Islamic Political Thought

A multifaceted, multidimensional, changing, and inconsistent Islamism is a subject under study in this chapter. It is impossible to comprehend modern Muslim societies without an account of the impact of Islam on all sides of life. It would be a mistake to present Islamism as a node on the body of Muslim societies. In fact, Islamism in many respects reflects the essence of modern Muslim societies, of their mode of thought and life. It helps to maintain social, economic, political sphere at different societal levels as well as create a peculiar Islamic pattern of modernization. That is why Islamism cannot be eliminated at the present stage; it can be only overgrown. And this will take a long time. One should understand clearly that it is impossible to reduce the dangers of radical and terrorist Islamism only by force. It will decrease only after it is separated from moderate Islamism having made the latter a more respectable, open, and involved in normal political life movement. We analyze in this chapter a number of issues. Among them are general characteristics and functions of Islamism; confrontation of Islamism with secular regimes; evolution of Islamism; modern trends and the future of Islamism, etc.

This book explores of how the events of September 11 and the subsequent 'war on terror' have impacted on the lived experiences of British South Asian Muslims in their religious and ethnic identity, citizenship, Islamophobia, gender and education, radicalism, media and political representation. Specialists in sociology, social geography, anthropology, theology and law examine the positions of South Asian Muslims from a variety of analytical perspectives and methodological approaches. The book draws on post-9/11 primary empirical material while other contributions are more discursive, providing valuable polemics on the current positions of British South Asian Muslims.

Quote as:
Salvatore, Armando. 1997. Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity, Reading: Ithaca Press.

This is my first book, based on my PhD thesis that won the MESA Malcolm Kerr Award in the Social Sciences, 1994. The book provides a 'genealogical' background to more recent work of mine, particularly the volume The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility.

Eurocentric approaches to political Islam tend to deploy an internalist methodology that theoretically obscures the generative and constitutive role of international relations. This article addresses this problem through a critical application of Leon Trotsky's idea of ‘uneven and combined development’ to Ayatollah Khomeini's invention of the concept of ‘Islamic government’. It argues that this concept was international in its socio-political stimulus and intellectual content, and, crucially, reflected, influenced, and mobilised an emergent liminal sociality that combined Western and Islamic socio-cultural forms. This heterogeneous character of Iran's experience of modernity is, the article argues, theoretically inaccessible to Eurocentric approaches’ homogeneous and unilinear conceptions of history, which, as a result, generate exceptionalist modes of explanations.

Abū Ḥanīfa has been seriously and repeatedly censured from various angles starting during his lifetime. One can easily come across these criticisms in biographical
literature such as the ṭabaqāt and rijāl works. It may be observed that it is his raʾycentered jurisprudence that is brought to the fore in the criticisms mostly pronounced by Ahl al-ḥadīth. Ḥanafīs have struggled to respond to the attacks on Abū Ḥanīfa through various strategies. One particular strategy was employed by Ibn Abī al-Wafāʾ Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Qurashī (d.775/1373) in the concise biography of Abū Ḥanīfa found in the introductory section of his al-Jawāhir al-Muḍiyya fī Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanafiyya, one of the most voluminous biographical works dedicated to Ḥanafī jurists. In this article, I focus on how al-Qurashī presents Abū Ḥanīfa in his work: I discuss which aspects and qualities of Abu Ḥanīfa he highlights, what his sources for the biography are, and what kind of an Abū Ḥanīfa portrait he eventually depicts for his readers. I try to identify the original aspects of al-Qurashī’s biography by comparing it with how Abū Ḥanīfa is portrayed in earlier biographical entries (especially those found in ṭabaqāt-rijāl works). I conclude that al-Qurashī attempted to construct a biography significantly different from earlier perceptions of Abū Ḥanīfa: instead of presenting him as a great faqīh famous with his legal thinking and argumentation (raʾy), he chose to portray him as a muḥaddith, well-versed in ḥadīth transmission and rijāl criticism (al-jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl). Why al-Qurashī preferred to do this is furthermore discussed in the context of the intellectual and socio cultural milieu of the Mamlūk Egypt. One final goal of the article is to demonstrate through the example of Abū Ḥanīfa how and why the perception and presentation of
influential figures of the Islamic tradition are shaped and reshaped according to the developments, changes, and needs in the historical process.
Keywords: Abū Ḥanīfa, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Qurashī, al-Jawāhir al-Muḍiyya, Ṭabaqāt Literature, Rijāl Literature, Islamic Biographical Literature, Mamlūks, Ḥanafīs, Ahl al-Ḥadīth, Ahl al-Raʾy.

