scholarly journals Muslim Community Organizations’ Perceptions of Islamophobia: Towards an Informed Countering Response

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 485
Author(s):  
Sara Cheikh Husain

During the past two decades, Muslim Community Organizations (MCOs) in the West have increasingly become stakeholders in the public debates and the national consultations regarding the Muslim communities. MCO’s perception of Islamophobia is critical for understanding their collective response to the problem. Much of the Australian literature, nonetheless, tends to subsume Islamophobia within the dynamics of exclusion/inclusion within a social cohesion paradigm, and primarily through a focus on individuals. This article aims to contribute to the existing literature through a deeper contextual understanding of Australian MCOs’ framing of and engagement with Islamophobia in its various manifestations, in order to better cognize its impact on their agentic capacity. Deploying an expanded theoretical framework of agency structure, this article analyzes 25 interviews with representatives of Victorian MCOs, to explore their perceptions of Islamophobia across multiple domains of power—the social, discursive and the political. MCOs’ perceptions of the problem impact their responding anti-Islamophobia civic–political engagements towards soft grassroots connections and Muslims’ empowerment. In light of the findings, the article points for the need to enhance building inter-community solidarity, utilize supportive institutional multicultural schemes and establish a separate Muslim advocacy organization.

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aznar

Over the past decade, the problems arising from social communication have yet again become burning issues on social and political agendas. Information disorder, hate speeches, information manipulation, social networking sites, etc., have obliged the most important European institutions to reflect on how to meet the collective challenges that social communication currently poses in the new millennium. These European Institutions have made a clear commitment to self-regulation. The article reviews some recent European initiatives to deal with information disorder that has given a fundamental role to self-regulation. To then carry out a theoretical review of the normative notion of self-regulation that distinguishes it from the neo-liberal economicist conception. To this end, (1) a distinction is drawn between the (purportedly) self-regulating market and (2) a broader conception of self-regulation inherent not to media companies or corporations, but to the social subsystem of social communication, is proposed. This involves increasing the number of self-regulatory mechanisms that may contribute to improve social communication, and reinforcing the commitment of those who should exercise such self-regulation, including not only media companies but also the professionals working at them and the public at large.


1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margalit Drory ◽  
Jennie Posen ◽  
Doron Vilner ◽  
Karni Ginzburg ◽  
Bianca Lederman

AbstractThe Emergency Information Center model developed by the social work department of Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center is activated in cases of mass casualties following disasters. It aims to provide reliable information to help the public cope with confusion and uncertainty, and to enable the medical staff to concentrate on treating the casualties. The Information Center is comprised of several interrelated units within the hospital, and maintains contact with a range of community organizations. The article describes the structure and activities of the various units, and discusses a number of aspects relevant to personnel organization in crisis intervention.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Kontowski ◽  
Madelaine Leitsberger

European universities responded in different ways to the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015. Some subscribed to the agenda of higher education (HE) as a universal human right, while others stressed different long-term benefits of offering access to it. Yet, the unprecedented sense of moral urgency that guided immediate declarations of support and subsequent actions has largely remained unaddressed. With the crisis becoming a new reality for many countries, HE has a role to play in the social inclusion of refugees, even in countries that were not attractive destinations for refugees in the past. In this article, we provide an overview of the reasons why HE institutions supported refugees, and present the results of an empirical study of Poland and Austria during the 2015–2016 academic year. We then evaluate those first responses utilizing parts of Ager and Strang’s framework of integration, and discuss issues of institutional readiness, capabilities and the public role of HE stemming from this comparison. Our findings suggest that reasons such as acknowledgement of basic rights, or utilizing social capital are insufficient to explain and understand strong integrative support measures. We propose that refugee support by HE institutions is both better understood and promoted through the language of hospitality.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-98
Author(s):  
Fathor Rahman

This paper explored a daily fiqh practice or, more precisely, the practice of Islam among Muslim minorities in Bali, which is transformed into an adaptable form of religious diversity promoting harmony. In the midst of the strong domination of Hindu custom and the acts of violence by few Muslims in Indonesia, the Balinese Muslim community strived to manifest Islamic teachings (fiqh) in daily life having tolerant and moderate. Through two problems such as; how is the religious adaptation pattern of minority Muslim communities in Bali? How do Muslim communities establish inter-religious harmony as a manifestation of their daily fiqh? This study attempted  to analyze it based on maqashid sharia theory. As for supporting data collection, this paper used field research using interviews and observations.The finding  indicated that there were interesting patterns of religious social relations occurred in the daily practice of Muslim minorities in expressing their Islamic teachings in the public area. Muslims in Bali are able to appraise their religious teachings and adapt with the surrounding community, which was socio-anthropologically dominated by the Hindu belief system.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatjana Cvjetićanin

