Appropriating and contesting ‘traditional Islam’: Central Asian students at the Russian Islamic University in Tatarstan

ABSTRACT

Based on an ethnographic case study of an Islamic university in Russia, I examine how the state-implemented and bureaucratized traditionalization of Islam in Russia affects the everyday life of Central Asian students and how this project ‘from above’ is entangled with their coping strategies. I show how religious education has become a resource for the state as well as for young students and their parents. The Russian state uses these official religious institutions to control the Muslim population by creating and promoting a state-approved version of ‘traditional Islam’ and producing official religious specialists. For the young Muslim students, however, Islamic education provides, in addition to religious knowledge, access to networks, social security and new economic opportunities. It thereby offers a way to cope with the uncertainty caused by high unemployment rates and other socio-economic difficulties among young people.     

Jürgen Althaus/Hans Peter Ries/Karl-Heinz Schnieder/Ralf Großbölting: Praxishandbuch Tierarztrecht

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Terminating the oldest living regulator: the death of the interstate commerce commission

This paper examines the termination of the oldest federal regulatory agency, in light of existing policy termination theories. The need for the ICC was severely reduced by major deregulation of railroads and trucking in 1980, changes from which also reduced the ICC's ability to maintain external interest group support. Still, although its budget and staff were cut, the ICC survived intact for 15 more years, until budgetary politics found it to be a useful symbolic target for termination. We also argue that this case shows the utility of putting termination theory into the larger framework of policy change, a literature that itself has largely ignored the critical element of policy and organizational termination.

”Once you establish a commission … you have the devil's own time passing an act abolishing it.”⁽¹⁾.     

Book reviews

John R. Davis, Britain and the German Zollverein, 1848–66 (London: Macmillan, 1997). x + 238 pp. £45. ISBN 0–333–67828–1.

Martin Thomas, Britain, France and Appeasement: Anglo‐French Relations in the Popular Front Era (Oxford and New York: Berg. 1996). xi + 268 pp. £29.95 hb; £12.95 pb. ISBN 1–85973–192–9.

Peter Lowe, Containing the Cold War in East Asia: British Policies Towards Japan, China and Korea, 1948–53 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997). xii + 288 pp. £40. ISBN 0–7190–2508–7.

David M. Barrett, Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and His Vietnam Advisers (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1994). xii + 279 pp. £11.95 pb. ISBN 0–7006–0631–9.

Rhodri Jeffreys‐Jones, Changing Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917–1994 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997). x + 275 pp. £14.50 pb. ISBN 0–8135–2449–0.

Philip M. Taylor, Global Communications, International Affairs and the Media Since 1945 (London &; New York: Routledge, 1997). xx + 248 pp. £45 hb. ISBN 0–415–11678–3; £15.99 pb. ISBN 0–415–11679–1     

“Our Respective Empires Should Stand Together”: The Royal Dimension in Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1919–1941

In the inter-war period court diplomacy played an important role in Anglo-Japanese relations. Both governments saw the exchange of high-level royal visits and the conferment of decorations, such as the bestowal of the Order of the Garter to Emperor Hirohito in 1929, as a useful means of indicating respect and the desire for continued co-operation. Even as late as 1937 Prince Chichibu’s attendance at King George VI’s coronation was intended to lead to closer ties. This article demonstrates that the neglected field of court diplomacy and diplomatic protocol can provide a useful parallel commentary on more overtly political events.