Suchergebnisse

The resurgence of the radical Right in America & Europe has drawn attention to the existence of political philosophers & writers whose names are only sometimes familiar & whose thought is generally unknown. It even comes as a surprise to some that the radical Right actually has a political philosophy, other than that of Nazism or of Mussolini's Fascism, both of which in fact remain discredited & marginal. Instead, the resurgent Right draws on well-known thinkers like Nietzsche & Hegel, on less-known thinkers like Oswald Spengler & Julius Evola, & on the relatively obscure writings of living political philosophers such as Alain de Benoist in France & Alexander Dugin in Russia. Then there is a whole range of emergent thinkers, often American, some unknown, & some famous only for media stunts. This text looks at the classic canon, at the most influential modern thinkers, & at a selection of emergent thinkers.

"Making European Muslims provides an in-depth examination of what it means to be a young Muslim in Europe today, where the assumptions, values and behavior of the family and those of the majority society do not always coincide. Focusing on the religious socialization of Muslim children at home, in semi-private Islamic spaces such as mosques and Quran schools, and in public schools, the original contributions to this volume focus largely on countries in northern Europe, with a special emphasis on the Nordic region, primarily Denmark. Case studies demonstrate the ways that family life, public education, and government policy intersect in the lives of young Muslims and inform their developing religious beliefs and practices. Mark Sedgwick's introduction provides a framework for theorizing Muslimness in the European context, arguing that Muslim children must navigate different and sometimes contradictory expectations and demands on their way to negotiating a European Muslim identity"--Provided by publisher

This chapter looks at the rise of anticolonial terrorism in Egypt, and especially at the role played by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It argues that assassination became established among anticolonial nationalists in Egypt before the Brotherhood was founded and was then briefly practiced by the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, however, generally preferred other varieties of violence, which it understood as jihad. Some of these were more obviously acts of political violence than others. The use of violence was never part of the Brotherhood's main strategy, however, and in the end it proved disastrous for them. They definitively abandoned terrorism in about 1968.

This article examines the authority of the Sufi shaykh, which it divides between the esoteric and the exoteric (which includes the social implications of esoteric authority) and analyses with help from Weber. In principle Sufi shaykhs are among the most important leaders of the Sunni faithful. In practice, however, the Sufi shaykh now has much less power and authority than might be expected. This is partly because modern states have, in general, reduced the power of Sufi shaykhs, and because decline in the power of the ʿulamaʾ has included the decline of the power of Sufi shaykhs who are also ʿulamaʾ. It is also because there is an inverse relationship between the power of the shaykh and the size of his ṭarīqa (order). The most powerful shaykh is the one with primarily charismatic authority, but his ṭarīqa will be small. The largest ṭarīqa is led by a shaykh whose authority depends on tradition and heredity; his power is not so great. This paradox is not changed by the availability, for political reasons, of new sources of state support for the leadership role of Sufi shaykhs as an alternative to Salafi and ikhwāni Islam.

Eclectic Sufsm that might be interpreted as a modern form of subjectivity construction has been observed in Morocco and Pakistan. This article reports comparable phenomena elsewhere, using the case of the Arabic translation of Elif Shafak's novel The Forty Rules of Love. The article argues that, in the wider Arab world as in Morocco and Pakistan, the localization of eclectic Sufsm is an instance of the reinterpretation of Islamic traditions to incorporate globally relevant social imaginaries. It questions, however, the association between eclectic Sufsm and individualism, and argues that there is also a further form of localization: the application of eclectic Sufism to contemporary political conditions, notably the problem of sectarianism.

The term "jihadism" is popular, but difficult. It has narrow senses, which are generally valuable, and wide senses, which may be misleading. This article looks at the derivation and use of "jihadism" and of related terms, at definitions provided by a number of leading scholars, and at media usage. It distinguishes two main groups of scholarly definitions, some careful and narrow, and some appearing to match loose media usage. However, it shows that even these scholarly definitions actually make important distinctions between jihadism and associated political and theological ideology. The article closes with a warning against the risks of loose and wide understandings of such important, but difficult, terms.