scholarly journals “Islamic Moderation” in Perspectives: A Comparison Between Oriental and Occidental Scholarships

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tazul Islam ◽  
Amina Khatun
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
Legal Position ◽  
Western Scholarship ◽  
Willingness To Cooperate ◽  
Contextual Difference

‘Islamic moderation’ has received a great deal of academic and media attention both in the West and in the East. Yet, the denotation of the very term still remains abundantly paradoxical as different regions and contexts provide different sheds of meanings. In the western scholarship, Islamic moderation is concerned with liberal social norms, hermeneutics, political pluralism, democratic process, organizational affinities, and views of state legitimacy over the monopoly of violence, some kind of adaptation, willingness to cooperate or compromise. However, it is by no means exhaustive as its definition in Islamic scholarship provides some unlike constituents. To define moderation, Muslim scholars, firstly explores to lexical meanings of its Arabic substitute “wasatiyyah”. Secondly, they explore the textual meanings of the word “wasatiyyah” used in the orthodox text i.e the Quran and traditions (Sunnah) of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). According to them, moderation is a best suited, justly balanced or middle position between two extremes i.e. extremism and laxity. Their use of the term, is contextualized in terms of counter-extremism, modest socio-religious behaviour and temperate legal position. This research finds out a considerable textual and contextual difference in the use of the term ‘Islamic moderation’ between the East and the West. Hence, this study aims to explore the lack of integration between both scholarships in this issue. 

The Western Connection: Western Support for the East German Opposition

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Financial Support ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
The West ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
East German ◽  
Environmental Network ◽  
The Relationship

Without help from the west, the small East German opposition,such as it was, never would have achieved as much as it did. Themoney, moral support, media attention, and protection provided bywestern supporters may have made as much of a difference to theopposition as West German financial support made to the East Germanstate. Yet this help was often resented and rarely acknowledgedby eastern activists. Between 1988 and 1990, I worked withArche, an environmental network created in 1988 by East Germandissidents. During that time, the assistance provided by West Germans,émigré East Germans, and foreigners met with a level of distrustthat cannot entirely be blamed on secret police intrigue.Outsiders who tried to help faced a barrage of allegations and criticismof their work and motives. Dissidents who elected to remain inEast Germany distrusted those who emigrated, and vice versa,reflecting an unfortunate tendency, even among dissidents, to internalizeelements of East German propaganda. Yet neither the helpand support the East German opposition received from outside northe mentalities that stood in its way have been much discussed. Thisessay offers a description and analysis of the relationship betweenthe opposition and its outside supporters, based largely on one person’sfirst-hand experience.

The Qur’anic Calf Episode Between Orientalism and Islamic Tradition

2020 ◽  
pp. 265-317
Author(s):  
Michael E. Pregill
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The West ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
Golden Calf ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Western Scholarship ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Radical Revision

This chapter discusses the qur’anic Golden Calf episode as it is traditionally interpreted in both Muslim exegesis and Western scholarship. The qur’anic references to the image worshipped by the Israelites are usually understood as depicting the Calf as alive or at least possessing some semblance of life—as ? lowing image of a calf, as the Qur’an puts it. Further, the Qur’an seems to posit that the Calf was made and animated by a character called al-sāmirī—the “Samaritan”—and not Aaron as in the biblical story. Western scholars and traditional Muslim commentators have always agreed on this interpretation of the qur’anic version of the episode. However, this chapter shows that Western scholars have generally relied upon the explanation of the episode in Muslim exegesis or tafsīr, misunderstanding the role that early Muslim commentators played in introducing a radical revision of the story that was quite different in major details from the account found in the Qur’an itself. This can be demonstrated by examining historical translations of the Qur’an in the West, beginning with some of the earliest translations and commentaries of the medieval and early modern periods in Europe. In the specific case of the Calf narrative, Western scholars’ reliance on tafsīr has typically been motivated not by a desire to validate the claims of Muslim authorities, but rather by the assumption that Islam is at its root thoroughly dependent upon Judaism. This assumption has colored not only the overarching approach to the qur’anic narrative per se, but also the characterization of a number of rabbinic traditions that have been cited as the sources of that narrative.

