scholarly journals Modern Theories and Islamic Concept of Jihad Impacting Pakistan Security Dilemma

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 76-89
Author(s):  
Muhammad Tariq Javed
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Just War ◽  
National Interest ◽  
State Policies ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Security Dilemma ◽  
The West ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Western View

Pakistan National Security is directly related to a mix of Islamic precepts and the implications of contemporary real politics. Initially modern theories were a philosophical response to priesthood of the time hedging Christianity for their own predominance. With the advent of Islam the West applied the same antipathy to the faith of Islam and later it impacted Muslim states and Regions. The West however, circumvented religion as historical legacy representing Christianity. Pakistan being part of wider Muslim world is prone to historically prejudiced; direct and indirect threats based on Modern political theories. Modern theories are Euro-centric owing to their war prone regional history. Islamic Security concepts characterize trans-border implication. Modern political and security perspective are based on; personal experience of the people gone through wars and civil chaos whereas Islamic concept of just war is based on faith absolutes and Meta narratives1. Modern theories imply human nature as a pivot to craft response in anticipation of a predetermined threat to justify pre-emption. Modern theories have become the seed of modern state policies. Islam makes it obligatory to prepare and built power to first deter and retaliate only under tyranny, oppression and under the threat of expulsion and extermination. Pakistan military initiative are deemed inspired by Islamic concept of Jihad and have become cause of her Security Dilemma due to prejudiced Western view. Islam emphasis on mankind as one whole universal community called ‘Ummah’. The modern theories divide the world on National identifies and globalizes only trade and transactions. National Interest in modern theories is pivotal to the state policies. This marked difference is sometime purposely confused as a strategy to dub even a legitimate resistance or movement as Terrorism depending on National Interest expediency. The major cause of conflict is embedded in Islamic and modern political connotations of a just war. These polemical perspectives explain Pakistan Security Dilemma as part of the Muslim world and a need for negotiated understanding for peace and stability and interfaith harmony.

scholarly journals The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan

1986 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-297
Author(s):  
Mushtaqur Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
The West ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Oil Flow ◽  
New Social Order

ISLAM is as natural to the people of Afghanistan as the air they breathe.Any system repugnant to Islam or the introduction of alien forces to introducea new social order has always been resisted by the Afghans. The presentAfghan-Soviet war is one such story.The war is a matter of vital importance because its outcome will immenselyaffect Pakistan, Iran, and the rest of the Muslim world. It will also upset thebalance of power between the West and the Soviets, and might change thedirection of oil flow. It is curious that the war is not given the support orattention it deserves, in spite of its global ramifications. The West perhapsignores the war as Afghanistan is far removed from the Western mainstream,and its impact is not generally understood because the Afghan Mujahideenlack a sophisticated network of information. Moreover, the Soviets continuemisleading the world by claiming the war is only a law and order problembetween the Afghan government and a handful of “bandits” encouraged fromoutside.The war is neither a law and order matter nor its impact hard to realize.Afghan Mujahideen are fighting the Soviets to force them out of Afghanistan,and the Soviets are trying to hold on using biological, chemical, and othersophisticated weapons. In spite of enormous destruction and genocide, theAfghan Mujahideen are determined to fight to the last, and so apparently arethe Soviets to consolidate their occupation of Afghanistan. This paper presentsan analysis of the war and its impact on Pakistan, the Muslim world, andthe West from a geopolitical standpoint. A brief discussion of Afghanistanexplains the former status of Afghanistan as a buffer state first between theRussians and the British and later between the Soviets and Pakistan.Modern Afghanistan dates back to 1747 when Ahmad Shah Durrani tookover reins of that country. More or less during the same time, the British ...