Public archaeology and community archaeology are some of the terms denoting various ways in which archaeologists, convinced that archaeology should not act in isolation, reach out to the public or include it into disciplinary practices. The public is principally educated and enabled to embrace the social relevance of archaeology. Archaeologists are primarily visible in the public as the ones excavating and discovering the past. When we inform the public, educate or include it in our activities, work with or for the public – or when the public is dealing with archaeology on its own – archaeological fieldwork is not only the most recognizable and the most popular image of archaeology, but also undoubtedly the basic area of our activities. In Serbia, the field excavations are perceived as almost the only way of approaching the past, and the field directors, participants in excavations and interpreters of fieldwork are recognized as reliable (and often the only) public faces of the discipline. Authority is generated through discovery, and visibility is the result of popularisation. Public archaeology is mainly understood as public relations, or even as media relations. Collective anxiety, neoliberalism, and the political populism of the moment, all result in the trend of increase in discourse of memory and musealization of society. This contemporary politics of memory is an answer to the current space and time, with accelerated changes and endangered traditional values. Additionally, the new political reality from the 1990s on has dissolved the symbolic capital of the supra-nation, so the establishment of a new collective memory and cultural identity became necessary. The narrative of the “(celestial) people with history” is chosen, on the soil with a special spiritual axis, and the celebration of the unique homogenous nation is embraced. The construction of the new identity is helped by the disciplines dealing with the past, and various institutions –including the archaeological ones – go a step further in “imprinting upon heart and soul” the new cultural/political memory. This step further demonstrates that they recognize the public only in the structures of power. The institutional and ethic crisis is apparent: even in the places where the professional community (including conservators, custodians, academic community, as well as archaeologists) emphatically opposes excavations, they will be conducted nevertheless. More often than not, the sensational, unique or luxurious is emphasized, mainly to secure the social, political and financial support for projects, as well as prestige. The authorized narratives of the past and the pre-packaged heritage corrupt the image of archaeology and contribute to the misconception of the past. The paper treats both the examples of good and bad practice, with the intention to demonstrate that the need to promote must be supplemented by responsibility, and the public archaeology in Serbia broadened by new aims.  


Author(s):  
La Ode Yusuf ◽  
I Wayan Cika ◽  
I Gusti Ketut Gde Arsana

Globalization has caused tradition to change, meaning that globalization has caused the sacred tradition to change into the propane tradition as it has been used as a tourist attraction. This present study discusses the Bangka mbule-mbule tradition used as a tourist attraction in Wakatobi Regency, South East Sulawesi. The study is intended to inform the public that the Bangka mbule-mbule has been performed as a cultural tourist destination. The study uses the descriptive qualitative method. The data which were obtained from the field were qualitatively described. The social theory combined with the theory of cultural tourism department was used to analyze the data. The result of the study shows that Tradition can be defined as a right heritage or a heritage from the past which is still currently found in society. One of the traditions which is still performed is the bangka mbule-mbule tradition. It is still performed by Mandati people in Wakatobi Regency, South East Sulawesi. The owners of the tradition still believe in it. It has been performed to support the cultural tradition in Wakatobi. The implication is that it has increased the number of tourists visiting Wakatobi, South East Sulawesi.


Author(s):  
Magdalena Zolkos

This book develops a political philosophic approach to restitution and repatriation of objects, by arguing that the development of restitutive norms in the West has been auxiliary to the emergence of modern state sovereignty. It draws on critiques of international law of cultural heritage return, and of its Western humanistic underpinnings, including the ontological binary distinction between things and persons. Rather than accept the restitutive goals of politics and law seeking to do justice for the past and to ‘undo’ the expropriations and dispossessions that have occurred, and are still occurring (be it in contexts of coloniality or war), this book looks at the limits and aporias of restitution in texts of philosophy, literature and social theory. As such, it identifies figures and objects situated beyond the possibility of restitution and repair. This includes analysis of the social fantasies and imaginaries that ‘prop’ our contemporary reparative politics—making the past ‘unhappen’, or cancelling out the occurrence of wrongs. What the analysed texts have in common is that they articulate restitution through the motifs of undoing and making-unhappen, as a reparative and curative procedure, and a prelapsarian return to a place, time or condition prior to the event of violence. Insofar as this reading uncovers the mythical-religious ‘substrate’ of the restitutive tradition, and illuminates the political and affective allures of prelapsarianism, this book also offers insights into Western secularism, not as disappearance of religious thought in the public domain, but as its ‘repression’ (in a psychoanalytic sense).


Author(s):  
Verena Bernardin-Haldemann

AbstractFor the past two decades the issue of housing for the aged has caught the attention of many in the private as well as in the public sectors, and attempts have been made to improve the situation. If the problem persists today, gerontologists, among others, should be called to account, since they were instrumental in the formulation of many of the interventions. The problem has been approached generally in terms of adaptation to aging and adaptation to the environment. The ecological models currently used agree that happiness can be found at different states of equilibrium between the person and the environment and that the elderly arrive at this state of equilibrium through a special “docility” towards the environment; a “docility” which would be linked to aging. However, this docility would appear to be historically and socially contingent rather than being “natural”. It is thus important to explain the social production of old age and the docility which is tied to it.


1957 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 346-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glendon A. Schubert

Textbooks in public administration customarily conclude with a section on administrative responsibility. The charitable inference is that this location betokens the saving of the best till last, rather than the appendage of an afterthought. Herbert Kaufman might explain it as the preoccupation of the past generation of political scientists with the legitimation of the efficient exercise of administrative power to subserve the goals of the social state, with a consequent sublimation of the emerging problem of the control of large, professionalized bureaucracies. However that may be, it does seem clear that, with the exception of administrative decisions which adversely affect “civil liberties,” most political scientists have been content to let lawyers and defenders of the free enterprise system worry about the restraint of administrative action.


2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 149-170
Author(s):  
Zuzanna Bogumił

The Author examines the presentation of the German occupation at the Warsaw Rising Museum and in Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory in Krakow. Initially, she studies the space of these exhibitions and demonstrates that the Warsaw Rising Museum has some characteristics of reflective space, while the exhibition at the Schindler’s Factory is primarily a projective one. Then, she points out that both museums treat artefacts as illustrations of their stories, as a consequence of which they are simulations of the past rather than material testimonies of what had happened. Finally, the Author argues that the Warsaw Rising Museum primarily tells the story of glory of the Polish nation, while the Schindler Factory focuses on the social history. In conclusion the Author points out that none of the exhibitions breaks the existing taboos or offers a new approach to the past. Both museum stories perfectly reflect the shape of the Polish social memory of World War II. Differences in the way they present the past are a result of rooting each of the stories in different public debates that were conducted in Poland after 1989.


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