Promiscuity, Polygyny, and the Power of Revenge: The Past and Future of Burmese Buddhist Law in Myanmar

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa CROUCH

AbstractMyanmar is the only Buddhism-majority country in the world that has developed and maintained a system of family law for Buddhists enforced by the courts. This article considers the construction of Burmese Buddhist law by lawyers, judges, and legislators, and the changes made through legislative intervention in 2015. It begins by addressing the creation and contestation of Burmese Buddhist law to demonstrate that it has largely been defined by men and by its perceived opposites, Hinduism and Islam. Three aspects of Burmese Buddhist law that affect women are then examined more closely. First, Burmese Buddhist law carries no penalties for men who commit adultery, although women may risk divorce and the loss of her property. Second, a man can take more than one wife under Burmese Buddhist law; a woman cannot. Third, restrictions on Buddhist women who marry non-Buddhist men operate to ensure the primacy of Burmese Buddhist law over the potential application of Islamic law. This article deconstructs the popular claim that women are better off under Burmese Buddhist law than under Hindu law or Islamic law by showing how Burmese Buddhist law has been preoccupied with regulating the position of women. The 2015 laws build on this history of Burmese Buddhist law, creating new problems, but also potentially operating as a new source of revenge.

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-201
Author(s):  
Umar Faruq Thohir

It is inevitable that a legal enactment, or reform of Islamic family law in various Muslim countries or countries with a majority Muslim population in the world. This is because the existing law (valid) is still not revealed or has been revealed but is considered not in accordance with the era anymore, due to the different “context” between the past and the present. As Anderson said, Islamic law in Islamic countries was not static at all. The form of renewal that is carried out differs from country to country. First, there are some countries that carry out reforms in the form of laws. Second, there are some countries that carry out reforms based on the decree of the president or king. Third, there are some countries that carry out reforms in the form of judicial provisions. The country of Turkey is the first country to carry out renewal in family law. Updates are carried out in the form of laws. For Turkish Muslims, Hanafi is a school that underlies the religious life formally until 1926, before the existence of legislation legislation that was eclectically codified. The Islamic Civil Law or what is called ¬Majallat al-Ahkâm al-liAdliyah, which most of the material is based on Hanaf madîî actually has been prepared in Turkey since 1876, although it is not comprehensive, because it does not include family law and inheritance law. Keywords: reform of Islamic, Waris, and Turkish Muslims


2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 255-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimír Bačík ◽  
Michal Klobučník

Abstract The Tour de France, a three week bicycle race has a unique place in the world of sports. The 100th edition of the event took place in 2013. In the past of 110 years of its history, people noticed unique stories and duels in particular periods, celebrities that became legends that the world of sports will never forget. Also many places where the races unfolded made history in the Tour de France. In this article we tried to point out the spatial context of this event using advanced technologies for distribution of historical facts over the Internet. The Introduction briefly displays the attendance of a particular stage based on a regional point of view. The main topic deals with selected historical aspects of difficult ascents which every year decide the winner of Tour de France, and also attract fans from all over the world. In the final stage of the research, the distribution of results on the website available to a wide circle of fans of this sports event played a very significant part (www.tdfrance.eu). Using advanced methods and procedures we have tried to capture the historical and spatial dimensions of Tour de France in its general form and thus offering a new view of this unique sports event not only to the expert community, but for the general public as well.


Author(s):  
Umriniso Rahmatovna Turaeva

The history of the Turkestan Jadid movement and the study of Jadid literature show that it has not been easy to study this subject. The socio-political environment of the time led to the blind reduction of the history of continuous development of Uzbek literature, artificial reduction of the literary heritage of the past on the basis of dogmatic thinking, neglect of the study of works of art and literary figures. As a result, the creation of literary figures of a certain period, no matter how important, remained unexplored.


Author(s):  
Greg Garrett

Hollywood films are perhaps the most powerful storytellers in American history, and their depiction of race and culture has helped to shape the way people around the world respond to race and prejudice. Over the past one hundred years, films have moved from the radically prejudiced views of people of color to the depiction of people of color by writers and filmmakers from within those cultures. In the process, we begin to see how films have depicted negative versions of people outside the white mainstream, and how film might become a vehicle for racial reconciliation. Religious traditions offer powerful correctives to our cultural narratives, and this work incorporates both narrative truth-telling and religious truth-telling as we consider race and film and work toward reconciliation. By exploring the hundred-year period from The Birth of a Nation to Get Out, this work acknowledges the racist history of America and offers the possibility of hope for the future.


Author(s):  
Louçã Francisco ◽  
Ash Michael

Chapter 11 assesses the growth prospects of the world economy. The history of global economic doomsaying is traced briefly, a frequently reasonable position that has not done well with the facts for the past hundred years. Capitalism has been adept at escaping from the pit and pendulum. A set of global imbalances is then reviewed that are seen as posing a severe threat to global economic stability and certainly to the prospects for sustainable and equitable growth. The Great Recession following the Crash of 2007–8 might be “different this time.” Historical and contemporary fears of “secular stagnation” are discussed but the speculative nature of stagnationist assessments is acknowledged.


