Intellectual (Neo-) Imperialism: The Examples of “Islam[ism(s)]” and “Jihad[ism(s)]”

In any scientific endeavour, or considered as such, methodology and epistemology are paramount, not to mention ontology: what is the nature of the reality that we are studying? What is the nature of the knowledge that is being produced and its rationality? What are the methods applied to the field of study? However, when it to comes to “Islam”, the “Middle East”, or the “Orient”, the starting points are assumptions and truisms, particularly in “scientific” fields such as Political Science or International Relations, especially when the subject is the relation between politics and religion. In the last few decades, Islam has become a central point of reference for a wide range of political activities, arguments and opposition movements. The term “political Islam”, or “Islamism”, has been adopted by many scholars in order to identify this seemingly unprecedented irruption of Islamic religion into the secular domain of politics and thus to distinguish these practices from the forms of personal piety, belief, and ritual conventionally subsumed in Western scholarship under the unmarked category “Islam”. There have been tremendous, innumerable websites, voluminous publications and many projects on “Islamism(s)” and “Post-Islamism(s)”, the idea that political Islam had failed. However, when reality did not confirm that prediction, a new term was coined: “neo-Islamism”. This paper aims to explore the thesis that, as in other fields, these labels are nothing more than an attempt by Area Studies within Western academia to mould reality according to preconceived ideas and according to policy-oriented circles and funded by governmental organizations, and that, when dealing with “Islam” and “politics”, we are urgently in need of a different epistemology.

Educational and scientific programmes for the citizens of Belarus as an example of science diplomacy – a political and legal analysis

Owing to current events in Belarus (political and social, including the economic crisis and the ongoing activities that are having a negative impact on the functioning of opposition movements), the country is becoming an arena of competition for influence. In the context of the subject of this analysis, rivalry, especially in terms of the influence of other states on Belarusian society, is of key importance. Science diplomacy may be a tool of competition for influence. The fact that science diplomacy can be both a tool with which to cooperate with other countries in the region and a tool of competition for influence is of key importance in analysing this problem. The scientific potential of the Belarusian community is also of interest to other countries, including Ukraine, Lithuania, and Germany. The effective and efficient implementation of science diplomacy activities towards Belarus is undoubtedly in line with the well-understood Polish national interest. The aim of the article was to conduct a political and legal analysis of the process by which Poland is using science diplomacy as a tool for influencing the scientific community of Belarus. Another research goal was to analyse the activities undertaken by two other countries in the region – Ukraine and Lithuania – with respect to science diplomacy. The article also aimed to analyse the formal and legal conditions related to the normative solutions used in the countries under analysis, enabling the undertaking and implementation of education by Belarusian citizens. The educational and scientific programmes offered to students and scientists from Belarus in Poland were also subject to legal analyses. The whole analysis is supplemented and concluded by an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of the activities carried out so far.

The management of disciplinary cases in the South African public service post-2009 to the 2018 era

Background: Poor management of disciplinary cases in the South African public service departments is on the rise. The management of disciplinary cases, amongst other things, has drawn considerable criticism from within the public sector, various media outlets, interest groups and even opposition movements. The government has adopted progressive discipline prescripts to inculcate and promote a culture of professional ethics and accountability. In the workplace, objectivity, consistency and fairness are an important part of healthy employer–employee ties.Aim: The study sought to obtain an in-depth understanding of disciplinary cases and describe the challenges senior managers face when managing disciplinary cases in the public service departments.Setting: Both the national and provincial public service departments of South Africa.Methods: The study adopted qualitative modernistic research approach. Semi-structured electronic questionnaire was used to collect views from 751 senior managers.Results: Public service employees are deprived of organisational justice because of weaknesses associated with the discipline management. This is because management of disciplinary cases and sanctions in most national and provincial departments in the public service is perilous and incongruent with the discipline management prescripts.Conclusion: Based on the findings, the current practices do not deter future violations of discipline management prescripts; inconsistent, unfairness and injustice application of sanctions and management of cases and future misconduct in the workplace. Therefore, the authors recommend the use of team-based and progressive discipline to ensure that staff contribute effectively, efficiently and ethically to the goals of the government. The present study contributes to the existing body of knowledge on human resource management and organisational behaviour and provides a platform that broadens an understanding of the amplifying toxic management of disciplinary cases in the South African public service context.

