Revisiting the Religious Openness Hypothesis in a Migration Context: The Case of Muslims with a Turkish Migration Background in Germany

The religious openness hypothesis, which states that religious traditions have the potential to integrate faith with intellect, is examined in this study within a migration context for the first time. Based on two lines of research, our central question is whether the sociological context or the Islamic tradition per se explains the (in)compatibility of faith and intellect orientation and their relation to psychological openness. Religious openness, psychological openness (ambiguity tolerance and acculturation strategies) and religiosity were measured among Muslims with a Turkish migration background in Germany. Our findings show a non-significant relationship between faith and intellect orientation and we therefore propose that the secular context is the crucial explaining factor. Religious reflection also moderates the link between different forms of religiosity and ambiguity tolerance. Finally, heterogeneous religious rationalities were uncovered that challenge the negative view of Muslims as fanatic, closed-minded people which prevails among the German majority society.

Consult Your Heart

In this article, I explore the authority of the heart (qalb) as a potential locus for the individual moral knowledge and normativity in Islamic ethics. To do so, I discuss the two ḥadīths that ostensibly suggest one’s “self” as a source of moral judgment. These ḥadīths raise renewed questions about the sources of moral judgment, the nature of moral judgment and the ethical capacity of the “self” (conscience)—“consult your heart and consult your self …”; “righteousness is good conduct, and sin is that which rankles in your chest and which you would hate for other people to look upon.” There are rich debates in the Islamic tradition on the place and authority of the bāṭin (inward) in generating moral knowledge, which correspond to contemporary discourses in Western ethics on the place of conscience in the moral formation of the individual. In this article, I argue that although Islamic legal tradition as a discipline has focused on qualified external actions of individuals and the ijtihād (independent legal reasoning) of mujtahids (jurists), it did not ignore the authority of the bāṭin for moral assessment and the ijtihād of common individuals. I propose that the inward dimension has always occupied an important space within the interdisciplinary field of Islamic ethics but has been overshadowed by the overarching theological disputes between the Muʿtazilīs and Ashʿarīs over the sources of knowledge. The article starts by exploring the relevant aḥādīth (reports) and their interpretation in ḥadīth commentaries, followed by an analysis of discussions in the fields of Islamic jurisprudence and Sufism.

Philosophy in the Narrative Mode

Histories of Arabic and Islamic philosophy tend to focus on texts which are systematic in nature and conventionally classified as philosophy or related scholarly disciplines. Philosophical principles, however, are also defining features of texts associated with other genres. Within the larger field of philosophy, this might be especially true of ethics and within the larger body of literature this might be especially the case for stories. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that the very purpose of storytelling is to reinforce and disseminate moral conventions. Likewise, the moral philosopher can be conceptualized as a homo narrans.The aim of this contribution is to apply the approach to narratives as a mode of debating ethical or moral principles to biographies of Alexander the Great. More than any other figure of the classical world, Alexander was religiously validated in the Islamic tradition due to his quasi-prophetic status as the ‘man with the two horns’ in the Qur’an. He appears prominently in the larger orbit of Arabic and Islamic philosophy as interlocutor and disciple of Aristotle and is adduced anecdotally in philosophical literature as an example to teach larger lessons of life. As a world conqueror, he provided an attractive model for those who sought to reconcile philosophical insight with worldly ambition.Focusing on biographies of Alexander, this article explores ethical principles which are inscribed in this body of literature and thus reads the texts as a narrativized form of philosophy. The analysis is comparative in two ways. Biographies of different periods and regions of the Islamicate world will be discussed, but comparisons with pre-Islamic biographies of Alexander (notably Roman biographies and the Alexander Romance) are included as well.

