scholarly journals The Omani Experience of Multi-religious Coexistence and Dialogue: A Historical Approach to the Omani Principles and its Luminous Examples

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-78
Author(s):  
Al Muatasim Maawali

In a world that is increasingly hostile towards religious minorities, this paper tries to set a modern-day, successful example of multi-religious coexistence and interfaith dialogue. The paper examines historical examples derived from Omani history and explores Omani characteristics by surveying Western reports written by missionaries, visitors, and travellers of different religions in Oman. This is meant to demonstrate the hypothesis that the multi-religious coexistence and interfaith dialogue enjoyed today by the nearly fourmillion Omani population is a natural result of a long history of commitment to ‘Omani values’ and principles, practised by Oman’s Ibāḍī population with their fellow nonMuslims. The paper concludes that there is a strong correlation between the ‘Omani values’ recorded by the Western writers and the ongoing deeply rooted Omani experience of peaceful religious coexistence and interfaith dialogue. These ‘Omani values’ include the principles of tolerance, social justice, mutual respect, friendliness, hospitality, and simplicity. Finally, owing to the increasingly rising tensions between adherents of different religions, the paper recommends that such successful Omani experiences should be exported to other countries in the Muslim world and elsewhere. 

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 246
Author(s):  
Mohd. Sanjeer Alam

India is one of the most socially fragmented and unequal societies of the world. At the same time, it has the distinction of having the longest history of most elaborative affirmative action programmes for alleviating socially structured inequalities. While the affirmative action programmes have wider coverage in terms of social groups, there is continuing demand by new social groups for getting acknowledged as ‘disadvantaged’ and inclusion in the system of affirmative action. While group based ‘reservation’ as the most vital instrument of social justice has long been under fire and grappling with several challenges, the social justice regime is faced with the charge that it has largely excluded nation’s religious minorities. Of course, religion based affirmative action is faced with many constraints; nevertheless there are possibilities for it. This article discusses the constraints and possibilities of affirmative action for disadvantaged religious minorities, Muslims in particular.  


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-171
Author(s):  
Philip Dorroll

AbstractThe legacy of the 2013 Gezi Park protests has been controversial and its impact on Turkish politics difficult to assess. At the same time, there has been little reflection on contemporary Islamic feminist thinking in English sources. This essay argues that one important political and intellectual legacy of the Gezi movement has been the development of certain intersectional discourses in Islamic feminism in Turkey, whereby the shared experience of marginalization felt by pious Muslims, women, ethnic and religious minorities, and the LGBTIQ community has begun to broaden and complicate the scope of Islamic feminist discussions of liberation and social justice. By delineating and linking some important connecting threads of Islamic feminist theological thought in Turkey of the past 30 years, this essay will attempt to summarize key developments in the history of Islamic feminism in contemporary Turkey, demonstrating how they have led to new strands of intersectional feminist thinking in the post-Gezi era of Turkish politics.


Author(s):  
David Estlund

Throughout the history of political philosophy and politics, there has been continual debate about the roles of idealism versus realism. For contemporary political philosophy, this debate manifests in notions of ideal theory versus nonideal theory. Nonideal thinkers shift their focus from theorizing about full social justice, asking instead which feasible institutional and political changes would make a society more just. Ideal thinkers, on the other hand, question whether full justice is a standard that any society is likely ever to satisfy. And, if social justice is unrealistic, are attempts to understand it without value or importance, and merely utopian? This book argues against thinking that justice must be realistic, or that understanding justice is only valuable if it can be realized. The book does not offer a particular theory of justice, nor does it assert that justice is indeed unrealizable—only that it could be, and this possibility upsets common ways of proceeding in political thought. The book's author engages critically with important strands in traditional and contemporary political philosophy that assume a sound theory of justice has the overriding, defining task of contributing practical guidance toward greater social justice. Along the way, it counters several tempting perspectives, including the view that inquiry in political philosophy could have significant value only as a guide to practical political action, and that understanding true justice would necessarily have practical value, at least as an ideal arrangement to be approximated. Demonstrating that unrealistic standards of justice can be both sound and valuable to understand, the book stands as a trenchant defense of ideal theory in political philosophy.