Author(s):  
Farhad Khosrokhavar

The creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) changed the nature of jihadism worldwide. For a few years (2014–2017) it exemplified the destructive capacity of jihadism and created a new utopia aimed at restoring the past greatness and glory of the former caliphate. It also attracted tens of thousands of young wannabe combatants of faith (mujahids, those who make jihad) toward Syria and Iraq from more than 100 countries. Its utopia was dual: not only re-creating the caliphate that would spread Islam all over the world but also creating a cohesive, imagined community (the neo-umma) that would restore patriarchal family and put an end to the crisis of modern society through an inflexible interpretation of shari‘a (Islamic laws and commandments). To achieve these goals, ISIS diversified its approach. It focused, in the West, on the rancor of the Muslim migrants’ sons and daughters, on exoticism, and on an imaginary dream world and, in the Middle East, on tribes and the Sunni/Shi‘a divide, particularly in the Iraqi and Syrian societies.


PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27
Author(s):  
Leon F. Seltzer

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”


1994 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-106
Author(s):  
Hans Henningsen

The View of Nature and History in Grundtvig and LøgstrupBy Hans HenningsenGrundtvig’s and K.E. Løgstrup’s thoughts move in two different dimensions, but with the same intention of demonstrating that it was not the capacity of man to create culture that first gave significance to the world. But where Grundtvig speaks about history, Løgstrup speaks about »phenomena«, »nature«, and »universe«.While Grundtvig was largely unaffected by Kant, the latter - with his concepts of the selfexistent subject and the idea of the faculty of cognition as productive - became a challenge to Løgstrup. Kant heralds an era whose relationship with the universe is characterized as a »marginal existence«. Our culture became an emancipatory culture which was all to the good, but the era lost its sense of the .pre-cultural. structures in which life is »encased«.The era has also emancipated itself from Grundtvig’s historical view. But a history on the premisses of relativism is no history. Or, in Løgstrup’s words, there is no other history than the history of what is essential in life. Therefore, in reality, Løgstrup’s phenomenological and philosophical endeavours become a defence of history. Grundtvig’s view of nature was determined by his radical prioritization of history. He prefers to view nature as part of the historical life of man, which again determines his use of nature images. In Grundtvig there is no religious interpretation of any experience or perception of nature in spite of the fact that everything in the Creation is to be understood as images of the eternal.In Løgstrup there is no such cautions attitude towards nature. Here nature and sense perception are liberating, but as is the case with Grundtvig, nature is seen as the foundation of man’s life, as immediate experience.Grundtvig’s radical prioritization of history colours his view of art. The Creation itself is the greatest work of art; part of it is the upbringing through which all history must be the object of the individual’s own experience. Among the art forms, poetry ranks highest, with the song above all other forms, while Grundtvig only uses disparaging words about painting and sculpture because these art forms are wordless and preclude changes. Løgstrup, however, attaches much greater importance to sense perception and self-recognition through art.These contrasts may be regarded as what Løgstrup calls uniting opposites; it must be remembered, however, that such disparities cannot be harmonized so as to disappear, but are uniting precisely by virtue of the tension that exists between them. The actual existence of the contrasts does not preclude the possibility that in a wider sense the two views may be contained within the same framework and express a common intention.


1962 ◽  
Vol 25 (7) ◽  
pp. 216-218
Author(s):  
Frank V. Kosikowski

The situation regarding chemical residues in our country's milk supply is perhaps the most favorable for a number of years. Good control has been achieved over the incidence and concentration of antibiotic residues, levels of pesticides in milk have been reduced, and although radionuclides in food are related partly to bomb testing, nevertheless, our expanding monitoring system, which is keeping us well informed, indicates no cause for alarm. Despite all the past clamor, the milk supplies of the U. S. A. are among the purest and safest in the world now or at any period of time in the history of mankind.


2007 ◽  
pp. 27-37
Author(s):  
Dmytro V. Tsolin

Every reader of the Old Testament, both experienced researcher and newcomer, cannot fail to pay attention to one peculiarity in the presentation of the idea of ​​God: it is a harmonious (and, at times, amazing) combination of transcendence and immanence. The History of the Creation of the World (Genesis 1: 1 - 2: 3), which begins the first book of the Strictly Testament - Genesis - is an example of an exquisite prose genre with elements of epic poetry. In it, the Creator of the Universe appears to the Almighty, the Wise, and the All-Powerful, standing above the created world: Only one word of it evokes the material world from nothingness. This is emphasized by the repeated use of the formulas אלהים וימר / wa-yyo'mer 'ělohîm ("And Elohim said ...") and ויהי־כן / wa-yəhî khēn ("And so it became"). This use of two narrative constructs at the beginning and at the end of messages about the creative activities of God clearly emphasizes the idea of ​​reconciling the divine Word and being. God is shown here to be transcendental.


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