Sources of Muslim democracy: the supply and demand of religious policies in the Muslim world

This article explores the supply of and demand for religiously infused democratic politics in the Muslim majority world. The first half of the article reexamines the widespread support of Muslim publics for both democracy and shari’a law. Results from 15 years of public opinion polls in the Muslim world highlight a clear pattern of support for pious political candidates, but not clerical control of politics. These results, the article further claims, are consistent with contemporary scholars’ understanding of Muslim democracy. The second half of the article formulates and then tests several hypotheses about the role of states’ religious policies in generating this public demand for Muslim democracy. Using cross-national data on religion-state arrangements and Arab Barometer and World Values Survey data, the article finds support for the hypothesis that religious favouritism increases demand for pious political candidates, but less support for the hypothesis that religious regulation reduces demand for clerical control of politics.     

Armies of God,Armies of Men: A Global Comparison of Secular and Religious Terror Organizations

This article compares the violent activity of secular and religious terror organizations. Utilizing data compiled by the Global Terrorism Database cross-referenced with secondary and primary sources regarding the degree of religious components embedded in organizations’ ideologies, it tests the violent patterns of activity carried out by organizations guided by predominantly secular, secular/religious, and religious ideologies, between the years 1970 and 2012. The findings confirm that a) religious ideology correlates with specific, more deadly, attack tactics and violent patterns; and b) the degree of religious components within terror organizational ideology should be tested along a spectrum: the more religious an organization is, the more attacks it tends to carry out, and the deadlier its attacks become.     

The revitalisation of Buddhist peace activism in post-war Cambodia

This article examines the Buddhist peace movements in Cambodia, which are being revitalised after a long silence since the late 1990s. Specifically, it explains how Cambodian Buddhist monks develop and maintain their normative legitimacy and connection with civilian followers by focusing on their approaches to four types of resources: religious authority, cultural knowledge, social networks, and new communication technology. Through the analysis, the study aims to offer empirical examples of religious leaders’ strategies for promoting peace activism and to demonstrate an ideal type of locally owned peace-building promoted in post-conflict contexts, both of which are rarely available in the existing literature.     

论“和”文化语境下的国际法治建设

国际秩序建立在国际法律制度基础之上,新格局之下的国际政治经济秩序需要相应的良法善治。以西方宗教文化为精神内核的当代国际法,面对人类当下存在的公共问题,已经难以做出有效应对。构建人类命运共同体之理念正是充分吸取了中国传统“和”文化的有益成分,对现存国际法治基础理论给予了补充和创新,对人类未来国际法治建设给予指导,因为“和”文化完全不同于西方“利”文化,更有助于实现不同文化、文明的和解和共荣。     

The U.S. Coptic Diaspora and the Limit of Polarization

ABSTRACT

After briefly presenting the main characteristics of the Coptic diaspora in the United States and of its attempts at gaining political clout since the 1990s, the article examines the impact of the election of President Obama and of the 2011 Egyptian revolution on the rhetoric and strategy of the main Coptic organizations in the United States. I also examine the changing relation between Copts in Egypt and Copts in the United States.     

Contesting and negotiating religion and ethnic identity in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan

Post-Soviet Central Asia has inherited a set of circumstances conducive to the revitalization of religion. The renewal of Muslim awareness and identity in Central Asia may not be surprising, but the growth of Christianity is, especially in its Protestant form within indigenous Muslim communities. This article, based on qualitative field research, reviews one example of this development: the process of conversion to Protestant Christianity among Muslim Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan. A prominent aspect of this social movement has been the ways in which Kyrgyz Christians have entered into a dynamic process of engaging with issues of identity and what it means to be Kyrgyz – a process that has sought to locate their new Christian religious identity within, rather than on the margins of, familial and ethnic identity, and one that challenges the normative understanding of Kyrgyz identity: that to be Kyrgyz is to be Muslim. While providing the context for Kyrgyz conversion, this discussion primarily focuses on the way Kyrgyz Christians utilize a number of different discursive strategies to contest normative Kyrgyz identity constructs and to legitimize a Kyrgyz Christian identity.     

马克思《博士论文》思想内涵探析——对自我意识觉醒与宗教批判的实质评述

《博士论文》作为公认的马克思终生思想的历史开端,是其早期的重要思想理论成果。马克思在进行相关理论研究时,主要是对德谟克里特和伊壁鸠鲁的自然哲学进行一定的对比,从而能够分析出他们之间的差别。伊壁鸠鲁的自然哲学理论更加能够促进自我意识觉醒,同时也能够实现对宗教的批判,在继承德国古典哲学自我意识并赋予了其以现实性的同时,拿起"否定"武器对德意志基督教进行了深刻批判。     

CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES AND THE TREATMENT OF PAKISTAN’S RELIGIOUS MINORITIES

Although Pakistan was created as a homeland for South Asia's Muslims, religious freedom was one of its founding principles. Seventy years later, Pakistan is better known for religious extremism and the persecution of Muslim and non-Muslim religious minorities. Pakistan's blasphemy law is a state-sanctioned tool of religious oppression used to target members of minority faith communities whether Ahmadiya, Christian, Hindu, or Shiite, as well as Sunnis who criticize the law. This paper discusses the blasphemy law and other laws that have led to the state of religious oppression in Pakistan.     

Interpretation and mutability: socio-legal texts of the Quran; three accounts from contemporary Iran

Since the advent of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, radical changes have taken place in the views of many Iranian scholars regarding the nature of religious belief. In particular, the issue of the compatibility or incompatibility of Islam's socio-legal precepts and the challenges of time and space have become a crucial matter for numerous Iranian intellectuals. This paper discusses how three prominent Iranian intellectuals of the post-revolutionary era, namely Mostafa Malekian, Mohsen Kadivar and Hasan Yousefi-Eshkevari, have put forward arguments in favor of the contingent nature of the Quran's socio-legal passages. The paper argues that these scholars challenge the notion of the immutability of the Quran's socio-legal texts, claiming that they could be applied differently depending on the specific time and place. In this sense, the paper establishes the groundwork for showing how these scholars have re-examined traditional understandings of religion in light of the new challenges that are arising in the modern world.