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Dagbon is the territory that is inhabited by the Dagombapeople. The Dagomba are part of the Mole-Dagbani speaking people, having descended from a common ancestor with the Mossi, Mamprusis andNanumba. Dagbon is in the Northern Region of Ghana, lying between latitudes nine and ten and has an area of 9,611 square miles. Dagbon is the largest of the ethnic kingdoms in Northern Ghana. Communal violence erupted in the capital of the Dagomba people on March 25, 2002. This continued for three days, resulting in the death of their king, Ya Na Yakubu Andani on March 27, 2002. The remote cause of this three-day war was a long-standing dispute, relating to the succession to the Dagbon skin. The Dagbon crisis has become a complex web of power play among family members, political manipulation or interference and the politics of justice. But these did not begin in 2002. They have their historical antecedents. Since 1953, nearly all governments have intervened in this dispute in one way or another. But this political involvement has only deepened the rift and accentuated the disagreements. This paper posits that, there can be no political solution to the Dagbon crisis. Since the Dagomba people are predominantly Muslims -and have a huge developmental deficit, this paper advocates a combination of Islamic, traditional and development-based solutions.

After the fall of Suharto regime in May 1998, political change wasnot only marked by the more democratic political atmosphere, butalso by the awakening of radical and conservative Islam groups.These groups have ample rooms to promote their agenda.Although they have different agendas such as the implementationof Islamic law, the establishment of Islamic state and even ofIslamic Caliphate in Indonesia, they are similar in their attempts toreplace Pancasila as the state foundation into Islam. This articleaims to show that these attempts are not enough rooted in thehistory. Historically, the founding fathers clearly stated thatIndonesia is neither an Islamic nor secular state; it is a state foundedon Pancasila. This phrase summarizes the difficult compromisesand agreements among the founding fathers of this Republicconcerning the official national ideology, i.e., between the Islamistand nationalist groups. It brings us to a few months before and afterthe independence day declared on August 17, 1945. There shouldbe no contradiction between Pancasila and Islam. ModerateMuslims in Indonesia already have enough reason to reject the ideaof an Islamic state as well as to accept Pancasila as a political reality,as the common platform for a plural Indonesia.

Der Beitrag untersucht die gegenwärtig beobachtbaren Entwicklungsdynamiken und -schübe des Islams als Teil von weitreichenden Globalisierungsprozessen. Das Ziel ist hierbei, eine aus der jüngeren Globalisierungsdiskussion entwickelte analytische Perspektive auf einige jüngere Entwicklungen im Verhältnis von Islam und Globalisierung zu projizieren und zu sehen, welche soziale Topographie dieser Blick freilegt. Diese Perspektive verortet die aktuell beobachtbaren Globalisierungsprozesse an vielen Punkten und Positionen in einem sozialen Bezugsrahmen, dessen vieldimensionale Architektur sich durch traditionelle Globalisierungskonzepte und die ihnen zugrundeliegenden einwertigen Determinierungslogiken nur unzureichend fassen lässt. Die hier präsentierten empirischen Beispiele legen die Metapher einer vielschichtigen Landschaft aus verschiedensten Relationen mit jeweils spezifischen in sie eingebauten sozialen Asymmetrien nahe. Den Gegenstand der Betrachtung bildet also eine Vielzahl von mehr oder weniger verbundenen sozialen Räumen, die sich unter den aktuell beobachtbaren Prozessen von Globalisierung konstituieren. An diesen Prozessen sind auch Frauen in vieler Hinsicht beteiligt, die sich in unterschiedlichen sozialen Räumen unterschiedliche Möglichkeiten schaffen. (ICH)

Der Aufsatz gliedert sich in drei Abschnitte. Auf der Basis von Überlegungen aus der klassischen Vorurteilsforschung wird in einem ersten Schritt der Versuch unternommen, Kriterien für die Definition von Stereotypen und Vorurteilen herauszuarbeiten, um anschließend zu diskutieren, inwieweit sich diese Kategorien soziologisch als Feindbilder interpretieren lassen. In einem zweiten Schritt werden die Prozesse der Herausbildung positiver und negativer Assoziationen mit Gruppen ausführlich in den Blick genommen, die ihrerseits die Möglichkeitsbedingungen für die Entstehung von interreligiösen Konflikten darstellen. In einem dritten Schritt stehen empirische Ergebnisse im Mittelpunkt. Hier geht es vor allem um die Frage, inwieweit Christen dem Islam eher negative Images zuordnen und dem Christentum demgegenüber eher positive Eigenschaften zuschreiben. Es geht um die Frage, ob die Religionszugehörigkeit der christlichen Mehrheitsbevölkerung in Deutschland zu sozialer Kategorisierung in der Weise führt, dass das Christentum auf- und der Islam abgewertet wird. Gleichzeitig werden die Zuschreibungen der Christen mit denen der Konfessionslosen verglichen, die einen beträchtlichen Teil der Bevölkerung stellen. Zentral ist dabei vor allem die Überlegung, dass die Arten der Kategorisierung durch Christen und Konfessionslose systematische Differenzen aufweisen müssten. (ICB2)

