Suchergebnisse

How long have the United States and their Saudi allies been sponsoring and financing the radical Islamists, and why doesn't anyone stop them? Labévière uncovers the money-laundering, the organized crime and the interlocking world of business and politics that fuel the terrorists. The central nerve of Islamism, he states, is not religion - it is money.

This article examines how state-linked religious actors negotiate religious demands in a secular authoritarian state. There is a prevalent assumption that such religious actors lack the agency to affect state decisions. I do not seek to challenge that proposition, rather to qualify it by identifying the scope and extent of their authority. Taking the state as an autonomous actor, I examine fatwas or official religious edicts in Singapore through the lens of 'policy feedback', which analyses how the bureaucratisation of religious institution created new legal and bureaucratic channels that shape state policies. This paper aims to primarily answer the following question: What role do fatwas play in shaping statist interpretation of religion? I answer this by looking at the historical development of religious bureaucracy in Singapore – which includes the fatwa institution – and analysing the role of fatwas in relation to state policies. I argue that the bureaucratisation of religion not only regulates religious demands, but creates a juncture for religious institutions to inform and contest statist version of Islam though policy feedback, a concept that has thus far been only partially applied to economic issues. Policy feedback explains how religious demands are negotiated at the bureaucratic level and is particularly instructive in clarifying the discourse between the state and the fatwa institutions, which underlines that the policies and programmes of the autonomous state can be influenced by the very demands of religious bureaucrats. This paper also introduces Statist Islam as an original concept with which to conceptualise the amalgamation of statist and religious interests, and considers how the informal authority of fatwas continues to function beyond the legal and bureaucratic restrictions set by the state.

El artículo se enfoca en la cuestión étnica en el Medio Oriente ampliado. Busca explicar la multiplicidad de identidades existente hasta nuestros días y el nivel de conflicto étnico, superior al de otras regiones. Tal situación está anclada en el Estado otomano y otros Estados islámicos coetáneos, que no tendieron hacia la uniformidad como los Estados modernos europeos. Hay una explicación histórica: un punto de partida diferente y un desarrollo trunco debido a su debilidad en el moderno sistema mundial. Los Estados del siglo XX agravaron la situación al intentar sin éxito transformarse en entidades políticas monoétnicas. ; The article focuses on the ethnic question in the greater Middle East. It seeks an explanation for the multiplicity of identities subsisting nowadays, and for the level of ethnic conflict, greater than in other regions. Such situation is rooted in the Ottoman state and other Islamic coeval states, which did not tend toward uniformity, as modern European states did. There is a historical explanation for this: their different starting point, and their interrupted development due to their weak position in the modern world system. Twentieth century states aggravated the situation by unsuccessfully trying to transform themselves into monoethnic political bodies. ; 154-171 ; haroldo@servidor.unam.mx ; semestral

"The opening chapters of the volume document relations between the state and prominent Islamic political organizations. A second group of essays brings the level of documentation and analysis one step closer to the grass-roots operation of "reformist" or "resurgent" Islamic movements. The final group shifts the description and analysis to the most basic level - the grass-roots reception of institutional discourse and the target of reformist and resurgent activity. Collectively the essays provide crucial insights into the diversity and complexity of the reception and actualization of Islamic reform. They build a convincing argument for viewing resurgent Islam in Southeast Asia as neither monolithic nor antithetical to the nation-state. The portrait of these movements presented here is sympathetic but critical and does much to advance our understanding of the region and of the role of Islam in shaping its past and future." "Islam in an Era of Nation-States will be of interest to students of Islam, Southeast Asian history, and the anthropology of religion. In examining the politics and meanings of Islamic resurgence, it will also speak to political scientists, religious scholars, and others concerned with culture and politics in the late modern era."--Jacket

Argues that Islam has played a key role in its formation and has been gradually accommodated within the officially secular nationalism of the modern Turkish state founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923 and that the current debate between Islamists and secularists concerns only Islam's importance, not its existence, in shaping national identity.

The collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago engendered both hope and fear about the future of Islam in Uzbekistan (and Central Asia in general). Many Muslims from other countries hoped that, freed from the constraints of the Soviet regime, Uzbeks and other Central Asians would rediscover their religious traditions and rejoin the broader Muslim world.1 Other observers feared that Islam would emerge as a political force and threaten the security of the region.2 As the decade progressed and militant Islamist organizations appeared, fear tended to overshadow hope. The events of autumn 2001 in Afghanistan, when fighters belonging to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) played a prominent role alongside the Taliban, seemed to vindicate the darkest fears,3 and to justify the unremitting campaign that the regime of President Islom Karimov has waged against "religious extremism" since 1998.

How long have the United States and their Saudi allies been sponsoring and financing the radical Islamists, and why doesn't anyone stop them? Labévière uncovers the money-laundering, the organized crime and the interlocking world of business and politics