation (Sunni Islam). I argue that the recent Malaysian history of refugee treatment presents a case for Muslim solidarity, but one tempered by a prevalent racism in Malaysia against people from the Indian subcontinent. Nonetheless, Islam provides an alternative history for providing protection to people in need. The UNHCR has pursued this approach in Muslim majority countries that are not signatories to the refugee convention in the hope of carving out a complementary protection space based on Islamic law and practice. This article traces these attempts and situates them within the Malaysian sociopolitical terrain, drawing out the possibilities and limits to such an approach.     

Dynamics of Islam,identity, and institutional rule in Uzbekistan: Constructing a paradigm for conflict resolution

The “re-Islamization” of society in independent Uzbekistan has proven to be a complex process, generating conflict in the social, cultural and political spheres. Since the early 1990s, the regime of Islam Karimov has sought to undermine any manifestation of “unofficial” Islam via imprisonment of the leadership, implementation of repressive statutes governing religious activity, and other coercive means. Yet, since 1999 Uzbekistan has experienced more religious violence directed against government power structures by “extremists” than any other former Soviet republic in Central Asia. Important issues that should direct U.S. policy remain unresolved: How significant is the threat from radical Islam in Uzbekistan, that is, what are the chances of politicized, “fundamentalist” Islam emerging as a mass movement there? Has recent U.S. policy reduced or exacerbated the dynamics of conflict between the regime and the “radicals?” In order to effect resolution of this conflict, a new paradigm must be implemented in U.S.–Uzbek relations which moves the Uzbek regime toward democratization, while maintaining social stability. In addition, politicized Islam, in a non-radicalized form, should also figure into any policy strategy directed at long-term stability in Uzbekistan.