scholarly journals THE ISLAMIC EPISTEME OF POLITIES DEVELOPMENT IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

2020 ◽  
pp. 445-471
Author(s):  
Labeeb Bsoul
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
State System ◽  
Nation State ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Development And Management ◽  
Modern Nation State

This paper illustrates the contributions of Islamic law to the development of transnational socio-political organisations that transcend racial and geopolitical fixations. Those are best enshrined in the premise of the unıty of believing community and humanity led to the Shari‘ah/Islamic law. Islam advocates the development and consolidation of communities. Thıs study dıscusses the concept of ‘ummah’ (community of believers) according to the tradıtıon of Prophet Muhammad and surveys ıts development throughout the Islamıc caliphates, sultanates, and imamates up untıl colonialısm and modern ‘nation-state’ system. The article argues that there are ontological, epistemological, and normative differences spanning the divide between Muslim and Western worldviews especially concerning the development and management of their polities.

scholarly journals Do Human Rights Have a Secular, Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 149 (3) ◽  
pp. 148-169
Author(s):  
T. Jeremy Gunn
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
Mistaken Assumption ◽  
Islamic Values ◽  
Modern Nation State

There is a widely shared belief, both within and outside the Muslim world, that Islamic law cannot be reconciled with the modern human rights regime that developed out of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (udhr). Many Muslims perceive that the purportedly individualistic, secular, and Western orientation of human rights is alien to Islamic values. Abdulaziz Sachedina and other scholars of Islam have argued that the underlying tenets of the udhr and its progeny are simply incompatible with Islamic law. In reality, the problem is not an underlying conflict between human rights and Islam, but the mistaken assumption that the modern nation-state is the proper institution for interpreting and enforcing Islamic law.

The Challenge of Religious Governance in the Modern Nation-State

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-41
Author(s):  
Omer Awass
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Islamic Republic ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Governmental Body ◽  
Islamic Republic Of Iran ◽  
Current Member ◽  
Modern Nation State

Abstract This article explores the tensions of Islamic governance in contemporary Iran by examining the convergence of Islamic law with modern practices of governance. One key contention with contemporary statehood this political project is trying to reconcile is how to re-embed religious norms in the secularized political sphere. I assert that the political and legal practices for re-embedding these norms indicate an epistemic shift in the modes of legitimation within Muslim political and legal tradition possibly leading to the formation of a new Islamic political orthodoxy. This exploration is based on information from ethnographic interviews conducted with the former President of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1989–1997), the late Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and former Minister of Radio and Television (1981–1994) and the current member of the Expediency Council, Muhammad Rafsanjani. The article bases its argument by analyzing two variant forms of political practice. First, scrutinizing the fatwas of Ayatollah Khomeini that played a crucial role in influencing policy in the first decade of the Islamic Republic. Second, examining the adjudications of a conciliar governmental body (Majma-e Tashkhis-e Maslahat) formed a decade after the revolution to resolve the tensions associated with the implementation of Islamic law in this modern nation-state.

War and Religion: The Iran−Iraq War

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peyman Asadzade
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Public Support ◽  
State System ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
Centered Form ◽  
The People ◽  
Modern Nation State

Religion has historically played a central role in motivating rulers to start and individuals to participate in war. However, the decline of religion in international politics following the Peace of Westphalia and the inception of the modern nation-state system, which built and highlighted a sense of national identity, undermined the contribution of religion to politics and consequently, conflict. The case of the Iran−Iraq War, however, shows a different pattern in which religion did play a crucial role in motivating individuals to participate in war. Although the evidence suggests that religious motivations by no means contributed to Saddam’s decision to launch the war, an overview of the Iranian leaders’ speeches and martyrs’ statements reveals that religion significantly motivated people to take part in the war. While Iraqi leaders tried to mobilize the population by highlighting the allegedly Persian-Arab historical antagonism and propagating an Iraqi-centered form of Arab nationalism, Iranian leaders exploited religious symbols and emotions to encourage war participation, garner public support, alleviate the suffering of the people, and build military morale. The Iranian leadership painted the war as a battle between believers and unbelievers, Muslims and infidels, and the true and the false. This strategy turned out to be an effective tool of mobilization during wartime.

Equality and Difference

2018 ◽  
pp. 9-33
Author(s):  
Seyla Benhabib
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
State System ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Political Modernity ◽  
Alternative Institutions ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Equal Citizenship ◽  
Modern Nation State

This chapter explains how in the German—Jewish encounter with political modernity, the contradictory presuppositions constitutive of every nation-state are revealed. Now that the weaknesses of the Westphalian state-system are becoming increasingly apparent, whereas the alternative institutions that ought to transcend this system are still remote, scholars can identify some of these paradoxes more vividly. The dignity of equal citizenship for all and the sovereignty claims of the nation are the dual sources of legitimacy in the modern nation-state, and the tensions among them have accompanied and enframed the people's political experiences since the bourgeois democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century. The chapter shows how Jewish political and legal thinkers of the twentieth century have grappled with both dimensions of this paradox.

