The Social Adaptation of Khmer Rouge Perpetrators in the Aftermath of the Cambodian Genocide

This paper explores the social adaptation of 157 former Khmer Rouge (KR) cadres. The cadres lived in relative isolation in the former KR stronghold, the semi-autonomous Anlong Veng, under the leadership of their commander, Chhit Chhoeun (alias Ta Mok). With the help of survey analysis, the paper presents findings regarding the cadres’ traumatisation, their views on assigning responsibility for actions during the genocide (1975–1979), as well as the cadres’ feelings of shame and lack of trust. The cadres demonstrated avoidance and a lack of self-confrontation and, similarly, manifested limited reflection about their individual and collective participation in the genocidal regime of the KR. The paper concludes with the long-lasting impact of thought reform and obedience to authority. Community re-building in post-genocide societies requires efforts at collective rehabilitation of collaborators of genocidal regimes and survivors alike.

Reformist Muslims in Contemporary America

In the last two centuries, Muslims have made efforts to reform Islamic tradition and thought. Reform attempts have often focused on the advancement of the Islamic tradition and reconfiguration of Muslim thought and practices in light of changing sociopolitical circumstances and human knowledge. Reforming Islam has been a particularly central focus since Muslims’ direct encounters with modernity in the early 20th century. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (b. 1838–d. 1897), Muhammad Abduh (b. 1849–d. 1905), Muhammad Rashid Rida (b. 1865–d. 1935), and Fazlur Rahman (b. 1919–d. 1988) are the prominent figures of the reformist trend in recent history. Since the 1990s, an increasing number of Muslims have migrated to the United States, and rising Muslim populations have led to the emergence of reformist Muslim intellectuals there. Many of these reformists are professors or public intellectuals working at American institutions, and they come from different ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds. Reformist American Muslim intellectuals should not be considered as an entirely and internally homogenous group; instead, it should be seen as an umbrella term covering various critical reconstructivist approaches to the Islamic tradition and modernity in the context of the United States and globalization in the last three decades. These thinkers call themselves “reformists,” “progressives,” or “critical Muslims” in their works. Referring to them as “reformist American Muslim intellectuals” was preferred for this article because they live and work in the United States and want change, but they are not advocating for revolution or radical social upheaval. Instead, reformist Muslims mainly focus on building democratic, pluralist, and ethical theories or practices from a Muslim perspective while prioritizing the development of indigenous Islamic arguments for their agendas and ideas. Thus, their intellectual projects often simultaneously challenge (a) apologetic, exclusivist, premodern socio-legalistic thoughts, and epistemologies promoted by Muslim fundamentalists, Islamists, and traditionalists; and (b) Western-centric, secularized, reductionist views found in some popular Western discourses. Ultimately, reformists attempt to deconstruct the hegemonic assumptions of (neo)orientalist perspectives and dogmatic discourses about Muslims in order to reconstruct democratic, pluralists, and just interpretations of the Islamic tradition for the sake of contemporary Muslims. The themes of reformists’ writings reveal a correspondence to the sociopolitical issues of contemporary Muslims in the West and the global scene. For example, reformist Muslims’ writings have focused on themes such as the critique of traditional Islam in the aftermath of 11 September 2001 and the resurgence of radical groups, extremist ideas, and authoritarianism in Muslim communities. Thus, reformist Muslims often focus on debates about Islam’s compatibility with modernity and democracy, the role of religion in public life, human rights, religious freedom, pluralism, and gender justice. As a result, reformist Muslims in the United States can be seen as a continuation of Islamic modernism that started in the 19th century in the Islamic world but has been significantly shaped by the conditions of the modern American society and circumstances of Muslims. In other words, it is reasonable to say that reformist Muslim discourses do not emerge or exist in a vacuum. Thus, their writings can be seen as the production of a dialectical engagement between Islamic tradition and modernity at large.

