scholarly journals Islamic Culture and Western Civilization: The Prospects of Coexistence in the Thought of Alija Izetbegović

Author(s):  
Muhammad Akram ◽  
Usman Ali Sheikh

Alija Ali Izetbegović (1925-2003) is one of the outstanding Muslim thinkers in recent history who have re-conceptualized the Islamic worldview and ethos in the context of the contemporary world on the one hand and critically reflected upon the modern Western civilization, on the other. Izetbegović conceives Islam as a system representing a middle path between Christian spiritualism and materialism of modern civilization. However, like any profound philosophical system, his thought requires exposition and interpretation, which the present paper ventures to undertake. Specifically, the paper inquires whether and how far his vision of Islam facilitates coexistence between Muslims and the others, especially regarding the Muslims living in Western societies. The query is crucial because some writers have accused Izetbegović of being a fundamentalist who pursued an agenda of monolithic Islamic culture with little room for meaningful participation of non-Muslims. The paper concludes that contrary to such negative renderings of his thought, Izetbegović was a thinker with a vast intellectual spectrum and an open outlook. Some of his peculiar notions can be conducive to the coexistence between Muslims and other European communities as well as Islamic culture and Western civilization.

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (6) ◽  
pp. 88-99
Author(s):  
Andrey A. Lukashev

The typology of rationality is one of major issues of modern philosophy. In an attempt to provide a typology to Oriental materials, a researcher faces additional problems. The diversity of the Orient as such poses a major challenge. When we say “Oriental,” we mean several cultures for which we cannot find a common denominator. The concept of “Orient” involves Arabic, Indian, Chinese, Turkish and other cultures, and the only thing they share is that they are “non-Western.” Moreover, even if we focus just on Islamic culture and look into rationality in this context, we have to deal with a conglomerate of various trends, which does not let us define, with full confidence, a common theoretical basis and treat them as a unity. Nevertheless, we have to go on trying to find common directions in thought development, so as to draw conclusions about types of rationality possible in Islamic culture. A basis for such a typology of rationality in the context of the Islamic world was recently suggested in A.V. Smirnov’s logic of sense theory. However, actual empiric material cannot always fit theoretical models, and the cases that do not fit the common scheme are interesting per se. On the one hand, examination of such cases gives an opportunity to specify certain provisions of the theory and, on the other hand, to define the limits of its applicability.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric R. Scerri

<span>The very nature of chemistry presents us with a tension. A tension between the exhilaration of diversity of substances and forms on the one hand and the safety of fundamental unity on the other. Even just the recent history of chemistry has been al1 about this tension, from the debates about Prout's hypothesis as to whether there is a primary matter in the 19th century to the more recent speculations as to whether computers will enable us to virtually dispense with experimental chemistry.</span>


1943 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-34
Author(s):  
Kenneth Scott Latourette

A strange contrast exists in the status of the Christian Church in the past seventy years. On the one hand the Church has clearly lost some of the ground which once appeared to be safely within its possession. On the other hand it has become more widely spread geographically and, when all mankind is taken into consideration, more influential in shaping human affairs than ever before in its history. In a paper as brief as this must of necessity be, space can be had only for the sketching of the broad outlines of this paradox and for suggesting a reason for it. If details were to be given, a large volume would be required. Perhaps, however, we can hope to do enough to point out one of the most provocative and important set of movements in recent history.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 12-34
Author(s):  
Nestor A. Manichkin ◽  

The article dwells upon connection between the two most important Kyrgyz traditions: shamanism ( bakshylyk ) and storytelling ( zhomokchuluk ). It considers the general cultural and social field that forms some features that are characteristic of both shamans and storytellers, as well as the traces of pre-Islamic culture that can be found in the world of the Kyrgyz epic. Special attention is paid to the post-folklor version of the epic “Manas” – the dastan “Aykol Manas” and the public discussion around that literary work. The discussion reflects, on the one hand, specific aspects of the understanding of the Kyrgyz epic tradition, and on the other hand, a number of characteristic features that accompany modern transformations of Kyrgyz shamanism.