Women and Terrorism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mia Bloom
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Honor Code ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Terrorist Organizations ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
Security Personnel ◽  
Untapped Resource ◽  
The Ideal

Women are playing an increasingly significant role in terrorism. As men are progressively targeted by security personnel, using female operatives provides terrorist organizations with a “win-win” scenario; if security forces avoid invasively searching women for fear of outraging the local conservative population (based on social norms of women’s modesty and the honor code), women are the ideal stealth operatives. If security personnel are too aggressive in searching women, they aid terrorist recruitment by outraging the men in that society and providing the terrorists with propaganda that “our women” are being violated. In most conflicts, women remain an untapped resource. Recruiting women allows terrorist organizations to access an additional 50% of the population. Female attacks generate greater media attention than those conducted by men. This is especially relevant when media attention is one of the terrorists’ main objectives. Although women’s involvement in terrorist and extremist activities is not a recent development, their presence as frontline activists, propagandists, and recruiters is increasing around the globe.

India's Foreign Economic Policies

1955 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 546-571
Author(s):  
Jerome B. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The West ◽  
Mixed Economy ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
Communist China ◽  
The Cold War

While the West is occupied with the cold war, an economic test is slowly shaping in Asia. Upon its outcome may depend the political beliefs and allegiance of half the world's people. The issue may be stated simply, although the forces at work are complex and intricate: Can India, with a population of 360 million, under the democratic process, with free elections and a mixed economy similar to mat of many Western nations, meet the national aspirations for economic betterment and a more abundant life more fully and more rapidly than Communist China, with its totalitarian rule of 500 million people and its forced labor, forced investment, and forced production? In spite of all the propaganda about progress in Communist China, it is probable that the Indian record of actual achievement is more impressive, though less well publicized.

Cultural Studies in China: towards closing the gap between elite culture and popular culture

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
WANG NING
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
The West ◽  
Chinese Context ◽  
Elite Culture ◽  
Closing The Gap ◽  
The Mainland Of China ◽  
Western Scholarship

This essay deals with cultural studies, including elite culture and its products (literature and the performing arts), as well as studies of film and TV and other expressions of popular culture in the mainland of China. It lays particular emphasis on the currently prevailing concept of Cultural Studies introduced from the West at the beginning of the 1990s. The author addresses the following issues: how Cultural Studies was introduced into the Chinese context, how it was integrated with existing practices of cultural history and comparative literature studies, how it was institutionalized in China, and how it was developing into a position from where it can engage in a dialogue with Western scholarship against the background of increasing globalization. According to the author, Cultural Studies has much in common with literary studies, especially in the Chinese context. Therefore, these two branches of learning should not necessarily be seen as opposed to one another. Literary and cultural studies are complementary rather than exclusionary towards each other.

scholarly journals Prophet Muhammad and His Western Critics

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-164
Author(s):  
Ibrahim Kalin
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
The West ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Western Scholar ◽  
Western Scholarship ◽  
The Relationship