This article examines the heritage destruction undertaken by the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. To date, their iconoclasm has been mostly characterised either as acts of wanton barbarism devoid of religious or political justification, or as a cynical performance designed as a mass media spectacle. Drawing on a systematic analysis of two key IS propaganda outlets – their on-line magazine, Dabiq, and the various slick films released by Al-Hayat – this article argues that the heritage destruction perpetrated by the IS are not only situated within a carefully articulated theological framework and key to the creation of a new and ideologically pure ‘Islamic State’, but that they are also constituted by several complex layers of religious and political iconoclasm. To demonstrate, this article documents the iconoclasm undertaken by the IS along two key axes: Symbolic Sectarianism (Shia and Sufi mosques and shrines); and Pre-Monotheistic Iconoclasm (ancient polytheistic sites). Attacks on key sites within these categories, such as the Sayyida Zaynab shrine in Damascus or the Mosul Museum, not only adhere to their religious and political framework but also serve broader geo-political agendas and are attacked as proxy targets for their physical and ideological opponents.

ABSTRACT
The rulers’ changes in the Islamic states points to a phenomenon in which the important issues of political thought, such as legitimacy, obedience-opposition balance, rebellion to power, the possibility to dethrone the head of the state and its legal position in the sharia, are intertwined. This paper, which aims to analyze the “power changes” witnessed during the period described as “the history of Caliphs” which is from Umayyad period to the end of the Ottoman area, in terms of the reasons reflected in classical history books, will focus on whether this issue, which is framed in texts with political-jurisprudential provisions, is corresponding in concrete cases or not. At the same time, in the article, which includes the criticism of the academic approaches dealing with the political attitudes of Islamic societies within the framework of absolute obedience and despotism, the ways of changing power are examined under three main headings: Hal‘ (Violation of the principle of obeying Shari‘a, health problems and incapability), resignation and revolution (to be evaluated as a baği and political conflicts/riots). The main claim of the article is that the binding principle of Sharia in texts with political-fiqhi provisions is in a central position in the changes of power as reflected in the classical history books and that the concrete reflections of the concepts such as bay’ah, hal‘, fısk and fitnah in historical events cannot be denied. This reveals that, in some cases, the Sharia process of political change has been obeyed, the sharia-political taakkul process, which was initiated by the ulama and the other government, played an important role in this matter.
Keywords: Islamic political thought, obedience, hal‘, resignation, revolution.
Dîvân DİSİPLİNLERARASI ÇALIŞMALAR DERGİSİ Cilt 24 sayı 47 (2019)

A number of studies have examined the role of the economically marginalized classes in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the events which transpired in its immediate aftermath. It has been suggested that the mass mobilization of these classes, often referred to collectively as the mostazafin (downtrodden) in the official literature of the Islamic Republic, was instrumental in the success of the revolution and the subsequent establishment of the Islamic Republic under the leadership of Ruhollah Khomeini. The present paper contrasts Shi'i liberation theology and Shi'i Islamism as two distinct pro-mostazafin discourses that emerged in mid-and late-twentieth century Iran, and which facilitated the participation of the lower-and under-classes in the revolutionary movement. It argues that while it was developed originally by Shi'i liberation theologians, Islamist forces were able to successfully appropriate the pro-mostazafin discourse and gain the support of the economically marginalized classes in the crucial final phase of the revolution, and in doing so create an important social base for their political power.

Neoconservative democratization took on new life after 9/11: the United States should be a global guarantor of liberty, even if coercing this freedom. The justification was a hybrid of liberal democratic peace and realist national security. However, this aggressive democratization is contradictory: the philosophical foundation is insincerely decorated by liberal language that overlooks damaging compromises when ideology is put into practice. Uzbekistan, with whom a close partnership in the war against terror was developed and then was further deepened along supposedly democratic development lines, is used as a critical case study. In short, the contradictions in neoconservative ideology create flaws in policy implementation that do not create smoother paths to development, prevent democratic consolidation and weaken American security interests.

Once an oppositional ideology in the 1990s that united Muslim intellectuals around a radical critique of the state based on the ideals of democracy, civil society and pluralism, how has Turkish Islamism transformed into a state-centric and conservative world-view? This paper aims to document this transformation by scrutinizing the writings of a group of intellectuals in the context of (I) the 28 February 1997, military memorandum and the subsequent events which culminated in the AKP’s first electoral victory in 2002; and (II) the series of trials that started in 2008 known as the Ergenekon trials through which the AKP gained the upper hand in Turkish politics. In so doing, the paper problematizes the prevalent narratives on the relationship between Islam, on the one hand, and democracy and civil society, on the other, that miss how formulations and articulations of Islamism evolve in changing political contexts.

