Militancy, Monarchy and the Struggle to Desacralise Kingship in Arabia

2017 ◽  
pp. 203-218
Author(s):  
Ahmed Dailami
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Economic Capacity

Thirty years of scholarship on Saudi Arabia has assumed a fused relationship between religious and political authority at the helm of a petro-state. This chapter questions the fundamental theoretical assumptions about that relationship both historically and in the contemporary era. By examining the tensions between religious violence, the state’s political authority, and the liberal solutions that have emerged to resolve them, the chapter both draws out the ideological lineage of Saudi reformism for the post-Islamist era, while suggesting new ways to conceptualize political power as distinct from religious authority or economic capacity. In the process, the chapter takes stock of Saudi Arabia’s puritan tradition as its monarchy leads the regional drive against Political Islamism.

Contested identities: Tuan Guru and Ahmadiyah in the redrawing of post-1998 Sasak-Muslim boundary lines in Lombok

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sitti Sani Nurhayati
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Boundary Lines

<p>This study examines what drives the increasing hostility towards Ahmadiyah in post-Suharto Lombok. Fieldwork was undertaken in three villages – Pemongkong, Pancor and Ketapang – where Ahmadiyah communities lived and experienced violent attacks from 1998 to 2010. The stories from these villages are analysed within the context of a revival of local religious authority and the redefinition of the paradigm of ethno-religious identity. Furthermore, this thesis contends that the redrawing of identity in Lombok generates a new interdependency of different religious authorities, as well as novel political possibilities following the regime change. Finally, the thesis concludes there is a need to understand intercommunal religious violence by reference to specific local realities. Concomitantly, there is a need for greater caution in offering sweeping universal Indonesia-wide explanations that need to be qualified in terms of local contexts.</p>

scholarly journals Iran and Saudi Arabia’s Strategic Rivalry and the Middle Eastern Security: An Assessment

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-19
Author(s):  
Azeem Gul ◽  
Rizwana Karim Abbasi ◽  
Syed Arslan Haider
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Positive Development ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
Syrian Crisis ◽  
External Power ◽  
Regional Influence

The strategic rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran has been worsened for the last two decades. This historical sectarian divisions led by Saudi Arabia and Iran has now morphed into a struggle for regional influence between Shia political power led by Iran and Sunni political power led by Saudi Arabia. Against this backdrop, the study examines the contours of the Middle Eastern security in the context of Saudi and Iran strategic rivalry in various conflicts such as crisis in Syria, Yemen, and situation in Iraq including proxy wars and Iran’s nuclear program. The study finds out that the security situation of the Middle East would have been much better if Saudi and Iran would have cooperated on various issues such as Yemen and Syrian crisis. In addition, the internal vulnerabilities of the Middle East with Iran and Saudi strategic antagonism provided opportunities to the external power intervention that further has intensified the conflicts in the region. The study concludes that the solution of the Middle Eastern problem would lie in building cooperation between Iran and Saudi Arabia relations and in this respect the current rapprochement between the two states is a positive development for Middle Eastern security.

The Fall of the Catholic Cosmopolitan: Charles O'Conor and the Catholic Debate on the Act of Union

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-170
Author(s):  
James Livesey
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Catholic Perspective ◽  
The Catholic Church

This article addresses the writing and politics of Charles O'Conor, grandson of the noted antiquarian and founder of the Catholic Committee, Charles O'Conor of Belangare, who as librarian to George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, Marquis of Buckinghamshire, at Stowe played a crucial role in articulating Irish Catholic responses to the 1801 Act of Union. The paper argues O'Conor represented a Catholic perspective that felt an historic compromise between the political authority of the British constitution and the religious authority of the Catholic Church was possible.

"FREELY ELECTED IN FEAR": PRINCELY ELECTIONS AND POLITICAL POWER IN EARLY MODERN TRANSYLVANIA

2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Murdock
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Sufficient Power ◽  
The Right ◽  
Broad Consensus

AbstractTransylvania's survival was threatened by both its Habsburg and Ottoman neighbors. Given this precarious international position, ruling princes required sufficient power to govern effectively, and also needed to maintain a broad consensus for their right to exercise authority over the diverse political elite. A successful balance of power between princes and the estates was built around the freedoms granted to a number of different churches, and around the right of the diet to elect princes. This article examines the elections of Gábor Bethlen and other Calvinist princes in Transylvania during the early seventeenth century. Even though these elections were rarely free or fair, they provided a key basis for the growing political authority of princes who were widely identified as divinely-appointed rulers. Transylvania thus provides a model of a competence for elective monarchy, a form of political organization often thought to lead inevitably to unstable and ineffective government.

scholarly journals Ideology, Rhetoric and Argument

1993 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Weiler
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Rhetorical Criticism ◽  
Political Authority

Rhetorical criticism examines ideology as a form of strategic argumentation that functions to legitimize political authority. Ideology presents itself as political philosophy in a way that calls attention to its argumentation. Ideological arguments support claims (1) that those who wield political power represent the interests of all, and (2) that the existing social order is natural and inevitable in light of human nature. Functionally, ideology is indispensible, but perverse. Formally, ideology is argumentation that obscures its partiality under claims to universality.

scholarly journals The Mountain as Mandala: Kūkai’s Founding of Mt. Kōya

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Bushelle
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
Social World ◽  
The State ◽  
Special Consideration ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Human Agent ◽  
The Social ◽  
Heian Court

This article considers the sociocultural significance of Kūkai’s understanding of Mt. Kōya as a mandala. Locating the context for his formulation of this understanding in his efforts to found Mt. Kōya in the mid-Kōnin era (809–823), it seeks to elucidate its disclosive function. The interpretation is put forward that Kūkai’s mandalic understanding of the mountains disclosed the possibility of a disembedded form of Buddhist life, one in which the human agent is understood to exist outside the social world of the Heian court and the divine cosmos on which it was believed to be grounded. Particular attention is paid to the sociopolitical effects of this disclosure, suggesting specifically that it contributed to the differentiation of religious authority from political power in Japan. To elucidate this process, Kūkai’s founding of Mt. Kōya is situated in a genealogy of monks who founded mountain temples that operated relatively autonomously vis-à-vis the state. Kūkai’s erstwhile collaborator, Saichō, is given special consideration.

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