This book by the Pakistani scholar Zafar Ali Qureshi is devoted to animportant aspect of the relationship between Islam and the West.The image of the Prophet Muhammad (pbu) produced by western scholarsof Islam has determined, in many ways, the parameters of the relationshipbetween the two religions and the respective civilizations to which theyhave given rise. The main argument of Qureshi's extremely well-researchedbook is that the western scholarship bred by the centuries-oldChristian prejudices against Islam has tried to undermine the religious andintellectual basis of Islam by undermining the central place and authority ofthe Prophet of Islam. This strategy was in no way accidental, because theChristian conception of religion takes as the basis of the Divine revelationnot the revealed book, i.e., the Qur'an or the Bible, but Jesus Christ. Seenthrough the eyes of Christology, Islam could not be anything other than'Muhammadanism', and any scholarly treatment of it was bound to bebased on the figure of the Prophet of Islam. It was within this frameworkthat a number of historicist and materialist accounts were given to provethat the Prophet Muhammad was not an authentic prophet and that hismotives were basically political, tribal or economic.The number of books produced in this line of spurious scholarship isimmense, and Qureshi has carried out an immense survey of westernliterature on the life and personality of the Prophet. Although the authorspans through hundreds of books produced in the West, he focuses on thework of Rev. Montgomery Watt, the celebrated western scholar of Islam.The reason for this concentration is that Watt's two-volume work on the ...

scholarly journals Ebola and State Legitimacy

2019 ◽  
Vol 129 (621) ◽  
pp. 2064-2089 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Flückiger ◽  
Markus Ludwig ◽  
Ali Sina Önder
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
West African ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
Public Good Provision ◽  
Trust In Government ◽  
The West ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
Good Provision

Abstract We exploit the West African Ebola epidemic as an event that necessitated the provision of a common-interest public good, Ebola control measures, to empirically investigate the effect of public good provision on state legitimacy. Our results show that state legitimacy, measured by trust in government authorities, increased with exposure to the epidemic. We argue, supported by results from SMS-message-based surveys, that a potentially important channel underlying this finding is a greater valuation of control measures in regions with intense transmission. Evidence further indicates that the effects of Ebola exposure are more pronounced in areas where governments responded relatively robustly to the epidemic.

scholarly journals China Scholars and the Media: Improving an Awkward, Important Relationship

2014 ◽  
Vol 220 ◽  
pp. 1111-1122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Important Task ◽  
The West ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The World ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Media Discourses

AbstractPublic interest in China, as reflected in the level of media attention, is burgeoning in the West and elsewhere in the world. This interest is driven by China's increasing presence and importance in the lives of people around the world; and for the same reason is likely to continue growing. Since media discourses are the main way in which Western publics receive information about China, contributing to media reports and helping journalists reach deeper understandings is an important task and opportunity for academics whose specialist knowledge of China is often more nuanced than that of generalist China correspondents. Although developments in the two professions are demanding closer and more frequent interactions, many scholars are reluctant to engage. This is partly due to structural disincentives within the academy, and partly due to obstacles in the scholar–media relationship. Focusing on the latter, the objective of this article is to illuminate how China scholars and journalists currently interact, and to identify means to increasing their efficiency and sustainability.

Introduction: Parties, Party Choice, and Partisanship in East Asia

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell J. Dalton ◽  
Yun-han Chu ◽  
Doh Chull Shin
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Electoral Competition ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Party Choice ◽  
Democratic Polity ◽  
Political Interests

Political parties are widely seen as “a sine qua non for the organization of the modern democratic polity and for the expression of political pluralism.” The manner in which parties articulate political interests largely defines the nature of electoral competition, the representation of citizen interests, the policy consequences of elections—and ultimately the functioning of the democratic process.

scholarly journals ENGLISH-INTRODUCTION TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF ISLAM (A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ORIENTALIST APPROACH AND WESTERN SUPREMACY)

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-62
Author(s):  
Moosa Lakhani ◽  
◽  
Mukhtiar Ahmed Kandharo ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Scholarship ◽  
Intangible Investment

Orientalism is an idea originated in the west to define east and its forms of arts. It gained its strength from the Industrial west, which provided for necessary tangible and intangible investment necessary in furtherance of the idea from defining Europeans for not only east but also all non-Europeans. The paper elaborates the nature of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI1) in the light of orientalism and explains how the west used it to create western supremacy. The paper also considers different aspects of the EI1 to establish why and how it was an essential book for the western scholarship tilted towards Islam and how and why it was painted with objective and biased approach.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document