Society and religion

Turkey ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Finkel

What role does Islam play in Turkish public life? Turkey is both a Muslim-majority country and an avowed secular state. Reconciling these two identities has proven surprisingly complicated. While Turkey lays claim to serving as a cultural ambassador between faiths in a post-9/11 world,...

Author(s):  
Robert W. Hefner

In recent years many Muslim-majority countries have undergone troubled and even tragic political transitions. A key feature of most transitions has been heightened debate over the place of women in public life, and the role of Shari‘a and Islamic ethical traditions in defining women’s roles. This chapter examines the pervasiveness of Shari‘a appeals in today’s transitions, in particular with regard to the Southeast Asian nation of Indonesia. It presents a general model for the analysis of Islamic law and ethical plurality, and then explores the model in relation to the history of Islamic law and gender politics in modern Indonesia. It ends with an analysis of the unsuccessful effort of the Islamic women’s movement in 2004 to introduce far-reaching gender reforms into the codified body of Islamic personal status law used since 1991 in Indonesia’s Islamic courts.


2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niamh Reilly

The renewed vitality of religion in political and public life has prompted reconsideration of established ideas about secularisation and secularism. In Western Europe, ethnocentric enforcements of secularism are implicated in oppressive practices directed at minority women and communities while religiously-justified authoritarian movements against rights for women and LGBTQ people continue to emerge. These ‘postsecular’ challenges require recasting secular thinking within a wider re-theorisation of emancipatory feminist practice. This means recognising the positivity of religious subjectivities and norms in emancipatory political projects. It also entails rethinking the nature of the secular state and challenging oppressions emanating from enforced secularism no less than from coerced conformity to religious norms. The Musawah Framework for Action advanced by the Malaysian advocacy group Sisters in Islam is discussed to illustrate how secular thinking can be recast for emancipatory feminist practice to transform narrow Eurocentric accounts of secularism and patriarchal interpretations of secular and religious norms.


Hawwa ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-110
Author(s):  
Louise Halper

AbstractIran and Turkey, one an Islamic, the other a secular republic, are the more successful loci of women's participation in public life, both politically and economically, than are a number of other states whose population is largely Muslim. I suggest their relative success (as measured by World Bank and UNHDR data) may be due to similar transformative shifts from monarchy to republic. Historical examination of the cases of Turkey and Iran suggests that while the mobilization of women into political activity is crucial, it need not result in similar legal changes. Obviously, the right to vote is fundamental to political participation and exists for women in both countries. The comparison of the two republics suggests that, at least in Muslim-majority countries, a legal regime explicitly protecting gender rights may be less central to social change, including women's participation in public life, than is a history of women's mobilization in support of popular politics.


2005 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 248-265
Author(s):  
Heinrich Bedford-Strohm

Abstract What are the sources from which the liberal secular state regenerates itself? The article describes four answers: the model of civil religion (1), the »Christian occident« model (2), the discourse model (3) and the model of critical integration (4). Drawing on Habermas' and Rawls' late acknowledgment of the important role of religion for public life, the article shows how the model of critical integration of discursive reason and religion is a vital basis for the regeneration of a democratic state. The idea of freedom as a gift is shown to be one example of the contributions public theology can make to the debate on the sources of regeneration of the democratic state. Honoring the dignity of the human person as something given not earned, means building the moral infrastructure of society not on merit but on gratuitousness and the free engagement for the other.


2000 ◽  
pp. 67-75
Author(s):  
R. Soloviy

In the history of religious organizations of Western Ukraine in the 20-30th years of the XX century. The activity of such an early protestant denominational formation as the Ukrainian Evangelical-Reformed Church occupies a prominent position. Among UCRC researchers there are several approaches to the preconditions for the birth of the Ukrainian Calvinistic movement in Western Ukraine. In particular, O. Dombrovsky, studying the historical preconditions for the formation of the UREC in Western Ukraine, expressed the view that the formation of the Calvinist cell should be considered in the broad context of the Ukrainian national revival of the 19th and 20th centuries, a new assessment of the religious factor in public life proposed by the Ukrainian radical activists ( M. Drahomanov, I. Franko, M. Pavlik), and significant socio-political, national-cultural and spiritual shifts caused by the events of the First World War. Other researchers of Ukrainian Calvinism, who based their analysis on the confessional-polemical approach (I.Vlasovsky, M.Stepanovich), interpreted Protestantism in Ukraine as a product of Western cultural and religious influences, alien to Ukrainian spirituality and culture.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-232
Author(s):  
Sam Abede Pareno ◽  
M Rif’an Arif

ABSTRACT Religious traditions in Indonesia are known to be very moderate and tolerant abroad is a reflection of the character of a great noble nation. Between religion, tradition and culture are able to perform compounds so as to create a genuine religious harmony. Because of this reality Indonesia is regarded as the largest Muslim majority country in the world that almost without conflict, in the midst of reality Muslim countries in the Middle East that impressed the dispute into the daily menu. However, the reality of Indonesia as a moderate nation is injured by the act of a group that is fond of terrorism and radicalism by riding Islamic religious teachings. Thus, this reversed religion is assumed as a source of cruelty.   It is through that phenomenon researcher, feel the need to examine the strategy of disseminating moderate Islam by Nahdlatul Ulama. The selection of this Islamic organization according to the authors due to its success in moderating Islam in Indonesia. In this study, the study using a qualitative approach or method as well as adopting the theory of Van Dijk discourse analysis as a scalpel to peel the discourse of moderate Islam published by PWNU East Java through the website. As for this research, the findings are important, among others are: 1) moderate Islamic discourse campaigned by Nahdlatul Ulama East Java is categorized into three segments, namely social, religious and nationality. 2) the text structure that builds moderate Islamic discourse NU East Java in Van Dijk perspective constructed in three domains, namely text, social cognition and social context. 3) the principles of Public Relationship implemented by NU through cyber (online media), among others; News publications and expert opinions, production of image and video-based information, and updating official NU information to the public about their attitudes and views on the phenomena that occur by promoting the values of Islamic moderatism. Key Word : Islamic Moderatism, Nahdlatul Ulama, Cyber Public Relationship


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