How do we understand links between Sufism and pro-egalitarian revolutionary activism in the early twentieth century; and how did upland compositions of self and community help constitute revolutionary activism in South Asia more broadly? Using Pashto poetry as my archive, I integrate a history of radical egalitarian thought and political practice into a holistic study of self-making, of imperial spatiality, and of shifting gradients of power in the regions between Kabul and Punjab. Amid a chaotic rise of new practices of imperial and monarchic hegemony around the turn of the twentieth century, I argue, older sedimentations of ‘devotee selfhood’ in the high valleys of eastern Afghanistan gave rise, in social spaces preserved by self-reflexive poetic practice and circulation, to conscious desires for avoidance of all forms of hierarchy or sovereignty, in favour of a horizontal politics of reciprocity. Such inchoate drives for freedom later played a role in constituting anti-statist revolutionary subjectivities across great geographical and social distance. From upland Sufi roots, they rippled outwards to intersect with the work of transnational socialist and anti-imperialist militants in Indian nationalist circles too and even influenced scholars at the heart of the nascent Afghan nation state.

Over the past decade, issues concerning Islam and Muslims have featured prominently in public and media discourse. Much of this discourse is stereotypical, anecdotal and often unsubstantiated. Indeed, relative to the extent of comment on Islam and Muslims, few factual data exist on what Muslims really think. This article presents the views and opinions of the Queensland Muslim community based on the findings of a survey conducted at the 2009 Muslim Eid Festival in Brisbane. The findings of this research contradict many of the assumptions made about Australia’s Muslims concerning their views and opinions on a range of social and political issues. The research shows that Muslims highly value Australia’s key social and political institutions, including its democracy, judiciary, education and health-care systems. However, Muslims do express a lack of trust in certain institutions, namely the mass media. Also, consistent with the views of people globally, Muslims are deeply concerned about conflicts in the Middle East as well as the environmental crisis. This article suggests the need for a shift in public discourse to more accurately reflect the commonality, rather than incongruity, between Muslim views, opinions and concerns and those of the wider society.

Öz
Son yüzyılda karma yem endüstrisinin gelişmesiyle birlikte hayvanlardan maksimum verim alma adına farklı yem rasyonları oluşturulmuş ve bu rasyonlara hayvansal kökenli hammaddeler ve yem katkı maddeleri de ilave edilmiştir. Dolayısıyla geçmiş dönemlerde sadece bitkisel kaynaklardan beslenen hayvanlar kendi türevlerini de yemeye başlamışlardır. İşte bu araştırmada eti insanlar tarafından tüketilmesi helâl olan hayvanların bu tür yemlerle beslenmesinin fıkhî hükmü ele alınmıştır. Konu, cellâle, zarar, hayvan fıtratı, habislik ve istihâle açısından değerlendirildikten sonra, fıkhen necis kabul edilen yemler ile sağlık açısından riskli olan yem katkı maddelerinin rasyona katılmasının ve bu tür yemlerle beslenen hayvanların tüketilmesinin mahzurlu olduğu neticesine ulaşılmıştır. Hadislerde celâllenin etinin yasaklanması, hayvansal kökenli yemlerle beslenen hayvanları tüketen insanlarda bir kısım hastalıkların ortaya çıkması, otçul olan hayvanlara bu tür yemlerin verilmesinin onların fıtratına aykırı olması, pis yemlerle beslenen hayvanların bir süre sonra tayyiplik vasıflarını kaybedecek olmaları bu hükmün temel dayanaklarıdır. Her ne kadar necis olan yemler hayvanların karnında istihale geçirseler de bu yemlerde bulunan bir kısım bakteri, virüs ve mantarlar hayvanın vücudunda yaşamaya devam etmekte ve buradan onu tüketen insanlara da geçerek onlarda bir kısım rahatsızlıklara yol açmaktadır.
Abstract
The development of the compound feed industry has produced different feed combinations in order to get the maximum benefit from animals in the last century. The ram materials including animal origins and addictive materials have been added to these combinations. Thus, animals started to eat not only vegetable feeds, but also their derivatives. In this regard, this article examines the jurisprudential situation of these animals that is halal for human and fed by the mentioned compound feeds. The issue has been examined through the perspectives of jallala, damage, animal nature, habith, and istihala. Then, this study found that the fodders considered as unclean by Islamic jurisprudence and addictive materials including health risk are unfavorable. This study also discovered that animals that are fed by these kinds of fodders are unfavorable as well. The main reasons for this ruling on the prohibition of the meat of jallala grounded in the Hadiths. Its reasons are some sicknesses that arise in people who consume the meat of the jallala, feeding herbivorous animals with such foods is incompatible with their natural disposition, and animals are fed by such unclean foods lose their cleanness status over time. These are the foundation of this jurisprudential ruling. Even though the unclean foods may experience istihala in the stomach of the animals, some bacteria, virus, and fungi which are in these foods continue to live in the body of the animal and then transport to the people who consume it and lead to some sicknesses in humans.

