The New Islamic State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhad Khosrokhavar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
The West ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

The creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) changed the nature of jihadism worldwide. For a few years (2014–2017) it exemplified the destructive capacity of jihadism and created a new utopia aimed at restoring the past greatness and glory of the former caliphate. It also attracted tens of thousands of young wannabe combatants of faith (mujahids, those who make jihad) toward Syria and Iraq from more than 100 countries. Its utopia was dual: not only re-creating the caliphate that would spread Islam all over the world but also creating a cohesive, imagined community (the neo-umma) that would restore patriarchal family and put an end to the crisis of modern society through an inflexible interpretation of shari‘a (Islamic laws and commandments). To achieve these goals, ISIS diversified its approach. It focused, in the West, on the rancor of the Muslim migrants’ sons and daughters, on exoticism, and on an imaginary dream world and, in the Middle East, on tribes and the Sunni/Shi‘a divide, particularly in the Iraqi and Syrian societies.

Islamic International Relations Towards a Theoretical Framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gubara Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The World

The Western originators of the multi-disciplinary social sciences and their successors, including most major Western social intellectuals, excluded religion as an explanation for the world and its affairs. They held that religion had no role to play in modern society or in rational elucidations for the way world politics or/and relations work. Expectedly, they also focused most of their studies on the West, where religion’s effect was least apparent and argued that its influence in the non-West was a primitive residue that would vanish with its modernization, the Muslim world in particular. Paradoxically, modernity has caused a resurgence or a revival of religion, including Islam. As an alternative approach to this Western-centric stance and while focusing on Islam, the paper argues that religion is not a thing of the past and that Islam has its visions of international relations between Muslim and non-Muslim states or abodes: peace, war, truce or treaty, and preaching (da’wah).

scholarly journals The Arabs in the First Communication Revolution: The Development of the Arabic Script

2001 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Issam S. Mousa
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Communication Theory ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Arabic Script

Abstract: Scholars unanimously agree that the development of the alphabet is a cornerstone of civilization and that Greece played a central role in the spread of this medium in the West. Both Latin and Arabic scripts were derived from the Phoenician, which represents a shared cultural heritage between the Middle East and the West. However, the question of the development of the second most used alphabet in the world, Arabic, is riddled with uncertainty for scholars. They disagree on the origin of this significant medium, which has been used by Arabs, Persians, and other nations for the past 15 centuries. This paper examines how critical communication theory may help solve this enduring mystery and finds compelling evidence to suggest that the Arabic script evolved from the Nabataean rather than the Syriac. Résumé : Les spécialistes sont tous d'accord que le développement de l'alphabet a été une pierre angulaire de la civilisation et que la Grèce a joué un rôle primordial dans la diffusion de l'alphabet à travers l'Occident. Les textes latins et arabes sont tous les deux originaires du phénicien, représentant un héritage culturel partagé entre le Moyen Orient et l'Occident. Cependant, la question du développement de l'alphabet arabe, le deuxième plus répandu au monde, est entourée d'incertitude pour les spécialistes. Ceux-ci sont en désaccord sur les origines de ce mode de transmission important, que les Arabes, les Perses et d'autres nations utilisent depuis quinze siècles. Cet article examine comment la théorie critique en communication peut aider à résoudre ce mystère persistant et découvre des indices importants suggérant que l'écriure arabe a évolué du nabatéen plutôt que du syriaque.

scholarly journals The Role of Pakistan in the Organization of Islamic Conference

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-78
Author(s):  
Sulayman S. Nyang
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
The West ◽  
Naval Power ◽  
Muslim People ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

The rise of Western naval power in the world was the consequence ofthe earlier Iberian discovery of peoples, societies and cultures beyond theseas known to the Europeans of the early fifteenth century. It was indeedthese forays and adventures that gradually led to the imposition ofWestern colonial and imperial rule over what were previouslyindependent societies and cultures in Asia and Africa. The Muslimsocieties, along with Buddhist, Hindu, Eastern Christian and traditionalAfrican peoples, were all brought under one European imperial roof,and their societies exposed to the transforming powers of Westernindustrial might.It was of course this rise of the West and the decline of the East that ledto the parcelling out of Muslim lands and to the alteration in the directionand flow of cultural and intellectual exchanges between the Muslims ofthe Indian subcontinent and their brethren elsewhere in Dam1 Islam.With such a division of the Muslim lands, each Muslim people livingunder a given colonial power tried to maintain its Islamic identityagainst whatever odds there were in that colonial system. Pakistaniswere part of this global phenomenon and the creation of their country in1947 dramatized the Muslim feeling of loss of unity and the urgent needto recover the universal feeling of Islamic solidarity which colonial ruleseemingly derailed from the tracks of human history.In this paper I intend to examine and analyze the role of Pakistan inthe Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). Working on theunderstanding that Pakistan at the time of the formation of the OIC in1969, was the most populous Islamic state in the world and that its verycreation was occasioned by the Islamic sentiments of the Muslim ...