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 683-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyaves Azeri

An important aspect of Evald Ilyenkov’s theory of social mind is anti-innatism. Anti-innatism is not only the necessary logical outcome of Ilyenkov’s overall philosophical system and in particular of his anti-reductionism, but also it is a socio-historically possible and necessary consequence of the capitalist mode of production, which amounts to the formation of a gap between socially formed human knowledge and growth of the productive powers, on the one hand, and value-producing labour, on the other.


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 53-68
Author(s):  
Mihai Murariu

This article deals with the movement known as “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident,” or Pegida, focusing primarily on the nativist dimension which often takes centre stage in its ideological discourse. Pegida describes itself as a defender of Western Civilization and of its Christian legacy from what it sees as the perils of Islamisation on the one hand, and of globalist political elites on the other. In the context of the political changes and rise of alternative visions of civil society, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, Pegida should arguably be seen as a representative of a growing European nativist wave. Lastly, the article looks at the “Prague Declaration,” a document which was signed in 2016 by Pegida and a number of allied movements from outside of Germany.


2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (02) ◽  
pp. 179-185
Author(s):  
Nicolas Barreyre ◽  
Geneviève Verdo

Over the course of the last twenty years, two historiographical movements have challenged the notion of sovereignty, particularly that of the “natural” anchoring of an absolute, statal form of sovereignty in a uniform territory as its perfected model. On the one hand, the experience of globalization that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall—and which fed talk of the “end of nation-states”—led to a new examination of the political organization of the contemporary world, which in part “deterritorialized” the issue of political control. On the other hand, the extraordinary rise in studies of colonial empires has established that sovereignty, far from being the homogeneous block of the jurist’s refined concept, could be exercised in varying degrees and even be conceived as multiple and “layered.”


Author(s):  
James Davidson

This article examines consumerism, with some evidence for the character of consumption in a very particular time and place: Athens in the two centuries between about 500 and 300 BC. In Athens, the marketplace was centred on the agora proper, a flat area to the north of the acropolis clearly demarcated by boundary stones, but the market spread out from there. Alongside the remarkably precocious linkages between democracy, freedom, individualism, and shopping opportunities which seem to be part of some kind of universalizing or at least very familiar discourse, it is also easy to argue that the peculiarities of the Athenian consumer scape were the consequence of locally contingent conditions: recent history, politics, taxes, laws, and wars. Finally, although the metaphor of consuming was frequently extended to the consumption of sexual services on the one hand and to the ‘gobbling up’ of property on the other, there is little evidence that it was ever extended to ‘the purchase and use’ of semidurables such as household furnishings and clothes.


2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Tapati Guha–Thakurta

The essay narrates the biography of a single art object—acclaimed in recent history as a “masterpiece” of ancient Indian sculpture—to invoke the larger spectrum of practices and discourses that came to constitute the field of art history in modern India. It explores the shifting locations and aesthetic trajectories that marked the transformation of this artifact from a curious archaeological “antiquity” into a national “art-treasure” and icon of Indian femininity, and later even into “a travelling emissary of ancient Indian art and culture.” On the one hand, the spectrum of travels of this object provides an ideal instance for mapping over the twentieth century the changing colonial, national and international stature of Indian art. On the other hand, its career also pointedly reveals the clash of contending claims and the politics of “return” and “restitution” that have attended the nationalization and artistic consecration of many such objects.


2018 ◽  
pp. 25-44
Author(s):  
Muamer Neimarlija

The aim of the current paper is to compare the reception of the Qur’an and Hadith texts related to science in the classical and modern world of Islamic culture. For this purpose, we have made the reinterpretation of certain texts related to science, within the constituent sources of Islam, the Qur’an and the Sunnah of Muhammad s.a.w.s., on the one hand, and the presentation of the attitude of Muslim people towards science in the medieval and modern times, on the other hand. Only certain texts from the Qur’an and Hadith, those, in the author’s opinion, the most relevant ones, were chosen for the further analysis. Moreover, the flash indicators in relation to the Muslim attitude towards science were presented through scientific innovations and current statistical data. For the purposes of this paper, a methodological approach based on the combination of traditional and rational tafsir (Halilović, 2015) and the application of a historical method (Granić & Karić, 2009) was used. The findings reveal the discontinuity of the initial scientific strenuousness within the Muslim circles, as well as the correlation between the multi-century scientific impotence and the long-lasting civilizational flounder of the Muslim community –ummah.


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