Varieties of Secularity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Zemmin
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Research Perspective ◽  
Global Modernity

Modern societies in the Middle East have been shaped by processes of secularization, leading to a state of secularity on two levels: structural differentiations and conceptual distinctions between religion and the secular. Overt promotion of secularism failed to gain wider societal acceptance, especially among those who perceive a tension or contradiction between secularity and Islam. While some scholars share this view, recent works point out conceptual distinctions between the religious and the secular in Islam. After a snapshot of scholarly approaches, this chapter attends first to structural differentiations and then to conceptual distinctions of secularity. It largely focuses on the formative period of modernity but also adds a historical and contemporary dimension. Acknowledging the hegemony of colonial powers in configuring secularity both historically and conceptually, but highlighting Islamic variations and precolonial resources of secularity in the Middle East, this chapter furthers a research perspective on the varieties of secularity in global modernity and their plural genealogies.

Sacred Place and Sacred Time in the Medieval Islamic Middle East

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniella Talmon-Heller
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Sacred Place ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Mamluk Period

Focusing on the construction of sanctity and its manifestations in individual devotions, formal ceremonies and communal rites, this book offers a fresh perspective on religious culture in the medieval Middle East. It investigates Islamic thinking about and practice in sacred places and times through the detailed research of two contested case-studies: the shrine(s) in honour of the head of al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAli, and the (arguably) holy month of Rajab. The narrative spans the formative period of Islam until the late Mamluk period, attuned to changing political contexts and sectarian affiliations, and to the input of the social sciences and the study of religion. The juxtaposition of sacred place and time reveals that the two expanses were regarded as complementary venues for similar religious devotions, and imagined by a common vocabulary.

The Press in the Middle East and North Africa, 1850-1950

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The Press

This volume presents twelve detailed case studies of the press from the Ottoman Empire and the post-Ottoman Arab world including North Africa in the period before independence (c.1850-1950). It charts the emergence of this important medium, its practitioners and its function as a forum and agent in political, social and cultural life in the Middle East and central to an understanding of the development of free speech, civil society, political life and cultural expression. Examining both local and foreign language publications the studies engage with themes such as the reading public, the representation of gender and class, the articulation of national, community and dissident voices in the press and its relationship with political power. The volume also provides a collective exploration of the profile of the practitioners of journalism from political activists and amateurs to the later emergence of the professional journalist in the Middle East. In taking up this focus, the collection argues that the press is both a vector and an agent of history that facilitates critical entrée into the complex processes of political, social and cultural transformation that the region was undergoing during this formative period.

scholarly journals The Motif of the Angel(s) of Death in Islamic Foundational Sources as an Element of Cultural Diffusion

Verbum Vitae ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 1233-1261
Author(s):  
Bożena Prochwicz-Studnicka ◽  
Andrzej Mrozek
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Cultural Diffusion ◽  
Textual Traditions

The article harks back to the publication entitled “The Motif of the Angel(s) of Death in Islamic Foundational Sources” (VV 38/2 [2020]), which was devoted to the analysis of the eponymous theme in the foundational sources of Islam: the Quran and the sunna of the Prophet Muhammad. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the motif of angel(s) may have been borrowed from two monotheistic traditions that came before. The verification of the thesis that the motif of the angel(s) of death underwent diffusion was carried out in several steps. First, the motif was identified in the textual traditions of Judaism and early Christianity (i.e. sets of texts that were known and, in all likelihood, widespread in the Middle East during the formative period of Islam). As a result of the analysis, most of the themes recognised in the foundational texts of Islam were found. The next step was to identify possible routes of their transmission and percolation into the Islamic tradition and to determine the “ideological demand” for the motif of the angel(s) of death in the burgeoning Islam. Although Jewish and Christian imagery and beliefs about angels are an important (if not the primary) source of influence on Muslim angelology, there was most likely a two-way interaction between the monotheistic traditions, albeit to a limited extent.

Modernization Theory, Then and Now

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
Modernization Theory ◽  
Reflexive Modernization ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Global Modernity ◽  
Research Findings

Contrary to the pronouncements of Wallerstein, Alexander and others, modernization theory is far from dead. Publications on modernization theory have increased in number during each successive five-year period since 1970. I distinguish between modernization theory “then” – its formative period from 1949 to 1979, and “now” the period since the 1990s. Two main things have happened to the theory. First, some research findings in diverse sub-fields continue to vary with, and be explained by, societies’ level of modernization, thereby confirming the original modernization paradigm. Second, when other researchers discovered anomalies that could not be explained within the original theory, they did not abandon the theory. Instead, they creatively extended it in new directions that could account for the anomalies, using such concepts as reflexive modernization, risk society, first and second modernity, ecological modernization, evolutionary theory, values modernization, multiple modernities, and global modernity.

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