6. Religious terror

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-113
Author(s):  
Charles Townshend
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Religious Fundamentalism ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
The West ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Terrorist Acts ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Early 21St Century

In the early 21st century, the world faced a revival of religious fundamentalism. The liberal assumption that the rise of modern society and the demise of religion came hand in hand was thrown into doubt. In the 1980s, terrorism was restricted to a few radical revolutionaries and familiar nationalists. The next decade saw a shift. It was Islam in particular that captured the attention of the West. ‘Religious terror’ considers the relationship between religion and violence, messianism, suicide and self-sacrifice, and fundamentalism, including the rise of the Islamic State movement. Are the motives for such terrorist acts purely religious or are they political as well?

Gesundeit und Leistungsfahigkeit im Kindes- und Jugendalter

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 440-440
Author(s):  
PETER STERN
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
World Health ◽  
German Population ◽  
State Of Health ◽  
Hostile Environment ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Comfort

This book constitutes a valuable contribution to the problems of physical fitness of today's children and adolescents. According to the World Health Organization's definition, "health is a state of complete physical, mental and social comfort." The authors proceed to prove in a series of interesting statistical, sociologic and physiological studies, why the general state of health of West Germany's youth falls short of this goal. In spite of the great reduction of infant mortality and the increase of general life-expectancy in the past 80 years, the situation of the child in modern society is considered to be unsatisfactory. One third of the West German population lives in big cities, believed to create a hostile environment to children, i.e. lack of security and "Lebensraum."

The Legacy of Iraq

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
The World ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Market Capitalism

This book critically reflects on the failure of the 2003 intervention to turn Iraq into a liberal democracy, underpinned by free-market capitalism, its citizens free to live in peace and prosperity. The book argues that mistakes made by the coalition and the Iraqi political elite set a sequence of events in motion that have had devastating consequences for Iraq, the Middle East and for the rest of the world. Today, as the nation faces perhaps its greatest challenge in the wake of the devastating advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and another US-led coalition undertakes renewed military action in Iraq, understanding the complex and difficult legacies of the 2003 war could not be more urgent. Ignoring the legacies of the Iraq War and denying their connection to contemporary events could mean that vital lessons are ignored and the same mistakes made again.

Variable oil and argumentative conflict in the Middle East

2020 ◽  
pp. 824
Author(s):  
Malik Daham Mata’ab
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Large Area ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World

Oil has formed since its discovery so far one of the main causes of global conflict, has occupied this energy map a large area of conflict the world over the past century, and certainly this matter will continue for the next period in our century..

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianfranco Pacchioni
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Radical Transformation

About 10,000 years ago, at the beginning of the agriculturalrevolution, on the whole earth lived between 5 and 8 million hunter-gatherers, all belonging to the Homo sapiens species. Five thousand years later, freed from the primary needs for survival, some belonging to that species enjoyed the privilege of devoting themselves to philosophical speculation and the search for transcendental truths. It was only in the past two hundred years, however, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, that reaping nature’s secrets and answering fundamental questions posed by the Universe have become for many full-time activities, on the way to becoming a real profession. Today the number of scientists across the globe has reached and exceeded 10 million, that is, more than the whole human race 10,000 years ago. If growth continues at the current rate, in 2050 we will have 35 million people committed full-time to scientific research. With what consequences, it remains to be understood. For almost forty years I myself have been concerned with science in a continuing, direct, and passionate way. Today I perceive, along with many colleagues, especially of my generation, that things are evolving and have changed deeply, in ways unimaginable until a few years ago and, in some respects, not without danger. What has happened in the world of science in recent decades is more than likely a mirror of a similar and equally radical transformation taking place in modern society, particularly with the advent ...

Islamic State: Understanding the Nature of the Beast and Its Funding

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Martin ◽  
Hussein Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Terrorist Group ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Annual Income ◽  
International Peace ◽  
Holy War ◽  
World Today ◽  
The World ◽  
Peace And Security

The Islamic State (IS) took the global stage in June 2014 and since has become one of the greatest threats to international peace and security. While initially closely affiliated with Al-Qaeda, the IS has proved itself to be a distinct phenomenon of horror—more dangerous than Al-Qaeda. The group essentially established itself in the volatile Middle East, but has infiltrated many parts of the world with the aim of expanding Islam’s Holy War. What certainly makes the IS different from its predecessors is that the group has been labeled the wealthiest terrorist group in the world today. By the fall of 2015, IS generated an annual income of US$2.4 billion. The question for many analysts observing the situation in Syria is: where does the IS gets its money? The aim of this article is to critically observe the nature of IS and its funding requirements and the measures pursued in curtailing the group’s funding.

scholarly journals Historiographical traditions and modern imperatives for the restoration of global history

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Global History ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Times

This essay has been written to serve as a prolegomenon for a new journal in Global History. It opens with a brief depiction of the two major approaches to the field (through connexions and comparisons) and moves on to survey first European and then other historiographical traditions in writing ‘centric’ histories up to the times of the Imperial Meridian 1783–1825, when Europe’s geopolitical power over all other parts of the world became hegemonic. Thereafter, and for the past two centuries, all historiographical traditions converged either to celebrate or react to the rise of the ‘West’. The case for the restoration of Global History rests upon its potential to construct negotiable meta-narratives, based upon serious scholarship that will become cosmopolitan in outlook and meet the needs of our globalizing world.

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