THE PATH OF HOPE IN RELATIONSHIPS INVOLVING OLDER ADULTS: THE PERSPECTIVE FROM THE COMPLEXITY OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

ABSTRACT Objective: to reflect on the relationships involving the older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of complexity, envisioning the path of hope. Method: this is a reflection based on the Theory of Complexity, according to Edgar Morin, and on articles addressing the new coronavirus. Results: the experiences during the pandemic showed economic, social, health, cultural, ethical, and moral difficulties in relation to the older adults. Facing the uncertainties of COVID-19 teaches about the attitude towards this inevitable involvement in the individual and collective life, as well as in the history of the country and the world - a problem aggravated by the fears of humanity. Therefore, adapting society and remodeling it with regard to relationships with the older adults can translate into success against the pandemic disease. This induces thought reform, reorganizing the understanding of the older adults, which currently involves scattered, disjoint, compartmentalized, and excluding thinking. This reform is broad, deep, paradigmatic, cultural, ethical, and moral, which strengthens the culture of aging, propagating and democratizing the poetry of living, allowing the older adults to know the beauty of emotions, and to discover their own truths through the masterpieces of their lives. However, this intention presupposes a metamorphosis of individualism, oppression, and exclusion, in whose context gerontological nursing is fundamental. Conclusion: the transformations experienced during the pandemic may be the prelude to changing relationships with the older adults, through multiple reforming and transforming processes that come together, by the strengthening of gerontological nursing. Perhaps the pandemic moment is the beginning of the path of hope for new times of Humanity's dignity.

Totalistic Programs for Youth

Recent annual estimates suggest that in the United States, approximately 57,000 young people are placed by their parents into some type of residential treatment program. Parent – pay programs are exempt from federal safety standards and some states provide little or no regulatory oversight. Federal investigations revealed a nationwide pattern of institutional abuse across multiple facilities, and some professionals have noted ‘cruel and dangerous uses of thought reform techniques’ within such programs (U.S. House of Representatives 2007, 76). This article summarizes qualitative research based on interviews with 30 adults who lived for an average of 20 months within a ‘highly totalistic’ youth program. The concept of totalistic treatment was operationalized and measured with seven key identifiers found in the literature. Twenty – five different programs of four general types were represented: therapeutic boarding schools, residential treatment centers, wilderness/outdoor programs, and intensive outpatient programs. To organize qualitative findings, three themes explaining the experiences, immediate effects, and long – term impacts of treatment help to reveal implicit meanings woven throughout the interviews. By understanding a wider range of experiences associated with totalistic programs, efforts to improve quality of care and strategies to prevent harm may be improved. Harm prevention efforts would benefit from the analytical perspectives found in theories of coercive persuasion and thought reform.

Rationality and Freedom in Islamic Thought

Rationality and freedom are fundamental elements of Western modernity. Although modern and contemporary Islamic thought has established its intellectual foundations on the fundamentals of intellectual thought that are at the core of its Islamic intellectual system, at the same time many of its intellectual products have been a response In spite of the fact that this Islamic intellectual response stands out from Western modernity as a negation or a positive attitude. The Islamic intellectual response differed in determining its position on Western modernity, depending on the nature of the historical stage that was The Islamic nation, as well as the nature of the challenge posed by Western civilization to other nations and other civilizations, including the Arab Islamic civilization, so we see that the response of modern Islamic thought reform differs in his vision and directions from the response of Islamic fundamentalist contemporary thought.

Political Offenders in Xingkaihu Labour Camp

This chapter examines the life experiences of counter-revolutionaries and ultra-rightists in the Xingkaihu labour reform complex. It was the mass persecution of the 1950s and the subsequent shortage of prison facilities that prompted the boom of labour camps in the northeast, including the establishment of Xingkaihu, a colony directly administered by the Beijing Public Security Bureau. In Xingkaihu, student inmates who were mentally or ideologically unyielding were more assertive than others in articulating their opinions, resisting thought reform, and refusing to entirely submit to camp cadres. The chapter shows that the CCP practice of mixing political prisoners with criminal prisoners in labour camps turned out to be quite insidious, enabling the police to use the latter to monitor and discipline the former.