Stories Archive | Page 63 of 72

Analyses

After surpassing 90 percent approval in the first round of the presidential elections on October 6, incumbent Tunisian leader Kais Saied faces his new term in a political, social, and economic climate vastly different from that of 2019. We discussed this shift with writer and essayist Hatem Nafty, whose latest work, Notre ami Kaïs Saïed. Essai sur la démocrature tunisienne (Our Friend Kais Saied: An Essay on the Tunisian Dictatorship), was presented in late September.

Political Theory
«We need an alliance with moderate Islam in order to defeat ISIS»
Italian MP Khalid Chaouki interviewed by Elisa Gianni 27 October 2014

“The first to pay with their lives are those who profess this religion in a peaceful, calm and respectful manner.” With those words the Italian Speaker of the House Laura Boldrini commented on her meeting with the secretary of Italy’s Islamic Cultural Centre, Abdellah Redouane, and the faithful who were meeting for Friday prayers at Rome’s Great Mosque. This was an encounter that the Islamic community had wanted and requested and addressed at Italians and Muslims in order to say “no to terrorism” and reiterate that “Islam is a religion of peace.” Those words were part of the clear and explicit appeal read at a table at which the Italian state’s third highest ranking official sat next to authorities of the largest mosque in Europe.
Political Theory
Afghanistan inaugurates the post-Karzai period: a two-headed government and disillusioned citizens
Giuliano Battiston 29 September 2014

On Monday, September 29th, the curtain will drop on the lengthy rule of Hamid Karzai, in power since 2001. He will be replaced in Kabul’s large Arg presidential palace by Ashraf Ghani, whose appointment will be sealed at a solemn ceremony, albeit one less festive than expected. The Afghans and the international community would have liked to celebrate the central Asian country’s “first peaceful and democratic transfer of power in recent history”, but things did not turn out as expected.
Political Theory
ISIS, Radicalization, and the Politics of Violence and Alienation
Conference 4 September 2014

Reset-Dialogues is pleased to republish the summaries and video of a panel discussion organized at the National Press Club in Washington by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. Islam and foreign policy experts – among whom John Esposito, Shadi Hamid, Michele Dunne, and Michael O’Hanlon – talked about the causes for the rise of radicalism in Iraq and Syria and the creation of militant groups such as ISIS. They discussed the intentions of ISIS and the threat posed to the Middle East and the rest of the world. The panelists provide criticism of the Obama administration’s response to ISIS and offered recommendations for moving forward.
Political Theory
CSID Condemns Violence of ISIS
and Murder of Journalist James Foley
Press release 27 August 2014

Reset-Dialogues is pleased to republish and subscribe to the following press release in which the Center for the Study for the Studi of Islam and Democracy (CSID), based in Washington DC “condemns in the strongest possible terms the gruesome and barbaric killing of journalist James Foley by the so-called Islamic State (formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or of Iraq and Shem (ISIS)).”
Political Theory
“ISIS can be stopped, but rebuilding Iraq is up to its people”
Lapo Pistelli interviewed by Francesco Bravi 22 August 2014

Deputy Foreign Minister Lapo Pistelli is the Italian government’s delegate for the Middle East and in the past was a professor and OSCE representative as well as being a former member of the Italian and European parliaments’ Foreign Affairs Committees. Pistelli’s long summer started when he returned to Italy with the last flight out of Erbil before U.S. air strikes on ISIS jihadists began. There he saw first-hand Iraq’s wounded image in refugee camps, filled with those who had already abandoned everything to flee the men led by “Caliph” al-Baghdadi, and were now preparing to flee once again. Today, he believes, such an international crisis or the decision-making system in place called upon to remedy matters, are no longer issues to be addressed by desk-strategists, because when events are this harsh, a backlash can only be prevented by the United Nations’ centrality and the flexible of politics and diplomacy.
Philosophy
Discussing Toleration After Susan Mendus
Roberta Sala, University of Milan San Raffaele 26 June 2014

In her paper entitled The changing face of toleration Susan Mendus critiques the idea of toleration as acknowledgement, which she calls “new toleration”, in opposition to the more classical notion of toleration as not interfering in what we consider an object of disapproval (be these decisions, actions or forms of behaviour). In particular “new toleration” is not, in her opinion, able to answer new questions posed by religious toleration. These are in truth ‘surprisingly’ new issues, when considering that until a decade ago they seemed definitively resolved
Philosophy
The Changing Face of Toleration
Susan Mendus, University of York 26 June 2014

The topic of toleration has interested, indeed fascinated, me for nearly 30 years. Twenty-eight years ago, in 1985, I was appointed Morrell Fellow in Toleration at the University of York, and I have continued to work within the Morrell Centre ever since – first as a Research Fellow, then as Director of the Programme, and now as Morrell Professor Emerita. In short, the problem of toleration has occupied much of my working life. However, looking back on the past 30 years, it is interesting to note that the problem of toleration is not at all the same now as it was when I began studying it all those years ago, and my main focus this evening will be on ways in which the problem of toleration has changed and with the new challenges which toleration faces in the modern world. Let me begin, though, by saying something about the way in which the problem of toleration was understood when I first began studying it all those years ago.
Philosophy
Toleration and the Need for Historical Understanding in Philosophy
Mario Ricciardi, University of Milan 26 June 2014

Towards to end of his life, Bernard Williams was eager to urge upon his readers the relevance of the historical dimension of philosophical understanding. In particular, if what is at stake is the clarification of a moral or a political concept, he claimed that philosophers need “what is unequivocally some kind of history”. Conceptual analysis on its own is insufficient because “the so called essence of a certain value (…) may be so schematic or indeterminate that it can be understood only by reference to particular historical formations. Nothing that has a history can be defined, as Nietzsche rightly said, and our virtues and our values certainly have a history”. It is difficult to think of a better example than toleration to vindicate Williams’s claim.
Gender
India, its women and cinema.
Interview with film director Aparna Sen
it
Maria Grazia Falà 9 June 2014
Constant attention to the world of women, to Indian social situations and policies that are only now slowly changing; violence, rape, or threats made against women, only nowadays at times reported with all the risks and dangers this involves, are words the Bengali director Aparna Sen, born in 1945, has always used with the special attention she has always paid to social issues and especially the feminine universe.
Sociology
Virgin Homicides: The Matrix of Elliot Rodger’s Mass Murder in Santa Barbara
Roger Friedland 4 June 2014

Elliot Rodger murdered six students at my university, UC Santa Barbara. Horror sometimes offers us a mirror. Looking at the pathological forces us to examine the normal. In our country, the normal means men’s guns and women’s bodies. The event again reminds us that the United States is great at mass murder, that we live in a freakish land where carrying semi-automatic weapons is a citizen’s right. At the memorial service, Richard Martinez, a victim’s father, asked us to rise and repeatedly shout out: “Not one more!!” The very day of the memorial a 21 year-old UCSB student was arrested for accidentally shooting his 9 mm. Glock pistol through the wall into the adjoining Isla Vista apartment. Police found seven firearms and a thousand rounds of ammunition.