A RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA UNTIL 11TH CENTURY CE

Islam spread in the African continent in phases and in different ages. The process occurred through either expansion of Muslim power as in North Africa, or trading as happened in West Africa. Falola argued that the process of spreading Islam in West Africa generally occurred peacefully through trading and preaching. In that regard, the purpose of this article is to examine the process of spreading Islam in West Africa until the 11th century CE. On the whole, this article is a qualitative research using historical study and content analysis to gather and analyse information from relevant primary and secondary sources. Research findings argue that initial contact of Muslims with the West African region began since the century 1H/7CE. From this contact, Islam began to be introduced to the inhabitants of West Africa through trade from the 2H/8CE century. This research finds that at the end of 4H/10CE and early 5H/11CE centuries, Islam was accepted by the ruling class of West African kingdoms, such as the conversion of rulers of Kanem, Songhay, Takrur and Malal. However, there were also West African rulers who did not embrace Islam such as the ruler of Ghana. Nevertheless, Muslims who resided in their territories were well-treated. Later on, this helped to spread Islam in these territories.

Philosophical and legal understanding of the nature of the constitutional human right to health protection

in this article, the author examines the nature of the constitutional human right to health protection through its philosophical and legal interpretation. In this study, the consideration is carried out from the point of view of the concepts of natural law and historical materialism. As a result of the conducted research, the author comes to the conclusion that the human right to health protection has a materialistic nature, arises and exists as a result of the need for the ruling class to regulate public relations related to health protection by expressing its will in the law.

Threats and Grounds for Dismantling the European Security Architecture

This article deals with one of the priority areas, the area of European security. Based on the literature on the subject and an analysis of the situation in Central and Eastern Europe, the author presents various types of current threats evident in Belarus, Poland, Russia, Turkey and Hungary, as a result of, among other things, societal alienation from the ruling class. The ignoring of their people and lack of tolerance in these countries has provoked a rebellion in society against governments’ exercise of power and approach to the rule of law. By analysing aspects of the threat, the author tries to uncover the motives of governments that are trying to maintain this approach and are ready to sacrifice the health and lives of their citizens.

The hub of the system. Discussions and perceptions regarding the geopolitical role of Milan in the 16th century

The article studies the geopolitical role of the State of Milan during the 16th century, as it was perceived and discussed by both members of the Habsburg ruling class as well as Italian writers, politicians and diplomats who did not belong to those circles nor were under their influences. The analysis starts with the early years of the century and subsequently covers the period of the Wars of Italy and then the second half of the century, when the new international context created by the peace of Cateau Cambrésis gave rise to a complex interplay between continuity and change. Keywords: geopolitics, 16th-century Italy, Milan, Habsburg Empire.

Political Communication and the Nigerian Democratic Experiment: Critical Insights from Yorùbá Philosophy

Nigeria’s political sphere is fraught with violence, electoral frauds, unfulfilled promises and negligence on the part of the ruling class, hence political communication in Nigeria have been faced with hostility from electorates spurred by public distrust of the mass media. This essay philosophically argues for a culture-bound understanding of political communication in a way that enables a strategic decolonization of communication concepts and ideologies. This cultural understanding advocates the need for the domestication of information prior to their application in a way that enable us to properly reflect on and engage with the existential complexities of Africa’s political landscapes. The central claim of the Yorùbá political communication is that local and national communicative principles in political discourses should be subsumed under epistemic, ontological, and ethical dimensions drawn from Yorùbá histories, cultures, and values. This essay therefore deploys Yorùbá philosophical insights underlying the creation, distribution, use and control of information as a political resource that could be adopted by governments, organizations, the media, and individuals in Nigeria.