Author(s):  
Bryan D. Palmer

This article is part of a special Left History series reflecting upon changing currents and boundaries in the practice of left history, and outlining the challenges historians of the left must face in the current tumultuous political climate. This series extends a conversation first convened in a 2006 special edition of Left History (11.1), which asked the question, “what is left history?” In the updated series, contributors were asked a slightly modified question, “what does it mean to write ‘left’ history?” The article charts the impact of major political developments on the field of left history in the last decade, contending that a rising neoliberal and right-wing climate has constructed an environment inhospitable to the discipline’s survival. To remain relevant, Palmer calls for historians of the left to develop a more “open-ended and inclusive” understanding of the left and to push the boundaries of inclusion for a meaningful historical study of the left. To illustrate, Palmer provides a brief materialist history of liquorice to demonstrate the mutability of left history as a historical approach, rather than a set of traditional political concerns.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (XXII) ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Benon Gaziński ◽  
Maria Swianiewicz-Nagięć

In his article, authors deals with Stanisław Swianiewicz heritage. They point-out that it cannot be reduced to the famous episode of the Katyń massacre while he avoided death being sent to the Gwiezdowo station in the neighbourhood of the mass graves – the only one such a case. While settled in Vilnius, after the Bolshevik’s revolution, he became a Professor of the Stefan Batory University, dealing with the Soviet studies, history of ideas and economic thought. In the article – very little known – journalistic essays are overviewed as published by Swianiewicz in pre-war Vilnius press and dealing with the issue of the national and religious minorities of the Polish Eastern Borderlands.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Priyo Joko Purnomo ◽  
Wahyudhi Wahyudhi

Gambuh as the performing art in Malay area became one of the cultural transformation evidences of the close relation between Java and Malay. The history of gambuh performance in Malay area recorded in the archipelago’s manuscripts, one of them is a manuscript entitled Surat Gambuh which is being the collection of Leiden University Library. This paper attempts to examine the contents of the manuscript in order to reconstruct the gambuh performance art in Malay and also trace the historical aspects. As far as the research had been done, there have been no studies of this manuscript so it is necessary to first transliterate it using a critical method. Furthermore, the historical aspects are explored using a historical approach by adding data from other texts of Panji. The analysis result of the reflection of Malay gambuh performance rules and historical aspects show that there is a transformation of work from oral tradition to written tradition, the cultural acculturation between Java and Malay, and the Islamic influence behind Malay gambuh.


2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daphna Hacker

Abstract This article suggests enacting an accession tax instead of the estate duty – which was repealed in Israel in 1981. This suggestion evolves from historical and normative explorations of the tension between perceptions of familial intergenerational property rights and justifications for the “death tax,” as termed by its opponents, i.e., estate and inheritance tax. First, the Article explores this tension as expressed in the history of the Israeli Estate Duty Law. This chronological survey reveals a move from the State’s taken-for-granted interest in revenue justifying the Law’s enactment in 1949; moving on to the “needy widow” and “poor orphan” in whose name the tax was attacked during the years 1959–1964, continuing to the abolition of the tax in 1981 in the name of efficiency and the right of the testator to transfer his wealth to his family, and finally cumulating with the targeting of tycoon dynasties that characterizes the recent calls for reintroducing the tax. Next, based on the rich literature on the subject, the Article maps the arguments for and against intergenerational wealth transfer taxation, placing the Israeli case in larger philosophical, political, and pragmatic contexts. Lastly, it associates the ideas of accession tax and “social inheritance” with inspirational sources for rethinking a realistic wealth transfer taxation to bridge the gap between notions of intergenerational familial rights and intergenerational social justice.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 520-538
Author(s):  
Fayzul Huq ◽  
Arshad Islam ◽  
Kazi Afifa Khatun

The Muslims of Bangladesh are separated into diverse religious, political, and social groups. Several scholars tried to unite Muslims. One of the most significant Islamic intellectuals of Bangladesh, Sheikh Azizur Rahman Nesarabadi, proposed a paradigm of religious harmony to unite the Bangladeshi people and global nations. According to him, religious harmony with the doctrine of Ittihad Ma’al al-Ikhtelaf (Unity in Diversity) is the only key answer to the current disunity at the national, international, and global levels. This study examines his concept and his role in the society and politics of Bangladesh by textual analysis of primary and secondary data. After analyzing religious harmony itself, we deliver a brief biography of Sheikh Azizur Rahman, presenting his contribution to both Sharia and Sufi education, and their effects on his vision. The study then emphasizes his thoughts on four steps of religious harmony and analyses in light of current social realities in Bangladesh and the Muslim world. This paper concludes that Sheikh Nesarabadi’s thought and theory on religious harmony depend upon three foundations: common good interest, moderation, mutual respect, and the Tawhidic model. These contain the structure for religious harmony of Muslim unity whose implementation by Muslims can achieve the command of Allah to empower the Ummah to continue a leading role in the world as a Khalifah of Allah SWT almighty.


Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Gergen

The emergence of this handbook on social justice represents a groundbreaking event in the history of social psychology. In this summary discussion, I outline significant limits to social justice work embedded in the empiricist tradition of inquiry and point to ways in which the current work transcends these limits. However, I also view the present endeavors as in a fledgling state. In the service of enriching and rendering these pursuits more effective, I discuss five domains in which tensions currently prevail and suggest directions for future undertakings. Challenges are discussed in terms of epistemological schisms, presumed ontologies, value pluralism, explanatory paradigms, and the limits of representationalism. A final invitation is made to shift from a mirroring orientation to research to world-making.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document