Search results

European Report on Development ; The empirical literature has established a strong link between the fact of being a Muslim-dominated country and indicators of political performance and democracy. This suggests the possible existence of a relation between religion, Islam in this instance, and societal characteristics. Bernard Lewis and others have actually argued the case for such a relation, pointing to aspects of the Islamic religion and culture that make the advent of democracy especially difficult. These arguments fall into the general idea of the "Clash of civilisations" put forward by Samuel Huntington. In this paper, we discuss this sort of argument and show that there is a systematic misconception about the true nature of the relationship between Islam and politics: far from being merged into the religious realm, politics tends to dominate religion. Because of the particular characteristics of Is-lam, namely, the lack of a centralised religious authority structure and the great variability of interpretations of the Islamic law, there is a risk of an "obscurantist deadlock" in the form of a vicious process whereby both the ruler and his political opponents try to outbid each other by using the religious idiom. This risk looms particularly large in crisis situations accentuated by international factors.

Africa's religious canvas : an overview -- History and spread of Islam in Africa -- Political Islam and African politics -- Islam and comparative culture

After violent protests all over the country had forced President Suharto to step down in 1998, Indonesia successfully made the transition from an authoritarian state to a democracy. In this book Indonesian scholars attached to Islamic universities and Dutch researchers investigate what happened since and what the consequences are of the growing influence of orthodoxy and radicalism, which already visible before 1998, only got stronger.This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.

Islam plays a pivotal political role in Southeast Asian countries, where the governments that have ruled since independence have been concerned with influencing the trajectory, content, hermeneutic and style of the legal traditions of their Muslim citizens and reconciling them with the states' wider policy objectives. This contribution looks at one particular tool for this form of 'guiding' Islam – the codification of Islam – comparing the codes in two Muslim-majority countries (Malaysia and Brunei) and two Muslim-minority countries (Singapore and the Philippines). Utilising comparative law methodologies, this article explores the structure, style and content of the codes in order to explicate their explicit and implied function. These codes are less concerned with being a statement of substantive Islamic law than with setting up a state-sanctioned bureaucracy for the administration of law for Muslims. These bureaucratic institutions were the key instruments for the states to develop their own brand of Islam. In doing so, the state's approach towards socially engineering Islam oscillates among appropriation, accommodation, control and subjugation of Islam in different political and legal frameworks.

1. Introduction / Azyumardi Azra and Wayne Hudson -- 2. Political modernity and Indonesian Islam : a manifesto / Azyumardi Azra and Wayne Hudson -- 3. Islamic perspectives and the rules of law and constitutionalism / N.A. Fadhil Lubis -- 4. Constitutional values and an Islamic state / Adnan Buyung Nasution -- 5. The ambiguities of the rule of law / Brian Galligan -- 6. Western and Islamic conceptions of the rule of law / Spencer Zifcak -- 7. Democracy and Islam / Bahtiar Effendy -- 8. Islam and democratisation in Indonesia / Ahmad Syafii Maarif -- 9. Islam and the claims of democracy / Graham Maddox -- 10. Democratic leadership / Haig Patapan -- 11. Islamic perspectives on citizenship and statehood / N.A. Fadhil Lubis -- 12. Towards a conceptual framework for citizenship / Geoffrey Stokes -- 13. Liberal and communitarian approaches to citizenship / Janna Thompson -- 14. Problems with citizenship / Barry Hindess -- 15. Religious pluralism in Indonesia / Azyumardi Azra -- 16. Pluralism and liberalism / John Kane -- 17. Pluralism and universalism / George Crowder -- 18. Human rights and duties in Islam / N.A. Fadhil Lubis -- 19. Human rights and pluralism / Joseph Camilleri -- 20. Civil society and tolerance in Indonesia / Saiful Mujani -- 21. Civil society and the media in Indonesia / Philip Kitley -- 22. Indonesian Islam and democracy : ways ahead / Wayne Hudson and Azyumardi Azra.