scholarly journals Tabish Khair’s Just Another Jihadi Jane: Western Civilization and ‘War on Terror’ Versus Islamist Terrorism as the Two Sides of the Globalization Coin

Societies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Dolores Herrero

Armed conflicts and violence have always been concomitant with human history but it is undeniable that our perception of them has undergone some disturbing evolution of late. Whereas in the past wars and organized violence were mainly regarded as being temporary, that is, originating in a number of reasons and tensions that might become eventually solved and confined to very specific zones on the world map, nowadays most people feel that nobody can escape the scourge of indiscriminate violence and this is mainly due to terrorism, in particular to that associated with Muslim fundamentalism. The aim of this paper will be to discuss the origins of this form of terrorism, together with its inextricable relationship with the so-called ‘civilized’ West, putting the emphasis on its more secular aspects and implications so as to show how Tabish Khair’s novel, Just Another Jihadi Jane denounces the effects that this conflict can have upon average people, all the more so if they happen to be Muslim women living in the western world.

Author(s):  
Yasser Elhariry

Pacifist Invasions begins with a short preface that engages the polemics surrounding Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel on Islam and France, Soumission (2015), which hit bookstands nationwide across France on the same day as the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris. Ever since his first novels, Houellebecq has been lyrically singing the progressive decline and suicide of French society and Western civilization. With Soumission, he—and not the attackers—kills them off altogether. This recent episode in literature exposes the difficulty of coping with the afterlives of literatures and languages after colonialism: tellingly, what remains entirely absent from the media circus around Houellebecq in the on-going aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack is how France, for the past fifty years, has continued to lurk in the shadows of the postcolony. Pacifist Invasions takes as its beginning and its end the metaphorical conceit of Houellebecq’s ‘end of French,’ particularly through its textual and poetic manifestations in Francophone literary cultures that are in dialogue with the world of Arabic letters, to argue that French is undergoing a necrophilological colonization by Arabic literature and Islamic scripture under the pens of the five writers studied in Pacifist Invasions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk G. Van der Merwe

Throughout its history, Christianity has stood in a dichotomous relation to the various philosophical movements or eras (pre-modernism, modernism, postmodernism and post-postmodernism) that took on different faces throughout history. In each period, it was the sciences that influenced, to a great extent, the interpretation and understanding of the Bible. Christianity, however, was not immune to influences, specifically those of the Western world. This essay reflects briefly on this dichotomy and the influence of Bultmann’s demythologising of the kerygma during the 20th century. Also, the remythologising (Vanhoozer) of the church’s message as proposed for the 21st century no more satisfies the critical Christian thinkers. The relationship between science and religion is revisited, albeit from a different perspective as established over the past two decades as to how the sciences have been pointed out more and more to complement theology. This article endeavours to evoke the church to consider the fundamental contributions of the sciences and how it is going to incorporate the sciences into its theological training and message to the world.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 261
Author(s):  
Nurul Salsabila Abu Bakar ◽  
Mohd Nazri Ahmad