Moral Value and Commercial Gain

This paper presents three theoretical accounts developed to assess the moral value and legal status of acts designed to promote commercial gain in the thought of major classical Muslim scholars. There has been an increased interest in Islamic commercial law and ethics in recent years. Much of the recent scholarship consists of practically inclined studies that tend to lump the Islamic tradition of evaluation of commerce under the principles of social justice and avoidance of harm. Our study of three selected scholars will reveal distinct approaches that are characteristic of classical Islamic ethical discussions: anchoring moral value in this world, attributing moral goodness to salvation in the next world, and finding a balance between these two approaches. Counterintuitively, we will see that the naturalistic view that ascribes moral values to things and actions was the most restrictive, whereas the dualistic model that focuses on salvation in the next world was markedly more permissive of commercial transactions.

Dialectics of Ethics

Philosophical and theological ethics in the Islamic tradition tend to be appraised on the basis of a unilateral perspective, which circumvents a moral rational approach to intuition. On this account, moral knowledge is expected to rest on intuitive judgments, which are universally accessible to human beings. Looking at moral ontology and epistemology in Arabic philosophy, I demonstrate that taking intuitionism as the only valid rational discourse to ethics needs to be challenged. In fact, Arabic philosophers do not subscribe to a realist view of the good and evil in relation to human actions, and rather admit a division between cosmic values in metaphysics and moral values in ethics. In so doing, they show how metaphysics ascribes a substantial view to good in existence and a negative theory to evil, while the science of ethics admits a teleological and relative view of the good. Overall, the falāsifa remain committed to Aristotle’s premise that ethics does not rely on abstraction and emphasized the role of experience too. But, they seem to be also attentive to the dialectical nature of Islamic jurisprudence in producing norms considering both principles of the law and its particular application. This is also clear in their epistemology of ethical judgments such as the maxim justice is good. While they ascribe a universal status to ethical maxims, they preclude from granting them an absolute status over the authority of norms construction. Instead, philosophers attribute a dialectical role to ethical maxims to guarantee both consensus over norms and the possibility to produce truthful opinions. Keywords: Moral ontology and epistemology, The problem of evil, The nature of the good, Moral values, al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, Ibn Rushd, Legal epistemology, Written and unwritten laws, Ethical maxims, Widely-accepted premises (mashhūrāt), Reputable premises (maḥmūdāt).

A RESEARCH ON THE USE OF OTTOMAN-ISLAMIC HERITAGE AS A CONSUMPTION OBJECT IN CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

The Islamic heritage contains a rich cultural diversity with residential and public buildings such as traditional houses, mosques, palaces, and caravanserais that belong to the Ottoman Empire period. The character of the Islamic tradition is reflected in the environment-form-space organizations and construction techniques of these buildings. But today, the influence of the Islamic heritage has begun to be represented with the dominance of consumption-oriented culture and technology. The references taken from the architecture influenced by Islam are reduced to pure visuality and fashion. Especially, Ottoman architecture and its traditional elements become consumption objects that put visuality in the foreground in contemporary design practices. The Ottoman-Islamic heritage is referenced by imitating traditional buildings’ facades or copying structural elements. These new buildings produced with today’s technologies under the name of continuity of historical culture aim to fulfill the demands of the capitalist economy rather than conveying the essence of design. The study criticizes the transformation of Ottoman-Islamic architecture’s authenticity into “looking/pretending authentic” as a theme. In this context, this study discusses the Ottoman-Islamic heritage has become an object of consumption through a variety of examples that are located in Turkey such as hotels, shopping centers, residential buildings.

Revitalisasi Amaliah Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) dalam Menangkal Faham Radikalisme di Madrasah Aliyah

The spread of radicalism in education requires students to fortify and strengthen their beliefs to not fall into radicalism. The researcher aims to discover the revitalization of NU’s practice in countering radicalism in schools. In this study, the type of field research is descriptive analysis. This study resulted in research findings, namely the implementation of NU’s Islamic tradition in the form of grave pilgrimage of Walisanga and Asmaul Husna reading, as well as a form of revitalization in countering radicalism through NU’s Islamic tradition practice for strengthening Aswaja’s theology.