In the wake of the Arab Revolutions of 2011, countries in the Middle East are grappling with how Islamists might be included within a regime of democratic political pluralism and how the aspirations for an “Islamic state” could affect the citizenship status of non-Muslims. While Islamic jurisprudence on this issue has traditionally classified non-Muslims in Islamic society as protected peoples or dhimma, endowed with what the authors term “minority citizenship”, this article will examine how the transnational intellectual Wasatiyya or Centrist movement, of which Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is the figurehead, have sought to develop a new fiqh of citizenship in which Muslims and non-Muslims have equal civil and political rights. This article will focus on Yusuf al-Qaradawi on the basis that his very recent shift in 2010 on the issue is yet to be studied in depth, as well as in view of the fact that the dilemma faced by reformist Islamic scholars—how to integrate modern concepts into a legal tradition while simultaneously arguing for that tradition’s continuing relevance and authority—is for him rendered particularly acute, given that this tradition is itself the very source of his own authority and relevance. It will therefore be argued that the legacy of the Islamic legal  tradition structures his discourse in a very specific way, thereby having the potential to render it more persuasive to his audience, and worthy of a more detailed examination.

Debates about preserving, modifying and applying sharia (Islamic normative guidelines) through principles of taqlid (to follow) or ijtihad (to carry out independent interpretation) are immensely useful in thinking through a sharper definition of tradition for political theorists and historians of political thought more generally. Political theorists and historians of political thought have tended to use tradition in a range of ways without specifying key elements of the concept. Building on debates in Islamic thought related to taqlid and its relationship to ijtihad, and through a focus on the ideas of a contemporary thinker, Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, this paper proposes that tradition in political thought can be defined as a framework for knowledge production and consumption constituted of two key elements: method and sensibility. Further, the paper suggests that this definition allows us a better understanding of vibrancy in a tradition:
vehement debate, contradictions and internal contestation are not signs of decay but of vitality within a tradition. It is the severe delinking of the two elements of a tradition, method and sensibility, which has greater potential to reduce its vibrancy.

Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an immense body of morality literature emerged in the Ottoman Empire as part of a widespread turn to piety. This article draws upon the anthropology of Islamic revival and secularism to reassess this literature’s importance and propose a new view of the history of political thought in the empire. It does so through a close analysis of a fundamental concept of Ottoman political life: “naṣīḥat, ” or “advice.” Historians have used “advice books” to counter the presumption that the Ottoman Empire declined after the sixteenth century, but in doing so they have overlooked the concept’s broader meaning as “morally corrective criticism.” I analyze two competing visions of naṣīḥat at the turn of the eighteenth century to reveal how the concept was deployed to politically transform the empire by reforming its subjects’ morality. One was a campaign by the chief jurist Feyżullah Efendi to educate every Muslim in the basic tenets of Islam. The other was a wildly popular “advice book” written by the poet Nābī to his son that both explicates a new moral code and declares the empire’s government and institutions illegitimate. Both transformed politics by requiring that all subjects be responsible moral, and therefore political, actors. The pietistic turn, I argue, turned domestic spaces into political battlegrounds and ultimately created new, individualistic political subjectivities. This, though, requires challenging functionalist conceptions of the relationship between religion and politics and the secularist inclination among historians to relegate morality to the private sphere.

Ibāḍism is the only surviving sect of Khārijism, and thus represents the third main branch of Islam, after Sunnism and Shīʻism. Ibāḍīs, who number less than 1% of the world’s Muslims, are found mainly in the Sultanate of Oman, in the Mzāb and Wārgla (Ouargla) regions of southeastern Algeria, in the Nafūsa mountain region of northwestern Libya, and on the island of Jirba (Djerba), Tunisia. The traditional narrative of Ibāḍism’s origins dates it to ‘Abd Allāh ibn Ibāḍ’s split from the radical Khārijism of Nāfiʻ ibn al-Azraq in 64/684 CE. Ibāḍīs say that Jābir ibn Zayd (d. 93/711 CE) organized the sect in Baṣra, but recent scholarship questions much of this traditional narrative. This article discusses recent scholarship on Ibāḍism’s historical development, summarizes its distinctive teachings in theology and jurisprudence, and offers a brief analysis of the relationship of Ibāḍism to the Bū Saʻīdī sultanate of Oman and Zanzibar.

This article has two goals: first, it seeks to outline the dissonance between nationalist self-determination and a decolonial pursuit of independence using Fanon’s blueprint for decolonisation. Second, it interrogates the decolonial potential in Fanon’s blueprint, and asks whether anti-colonial groups can ever truly escape the inheritance of a Eurocentric nation-state despite their decolonial intent. To explore these themes, the article focuses on Hasan Al-Banna’s ideology and vision for the Muslim Brotherhood in the first half of the twentieth century. In its search for independence from the British, his movement rebuffed liberal models of national self-determination and pursued an alternative political imagining that was delinked from the coloniality of the nation-state. Drawing upon Banna’s memoirs, speeches and political tracts and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, this paper explores the parallels between Banna’s vision of independence and Fanon’s decolonial call for international solidarities and national consciousness as alternatives to nationalism. The paper goes on to argue that, ultimately, anti-colonial groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood have struggled to escape the colonial tethering of independence to the nation-state and its various trappings of coloniality.