The life of  Prophet Muhammad/ Sirah Rasullullah, SAW, (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is one of the written works of scholars to be featured as having played a major role in developing da'wah and Islamic Shari'ahs around the world from the past. The bond between Moslems and the prophet is strong so the Moslems can use sirah as a reference to strengthen faith, morals, foster the struggle of Islam and encourage the Muslim to hold on to the truth.  This study will highlight the role of the sirah in strengthening the social aspect of society and this will be seen based on the views of Sheikh Ramadan al-Buti. Content analysis is  used to analyze Fiqh as-Sirah an-Nabawiyyah. The data was analysed descriptively and explanatory. The findings show that the need for a sirah approach in the social aspect is high for the good of  social aspect itself. However, Syeikh Ramadan al-Buti has opened the opportunity so that the aspects of the sirah is applied to the social change of the Islamic society from time to time. The implications of the study show that the Prophet's sirah/life has succeeded in forming a good Islamic Government over the history of Western civilization. Sirah Rasulullah SAW merupakan salah satu karya penulisan ulama perlu diketengahkan kerana telah memainkan peranan yang besar dalam mengembangkan dakwah dan syariat Islam diseluruh dunia sejak dahulu lagi. Mempelajari sirah Nabi ini bukanlah semata-mata untuk mengetahui peristiwa menarik dan aneh yang berlaku di zaman Nabi SAW.Pengkajian sirah ini juga bukan sekadar ingin mengetahui peristiwa-peristiwa yang telah melakar sejarah sebagaimana kajian-kajian sejarah yang lain sebagai contoh sejarah hidup seorang khalifah atau sejarah tamadun yang silam. Sirah juga bukanlah sekadar satu kisah yang dibaca pada hari keputeraan baginda SAW sahaja. Apa yang lebih besar sebenarnya adalah ikatan seseorang Muslim dengan Rasulnya sehinggakan pada akhirnya Muslim itu berjaya menjadikan sirah sebagai sesuatu yang dapat menambahkan iman, memperelok akhlak, menyemarakkan perjuangan Islam serta dapat mendorong Muslim itu untuk terus berpegang dengan kebenaran dan seterusnya istiqamah kepadanya. Kajian ini akan mengetengahkan peranan sirah dalam mengukuhkan aspek sosial masyarakat dan perkara ini akan dilihat berdasarkan kepada pandangan Syeikh Ramadan al-Buti. Kaedah analisis kandungan akan digunakan dalam mengkaji kitab Fiqh as-Sirah an-Nabawiyyah bagi mendapatkan data. Data tersebut akan dianalisis secara deskriptif dan eksplanatori. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan bahawa keperluan pendekatan sirah dalam aspek sosial adalah tinggi bagi membentuk aspek sosial yang baik itu sendiri. Walau bagaimanapun, Syeikh Ramadan al-Buti telah membuka ruang sepenuhnya supaya aspek sirah diaplikasikan kedalam perubahan sosial masyarakat islam dari masa ke semasa. Implikasi kajian menunjukkan bahawa sirah Rasulullah telah berjaya membentuk satu Kerajaan Islam yang baik berbanding sejarah tamadun Barat yang musnah ekoran tiada sisa-sisa kemanusiaan yang dihidupkan.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Osakue Stevenson Omoera ◽  
Charles Onomudo Aluede

There are so many bugaboos associated with aging all over the world. While in the western world efforts are constantly being made to establish old peoples’ homes and nursing homes for geriatric purposes, the desired attention is yet to be drawn to this concept in Nigeria. Nigerian communities which used to be known for communal lifestyle seem to have jettisoned it as a result of acculturation. Today, the aged live with their kinsmen in the various societies without attention given to them; rather, they are seen as sources of threats and more often threatened to have evil hands in the death younger contemporaries in the society. This paper surveys the use of music for geriatric purposes in the previous epochs in Esan and suggests a continuum of this practice so that fruitful years could be added to the lives of the aged in Esan.


2018 ◽  
Vol 100 (907-909) ◽  
pp. 373-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valérie McKnight Hashemi

AbstractThe International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) revised the access rules to its archives in 2017 for reasons that are complex, fascinating and deeply contemporary to our times. As these rules define when and to what extent the ICRC Archives are made available to the public, their contents are important for the institution as well as for wider audiences. The ICRC must ensure that it can implement its humanitarian mandate to protect and assist victims of armed conflicts and other situations of violence and preserve confidentiality, while sharing its past with the world at large. This article offers a historical overview of the ICRC Archives and the development of their access regulations until their latest revision in 2017. It shows that both today and in the past, the rules of access to the archives have resulted from choices made by the ICRC on how to balance its mandate and long-standing interests with contemporary opportunities and risks related to independent scrutiny.