The Motif of the Angel(s) of Death in Islamic Foundational Sources as an Element of Cultural Diffusion

The article harks back to the publication entitled “The Motif of the Angel(s) of Death in Islamic Foundational Sources” (VV 38/2 [2020]), which was devoted to the analysis of the eponymous theme in the foundational sources of Islam: the Quran and the sunna of the Prophet Muhammad. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the motif of angel(s) may have been borrowed from two monotheistic traditions that came before. The verification of the thesis that the motif of the angel(s) of death underwent diffusion was carried out in several steps. First, the motif was identified in the textual traditions of Judaism and early Christianity (i.e. sets of texts that were known and, in all likelihood, widespread in the Middle East during the formative period of Islam). As a result of the analysis, most of the themes recognised in the foundational texts of Islam were found. The next step was to identify possible routes of their transmission and percolation into the Islamic tradition and to determine the “ideological demand” for the motif of the angel(s) of death in the burgeoning Islam. Although Jewish and Christian imagery and beliefs about angels are an important (if not the primary) source of influence on Muslim angelology, there was most likely a two-way interaction between the monotheistic traditions, albeit to a limited extent.

Religious policy of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II in the Syrian vilayets of the Ottoman Empire (1876-1909): methods and symbols

The author examines the religious and political course of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909), aimed at strengthening the unity of the Ottoman state and society based on the principles of Islam, and the implementation of this strategy in the Syrian provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The research is based on reports of contemporaries, as well as research works in Russian and English. Particular attention is paid to the strategic role of Ottoman Syria (including Lebanon and Palestine) in the context of strengthening the religious authority of the Sultan as the caliph of all Muslims and recruiting prominent ideologues and supporters of Islamic traditionalism from the Syrian vilayets to serve the Sultan. The author especially examines the role of wo representatives of the Muslim intellectual elite: the Sufi sheikh Abu-l-Huda al-Sayyadi as a close associate of the Sultan who provided patronage to the conservative ulama, as well as Ahmad Izzet Pasha al-Abid, who became the main inspirer of the Hejaz Railway. The article also reveals the features of the state policy towards religious minorities (both Muslim and non-Muslim) and migration processes in the Syrian provinces. With the weakening of the international positions of the Ottoman Empire and the strengthening of foreign interference, Syria set an example of relatively successful modernization based on Islamic tradition. At the same time, confessional identity continued to dominate over ethnicity, and the emerging feelings of Arab and Syrian patriotism did not conflict with the principle of Islamic unity of the subjects of the Sultan-Caliph.

Discussions about Russian muslims future on the pages of the Crimean journal «Asri Musulmanliq» (1924–1927) (on the example of the publication of the Samara theologian-educator M.-F. Murtazin)

For the first time in Russian historiography, a Russian-language translation from Turkish (literary version of Ottoman) of a manuscript of an article by the Samara imam Mukhammet-Fatykh Murtazin (18751938), sent to the religious and educational journal Asri Musulmanliq (Modern Islam, published in Simferopol in 19241927) editorial board of the People's Administration of Religious Affairs of Muslims of Crimea (NURDMK). The article entitled Islam and Civilization was planned for placement in № 13 for 1926, its translation was carried out by an employee of the Eastern Department of the OGPU in Crimea and sent for approval of the text to the Eastern Department of the OGPU in Moscow. Murtazin's manuscript contains a number of reformist ideas, loyal to the current political moment. He tried to adapt the Islamic tradition to new reality. The article was not allowed for publication due to the desire of its author to present the priority of Islamic civilization over the European and American worlds, which, obviously, did not correspond to the ideological attitudes of the workers of the Soviet special services. The authors also draw attention to the course and nature of intense theological discussion and the development of renovationist thought in the Muslim world of the Soviet Union in the 1920-ies, a discussion that took place under censorship and the emerging ideological pressure.