South Asia (Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan) has produced some of the greatest Islamic thinkers, such as Shah Wali Allah (sometimes also spelled Waliullah; 1702–1763) who is considered one of the originators of pan-Islamism, Rahmatullah Kairanwi (1818–1892), Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), Syed Abul A’la Mawdudi (also spelled Maududi; 1903–1979), and Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi (1914–1999), who have all played a pivotal role in shaping political Islam and have all had global impact. Islamism is intertwined with Muslim antisemitism. Some of the greatest Islamist movements have their bases in South Asia, such as Tablīghi Jamā’at—the largest Sunni Muslim revivalist (daw’a) movement in the world—and Jamā’at-i-Islāmi—a prototype of political Islam in South Asia. The region is home to some of the most important institutions of Islamic theological studies: Darul Ulūm Deoband, the alleged source of ideological inspiration to the Taliban, and Nadwātu’l-’Ulamā and Firangi Mahal, whose curricula are followed by seminaries across the world attended by South Asian Muslims in their diaspora. Some of the most popular Muslim televangelists have come from South Asia, such as Israr Ahmed (1932–2010) and Zakir Naik (b. 1965). This paper gives an introductory overview of antisemitism in the Muslim intellectual discourse in South Asia.

Although the nexus between religion, faith-based organizations, and community development is well established in the literature, the potential for change driven by indigenous and grassroots social structures such as Islamic schools (madrassas) is still largely ignored in practice. Against the backdrop of overall educational and political economic reforms affecting Pakistan, this paper examines the community development function and other extra-religious roles of the madrassa in development work following a disaster from an interpretivist approach. Mixed qualitative research methods based on institutional ethnographic interviews and participant observations were used with two selected madrassas and their immediate communities in Islamabad, Pakistan. Findings suggest the madrassa’s development roles in disadvantaged communities and in performing an intermediary role between the state, development organizations, and religious communities.

This essay explores the issues of multiculturalism, Islamism and the experiences of Muslim minorities in Western Europe and in Britain in the light of the events of 9/11 and 7 July London bombings. First, the experience of immigrants and minorities and the key historical and cultural debates in which the idea of Europe has emerged is contextualised. Second, the debate in relation to how multiculturalism in Western Europe is conceived and problematised is focused upon. Third, a detailed discussion of the British experience of multiculturalism is elaborated upon, exploring the various shifts in discourse and policy-maker thinking. Finally, suggestions for moving ahead are discussed, and how it might provide impetus to academic, governmental, civil society and practitioner action. In conclusion, it is argued that the challenges that Muslim minority youth face in Western Europe are many but not insurmountable if one takes into consideration the needs and aspirations of a society that is inclusive and forward looking but also aware of the historical and contemporaneous factors involved in the alienation and the marginalisation of variously incorporated Muslim minorities.

Numerous empirical studies of the relationship between popular support for Islamism and support for democracy and violence have yielded inconclusive results. We suspect that this is largely because scholars have not operationalized support for shari ̀a in ways that capture the concept's multi-dimensionality. In this paper, we employ data derived from a carefully designed survey instrument that casts unique insights into how Pakistanis imagine a shari ̀a-based government. We find that formalizing an Islamic government as one that implements shari ̀a by providing services and security for its citizens is positively associated with support for democratic values, whereas conceptualizing it as one that implements shari ̀a by imposing hudud punishments and restricting women's public roles is positively associated with support for militancy. These results suggest that it is important to understand how individuals within a particular context construe a shari ̀a-based government, and future empirical work should take this. S cholars and policy analysts have sought to understand the relationship between popular support for Islamism, and political preferences such as support for democratic politics and Islamist militancy. Empirical studies testing these relationships have been inconclusive, either showing no significant relationship or presenting contradictory findings In this paper, we argue that these discordant empirical findings derive from vexatious challenges in measuring support for shari ̀a in quantitative models. Scholars, usually forced to rely on existing data sets, tend to measure support for Islamism, defined as an ideology that locates political legitimacy in the application of the shari ̀a, rather than specifying the meaning of this support because existing surveys tend not to ask respondents what shari ̀a means to them. 1 Consequently, extant scholarship generally has not fully characterized respondents' interpretation of shari ̀a because analysts use variables that either reflect abstract patterns of support for a combination of religion and politics or, alternatively, support for very specific aspects of shari ̀a. We argue that these partial operationalizations limit accurate measurement of important variation in respondents' interpretations of shari ̀a, which in turn affects scholar's ability to accurately posit a relationship between support for certain interpretations of shari ̀a, and support for democracy and Islamist violence. In this paper, we attempt to make modest but important improvements in this scholarship by leveraging unique survey data that permit us to more robustly characterize the relationship between support for Islamism, and support for democracy and Islamist violence. We begin from the observation that a more accurate exposition of these relationships depends on an appreciation of the multi-faceted nature of shari ̀a and concomitant operationalization of the concept.