Joanna I of Anjou (1343–1382)

Joanna I of Anjou (1325–1382), countess of Provence and the fourth sovereign of the Angevin dynasty in south Italy (since 1343), became the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Sicily, succeeding her grandfather King Robert “the Wise” (1277–1343). The public and official images of the queen and the “symbolic” representations of her power, commissioned by her or by her entourage, contributed to create a new standard in the cultural references of the Angevin iconographic tradition aiming to assimilate models shared by the European ruling class. In particular, the following works of art and architecture will be analyzed: the queen’s portraits carved on the front slabs of royal sepulchers (namely those of her mother Mary of Valois and of Robert of Anjou) and on the liturgical furnishings in the church of Santa Chiara in Naples; the images painted in numerous illuminated manuscripts, in the chapter house of the friars in the Franciscan convent of Santa Chiara in Naples, in the lunette of the church in the Charterhouse of Capri. The church of the Incoronata in Naples does not show, at the present time, any portrait of the queen or explicit reference to Joanna as a patron. However, it is considered the highest symbolic image of her queenship.

The Pragmatics of Political Claims and Social Responses amidst Covid-19 and EndSARS Saga in Nigeria

There have been few stand-alone linguistic studies on the Covid-19 virus and the 2020 EndSARS protests in Nigeria. The present study intersects these two critical events with particular focus on the political claims made by the ruling class and the corresponding social responses in line with the contextual affordances shared by the participants. Searle’s speech act theoretic approach is adopted to analyse the pragmatic intentions of the illocutionary acts which political claims perform while Juvenalian satire is used to discuss the satirical elements embedded in the social responses in a bid to ridicule leadership follies and abuses. Three popular Nigerian online Newspapers and few comments from Facebook are selected for this study. Their selection is based on their coverage of these events, coverage of these political claims and popular readership evidenced in the social responses. In all, a total of 6 political claims and 25 social responses relevant to this study are analysed. The study revealed that the pragmatic relevance of these claims is embedded in its political functions of wielding undue influence over the populace, making promises driven by rhetoric and short of initiative and calculated reticence in response to social issues. Consequently, the social responses highlight and criticise leadership vices and the weak efforts of the government in dispensing its leadership interventions. It also fulfils communicative purposes of the contextual space, promote solidarity among the people while prompting change in the political class and the society at large.

IDEOLOGICAL INTERPELLATION AND SUBJECTS’ RESPONSES IN ANDI NOOR’S SHORT STORY, “KOPI DAN CINTA YANG TAK PERNAH MATI”

State is a machine of power for the ruling class to maintain its authority. The effort is practiced by interpellating individuals as its subjects. The state can be defined as repressive and ideological apparatus. This study aims to identify the interpellation’s category and the subjects’ responses that are portrayed in Andi Noor’s short story titled “Kopi dan Cinta yang Tak Pernah Mati” from Althusser’s perspective. The study is carried out by first identifying the ideologies that empower the interpellation. There are two categories of ideology that interpellate individuals as the subjects of ideology: (1) Totalitarianism and (2) Socialism. Next, the researcher identifies the category of apparatus that is used by the ideologies. The short story portrays the empowerment of the repressive state apparatus of armed or police forces by the ruling ideology and the empowerment of the ideological cultural apparatus by the opposition. Subjects’ responses that are found in this research vary, and not all subjects recognize the interpellation by the ideology. The responses are influenced by the empowerment of the apparatuses of each ideology. The subjects tend to resist the empowerment of the repressive state apparatus, but they recognize the interpellation by the empowerment of the ideological cultural apparatus. Negara merupakan mesin kekuasaan yang menjadi alat bagi kelas penguasa untuk melanggengkan kekuasaanya. Usaha ini dilakukan melalui penaklukan atau interpelasi terhadap individu agar menjadi subjek ideologi. Keberadaan Negara dapat dipahami sebagai aparatus represif dan aparatus ideologis. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengungkap kategori interpelasi dan respon subjek yang digambarkan oleh cerpen “Kopi dan Cinta yang Tak Pernah Mati” karya Andi Noor berdasarkan pandangan Althusser. Penelitian ini diawali dengan mengungkap ideologi-ideologi yang melakukan interpelasi. Terdapat dua ideologi yang saling melakukan interpelasi terhadap subjek-subjek, yaitu (1) Totalitarian dan (2) Sosialisme. Selanjutnya, peneliti melakukan pemetaan terhadap kategori aparatus yang digunakan oleh ideologi-ideologi baik itu aparatus represif atau ideologis. Cerita pendek ini menggambarkan aparatus negara yang represif yang diwakili oleh tentara yang digunakan oleh ideologi penguasa, sedangkan pihak lawan melakukan pemberdayaan aparatus kultural ideologis. Respon subjek yang ditemukan cukup beragam. Tidak semua subjek merekognisi interpelasi ideologi. Terdapat subjek yang pada awalnya melakukan misrekognisi namun pada akhirnya melakukan rekognisi terhadap interpelasi ideologi. Respon yang ditunjukkan oleh subjek dipengaruhi oleh pemberdayaan aparatus oleh masing-masing ideologi. Subjek cenderung melakukan misrekognisi terhadap aparatus represif, dan cenderung merekognisi pemberdayaan aparatus ideologis kultural.

