scholarly journals Factors of Transformation of Political Islam in World Politics: Origins of Violence and Terrorism

Author(s):  
H. R. Jabbarinasir

The article studies factors of transformation of political Islam and reasons for its “tightening” in the modern context. On the basis of the ideas of social constructivism, the author traces the main milestones in the evolution of political Islam and the formation of its radical branches that orient towards violence and terrorism. The article examines nine mega-events that ultimately determined the specifics of the modern union of Islam and poli tics — the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the September 11 attacks (2001), the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the “Arab Spring”, and the establishment of political Islam with a “Turkish face”. The author demonstrates that after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Islam began to gradually transform from the social phenomenon into the world-political factor. Initially, this tendency was observed in the intellectual and ideological spheres, but then penetrated practical politics. The article identifies four models of modern political Islam — Shiite, Salafi-jihadist, Takfirist-jihadist and moderate political Islam. According to the author’s conclusion, the attitude towards violence within these models is largely determined by the peculiarities of the formation, geographic ambitions and goals of the respective branches. The Shiite branch of political Islam that has established in Iran justifies violence for solving defensive tasks and appeals mainly to the categories of justice and protection of the oppressed. Salafijihadist and Takfirist groups, in essence, see violence as a key instrument for implementing the commandments of Allah and rebuilding the world on the principles of Sharia. The moderate political Islam (as shown by analyzing the case of Turkey) completely rejects violence, and religion remains largely a social phenomenon, although it is used for political purposes, in particular, to attract the electorate. On the basis of his analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that the idea of violence as an inherent element of political Islam is erroneous, but at the same time he points out risks of the increasing significance of this factor.

Author(s):  
Volker R. Berghahn

This chapter covers the years up to the official American entry into World War II on the side of Britain and the Soviet Union against Germany, Italy, and Japan. During the years 1933–41, strategies were developed by those six countries and then turned into actual policies that determined the shape of the relations of American big business with Britain and Germany during the subsequent wartime and postwar periods. And this decade was also decisive for the organization of both the world economy and world politics for the following fifty years until the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989–90.


1948 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-83
Author(s):  
Robert Strausz-Hupe

International politics, like nature, is a system of processes. There are no simple causes and effects of historical developments. The record of the past tends to determine the present — until circumstance intervenes. Peoples, like individuals, are at the mercy of what is called chance, and an apparently meaningless combination of circumstances may frustrate the culmination of long-developed tendencies. Tendency is conservative of past forms, and circumstance may appear formless, but their balanced interplay is the source of novel forms. It is only within the frame of reference of these three terms — tendency, circumstance and novelty — that forecasting future developments can derive its warrant from an exact science of prediction. The basic conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union is the central issue of world politics. Sir Halford Mackinder's celebrated theorem — the juxtaposition of the continental empire of Eurasia and the Oceanic Powers, and the contest over the vast rimland interposed be-between the “heartland” and the littoral of Eurasia — is today as brilliant a summation of the world strategic problem as it was forty years ago when it was first propounded.


1949 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 605-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Easton Rothwell

When the Soviet Union withdrew recently from the World Health Organization, a somewhat startled world learned that even the prevention of disease can be affected by world politics. The most cursory study of international organizations for other purposes discloses that none is immune to world social and political forces. On the contrary, they are in varying degree shaped and influenced by these forces, and in fact serve as vehicles for their expression.


1995 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Jabara Carley

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-41
Author(s):  
A. Mustafabeyli

In many political researches there if a conclusion that the world system which was founded after the Second world war is destroyed of chaos. But the world system couldn`t work while the two opposite systems — socialist and capitalist were in hard confrontation. After collapse of the Soviet Union and the European socialist community the nature of intergovernmental relations and behavior of the international community did not change. The power always was and still is the main tool of international communication.


2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Michael Martinez

In the wake of India's May 1998 decision to resume nuclear testing for the first time since 1974, as well as arch-rival Pakistan's subsequent response, the attention of the world again has focused on nuclear nonproliferation policy as a means of maintaining stability in politically troubled regions of the world. The 1990s proved to be an uncertain time for nonproliferation policy. Pakistan acquired nuclear capabilities. Iraq displayed its well-known intransigence by refusing to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arms inspectors access to facilities suspected of manufacturing nuclear weapons. North Korea maintained a nuclear weapons program despite opposition from many Western nations. Troubling questions about nuclear holdings persisted in Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa. New nuclear powers were created in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Even the renewal of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1995 failed to assuage the concerns of Western powers fearful of aggressive measures undertaken by rogue nuclear proliferants.


1963 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 226-230

The Security Council discussed this question at its 1022nd–1025th meetings, on October 23–25, 1962. It had before it a letter dated October 22, 1962, from the permanent representative of the United States, in which it was stated that the establishment of missile bases in Cuba constituted a grave threat to the peace and security of the world; a letter of the same date from the permanent representative of Cuba, claiming that the United States naval blockade of Cuba constituted an act of war; and a letter also dated October 22 from the deputy permanent representative of the Soviet Union, emphasizing that Soviet assistance to Cuba was exclusively designed to improve Cuba's defensive capacity and that the United States government had committed a provocative act and an unprecedented violation of international law in its blockade.


1992 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-281
Author(s):  
Robert Siekmann

Especially as a consequence of the termination of the Cold War, the détente in the relations between East en West (Gorbachev's ‘new thinking’ in foreign policy matters) and, finally, the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the number of UN peace-keeping operations substantially increased in recent years. One could even speak of a ‘proliferation’. Until 1988 the number of operations was twelve (seven peace-keeping forces: UNEF ‘I’ and ‘II’, ONUC, UNHCYP, UNSF (West New Guinea), UNDOF AND UNIFIL; and five military observer missions: UNTSO, UNMOGIP, UNOGIL, UNYOM and UNIPOM). Now, three forces and seven observer missions can be added. The forces are MINURSO (West Sahara), UNTAC (Cambodia) and UNPROFOR (Yugoslavia); the observer groups: UNGOMAP (Afghanistan/Pakistan), UNIIMOG (Iran/Iraq), UNAVEM ‘I’ and ‘II’ (Angola), ONUCA (Central America), UNIKOM (Iraq/Kuwait) and ONUSAL (El Salvador). UNTAG (Namibia), which was established in 1978, could not become operational until 1989 as a result of the new political circumstances in the world. So, a total of twenty-three operations have been undertaken, of which almost fifty percent was established in the last five years, whereas the other half was the result of decisions taken by the United Nations in the preceding forty years (UNTSO dates back to 1949). In the meantime, some ‘classic’ operations are being continued (UNTSO, UNMOGIP, UNFICYP, UNDOF, and UNIFIL), whereas some ‘modern’ operations already have been terminated as planned (UNTAG, UNGOMAP, UNIIMOG, UNAVEM ‘I’ and ‘II’, and ONUCA). At the moment (July 1992) eleven operations are in action – the greatest number in the UN history ever.


Slavic Review ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Arch Getty

It is clear that tested by the Constitution of the Soviet Union as revised and enacted in 1936, the USSR is the most inclusive and equalised democracy in the world.Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 1937Many who lauded Stalin's Soviet Union as the most democratic country on earth lived to regret their words. After all, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 was adopted on the eve of the Great Terror of the late 1930s; the “thoroughly democratic” elections to the first Supreme Soviet permitted only uncontested candidates and took place at the height of the savage violence in 1937. The civil rights, personal freedoms, and democratic forms promised in the Stalin constitution were trampled almost immediately and remained dead letters until long after Stalin's death.


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