The Riddle of the Sands

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Brayton
Keyword(s):  
Coastal Zone ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Intertidal Zone ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Aesthetic Appeal ◽  
Secret Service ◽  
German Coast ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Modern Nation State

The aesthetic appeal of coasts is due in part to the indeterminacy of the intertidal zone. The imagination finds room to play where land and sea meet. This chapter explores the coastal zone that lies at the heart of a novel considered by many to be the first modern spy thriller, Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service. Childers develops the notion of coastal indeterminacy as a figure for the boundaries, ambitions, and limitations of the modern nation-state. The journey of Childers’s characters through a north Atlantic archipelago that extends from the German coast draws a line of association between Europe and Britain, whose form depends on coastlines, estuaries, and shallows. In following this course, Childers creates a narrative fiction that shifts between charts, borders, and languages.

scholarly journals Exemplary Ethical Communities. A New Concept for a Livable Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5582
Author(s):  
Daniele Conversi
Keyword(s):  
Large Body ◽  
State System ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Sustainable Communities ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Social Ecological Systems ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Global Environmental

This article argues that we need to look at living examples provided by non-state communities in various regions of the world that are, perhaps unwittingly, contributing to the maintenance of the Earth’s optimal thermal balance. These fully sustainable communities have been living outside the mainstream for centuries, even millennia, providing examples in the global struggle against the degradation of social–ecological systems. They have all, to varying degrees, embraced simple forms of living that make them ‘exemplary ethical communities’ (EECs)—human communities with a track record of sustainability related to forms of traditional knowledge and the capacity to survive outside the capitalist market and nation-state system. The article proceeds in three steps: First, it condenses a large body of research on the limits of the existing nation-state system and its accompanying ideology, nationalism, identifying this institutional–ideological complex as the major obstacle to tackling climate change. Second, alternative social formations that could offer viable micro-level and micro-scale alternatives are suggested. These are unlikely to identify with existing nation-states as they often form distinct types of social communities. Taking examples from hunter-gatherer societies and simple-living religious groups, it is shown how the protection and maintenance of these EECs could become the keystone in the struggle for survival of humankind and other forms of life. Finally, further investigation is called for, into how researchers can come forward with more examples of actually existing communities that might provide pathways to sustainability and resistance to the looming global environmental catastrophe.

Islamic Law and the Environment in Indonesia

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Gade
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Critical Gap ◽  
Legal Opinions ◽  
Environmental Messages

Based on research in Indonesia in 2010–2013, this essay explains how Muslims expect norms of Islamic law to mobilize religious response to environmental crisis. It surveys attempts since the 1990s to develop “environmental fiqh (Muslim jurisprudence)” in Indonesia, justified in theory by rationales such as that actions causing environmental harm stem ultimately from human moral failing, and also that human aims and activities, including those protected by Islamic law, require a healthy biosphere. Many Indonesians expect Islamic ecological rulings to fill a critical gap in global persuasion, and to be successful when other (non-religious) environmental messages fail. Considering several key fatwas (non-binding legal opinions given in answer to a question) from the local level to the national in Indonesia, this paper explains how law and “outreach” (Ind. dakwah) come together to cast Islamic law of the environment in terms of foundational causes and ultimate effects. These religious norms coexist with and complement other globalized constructions (such as those of the nation-state and NGOs) that they increasingly incorporate.

scholarly journals Islam, State, and Nationalism in Brunei Darussalam, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia: A Comparative Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 182
Author(s):  
Muh Arif Royyani ◽  
Muhammad Shobaruddin
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
State System ◽  
Gray Zone ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Brunei Darussalam ◽  
Library Research ◽  
Independence Era

<p><span lang="EN-US">Islam has comprehensive roles in some aspects of human activity. It enlarged from theological aspect to political aspects. Some former colonized countries where Islam was coexisted, this religion became an embryo of nationalist movements during colonization era. This essay scrutinizes the role of Islam in escalating nationalism during colonization era and it relation with the states in post colonization era in four former colonized countries namely Brunei Darussalam, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia. By using comparative method, the essay researched some main literature (library research) related to Islam and nationalism. It was founded that Islam has significant roles in nationalist movement in the four analyzed countries through several channels. Meanwhile, in the post-independence era, the relation between Islam and state system are variably. In India, Islam is separated from state system (secular). In contrast, Islamic ideology became the main sources of state system in Brunei Darussalam (adopted entirely) and Malaysia (adopted partially). Then, Islam in Indonesia seems like “a gray zone” because the country does not using Islamic law but still adopting Islamic thoughts in several cases. </span></p>

Subversive Archaism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Herzfeld
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Equation Of State ◽  
Urban Slum ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Slum Dwellers ◽  
State Authority ◽  
Modern Nation State

In Subversive Archaism, Michael Herzfeld explores how individuals and communities living at the margins of the modern nation-state use nationalist discourses of tradition to challenge state authority under both democratic and authoritarian governments. Through close attention to the claims and experiences of mountain shepherds in Greece and urban slum dwellers in Thailand, Herzfeld shows how these subversive archaists draw on national histories and past polities to claim legitimacy for their defiance of bureaucratic authority. Although vilified by government authorities as remote, primitive, or dangerous—often as preemptive justification for violent repression—these groups are not revolutionaries and do not reject national identity, but they do question the equation of state and nation. Herzfeld explores the political strengths and vulnerabilities of their deployment of heritage and the weaknesses they expose in the bureaucratic and ethnonational state in an era of accelerated globalization.

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