Saints,scholars and the idealized past in Philippine Muslim separatism

Philippine Muslim nationalism appeals to two distinct but related imagined pasts: the traditional territorial past of the precolonial southern Philippines and the newly-emphasized moral past of the Sunna; the sacred traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions in the earliest days of Islam. Problems arise when the imagined moral past, embodied in the present by a sharp increase in the influence of Middle East-educated Islamic clerics and their calls for the purification of local Islamic practice, comes into direct conflict with the authority of the traditional aristocracy and locally-cherished cultural practices. The Muslim separatist movement that began in 1968 had dual goals. It was primarily an ethno-nationalist endeavour that had as its primary goal the creation of a Philippine Muslim nation - a nation-state governed by Philippine Muslims and modelled on the sultanates of the precolonial period. The second goal of the Muslim separatist movement was to reform local religious and cultural practices under the leadership of a new set of religious leaders. To understand the place of atavism and puritanism in the Philippine Muslim separatist movement I review the largely local tradition of saints and the more universal Muslim institution of religious scholars as they have interacted in the contemporary Muslim Philippines. I consider the contradictions between revanchist and reformatist goals of the movement by interpreting the narratives of Sultan Muhammad Adil, a prominent supporter of Muslim separatism in the Philippines.     

20世纪初期爪哇排华运动探析

本文聚焦于20世纪初期的爪哇排华运动,考察了华人资本主义发展与近代印尼民族主义发展之间的关系。指出这次排华骚乱是印尼民族资产阶级对华人资本主义扩张的一种自发反应,近代爪哇华人资本主义的发展以及由此而产生的华人商业文化与伊斯兰宗教文化、华人资本与印尼民族资本之间的文化冲突与商业竞争是导致这次排华骚乱的一个根本原因。笔者认为我们在谴责与抨击印尼民族资产阶级针对华人的狭隘民族主义和野蛮排华暴力的同时,也应该思考这次排华骚乱所带来的历史教训,反省华人资本主义扩张进程中的商业道德,并思考在多元社会里华人资本主义发展所依托的商业文化应如何与其根植的社会环境相适应,以促进多元族群社会经济与社会的和谐发展。     

埃及伊斯兰中间主义思潮的理论与实践

伊斯兰中间主义思潮,是以格尔达维博士为代表的埃及著名的伊斯兰思想家,在新的历史条件下对伊斯兰复兴主义所做的一种全新的理论建构。在理论形态上,它表现为以伊斯兰宪政主义、后伊斯兰主义、新伊斯兰主义为代表的形形色色的伊斯兰社会和政治思潮;在现实生活中,以1996年埃及中间党的成立和2005年议会大选时穆斯林兄弟会提出的"改革倡议"和"选战纲领"发表为标志,反映出它对当前埃及伊斯兰政治的指导和实践。作为当前伊斯兰世界最重要的思潮之一,中间主义不仅是全球化挑战背景下伊斯兰自我调适的扬弃与反映,更是对未来可能出现的某种伊斯兰治理模式的创新与探索。     

Critics Within: Islamic Scholars' Protests Against the Islamic State in Iran

Islamic scholarship, in Iran and elsewhere, has a long tradition of debate and critique. This tradition has come to pose a challenge to the constitutional order of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as a number of seminary-trained scholars have applied their critical methods to basic issues of state legitimacy, in particular the state's right to insist on interpretive closure. The regime has responded with force, convening special clergy courts to silence and imprison scholars, in violation of seminary norms of scholarly debate. These conspicuous acts of discipline seem to have backfired, as each escalating punishment has generated new critics within.     