Turkey

Turkey is a country that has been the outcome of domestic and global political, economic, societal challenges over two thousand years of massive transformations, from the nomadic Asian steppe to the Mediterranean agrarian world, to Islam, and to modernity, as well as from the cosmopolitan Ottoman ruling class to the modern Turkish nationalist elite and, recently, globalization and identity politics. Turkey’s history has been marked by confusion about the Ottoman Empire, which has been viewed as too European/Roman to be considered distinctly Asian and too Eastern to be considered European. Its successful centuries-long rule in Southeastern Europe has been a matter of curiosity, as has its turbulent modernization, which started pretty soon after the French Revolution. Its heir, the Turkish Republic, has been a typical modern state in accordance with the European political geography. Yet another recurrent theme has perhaps been the curious paradox of strong state and low state capacity. No matter whether foreign or domestic policy, economy or politics, history or present-day, (self-)perceptions and studies have oscillated between a strong Turkish state and its lower capacity on such issues as institutions, identity cleavages, class, gender, regional inequalities, protracted poverty and deprivation, and so on. Turkey has often been thought of as a latecomer to modern development, and this tension of missing and catching universal development has often been a recurrent theme since the Ottoman modernization in the 1830s or the proud new Republic’s substantial reforms in the 1920s, and at a level ranging from everyday life conversations to the highest level of official discourse. The political elite have often failed in state-society relations, but the country has often been subject to discussions on democratic consolidation; the economy has often been unstable, but it is still a member of the G20. In sum, the Republic of Turkey has been but one manifestation of world history: a modern state heir to a universal agrarian empire that disappeared like its fellows, a swift authoritarian modernization in the interwar years whose heritage still occupy minds, a Cold War security state that has developed in America-centered global capitalism, a post–Cold War state of neoliberal globalization trying to find its way in the turbulences of world politics and economy, with a failed desire of leadership in its neighborhood. Accordingly, the more than eighty sources cited and annotated here guide the readers through various manifestations of Turkey within historical, political, cultural, societal, economic, and foreign policy (with focus on the regional and the European dimensions) contexts. All in all, Turkish society has always been able to cope with all the above-mentioned challenges and manifestations, but it has been often very difficult for those earning and enjoying life with their honest labor.

Aesthetics of Law

The aesthetics of law appears as one of the parts of the philosophy of law that focuses on the relationship between law and aesthetical values, in their broadest sense. The aesthetics of law can be closed in its three dimensions: external, internal and the approach defined as "law as a tool of aestheticization”. This division was made from the perspective of the subject of research, which is the law. The third dimension refers to the law as "tool of aestheticization” of everyday life, which indicates the aesthetic function of law, implemented mainly by legal regulation and the legal norms they contain, which are the determinants of what is aesthetic. We can distinguish three basic fields in which the law can affect the aestheticization of everyday life: 1) legal norms that set and promote certain aesthetic standards, 2) legal norms that serve to protect and preserve aesthetic values and 3) the field where law, as an instrument of politics, can be used to fight against certain aesthetic values that are inconsistent with the ideology promoted by the ruling class – the so-called art in the service of state power. The first group of norms is used to make the overall „pretty” but when interpreting such legal regulations, can be concluded that there’s something more than only this - that it’s promoting aesthetic standards and values through legal norms. The policy of many countries focuses on introducing legal regulations aimed at ensuring the aesthetics of the landscape of their cities. The article aims to present the implementation of the third approach to the aesthetics of law in Poland and discussing legal measures and activities undertaken to ensure the aesthetics of the landscape.