This article identifies three sites of Islamic politics in South Africa for closer and critical analysis and appraisal. It proposes that Islamic politics inscribed an idealistic vision for the future. It promoted a utopian vision that was by definition unattainable. Secondly, the paper argues that Islamic politics was preoccupied with representation, a relentless and somewhat impossible task of representing Islam and Muslims in the public. Utopia and perfect representation, then, were the chimeral quests of Islamic politics.

This article develops the conceptual framework of the ritualization of heritage destruction to analyse and interpret the targeting of pre-monotheistic heritage sites and artefacts by the Islamic State. It draws upon anthropological studies of initiation rituals in violent male cults alongside literature on heritage destruction to conduct a systematic analysis of key Islamic State propaganda outlets. The analysis reveals that the heritage destruction wrought by the Islamic State functions as part of a broader process of ritualization that is instrumental in forming bonds between members and ensuring their allegiance. Such rituals serve multiple purposes: they physically and ideologically separate new recruits from existing social norms and laws; they breed a deference to leadership and create a unified identity towards the potentiality of violence; and they situate heritage destruction itself within a complex symbolic kaleidoscope of prescribed actions and specific attire, invoking connections to an imagined past and repeating the actions of their forbearers. The article concludes by noting that such analysis of the ritualization of heritage destruction is not only vital to understanding how groups such as the Islamic State successfully transform ordinary young men into a violent jihadist communitas, but also in further understanding, and responding to, such attacks on heritage sites.

With the future of the Middle East uncertain and unstable, claims to holding the authentic Islamic understanding of the role of religion in politics remain competed over in a political struggle for support, with sides believing that whoever can articulate the authenticity of their vision of government would become more able to influence public opinion. While one train of thought posits Islamic governance as an authentic and correct form of polity for the region which would bring about accountable, elected government, the other claims that Islam is fundamentally silent on the issue of the “state,” and that notions of an “Islamic state” or caliphate are in fact dictatorial and antithetical to orthodox Islam, though Islamic values can inform the individual in their role as a citizen within a democratic state. This article will briefly examine the genealogy of these two competing claims from a Sunni Muslim perspective after examining the dominant approaches to analysing political Islamic groups, while also questioning whether it is fundamentally necessary to insert democratic ideals into such a discussion.

Özet İslam siyasi tarihinde Sasani yönetim geleneğinin etkisiyle "din" ve "devlet" ikiz kardeş olarak görülmüştür. Bu perspektifte, dinin "temel", devletin ise bu temeli koruyan "bekçi" olarak sunulması, İslam siyasi düşünceler tarihinde "din ü devlet" anlayışının ortaya çıkmasına neden olmuştur. Başka bir deyişle, birlik, bütünlük ve nizamın korunması adına devlet, din üzerinde baskın olmuştur. Hz. Muhammed ve dört halife döneminde din ve devlet ayrımı ortaya çıkmamışken, Emevi saltanatı ile birlikte, ilmi temsil eden "ulema" ile iktidarı temsil eden "umera" arasındaki ilişki ve mücadele önem kazanmıştır. Ulema-umera ilişkisi bağlamında Ebu Hanife'nin Emevi ve Abbasi zulüm yönetimlerine karşı hakkı ve adaleti temsil eden duruş ve direnişi dikkate değerdir. Bu çalışmada, İslam siyasi düşünceler tarihindeki bilgi-iktidar ilişkisi, Ebu Hanife'nin duruşu ve siyasal fıkhı ekseninde incelenerek, İslam siyasi tarihindeki ulema-umera ilişkisi sorunsalının almış olduğu biçim ortaya konacak ve İslam dünyasının Sokrates'i olarak nitelenen Ebu Hanife'nin siyasal fıkhından nasıl istifade edilebileceği tartışılacaktır. Abstract In Islamic political history, under the influence of Sassanid tradition, "religion" and "state" were seen as twin brothers. In this perspective, the presentation of religion as "base" and the state as the "guard" who protects this basis have led to the emergence of the concept of "religion-state" in the history of Islamic political thought. While there was no distinction between religion and the state during Hz. Muhammad and the four caliphs, with Umayyad dynasty the relationship between the ulama, which represented knowledge, and the umera which represents power, became more important. On the context of the ulama-umera relationship and struggle, Abu Hanifah's stance and resistance, representing justice and rightiousness against the Umayyad and Abbasid despotism, is remarkable. In this study, the knowledge-power relationship in the history of Islamic political thought will be examined in the context of Abu Hanifah's position and political jurisprudence, and the form of the problem of the ulema-umera relation in Islamic political history will be put forward