Author(s):  
Fuad Muhammad Zein

The issue of politics and ethics are two sides of a coin that invited attention of medieval scholars both in the West and the Islamic world. Although interrelated, but the implementation raises the difference between the two worlds. For the Western world, represented by Machiavelli, politics and ethics should be separated. A ruler should not be bound by ethics and tradition, and does not need to obey the law. In domestic relations affairs, a ruler must collect on his love and fear of people. While in foreign affairs, a ruler must reflect "a smart wolf and a strong lion. As for the world of Islam represented by al-Mawardi, politics and ethics cannot be separated. Even the basics of government, he said, are inspired by Islamic values based on the Qur'an and Hadith. Even a ruler must have and improve its ethical because it is a basic rule.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. e0252869
Author(s):  
Melanie Bancilhon ◽  
Marios Constantinides ◽  
Edyta Paulina Bogucka ◽  
Luca Maria Aiello ◽  
Daniele Quercia

Quantifying a society’s value system is important because it suggests what people deeply care about—it reflects who they actually are and, more importantly, who they will like to be. This cultural quantification has been typically done by studying literary production. However, a society’s value system might well be implicitly quantified based on the decisions that people took in the past and that were mediated by what they care about. It turns out that one class of these decisions is visible in ordinary settings: it is visible in street names. We studied the names of 4,932 honorific streets in the cities of Paris, Vienna, London and New York. We chose these four cities because they were important centers of cultural influence for the Western world in the 20th century. We found that street names greatly reflect the extent to which a society is gender biased, which professions are considered elite ones, and the extent to which a city is influenced by the rest of the world. This way of quantifying a society’s value system promises to inform new methodologies in Digital Humanities; makes it possible for municipalities to reflect on their past to inform their future; and informs the design of everyday’s educational tools that promote historical awareness in a playful way.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Maja Gori ◽  
Alessandro Pintucci ◽  
Martina Revello Lami

 On the 23rd of August 2015 Daesh blew up the 2,000-year-old Baal-Shamin temple in the world-famous Greco-Roman site of Palmyra. This event triggered a profound emotional reaction in society at large, and the ruins soon became an iconic symbol of world heritage in danger. The appalling images of the ruins of Baal Shamin reinforced the perception, especially among western observers, that protecting cultural and natural heritage is yet another duty in the fight against terrorism. A similar international outcry occurred in 2001, when the Buddhas of Bamiyan fell to Taliban dynamite in Afghanistan, and when Iraqi museums and sites were ransacked and looted providing two of the most recent and vivid examples of destroyed heritage in the so-called War on Terror which was launched by the U.S. government after 9/11. Following the destruction at Baal-Shamin, UNESCO declared that the deliberate destruction of Syria's cultural heritage was a war crime, and put into motion several projects and actions aimed at preserving endangered Syrian archaeological heritage. At the same time, alongside income gained from the sale of drug and weapons, the trafficking of antiquities from Syria and Iraq worldwide provided a major source of revenue for Daesh.


2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 309-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramin Jahanbegloo

In the past decade, Islam has come to be associated more than ever with images of extremism and violence. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are stock characters in this association, in the aftermath of 11 September and the ‘war on terror’. Lost in all this is a long record of Muslim experience of non-violent change and peace-making. Yet Islam hardly glorifies violence — and does quite explicitly glorify its opposite. History offers much evidence of Muslim tolerance and civil engagement with other faith and cultural traditions. Non-violent Islam could give fresh life to secularism in Muslim societies. It may help steer public space away from state-dominated as well as other forms of political Islam, with their foolish utopias. Realizing the ideals of non-violence is a perennial struggle for Islamic communities around the world - and is part of the struggle for democratic life.


2019 ◽  
Vol 129 (4) ◽  
pp. 123-126
Author(s):  
Patrycja Misztal-Okońska

AbstractEnsuring safety for its citizens is a basic task of each country. In the past this function was limited to providing defence in the armed conflicts, while nowadays modern, highly developed countries are obliged to ensure state of safety and protection to their citizens in each situation. Apart from the natural dangers, which constantly appear depending on the season and climate of a certain area, some changes occurring in the world cause a range of new hazards. They include terrorist attacks, technical failures connected with industry development, as well as new natural dangers appearing as a consequence of climate change caused by significant human interference. Moreover, human actions may be a reason of various catastrophes and accidents occurrence, which require fast and effective reaction of services responsible for the safety of state and citizens. In Poland the system appointed for this purpose is an emergency management system, which functions on the basis of the Act of April 26, 2007 on crisis management.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document