Suchergebnisse

5 .It Takes Two (or More) to TangoThe Local Coproduction of the Alexandrian Revolutionary Moment; Youssef El Chazli; 6. Violence, Social Actors, and Subjectivation in the Egyptian Revolution; Farhad Khosrokhavar; Conclusion; Unruly Protest; Charles Kurzman; Index.

A global transformation of modes of religious authority has been taking place at an increasing pace in recent years. The social and political implications of the growing dominance of neo-scripturalist discourses on Islam have been particularly noticeable after 11 September 2001. This evolution of religiosity, which is mediated by mass media and new media technology, creates the conditions of existence of a post-Weberian and post-Durkheimian order. In this new social context, legitimacy (and legitimate violence) can be more easily disconnected from the institutionalized framework of religious and political authority. Both in Muslim countries and in Western democracies, the attempt by Islamic activists to make the Shari'a relevant in contemporary settings creates new opportunities and challenges for legal pluralism. At the same time, the multiplication of Muslim voices claiming to be able to interpret the sacred texts, particularly in virtual communities, creates an increasingly inchoate 'noise' about Islamic orthodoxy. In the context of an exponential increase in the global possibilities for religious identification and expression, the growth of neo-scripturalist interpretations of Islam reflects a quest for parsimony and stability.

AbstractThe EU's external promotion of norms and the idea of normative power Europe itself are increasingly contested, which is especially true in the EU's southern neighbourhood. However, whereas scholars of EU foreign policy acknowledge the contestation of external norms, they find it difficult to understand why other normative frameworks could be equally or more appealing to Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries, as they entail norms that are less prominent in the Western catalogue of liberal values. To facilitate the detection and analysis of a wider set of norms, we situate them along several continua of norm orientations and apply this framework to the EU's southern neighbourhood. EU foreign policy scholars can then examine whether different norms overlap or compete or are complementary or even incompatible, and the extent to which values promoted by European actors are congruent with normative frameworks in the MENA region.