"The violent clashes between young Muslim men and police that occurred in and around Sydney’s central business district on the evening of Saturday, September 15, 2012 have acted as a catalyst for an increasingly visible political struggle among different sections of the Australian Muslim population in the post-9/11 decade. The protests, ostensibly about the film Innocence of Muslims, have brought the contested nature of Islam and being Muslim in Australia firmly into the sphere of public political debate as Muslims aligned both against and with the protestors. This article aims to explore the extraordinarily open exchanges and
contestation primarily between Muslims born and raised in Australia in the immediate aftermath of the protests and the mechanisms utilized to contest power, authority and legitimacy. In doing so, it reveals important insights into the debates defining Muslim political identity and considers the broader implications for Australian Islam and multiculturalism.

Keywords: Sydney protests; Islam; Muslims; multiculturalism; political Islam; critical discourse analysis; freedom of speech""

In this study, Ibn Khaldun‘s work al-Muqaddima is investigated in the context of basic Ancient texts which are relevant to the political philosophy. Firstly, whether Aristotle‘s book Politics is known in medieval Islamic philosophy or not and it has been translated into Arabic or not and how much Ibn Khaldun is aware of this text are discussed. Secondly, we focus on the basis of views of Plato and Aristotle which are related to policy. Thirdly, the basic contexts of political considerations in al-Muqaddima and the relation between al-Muqaddima and two Ancient philosophers‘ opinions are mentioned. Fourthly, we focus on modern findings about the originality and innovation in al-Muqaddima‘s political thoughts. The study claims that Ibn
Khaldun‘s method for investigation in al-Muqaddima is close to Aristotle‘s and he innovatively made the history as a basic concept, being not unaware of Aristotle‘s views.
Key Words: Ibn Khaldun, al-Mukaddima, Political Philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, Politics, Republic.

This book investigates the relation between Islam and politics in Indonesia throughout the 20th century. Through accurate archival research, the author follows the career and ideology of Kartosuwiryo, the religious nationalist leader of the Sarekat Islam party and later Imam of the Islamic state of Indonesia. Focussing on the dialectic between the religious and secular anti-colonial and nationalist movements, this effort is pursued to understand the failure of political Islam in the mid-1950s and the consolidation of the Pancasila state under Sukarno’s and Suharto’s regimes.
Tracing a trajectory of political activism consistently dedicated to the formation of an Indonesian state independent of foreign intrusions, the chapters delineate the gradual radicalization of the Islamic party and Kartosuwiryo’s own ideals from the 1920s until the 1950s. For decades scholars of Indonesia have rejected the religious claims of this movement, interpreting the antagonism between the Islamic state and Soekarno’s republic as a fight for power, self-assertion, or land rights, whilst recently Kartosuwiryo and the DI have become heroic symbols of the local Islamist struggle. The author looks beyond this dichotomy unveiling a ‘third’ dimension of this character, a politician whose legacy has shaped the role of Islam in Indonesian politics.
A testament to the relevance of historical enquiry in the understanding of contemporary politics, Islam and the making of the nation guides the reader through the contingencies of the past which have led to the transformation of a nationalist leader into a ‘separatist rebel’ and a ‘martyr’, at the same time shaping Indonesia’s public perceptions of political Islam and strengthening the position of the Pancasila.

This paper is a case study of the ethno-cultural identity politics that young Muslim men since the events of 9/11 and 7/7 are found to be engaging with, using a life history methodology and the experiences of Moazzam Begg as a lens through which to view a wider phenomenon. It is argued that the issues, debates and policy concerns impacting on the question of Islamic political radicalism in Britain, namely inequality, integration, multiculturalism, foreign policy, the influence of Islamism and the ways in which the historical, cultural, economic and political societal context that young Muslims find themselves in today, all affect the experience of conflicting multicultural identity politics and Islamic revivalism, with one informing the other. First, the methodology is outlined. Second, the analysis explores the life history of Moazzam Begg, identifying the macro-meso-micro tensions between individual Muslim identity development in the context of global tensions and conflicts relating to the Islamic world. In conclusion, it is argued that the layers of radicalization are local, national and international in character, and this paper is an attempt to determine the nature and orientation of how these factors are at play. Furthermore, a clarion call is made to British academics, activists and policymakers to ask discerning questions and determine nuanced solutions to quite complex problems.