Islam, the West, and Ethnonationalism

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-68
Author(s):  
Iftikhar Malik
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
The Us ◽  
Western View ◽  
New Generation

Western analysis, due to its dangerous oversimplification of Islam and othermatters in the Muslim world, has traditionally seen the appearance of anyindigenous movement calling for change and improvement in the name of Islamas a major threat. Muslims continue to be viewed in the stereotypical perspectiveof the “us-against-them” syndrome, a practice which prevents a propercomprehension of the dynamics and dilemmas faced by Muslims in thepostcolonial era. The Western media and, to some extent, academia thrive onsuch themes as minority rights, nuclear proliferation, human rights, anddemocracy, which they use as barometers. Based on the data which they collect,they then pass sweeping decrees about Muslim countries. Internal diversity andconflict receive a great deal of attention, whereas human achievements andcivilizational artifacts are considered as “foreign” to the Muslim ethos. Islamas a religion is reduced to so-called “fundamentalism” and a mere puritanicaland/or coercive theological orthodoxy. Moreover, no distinction is made betweenIslam as a religion and Muslim cultures and societies, nor between Muslimaspirations for unity and the realities of national and ethnic differentiation. Theresult is a Western view which both distorts and demonizes a large part of theMuslim world.As if this were not enough, Muslims in the post-Cold War era are now beingpresented and “imagined” as the next enemy. Among the factors responsible forthis are a) the multiple nature of the Muslim world, given its geostrategic locationright next to Europe; b) Islam as the second major religion in the West; and c)the assertion of a new generation of Muslim expatriate communities at a time ...

A re-examination of al-Mahdī's letter to the Yemenites on the genealogy of the Fatimid caliphs

1983 ◽  
Vol 115 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbas Hamdani ◽  
François de Blois
Keyword(s):  
Academic Question ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The West ◽  
The People ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Subject

Ever since the establishment of the Fatimid empire in the early part of the 10th century of the Christian era the origin of its rulers has been the subject of incessant discussion and polemics. This was, for the people of the time, no idle academic question, but one of immediate political importance. The defenders of the declining Abbasid state went to great lengths to discredit the rulers of the dynamic rival caliphate in the West, denouncing them not only as rebels and heretics, but also as impudent swindlers falsely claiming to belong to the house of the Prophet, while they were in reality the offspring of one Maymūn al-Qaddāḥ. The Fatimid rulers, for their part, maintained all along that they did indeed belong to the family of Muḥammad, and traced their lineage, at least from the middle of the 10th century onwards, to Ismā‘īl, the second son and, it was claimed, only legitimate successor of the famous Shi‘ite leader Ja‘far al-Ṣādiq, the great-grandson of ‘All and of Fāṭimah, the Prophet's daughter. The Ismaili descent of these rulers became a matter of faith for their partisans, who survive to the present day, in various branches, proudly identifying themselves precisely as “Ismailis”. Historians, whether in the Muslim world or, later, in the West, have taken sides in this ancient dispute, which flares up again from time to time, often with astonishing ferocity.

scholarly journals In Defence of Just War: Christian Tradition, Controversies, and Cases

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-17
Author(s):  
Nigel Biggar
Keyword(s):  
Remote Control ◽  
International Law ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Just War ◽  
National Interest ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Cyber Aggression ◽  
The People ◽  
Conceptual Problems

This article presents four controversial issues that are raised by the articulation of just war thinking in my book, In Defence of War (2013, 2014): the conception of just war as punitive, the penultimate nature of the authority of international law, the morality of national interest, and the elasticity of the requirement of proportionality. It then proceeds to illustrate the interpretation of some of the criteria of just war in terms of three topical cases: Britain’s belligerency against Germany in 1914, the Syrian rebellion against the Assad regime in 2011, and Israe’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza in 2013. It is often claimed that just war thinking has been rendered obsolete by novel phenomena such as nuclear weapons, wars ‘among the people’, war-by-remote-control, and cyber-aggression. The presentation of issues and cases in this article, notwithstanding its brevity, is sufficient to show that just war thinking continues to develop by wrestling with controversial conceptual problems and thinking its way through novel sets of circumstances.

Universal Values and Muslim Democracy

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Anwar Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
World Today ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Dignified Life

This study deals with Universal Values and Muslim Democracy. This essay draws upon speeches that he gave at the New York Democ- racy Forum in December 2005 and the Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Istanbul in April 2006. The emergence of Muslim democracies is something significant and worthy of our attention. Yet with the clear exceptions of Indonesia and Turkey, the Muslim world today is a place where autocracies and dictatorships of various shades and degrees continue their parasitic hold on the people, gnawing away at their newfound freedoms. It concludes that the human desire to be free and to lead a dignified life is universal. So is the abhorrence of despotism and oppression. These are passions that motivate not only Muslims but people from all civilizations.

