Suchergebnisse

Since 2001 a new urge to moralize the use of violence as an instrument of state policy has appeared in liberal democracies. The American idea of a War against Terror, and the European notion of confronting a global terrorist threat, have together merged with a discourse on humanitarian military action: the political/moral 'responsibility to protect' is no longer to be confined to one's own citizens. Renewed interest among academics in 'just war' theory, the tradition that seeks to humanize war through law, reflects this development. This article questions the assumption that there is an essential difference between war (civilized violence) and terrorism (barbaric violence). It argues that their similarity appears more clearly if we set intentions aside-such as the deliberate or accidental killing of 'innocents'-and focus instead on three main facts: (a) modern war strategies and technologies are uniquely destructive, (b) armed hostilities increasingly occupy a single space of violence in which war and peace are not clearly demarcated, and (c) the law of war does not provide a set of civilizing' rules but a language for legal/moral argument in which the use of punitive violence is itself a central semantic element. Adapted from the source document.

If Islam is to be studied anthropologically, then it must be considered a distinctive historical totality that organizes various aspects of social life, rather than a heterogeneous collection of objects designated as Islam by various people. Ernest Gellner's (1981) attempt at conceptualizing Islam as a totality is shown to rely on non-Islamic conceptions of religion & politics. Gellner's account is also present as a dramatic struggle, with each character, eg, rural tribe or urban merchant, playing its part. This schematic description of social behavior leaves no room for the idiosyncratic gesture. Gellner's dramaturgical presentation of Islam also excludes those who do not appear to act, eg, women & peasants. It is concluded that any conceptualization of the Islamic religion that does not account for historical tradition as an organizing narrative will fail to understand Islam. 42 References. H. von Rautenfeld

The controversy arising as a result of the publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (London: Viking, 1988) is examined in light of a perceived threat to the British ideological structure & a cultural hierarchy organized around a defined British identity. Analysis of documents addressed by prominent British politicians to the Muslim community suggests that British identity is based on a liberal tradition of community & shared ideas. The reaction of the liberal elites to the Rushdie affair is perceived as an extreme emotional reaction caused by the politicization of a religious tradition that has no place in the cultural hegemony that has traditionally defined GB. It is argued that the multiculturalist policy of GB has failed precisely because ethnic groups are attempting to appropriate the institutions & ideology of the liberal tradition itself. L. Baker