This article investigates the place of Jerusalem in the interwar Pan-Islamic movement through a discussion of the history of how the city came to host the World Islamic Congress of 1931. Arguing against the conventional view that the congress was an unproductive diversion for the Palestinian national movement, it considers how the congress both promoted the Palestinian cause to the wider Muslim world and how it represented Jerusalem’s successful integration into interwar Islamic political networks. The imperial context is also considered at length, not only in terms of the imperial power’s treatment of Pan-Islamism but also in terms of how imperial connections helped the conference’s co-organizers Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the mufti of Jerusalem, and Shawkat ‘Ali, a leading Indian Pan-Islamist connect across national borders.

In spite of opposition term is today generally used in a political sense the term also can be use in a wider meaning that all kind of objection and criticism against the person who has power in any field. Opposition in question can be factional and written as well as verbal. Furthermore, purpose of the opposition might also be different. Sometimes it can done to stimulate, shake or take over authority and sometimes it can done to consolidate it –even if not intended. Ibn Sīnā who is one of the greatest authorities of Islamic Philosophy also faced different oppositions. Even though the well known criticizes came from al-Ghazzālī here dealt with a lesser-known one. I have dealt with al-Shahrastānī who wrote a separate critic book to Ibn Sīnā and characteristics of his critics. Based on this book called as Kitāb al-Musāra‘a al-Felāsife, I tried evaluate the nature, real reason and purpose of his opposition to Ibn Sīnā. In accordance with this purpose I have tried to examine this book by comparing with al-Ghazzālī’s Tahāfut al-Falāsife. By doing so, I aimed to get a general view of the course of this opposite line for Ibn Sīnā and his philosophy after al-Ghazzālī. As I have examined in detail al-Shahrastānī’s criticisms where in the mentioned book, I did not mention this aspect of the subject.

This book challenges top-down analytical frameworks that view Islam in the Balkans as a repository of ethno-national identities and/or a potential ‘depot’ of conflict between and among nations. Conceptually, it outlines a new framework whereas believers are endowed with the capacity to choose and resist the broad classificatory systems; but also envisage their own individual spaces amidst various offers that have permitted the competitive market of religion after the fall of communism. Empirically, chapters in this volume, written by researchers with extensive and hands-on experience in the field, provide cross-country evidence on the reconfiguration of state-organized religious fields and the emergence of new actors and forms of religiosity along the way. Combining a fresh analytical perspective with rich empirical analysis the book pushes our understanding of Islam in new directions particularly with regard to the relation between state and religion; role of foreign influences; the diversity of actors who speak for Islam; processes of individualization of faith; and evolution and traits of Islam in the European context.

The First of the Modern Ottomans blends biography with intellectual history. On the one hand, it is the story of an Ottoman life – the life of the scribe, ambassador, and prolific historian Ahmed Vâsıf (ca. 1735-1806), a man who improbably rose from obscurity in Baghdad to travel the empire, fight its wars, advise its sultans, and, in time, write its history. As a full-scale biography, the book is a rarity for the field of Ottoman history and reconstructs Vâsıf’s life, career, and opinions through meticulous research in both Ottoman and European sources. On the other hand, The First of the Modern Ottomans is also one of the first detailed intellectual studies of the early modern Ottoman Empire. Weaving together Vâsıf’s life and thought with the larger intellectual currents of the day – especially at the court of Sultan Selim III in Istanbul – it explores central debates among the Ottoman ruling elite over Europe, political reform, war and peace, justice, and the empire’s renewal. Vâsıf’s life reveals a vital response to the empire’s challenges at the turn of the nineteenth century – one that was novel and deeply enmeshed in Islamic philosophy, ethics, and statecraft.

i About RSIS The S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) was established in January 2007 as an autonomous School within the Nanyang Technological University. Known earlier as the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies when it was established in July 1996, RSIS' mission is to be a leading research and graduate teaching institution in strategic and international affairs in the Asia Pacific. To accomplish this mission, it will:

In the mid-90s, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and the Iranian Ayatollah Khamene’i both banned bloody forms of self-flagellation such as tatbir (cutting the forehead with a sword), calling them backward and un-Islamic. They argued that Shi‘a Muslims ought to imitate Husayn by actively fighting against oppressors rather than passively mourning Husayn’s martyrdom. This prohibition has not been unanimously applied in all Muslim
countries, including Syria, where such practices persisted until the Arab Spring (when virtually all Shi‘a Muslims left the shrine-town where these practices were performed). By closely reading the linguistic, conceptual, and juridical discourses that circulated in Syria in order to justify this position, the paper shows that the performers of tatbir conceived of these rituals in revolutionary, rather than reactionary, terms. By examining the performance and reception of flagellation processions in terms of differing modalities of affect, the paper opens up spaces for rethinking ‘revolution’ and ‘redemption’ in contemporary Twelver Shi‘ism.