Renamo and Mozambique

The history of independent Mozambique is a history of war and peace, and it is closely intertwined with the history of the main opposition movement Renamo (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana), which formed as an armed movement and transitioned into a political party. Mozambique gained independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975 after a ten-year liberation struggle. The main liberation movement Frelimo (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) became the ruling party and introduced far-reaching social, economic, and political reforms. These reforms generated discontent, which contributed to the formation of opposition movements in the center of the country. From the late 1970s onwards, an armed movement, later known as Renamo, gained ground in central Mozambique and fought a guerrilla war against the Mozambican government. Renamo received support from Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) and apartheid South Africa who sought to undermine Frelimo aid to liberation movements in their respective countries. It was only in 1992 that Renamo and Frelimo reached a settlement with the help of international mediators, with a path to multiparty elections in 1994. Since then, Renamo has participated in elections as a political party but has never won a majority in parliament nor was it able to claim the presidency. Political conflict between Frelimo and Renamo has never subsided, with Renamo regularly protesting election results and alleging fraud. Tensions escalated in 2013 and led to low-level conflict in the central region. A ceasefire agreement in 2014 and a unilateral truce by Renamo in December 2016 ended that conflict, but a peace accord was only struck after Afonso Dhlakama—president of Renamo—died of natural causes in 2018. Since then, tensions have remained due to armed activity by a Renamo breakaway movement and a slow demobilization process, and peace remains precarious. Renamo’s transition from an armed movement into a political movement, similarly to Mozambique’s transition from war to peace, has not yet fully materialized.

Nothing Eternal About It

This chapter addresses the common claims that sectarianism is either an ancient Arab phenomenon that has always existed and will always exist or a foreign conspiracy intended to divide the Arabs. It shows that both of these propositions abdicate responsibility for explaining a sectarianism cast as fundamentally inscrutable. In fact, this chapter argues that before the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms, there was no political public sphere in the Islamic World, and thus political sectarianism simply could not have existed. However, the chapter also observes that both Arab governments and opposition movements have drawn increasingly on primordial ties to strengthen their authority or make their case, with local loyalties often forming the basis of ruling elites. Rural people have fallen back on traditional social structures, while urbanites have suffered from social atomization and gone looking for alternative identities. As the state’s authority declined, sectarian and local identities took its place.

Rigoberta Menchú

Rigoberta Menchú Tum, a K’iche’ Maya woman from highland Quiché, Guatemala, is an international advocate for indigenous rights and the winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. Born in 1959, she came of age during the country’s brutal and eventually genocidal armed conflict (1960–1996), and has been involved in organizing and advocacy most of her life. As a young woman, Menchú participated in Catholic activism seeking better conditions for people in Guatemala’s rural highlands, mostly indigenous Mayas. She and other Catholic Action catechists led efforts for rights and dignity in the here and now, challenging a traditional Catholic emphasis on rewards for the poor in heaven. The work led to involvement in the Committee for Peasant Unity (Comité de Unidad Campesina, or CUC), a group uniting campesinos from the region’s many Maya communities and connecting them to Maya and ladino (non-Maya) workers on coastal plantations. CUC was the first organization to achieve such a presence in Guatemala, and it quickly drew the attention of a military state determined to quell social mobilization. In the context of brutal repression in the late 1970s and early 1980s, CUC—like many opposition movements—developed an alliance with the revolutionary Guerrilla Army of the Poor (Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, or EGP). Violence spiraled, for the country and for the Menchú Tum family specifically. In January 1980, students and CUC activists, including Menchú’s father, occupied the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City to call attention to state terror. State forces firebombed the building, and the protestors and others burned to death. The army had murdered Menchú’s brother the year before, and tortured, raped, and killed her mother a few months after the embassy massacre. Rigoberta Menchú fled to Mexico in 1981. Personal trauma did not prevent her from becoming a compelling spokesperson for the opposition, and in that capacity she traveled to Europe to raise awareness of the violence in Guatemala. That is where interviews for the famous I, Rigoberta Menchú were recorded, facilitated by the EGP. That testimonio introduced audiences worldwide to repression in Guatemala while arguing for multiethnic resistance to it. Over the years, critics have levied charges that Menchú’s testimonio—with a narrative style blending many people’s lived experiences—misrepresented her life and served the interests of the revolutionary Left. These critiques in turn generated impassioned defenses of her testimonio as an important expression of political voice. Menchú has continued to work on behalf of Mayas and other marginalized people both internationally and within Guatemala.

