This article explores the role of religion in Ottoman political legitimation. It shows that the Ottoman rulers were interested in a much more expansive, diverse form of political legitimation that included Islamic religious legitimation, but also used toleration and sultanic law to construct a more capacious form of political legitimation that included Muslim and non-Muslim populations of the empire.
There is no country in the “Old Continent” left immune by the terrorist attacks carried out or at least inspired by the Islamic State, although the largest number of victims of this unusual violence is reported in Middle Eastern countries (especially in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey) as the control of those territories conquered in the name of Jihad’s ideology in Syria and Iraq is becoming harder.
Only twice has Bangladesh made headline news in recent years: three years ago, when a complex of clothes factories collapsed in the suburbs of Dhaka killing over 1,200 people, and again last Friday when a group of armed men attacked a place patronised by Westerners killing 20 people, eighteen of them Westeners. The attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery, a café-restaurant in Dhaka’s most exclusive district, was not totally unexpected. There had been many signs indicating that Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most unstable countries in south Asia with 150 million inhabitants, of which the majority are Muslims, had sunk into a political crisis in which Islamist extremism is a destabilising force.
Is there an “Islamic State”? And can religiosity exist without freedom? No!, claims Islamic theologian Adnane Mokrani from Rome’s PISAI Institute and gives a political and historical explanation of why a secular State represents a real opportunity of religious freedom for Muslims
Whether “European Islam” is possible or not appears to be one of the controversial questions of our recent times. “Institutionalized ignorance” – in the words of Mohammed Arkoun – feeds mistrust, which in turn feeds fear. Fear becomes a prejudice, which in turn becomes a generalization; and generalizations are wrong. Thus, [institutionalized] ignorance is wrong. European arrogance seems to have forgotten the legacy of its earlier Enlightenment. Muslims’ moral order and Golden Age, long time passed, seems hijacked by terrorists. Wise moderates from both sides are needed more than any other times, and there are plenty of them. Bloody events in the name of politicized Allah, especially since the 1970s until the current horrendous massacres committed by the “Intolerant State” of ISIS nurture the stories that demagogues use to uphold their antagonistic views about each other.
From Reset-DoC’s Archive – For people of the Maghreb, or at least for those who are interested in the intellectual life, 2010 will undisputedly be associated with the heaviest harvest of intellectual and political figures of the region. As if death plotted against the region and decided to take away the emblematic figures of a glorious period of intellectual and political life. Mohamed Abid Al Jabiri, Edmond Emran El Maleh and Abraham Serfaty from Morocco; Mohamed Arkoun and Tahar Ouettar from Algeria and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd from Egypt, took their leave in 2010. As much as these intellectuals’ works are widely studied in Western academia, especially in Europe and America, they remain unknown to large sections of the Arab world. Many factors inform this ignorance. First, the objective discontinuities that exist in terms of free circulation of knowledge between the Mashriq (the east of the Arab world) and the Maghreb (the west). Second, the historical jealousies that have always existed between the two sides of the Arab world. (This article was published on Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations in 2011)
The intellectual project undertaken by the Moroccan thinker and philosopher Muḥammad ‘Ᾱbid al-Ǧābirī, better known as Mohammed Abed al-Jabri (1935-2010), considered one of the greatest Arab intellectuals of the century, would not be entirely “explored” if one did not also take into account his work involving a discourse on the Qur’an. So far, studies on his work emphasise the originality of his ideas that have proved to be decisive for the development of Arab thinking, for example the discovery of the three “cognitive orders” (bayān, ‘irfān and burhān), which have contributed significantly to the formation of Arab reasoning; just like the epistemological critique of Arab-Islamic cultural traditions (turāṯ) which resulted in a totally new perspective, thanks to an original approach in engaging with the past. The Muslim world was encouraged to reread, review and therefore also better understand its own cultural traditions so as to relate to modernity. But how could Islam’s relationship with modernity be re-established through the Koran and all the religious tradition gravitating around it? What is known of the “Koranic phenomenon”?
The late Egyptian theologian Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (10 July 1943 – 5 July 2010) was destined to be an Azharite sheikh, but the death of his father when he was fourteen, and the obligations of life led him to contribute to family household from an early age. However, he did not leave his scholarly thirst; he got his PhD in 1981 with a thesis on “The Philosophy of Interpretation: Mohi Eddin Ibn Arabi’s Method of Interpreting the Quran.” He belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood in Tanta in 1954, worked in Radio, and held lectureships and fellowships in Sudan, the USA, Japan, and the Netherlands; he received scholarly rewards for his works from Tunisia, Jordan and other international institutions. He was the student and colleague of the living famous philosopher Hassan Hanafi (b. 1935), whose project of the Islamic Left he (Abu Zayd) critiques especially in Critique of Religious Discourse (1990). He also met in scholarly discussions with contemporary philosophers-theologians like Sadeq al-Azmeh, Mohammed Arkoun, Abdolkarim Soroush, and Mohammad Amareh. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd will be remembered as a staunch rationalist and liberal theologian that defends three major values from within his own Islamic faith – reason, liberty, and justice. In his own words, “Islam truly liberated man”; to recover that achievement, re-interpreting the Sacred Text is a must for renewed liberation, based on considering “this-world” the essence of existence. This is an homage to his great contributions at the age of Arab-Islamic intellectual predicament, and political turmoil led by bloody hijackers of the Quran.
This essay was published by our Italian magazine Reset n.97, Sept.-Oct. 2006
The historical events that marked the years 1989-1990, the fall of the Berlin Wall and with it the Communist bloc, paved the way for radically new perspectives in schools of thought and the collective imagination. The famous statement made by former American President George Bush Sr. announcing the “end of the Cold War” and the birth of a “new world order” provided this perspective with an official seal of approval. The entire world expected a radical change in international relations. Hopes were expressed, optimistic forecasts were made; the “end of history” was even announced with the definitive triumph of liberalism and democracy. In Third World countries there was hope that the West would renounce the “logic of war” that had characterised its relations with the rest of the world, applying more inspired policies now motivated by the values of Enlightenment, those of “liberty, equality and fraternity.” Many members of the modern elites of these countries believed that the West, having won the Cold War, would encourage democratic change in the Third World. Some even stated that the West would certainly demand, as a starting point for all forms of cooperation with Third World governments, a real democratisation of political and social life as well as honest and real respect for human rights etc. Therefore, as far as people in the Third World were concerned, the West’s future relations with their countries would essentially have depended on making “new foreign policy” choices, continuing to manoeuvre within the framework of the same logic of war, or proceeding instead towards a real “reconstruction” of their own policies and strategies in order to allow relations with the South to be set within what was called the “post-Cold War” period.What has happened to those aspirations? In what way did the West perceive its future relations with the Third World in general and the Arab-Islamic world in particular? As far as politics are concerned, one must add that in the West, aspirations have now been replaced by scenarios created by professors of “strategic studies.” The observer preferring not to fall prey to the uncontrolled prejudices and reactions of fanatic and xenophobic right-wing environments, European and American, can satisfy all his curiosities by drawing on the self-proclaimed authoritative ideas of these professors.
Italian MP Khalid Chaouki interviewed by Elisa Gianni27 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.
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