American Muslim intercommunal disunity (fitnah) is exemplified by an emic event when an editorial foray contests the inherited legacies of black Muslim icons like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, which exigently compels "diplomats" of different minds into engaging the digital public square with calculated strokes. The woke era's partisan identity politics asymmetrically curtail acceptable expressions of religious authority on issues of race, religion, and politics. Hence, scholars spend their social capital as political actors in these ultracrepidarian environments to different ends. This multi-year study conducted across global sites analyzes scholars with dissimilar approaches to media and political engagement amidst an environment characterized by weaponized media, polarization, and shifting goal posts. Participant observation and textual analysis impart scenes of scholars with fraught associations to administrations, funding sources, and feuding authoritarian Arab regimes getting embroiled in geopolitical hostilities. With mainstream American Muslim narratives aligned with mainstream media's liberal filter bubbles, scholars impact consensus building with varying levels of success; those negotiating compromise within spheres of legitimate contestation and consensus ad interim maintain subsisting influence. However, those that do not are expurgated and thereby cede influence.
While freedom of religion is constitutionally safeguarded in the United States, practice and expression thereof are modulated by apparatuses exhorting both ethnic and faith communities to flatten into expedient caricatures. The 'moderate Muslim' caricature is contingently acknowledged as a victim of animus thereby expected to unquestioningly advance state objectives. American Muslim scholars consequentially maintain a vigilant wariness of state engagement, sentiments further intensified when Donald Trump came to power. With the Trump regime's perilous track record, Muslims willing to engage the federal government during the initial term were expectedly criticized. Situating the American Muslim communal consultation process (al-shūrā), this article analyzes 100 opinion editorials responding to the Department of State's formation of the Commission on Unalienable Rights in 2019, and its inclusion of a recognizable Muslim scholar as commissioner. For disparate reasons, editorials authored by critical communal voices formulated a perceived consensus against any engagement with the regime whatsoever, suggesting self-censoring expressive parameters and balkanization. Using Daniel Hallin's sphere of deviance, findings indicate that amidst increased expectations for religious leaders to be more accessible and accommodating, communal consultation on political issues broke down in the virtual spaces the scholar's critics inhabited whilst his own public relations messaging operated with discernable ambivalence. Findings further suggest that as American Muslims increasingly identify with the social justice language of the far-left, communal thought leaders' racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds disproportionately factor into how their words and engagements are interpreted and tolerated.
While freedom of religion is constitutionally safeguarded in the United States, practice and expression thereof are modulated by apparatuses exhorting both ethnic and faith communities to flatten into expedient caricatures. The 'moderate Muslim' caricature is contingently acknowledged as a victim of animus thereby expected to unquestioningly advance state objectives. American Muslim scholars consequentially maintain a vigilant wariness of state engagement, sentiments further intensified when Donald Trump came to power. With the Trump regime's perilous track record, Muslims willing to engage the federal government during the initial term were expectedly criticized. Situating the American Muslim communal consultation process (al-shūrā), this article analyzes 100 opinion editorials responding to the Department of State's formation of the Commission on Unalienable Rights in 2019, and its inclusion of a recognizable Muslim scholar as commissioner. For disparate reasons, editorials authored by critical communal voices formulated a perceived consensus against any engagement with the regime whatsoever, suggesting self-censoring expressive parameters and balkanization. Using Daniel Hallin's sphere of deviance, findings indicate that amidst increased expectations for religious leaders to be more accessible and accommodating, communal consultation on political issues broke down in the virtual spaces the scholar's critics inhabited whilst his own public relations messaging operated with discernable ambivalence. Findings further suggest that as American Muslims increasingly identify with the social justice language of the far-left, communal thought leaders' racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds disproportionately factor into how their words and engagements are interpreted and tolerated.
Public expenditure could play an important role in promoting economic growth and poverty reduction. Given the significant role of public spending, this study empirically explores the impacts of public spending on long-run economic growth and poverty reduction in Ethiopia. In particular, the researcher assessed the effects of public spending (disaggregated by function into human capital and agriculture) that can be financed via government saving or foreign saving on economic growth and poverty reduction in the country through its indirect effects on total factor productivity. The researcher employed a dynamic computable general equilibrium model that linked with micro simulation model that is solved recursively for the period 2009-2020. The CGE model used the updated 2009/10 social accounting matrix (SAM) while the MS model employed the 2004/05 household income, consumption and expenditure (HICE) survey to investigate household poverty via the consumption expenditure changes from the CGE model. The results of the study revealed that the government spending either allocated towards human capital or agriculture has improved the macro-economy, welfare and poverty situation of the country regardless of financing options. Given high elasticity of public expenditure on human capital with respect to total factor productivity, public spending targeted towards human capital resulted in high GDP growth and hence significantly reduced the poverty as compared to expenditure targeted agricultural sector. Moreover, the magnitudes of the welfare and poverty improvements is differ among financing options where the improvement of welfare of households and reduction of poverty is large under foreign saving means of financing against government saving financing schemes. Financing additional public expenditure through foreign saving increases the consumption of all households group more than financing through domestic resources (government saving) as households are supposed to save more at the expense of consumption under government saving financing option. In each simulation, the urban households reap more benefit from the improvement of income and consumption than rural households.