The Rise of Digital Repression

This book documents the rise of digital repression—how governments are deploying new technologies to counter dissent, maintain political control, and ensure regime survival. The emergence of varied digital technologies is bringing new dimensions to political repression. At its core, the expanding use of digital repression reflects a fairly simple motivation: states are seeking and finding new ways to control, manipulate, surveil, or disrupt real or perceived threats. This book investigates the goals, motivations, and drivers of digital repression. It presents case studies in Thailand, the Philippines, and Ethiopia, highlighting how governments pursue digital strategies based on a range of factors: ongoing levels of repression, leadership, state capacity, and technological development. But a basic political motive—how to preserve and sustain political incumbency—remains a principal explanation for their use. The international community is already seeing glimpses of what the frontiers of repression look like, such as in China, where authorities have brought together mass surveillance, online censorship, DNA collection, and artificial intelligence to enforce their rule in Xinjiang. Many of these trends are going global. This has major implications for democratic governments and civil society activists around the world. The book also presents innovative ideas and strategies for civil society and opposition movements to respond to the digital autocratic wave.

POS0583 ENGINEERED GLOVE TO EVALUATE THE SPEED OF THE HANDS’ MOVEMENTS IN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS

Background:Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a long-term, progressive, and disabling autoimmune disease1. The disease activity can be quantified by the Disease Activity Score 28-joint count – C reactive protein (DAS28crp)2; the evaluation of disability function (DF) is actually mainly performed only by subjective Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) like Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ)3; to investigate the functional aspects of RA hands it is usually used the grip strength (GS)4. However, in the scientific literature no tool, which objectively evaluates movement speed, has been reported. The Hand Test System (HTS, ETT) is an engineered glove (RAGLOVE), nowadays applied for neuroscience studies to evaluate hand motility5Objectives:To objectively evaluate the RA hand’s speed of the fine movements, through the HTS and to compared with a group of age and sex matched healthy controls. To verify the correspondence with the HAQ, DAS28, GS.Methods:55 consecutives RA patients (pts) (6 males, age 61 ± 16 years, mean duration of disease 12 ± 8 years), classified according to 2010 ACR/EULAR criteria6, and 50 matched healthy controls (HCs) were enrolled. After consent, all participants undergone HTS test that recognizes the touches between the finger tips during the opposition movements of the hands in standard sequences of movements, after dressed the glove. A multiple finger evaluation (MFE) and a single finger evaluation (SFE) were performed using a dedicated software that provided the physician the following quantitative parameters: Touch Duration (TD), Inter Tapping Interval (ITI) and Movement Rate (MR). Average time for hand 2 minutes. RA pts compiled the HAQ, performed the GS and a DAS28cpr was performed.The student’s t-test was used to compare the glove’s parameters between the groups whereas the analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilized to verify potential differences between the populations. In order to evaluate the single correlations, the r and p values of Pearson were employed.Results:For MFE, glove parameters TD and ITI were significantly higher in RA pts than HCs, whereas; MR was significantly lower in RA pts compared to HCs (all p <0.001).For SFE non-affected fingers (not swollen and not tender) of RA pts performed better than a clinically affected fingers, but in any case significantly worse than average HCs fingers (p < 0.001).There is a statistically significant correlation between the GS and MR (r= 0.39 p=0.003) and TD (r=-0.33 p=0.015).TD, ITI e MR of RA pts showed a significant correlation with the total score of the HAQ (r = 0.56, r = 0.39, r = -0.56, all p < 0.001;). DAS28, considered as a continuous variable, proved to be significantly correlated with the TD (r = 0.36, p = 0.009). When the RA patients were grouped according to the disease activity by DAS28cpr7, there was an increase of one third of the TD’s logarithm for each increase in the activity class (linear regression with ordinal predictors, beta = 0.33; 95%CI 0.03, 0.63,p < 0.0297). Finally, even RA pts in remission showed a TD significantly higher compared with HCs (p= 0.034).Conclusion:The RAGLOVE is shown as a new safe and fast tool to evaluate a new objective parameter in the hand’s functionality: the speed of finger movements. In RA pts, an inversely proportional correlation emerges between the speed of movement and disease activity.The significant correlation found with HAQ, highlights the loss of motility of the hands as one of the main determinant of disability. The RAGLOVE is now tested in RA patients undergoing treatment.References:[1]Hakkinen et al Ann Rheum Dis. 2005;[2]Van Der Heijde et al J of Rheum. 1993;[3]Fries et al Arthritis Rheum. 1980;[4]Mathiowetz et al J Hand Surg Am. 1984;[5]Carmisciano et al Eur J Neurol. 2020;[6]Aletaha et al. Ann Rheum Dis. 2010;[7]Aletaha et al Arthritis Rheum 2005.Disclosure of Interests:None declared