This paper is to figure out R. Ng. Yasadipura I's poe(li)tical imagination of Islam in Babad Tanah Jawi. The 'politics' is defined not merely as instrumental utility, but intertwined with 'poetics', an aesthetic strategy which allegorically unveils an interpretation of the undecidability of Islam as central Islam or peripheral Islam, as Arabia Islam or Javanese Islam. Based on the biographical and structural approaches, this article attempts to analyze textual, ideological, and religious traces of this 18th century Javanese Muslim bhujangga and its relation to the way he describes Islam in Babad Tanah Jawi. Yasadipura I is a political subject, since he describes Islam not merely as a religious consensus, but also dissensus to other identities. This dissensus is partly a logical consequence of—using Jacques Rancière's term—Yasadipura I's 'class migration', ranging from Muslim student (santri) from Kedu, royal advisor (menteri) of Surakarta court, to prolific writer and translator of Hindu-Buddhist kakawin and Islamic Malay suluk.

"Der Islam ist laut dem palästinensischen Grundgesetz die offizielle Religion in den Palästinensischen Gebieten. Er ist integraler Bestandteil des politischen und sozialen Lebens der Palästinenser im Westjordanland und dem Gazastreifen, die zu 98 Prozent Muslime sind. Maßgeblich beeinflusst er auch die beiden großen Bewegungen, Hamas und Fatah, sowie eine Vielzahl kleinerer Parteien und Bewegungen, die oftmals aus dem säkularen Milieu stammen oder marxistische Wurzeln haben." (Autorenreferat)

Religious authority is an extremely wide concept which may become manifest in an infinite variety of ways. It may be embodied in certain notions, in texts, in individual, in groups of persons, and in institutions in the widest sense of the word. For this reason, if a scholar wants to write an article about religious authority, it is essential to make a conceptual breakdown of the idea in order to write meaningfully on the subject. In the present contribution I would like to study the concept of religious authority in Indonesia through the vehicle of the Islamic institution of iftâ', delivering of a fatwa. In its classical form a fatwa consists of two parts: a question addressed to a scholar of Islam about a particular topic which has been addressed to him by one or more believers in order to obtain the scholar's opinion about this topic from the perspective of Islamic law. This part of the fatwa is called istiftâ' , while the person who raises the issue is called the mustaftî. istiftâ ', The second part of the fatwa is the actual answer given by the scholar, called the mufti , " fatwa -giver". The language of the fatwa is very formal and formulaic. In the fatwa, the mufti pronounces about issues which are of topical interest to the believer, by sang mufti referring to the standard manuals of jurisprudence. These topics often deal with ritual issues, but in principle may deal with any conceivable topic, including social and political issues or problems arising from the application and use of modern technology. In the course of time, fatwa's issued by important mufti s have been collected and hese collections can be regarded as manuals of applied legal science. In short, it can be said that fatwa s constitute a meeting, and in many cases a compromise, between the ideals of the Holy Law, as expressed by the 'ulamâ', and the reality of daily life, as experienced by the believers. For a study of the working of religious authority the fatwa is useful, because the fatwa is an important instrument through which the 'ulamâ'

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Constructing Pathways to Contemporary Islam / Nawab, Mohamad -- Section 1. Historical Trends in Contemporary Perspective -- 1. Pathways to Modern Islam / Allawi, Ali -- 2. A Theoretical Pathway to Contemporary Islam / Lumina, Iulia -- Section 2. Contesting the Islamic Intellectual Tradition -- 3. A New Approach to Islamic Intellectual Tradition / Unsal, Ali -- 4. The Best and Most Trying of Times / Hefner, Robert W. -- 5. The Function of Myths in the Justification of Muslim Extremism / Alatas, Syed Farid -- Section 3. Beyond the Arab Revolutions: Political Islam Revised -- 6. Building Trust in the Democratic Process / Saleem, Saleena -- 7. The Failure of Political Islam Revisited / Roy, Olivier -- 8. Regaining the Islamic Centre? / Abdul Hamid, Ahmad Fauzi -- Section 4. Contemporary Spaces of Critical Engagement -- 9. Enhancing Dialogue Between Religious Traditions / Bakar, Osman -- 10. The Ethical in Shari'a Practices / Moosa, Ebrahim -- 11. The New Horizons of Piety / Amer, Sahar -- Notes on the Contributors -- Index