Suchergebnisse

A legal maxim in Islamic law states that "The right to inviolability ('isma) is due for humanity (adamiyya)". The right to inviolability includes inviolability ofthe right to (1) life, (2) property, (3) religion, (4) mind (expression), (5) family andprogeny, as well as (6) honor and dignity. Universalist Muslim jurists share thisview from different schools of Islamic law. In particular, all jurists from the H.anaf¯ischool subscribe to this view. From this perspective being human is sufficient tohave human rights regardless of innate, inherited and gained attributes such as sex,religion, race and nationality. This article explores the thought of Muslim juristswho took humanity as the sufficient ground for human rights and the arguments theyused to justify it by deriving from classical Islamic law books. It will also provide ahistorical survey about how this view was implemented in Islamic history from Indiato the Balkans under Islamic law. Following it will discuss the reforms in Islamic lawduring the late Ottoman period (1839–1918). It will conclude by proposing how thepresent Muslim legal and political discourse can be re-connected to this universalisthuman rights tradition to overcome the challenges for human rights in the Muslimworld today.

A legal maxim in Islamic law states that "The right to inviolability ('isma) is due for humanity (adamiyya)". The right to inviolability includes inviolability ofthe right to (1) life, (2) property, (3) religion, (4) mind (expression), (5) family andprogeny, as well as (6) honor and dignity. Universalist Muslim jurists share thisview from different schools of Islamic law. In particular, all jurists from the H.anaf¯ischool subscribe to this view. From this perspective being human is sufficient tohave human rights regardless of innate, inherited and gained attributes such as sex,religion, race and nationality. This article explores the thought of Muslim juristswho took humanity as the sufficient ground for human rights and the arguments theyused to justify it by deriving from classical Islamic law books. It will also provide ahistorical survey about how this view was implemented in Islamic history from Indiato the Balkans under Islamic law. Following it will discuss the reforms in Islamic lawduring the late Ottoman period (1839–1918). It will conclude by proposing how thepresent Muslim legal and political discourse can be re-connected to this universalisthuman rights tradition to overcome the challenges for human rights in the Muslimworld today.

I am therefore I have rights," argues this paper. Mere existence qualifies a human being for universal human rights. Yet human beings do not live in solitude; they are always embedded in a network of social relations which determines their rights and duties in its own terms. Consequently, the debate about the universality and relativism of human rights can be best understood by combining legal and sociological perspectives. Such an approach is used in this article to explore the tensions and contests around the universality of human rights in Islamic law. Whether all human beings or just citizens are qualified for the inviolability of human rights is a question which divided Muslim jurists into two schools: Universalistic School, emanating from Abu Hanifa, advocated for the universality of human rights, while Communalistic School, originating from Malik, Shafii and Ibn Hanbal, advocated for civil rights. Universalistic School was adopted by such great cosmopolitan empires as Umayyads, Abbasids, Mughals and Ottomans. It was also reformed by the Ottomans during the nineteenth century in the light of the new notions of universal human rights in Europe to purge remaining discriminatory practices against non-Muslim citizens and to justify constitutionalism and democracy. Yet the universalistic tradition in Islamic law has been forgotten as the chain of memory was broken after the collapse of Ottoman Empire. This article briefly unearths the forgotten universalistic approach in Islamic law to build upon it a modern universalistic human rights theory for which there is a pressing need at this age of globalization.

In the last few years, issues related to human rights, including encouraging the democratization of Muslim societies from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, have acquired great importance in shaping the character of U.S.-Muslim relations and U.S. policy toward Muslim countries. An important impetus behind this development were the tragic events of 9/11, which demonstrated the destructive potential of militant groups that use a distorted interpretation of Islam as justification for their actions. These events also led to a greater realization by the United States--and the West--that a lack of democracy and lack of respect for human rights have been contributory factors to the rise of militant Islam. Consequently, in its approach toward the Muslim world, the United States has emphasized the themes of human rights and democracy. Within the Islamic world, too, both secular and moderate Islamists have begun focusing on issues related to human rights. Although many conservative Muslims believe that Islam is incompatible with Western notions of democracy and human rights, reformist Muslim thinkers and activists maintain that a proper reading of Islamic injunctions and the ethical values underpinning those injunctions shows there is no such incompatibility. Complicating the debate is the fact that many Muslims--secular as well as conservative and reformist--doubt the seriousness of the U.S. commitment to the cause of human rights and democracy in the Muslim world, believing that the United States applies human rights' standards selectively to suit its strategic and economic interests. Irrespective of the validity of these charges, they are part of the context of the U.S.-Muslim dialogue on human rights. And it is this complex dialogue that this volume seeks to advance.

History testifies that Muslims are successful in diversity management. Islamic polity has never aimed to build a community exclusively for Muslims; instead, Muslims built an Open Civilization from Andalusia to India where people from different cultures lived together. Islamic law has taken adamiyyah (humanity regardless of religion) as the subject of Islamic law to which rights and duties are accorded. This tradition, originating from Abu Hanifa, has formed the foundation of a universalistic interpretation of Islam in the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. The present movement in the Muslim world from dictatorships towards democracy is a long-delayed outcome of Islamic political ideals and values, which give utmost priority to unity, freedom and justice. There is a strong universalistic Islamic political tradition, the last major example of which is the Ottoman Khilafah whose pluralistic legacy has yet to be claimed. Islamic unity in diversity or Open Civilization is rooted in the multiplex Islamic thought.