Revolutions and Constitutional Crisis

Revolutionary actions and constitutional crises are closely linked. However, research mainly looks at the two phenomena as distinct from each other. While studies on revolutionary actions are interested in the agency and the impact of the actions on the country’s institutions, legal research focuses on the constitution itself. The separation of the two strands leads to a limited understanding of their dynamics and complexity. What do we know about the relationship between revolutionary actions and constitutional crisis, and vice versa? The first question is how revolutionary actions trigger constitutional crisis, defined as a moment in which decision makers are unwilling or unable to manage the societal conflicts within the confinement of the constitutionally provided boundaries. Different types of revolutionary behavior—such as elite-led military coups, civil wars, and nonviolent resistance movements—trigger constitutional crises in many cases. They can lead to a new constitution with diverse implications for the political system. Whether the opposition or the old regime prevails in the constitutional crisis is a question of the power resources of both parties to the conflict. In some cases, the opposition movements succeed in making the political system more democratic. However, there are also cases where the constitutional crisis ultimately leads to more power for the ruling class. The relationship also works vice versa: a constitutional crisis can trigger revolutionary actions. Constitutional coups, and processes of democratic backsliding and constitutional rot, can trigger violent and nonviolent revolutionary actions. Political elites can try to change constitutional norms for their own benefit, such as extending the presidential term of office. This often leads to a storm of public protest and can become a real threat to the regime’s survival. A constitution can enter a crisis phase for a long time if it no longer serves the needs of parts of society. The injustices that thus arise within society can be a strong motive for revolutions. The combination of agency and constitutional processes is a promising avenue for future research that could help analyze the complex relationship between constitutional crises and revolutionary actions. In addition to innovative theoretical approaches, new empirical data is needed to examine the process of constitutional negotiation in more detail.

How Exile Shapes Online Opposition: Evidence from Venezuela

How does exile affect online dissent? We argue that exile not only fragments opposition movements but fundamentally alters how they express opposition, because it internationalizes their networks and removes them from day-to-day life under the regime. Providing the first large-scale, quantitative study of the effects of exile on online dissent, we show that after exile Venezuelan activists 1) increase discussion of and support for foreign-led solutions to Venezuela’s political and economic crisis—including military intervention, sanctions, and diplomacy; 2) decrease discussion of local political dynamics; and 3) express harsher criticisms of the Maduro regime. Our analysis of over 5 million tweets sent by 357 activists over seven years suggests that the internationalization of networks is one mechanism by which exile shapes how activists communicate. After exile, activists increase their interactions with foreign entities and international actors and tweet in English at higher rates. Providing temporally granular individual- level measures of activists’ behavior, this work contributes to our understanding of the relationship between exile—one of the most ubiquitous yet understudied forms of repression—and dissent in the digital age.