Islamic Fundamentalism and Women's Economic Role: The Case of Iran

It is commonly believed that Islamic fundamentalism is responsible for the low female employment rate in the Middle East and North Africa. I earlier presented evidence from Indonesia indicating that the deteriorating conditions of women's economic role in the 1990s was related to the economic circumstances of the Asian Crisis, not to the rise of political Islam (Bahranitash, 2002). In fact, in Indonesia, increasing support for the Islamic movement was itself spurred by the Asian Crisis. As a contrasting case, I here examine Iran, a country where political Islam has been in power for over two decades. If commonly held views about the impact of the Islamic religion on female employment were true, one would expect a steady or sharp decline of the female employment rate in postrevolutionary Iran. The empirical data show the reverse. Women's formal employment rates increased in the 1990s and did so much faster than they had during the 1960s and 1970s, when a pro-Western secular regime was in power. This sharp increase in women's employment seriously challenges the view that religion explains women's economic status in Muslim countries. The evidence from Iran indicates that the situation of women's employment there has followed a common pattern of elsewhere in the South—an overall increase in female employment. This fact then suggests that the forces of international political economy, rather than religion, appear to be a determining factor in the state of women's economic role in Iran.     

Manufacturing the Jihad in Europe: The Islamic State’s Strategy

ABSTRACT

As the Islamic State (IS) caliphate in the Middle East has collapsed, it is seeking to extend its influence elsewhere, particularly in Europe where there are existing inter-communal tensions to exploit. IS has deployed the management of savagery doctrine through acts of terrorism as part of its strategy to increase polarisation by exacerbating fear and distrust among communities, encouraging sympathies for far-right actors among non-Muslims and potentially alienating counterterrorism policies by governments, pushing Muslims out of what it terms the ‘grey zone’. The desired outcome is to drain state resources and showcase Europe as hostile to Muslims, promoting the notion of a ‘war on Islam’.     

EXTENDING COMITY TO FOREIGN DECREES IN INTERNATIONAL CUSTODY DISPUTES BETWEEN PARENTS IN THE UNITED STATES AND ISLAMIC NATIONS

International custody disputes involving parents and children from Islamic nations and the United States have yielded a spectrum of interpretation of Islamic Shari'a law and the best interests of the child. The lack of a determinative treaty between the United States and all but one Islamic nation has led to an inconsistency of criterion in determining whether to extend comity to a custody decree from a court of an Islamic nation. The domestic law statutes, which determine jurisdiction in these matters, have provisions for international application and recognition of foreign custody decrees. The recognition of custody decrees from the courts of Islamic nations is contingent upon the satisfying of procedural and substantive thresholds. Focusing on the substantive, the author opines that American courts have a responsibility to understand certain aspects of the law, culture, and religion of Islam in order to accurately determine if the threshold has been meet.     

Iran's Tortuous Path Toward “Islamic Liberalism”

This article provides an overview of the intellectual and sociopolitical roots of Iran's tortuous path toward Islamic liberalism and reform. It analyzes the shift in the ideological orientation of a major faction within the political elite from a radical to a relatively moderate and liberal interpretation of Islam. The authors trace the roots of this ideological shift to a series of political developments since the triumph of the Islamic revolution in 1979, including various failures of the revolutionary regime to fulfill its populist and egalitarian promises; a considerable erosion in the legitimacy of the ruling clerics; the successful (though largely silent) resistance of the youth and women against the culturally restrictive policies of the Islamic Republic; the rise of a distinctly anti-fundamentalist, liberal-reformist interpretation of Islam by a number of Iranian theologians and religious intellectuals; and the precipitous decline in the popularity of revolutionary ideas in the 1990s. In spite of the increasing appeal of liberal-democratic ideas of individual freedom, pluralism, and political tolerance in the new reform movement and the overwhelming endorsement of these ideas in four recent national elections, including two presidential polls, the authors argue that the movement has had but a limited and, for the most part symbolic, influence on Iran's objective, and still repressive, political conditions.     

Conspiracism In and Around Libya

Abstract

The idea that there is one cohesive Islamist movement with a clearly defined plan to conquer power in Libya is a deeply flawed argument. It is one that, among other causes, is at the basis of the current divisions in the country and its civil strife. The Islamist movement in Libya, on the contrary, is a highly heterogeneous reality. Understanding this divisiveness is fundamental to the elaboration of a strategy for reunification and the establishment of law and order. Such a strategy should be based on the principle of incorporating those Islamists who accept the democratic process and isolating the more extremist ones.