Turkey is the only secular Muslim country which wants to be a part of a non- Muslim union, the EU. Turkish secularism is confusing to outside observers, in particular to the Europeans, and poses a problem in its integration into the EU. Turkish secularism is usually compared to French secularism. Yet there are major differences between them. The only parallel that can be found in the world to Turkish secularism is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Chinesestyle secularism where the state controls religion. The present political tensions in Turkey should be analyzed in the light of this phenomenon. The current main political cleavage in Turkey is not between Islamists and secularists, but between advocates of Western-style democratic secularism and advocates of the authoritarian-style secularism. The latter are against the Western-style democratic secularism and therefore against the EU.

In this article it is argued that the cleavage in modern legal discourse between the advocates of universal human rights and domestic civil rights has also been observed in Islamic law since its formative period in the first ce~tury oflslam, which correspondsto the seventh century AD. A survey of the works of Muslim jurists from the classical era demonstrates that the relationship between the 'ismah (inviolability or legal and political protection ofbasic human rights) and adamiyyah (humanity, personhood) has been contested for centuries, thereby giving rise to a latent cleavage between universalistic and communalistic jurists. This cleavage has yet to be explored, although it is cmcial to determine whether there are universal human rights in Islam. This article is a brief presentation of the preliminary fındings of an ongoing research.

In this paper I introduce a new concept, "open science," to denote a pluralist and democratic science culture. I claim that an open society requires, on both the local _and the global levels, ·an open science. For science culture plays a significant role in shaping the political cultures which have a direct impact on social relations and ·human rights. I call for reform of our exclusionist science culture with the aim of better understanding the world, and. at the same time, of promoting a more democratic attitude towards alternative explanations and interpretations. I argue that essentialism and exclusive focus on causal relations should be abandoned not only because they represent only one way of looking at the world, but also because of their negative social implications. Explored are examples of the traditional Islamic social (fiqh) and human (nahw and balaghah) sciences as actualized within the Ottoman milieu. Likewise, it is argued that the example of the medical fıeld, where the legitimacy obtains among parallel traditions originating from different civilizations, can serve as a model for other scientific fields.

Unlike the present age where recording and printing devices are taken for granted, disciples ofgrandmasters, such as Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Socrates and Muhammad, had to spend an enormous effort to preserve the teachings of their masters in the form of oral and/or written narrativ in order to relay it to the future generations. These efforts usually resulted in the creation of transmission networks for the dissemination of narrative, referred collectively by this paper as narrative social structure. This paper focuses on one such narrath-e structure, the hadith transmission network of Prophet Muhammad (571-632 AD). Hadith, which literally means narrative about Prophet Muhammad, had been widely transmitted orally and/or in writing, and remained as the only currency circulated in the transmission network. From the demise of the Prophet onward, a social structure and a critical approach developed around hadith narration, which transformed it from a conventional narrative into a "science " with formal rules and terminology. The political, religious, and legal importance of hadith in social life reinforced this process. The size of the network grew as Islam spread to other nations, but it also changed with the way hadith hadith became transmitted. In particular, the network began to shrink as written narrative gradually triumphed over the oral narrative, following the fate of traditional oral narratives in other parts of the world. The old tension between memorizing and writing hadith was resolved in favor of the latter, parallel to the spreading institutionalization of education which canonized certain reliable hadith collections. The data is deratedfrom classical sources mainly from Dhahabi (d. 1347AD) and Suyuti (d. 1505 .-ID). The analysis of the transmission structure as a narrative social structure reveals the interplay betM'een narrative and social structure as well as other interesting diffusion patterns in a time-stratified network.

AbstractDue to advancements in telecommunications and transportation over the past century, the world is shrinking and physical boundaries are being eroded. The advent of globalization has facilitated the flow of ideas, values, goods, and people from one part of the world to another. This hyperbolic human activity has altered the structure of inter-civilizational relations and has spawned a spirited debate on how to create a multi-civilizational world order. This paper is critical of contemporary approaches on the subject that envisage the primacy of one civilization on the one hand and a clash among civilizations on the other. By examining Ibn Khaldun's theory of 'Umrān and the discipline of Fiqh, it argues that these concepts remain relevant for our understanding of the human condition today. While the theory of Umrān analyzes political and economic relations at the macro-level, Fiqh tries to arrange societal relations at the micro-level. This paper also studies the Ottoman legacy since the Ottoman state was founded on Fiqh and the Millet system. It proved to be successful in preserving pluralistic communities based on principles of autonomy and mutual coexistence. Even though Ibn Khaldun was one of the pioneers in the field of civilizational studies, his seminal work is largely neglected in scholarly circles today, both Muslim and non-Muslim alike. The present inquiry seeks to address this shortcoming.

Due to advancements in telecommunications and transportation over the past century, the world is shrinking and physical boundaries are being eroded. The advent of globalization has facilitated the flow of ideas, values, goods, and people from one part of the world to another. This hyperbolic human activity has altered the structure of inter-civilizational relations and has spawned a spirited debate on how to create a multi-civilizational world order. This paper is critical of contemporary approaches on the subject that envisage the primacy of one civilization on the one hand and a clash among civilizations on the other. By examining Ibn Khaldun's theory of ʿUmrān and the discipline of Fiqh, it argues that these concepts remain relevant for our understanding of the human condition today. While the theory of ʿUmrān analyzes political and economic relations at the macro-level, Fiqh tries to arrange societal relations at the microlevel. This paper also studies the Ottoman legacy since the Ottoman state was founded on Fiqh and the Millet system. It proved to be successful in preserving pluralistic communities based on principles of autonomy and mutual coexistence. Even though Ibn Khaldun was one of the pioneers in the field of civilizational studies, his seminal work is largely neglected in scholarly circles today, both Muslim and non-Muslim alike. The present inquiry seeks to address this shortcoming.