This research examines the threat perceptions and different responses of states in dealing with common threats perceptions. Balancing strategies such as armament and alliance with other states are mainly the consequence of threats or perceived threats in states' internal and external environment. States that share structural similarities are expected to behave in similar ways while balancing their threats. However, often at times, differences are noticed in the balancing strategies of similar states. In the Gulf, upheavals such as the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the war that ensued as a consequence, the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, the US invasion of Iraq, and the Arab Uprisings shaped the region's security dynamics. Threatened by these upheavals, the states took different strategies to balance their threat perceptions. To arrive at a plausible explanation, the Most Similar Systems Design was used to determine the similar states to understand and explain the reasons for the difference. Therefore, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain were carefully selected given that they share common threat perceptions; they are monarchical and authoritarian, among other things. The threat perceptions and balancing strategies of the states were examined. The result suggests that differences inherent to the states determine the nature and magnitude of threat perception and explain why states that perceive similar threats reacted differently. ; Bu araştırma, tehdit algılarını ve devletlerin ortak tehdit algılarıyla başa çıkmadaki farklı tepkilerini incelemektedir. Silahlanma ve diğer devletlerle ittifak gibi dengeleme stratejileri, esas olarak devletlerin iç ve dış ortamlarındaki tehditlerin veya algılanan tehditlerin bir sonucudur. Yapısal benzerlikleri paylaşan devletlerin tehditleri dengelerken benzer şekilde davranmaları beklenmektedir. Bununla birlikte, çoğu zaman, benzer durumların dengeleme stratejilerinde farklılıkların ortaya çıkması söz konusu olabilmektedir. Nitekim Körfez'de İran İslam Devrimi, İran-Irak Savaşı, Irak'ın Kuveyt'i işgali, ABD'nin Irak'ı işgali ve Arap Baharı gibi olaylar bölgenin güvenlik dinamiklerini şekillendirmiştir. Bu olaylardan dolayı tehdit altında olan devletler, tehdit algılarını dengelemek için farklı stratejiler kullanmışlardır. Makul bir açıklamaya ulaşmak, farklılığın nedenlerini anlayıp açıklamak ve benzer durumları belirlemek için En Benzer Sistemler Tasarımı (Most Similar Systems Design) kullanılmaktadır. Bu nedenle, monarşi ile yönetilmeleri ve otoriter yapılar olmaları dolayısıyla Suudi Arabistan, BAE ve Bahreyn ortak tehdit algılarını paylaştıkları için dikkatle seçilmiştir. Bu doğrultuda devletlerin tehdit algılamaları ve dengeleme stratejileri incelenmiştir. Sonuç, devletlerin doğasında var olan farklılıkların tehdit algısının doğasını ve büyüklüğünü belirlediğini ve benzer tehditleri algılayan devletlerin neden farklı tepki verdiğini açıkladığını göstermektedir. Bu çalışma teorik olarak, tehditler ve dengeleme stratejileri üzerine daha önceden yapılan çalışmalarda dahil edilmemiş bazı değişkenleri ekleyerek literatüre katkıda bulunmuştur. Yapısal teoriler ve omnibalancing, birim düzeyindeki değişkenlerin devletlerin dengeleme stratejileri üzerindeki etkisini açıklamakta yetersiz kalmaktadır. Bu çalışma, benzer tehditlere verilen yanıtları daha iyi kavramak için devletlere özgü birim düzeyindeki özellikleri eklemiştir. Araştırmanın temel bulgusu, devletlerin benzer tehditleri algılamasına rağmen, demografik yapıları, liderlerin algılanan rolü, finansal kaldıraç gibi kendilerine özgü bazı birim düzeyindeki özelliklerin tehdit algılamasının doğasını ve büyüklüğünü belirlemesidir. Yukarıdaki birim düzeyindeki özellikler, benzer tehditleri algılayan devletlerin neden farklı tepki verdiğini de açıklamaktadır. Bu faktörler, bir devletin belli bir politikayı tercih etmesinin temel nedeninin kendine özgü karakteri olduğunu göstermez. Ancak diğer devletlerden farklı olarak bir devletin neden bu şekilde davrandığını ortaya koymaktadır. Araştırmada ortaya çıkan diğer bir bulgu ise, devletler algıladıkları tehditleri dengelemek için benzer stratejiler izleseler de taahhütlerinin aynı olmadığı yönünde ortaya çıkmıştır. ; Türkiye Bursları
In recent years, Nigeria's image has always been negatively depicted in the global media, as the country's name is associated with some of the world's most sophisticated cybercriminals. The situation with the country's perceived dented reputation, most especially in the Southeast Asia, Western Europe and the United States of America, is ripe for the anti-cybercrime discourse to take root, and subsequently, become a fertile ground for various parties to contribute to the grand discourse from different perspectives. This article highlights the way Nigerian government, through its revenues generating agency, the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS), utilizes a print media warning advertisement (WA) to discursively construct and showcase its efforts in combating cybercrimes. The study utilizes Fairclough's three-layered model for approaching discourse to analyse the FIRS-sponsored WA, which was published in The Guardian newspaper on 2 May 2013. The study incorporates analytical tools from the visual grammar (VG) and the multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) to examine the visual dimensions constituting the frame of the WA. The study revealed how the Nigerian government, through the FIRS sponsored WA, has attempted to discursively draw the attention of the general public to the potential dangers associated with the cybercriminals and their activities as well as suggesting the best ways to escape falling into their traps. The study recommends that governments and other civil societies should explore other means of creating more awareness to the general public, given the speed at which cyber-related crimes upsurge globally at the present time.