INTERPRETATION OF THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN MODERN POLITICAL THEORIES

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-96
Author(s):  
Sayyora Saidova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Human Heart ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Religious Policy ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Religious Factor ◽  
Religious Aspect

In the Middle East, the processes for leadership among religious and democratic progress in North Africa require that the state pursue secular policy on a scientific and dialectical basis. Because religious beliefs have become so ingrained in secular life that it is difficult to separate them. Because in the traditions and customs of the people, in various ceremonies, there is a secular as well as a religious aspect. Even the former Soviet Constitution, based on atheism, could not separate them. Religious faith has lived in the human heart despite external prohibitions. National independence has given freedom to religious belief, which is now breathing freely in the barrel. The religious policy of our state strengthens and expands this process and guarantees it constitutionally.

Growing Coconut Palms in the Pacific Islands: Colliding Knowledge and Values

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith A. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Coconut Oil ◽  
Tropical Pacific ◽  
Experiential Knowledge ◽  
The West ◽  
Passive Resistance ◽  
The People ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Tropical Pacific

Coconuts provided commodities for the West in the form of coconut oil and copra. Once colonial governments established control of the tropical Pacific Islands, they needed revenue so urged European settlers to establish coconut plantations. For some decades most copra came from Indigenous growers. Administrations constantly urged the people to thin old groves and plant new ones like plantations, in grid patterns, regularly spaced and weeded. Local growers were instructed to collect all fallen coconuts for copra from their groves. For half a century, the administrations’ requirements met with Indigenous passive resistance. This paper examines the underlying reasons for this, elucidating Indigenous ecological and social values, based on experiential knowledge, knowledge that clashed with Western scientific values.

Religious Freedom in Islam

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Philpott
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Human Right ◽  
The West ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
Muslim Majority

Is Islam hospitable to religious freedom? The question is at the heart of a public controversy over Islam that has raged in the West over the past decade-and-a-half. Religious freedom is important because it promotes democracy and peace and reduces ills like civil war, terrorism, and violence. Religious freedom also is simply a matter of justice—not an exclusively Western principle but rather a universal human right rooted in human nature. The heart of the book confronts the question of Islam and religious freedom through an empirical examination of Muslim-majority countries. From a satellite view, looking at these countries in the aggregate, the book finds that the Muslim world is far less free than the rest of the world. Zooming in more closely on Muslim-majority countries, though, the picture looks more diverse. Some one-fourth of Muslim-majority countries are in fact religiously free. Among the unfree, 40% are repressive because they are governed by a hostile secularism imported from the West, and the other 60% are Islamist. The emergent picture is both honest and hopeful. Amplifying hope are two chapters that identify “seeds of freedom” in the Islamic tradition and that present the Catholic Church’s long road to religious freedom as a promising model for Islam. Another chapter looks at the Arab Uprisings of 2011, arguing that religious freedom explains much about both their broad failure and their isolated success. The book closes with lessons for expanding religious freedom in the Muslim world and the world at large.

Legitimizing Transformation without Calling it Change:Tajdīd, Iṣlāḥ, and Saudi Arabia’s Place in the Contemporary World

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Sean Foley
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Political System ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
The West ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The People ◽  
Diverse Society ◽  
Oil Revenues

For decades, many scholars have contended that Saudi Arabia is a fixed political system, where a conservative monarchy uses advanced technology, oil revenues, and religion to dominate the people. Such a system is often portrayed as inherently unstable, a seemingly never-ending series of collisions between an unchanging traditional political structure seeking to hold on to power at any cost and a dynamic modernity—a view encapsulated in a phrase expressed at virtually every public discussion of the Kingdom in the West: ‘you must admit that Saudi Arabia must change’. Ironically this phrase confirms what this article argues is a secret to the success of Saudi Arabia in the contemporary era: the ability to legitimize transformation without calling it change. No society is static, including Saudi Arabia. Throughout the Kingdom’s history, the defining social institutions have repeatedly utilized Tajdīd (Revival) and Iṣlāḥ (Reform) to respond to new technologies and the changing expectations of a diverse society. While Muslim scholars are most often entrusted to arbitrate this process, ordinary Saudis use this process to guide their actions in the various social spaces they encounter both at home and abroad. Critically, this process reflects the response of King Abdulaziz and the founders of the third Saudi state in the early twentieth century to the factors that had brought down previous Saudi states in the nineteenth century.

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