bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Losing Control
Authors: Kabba Munya G.
Published: October 2020

This book belongs to the field of international relations. Its specializationis in the subfield of international security, with a critique of the realist paradigm– or power and control orientation in international politics. Itsmain argument is that the dominant realist approach in international securityis unsustainable due to the equalizing effects of terrorism and the proliferationof weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The dangerous“revolts at the margins” threaten the status quo. The book is a plea to stateofficials in the Middle East, the United States, Europe, Russia, transnationalcorporations, and international organizations to adopt attitudes conduciveto justice.Since Rogers is questioning the extant realist orientation, one wouldexpect him to outline the basic alternative principles for conducting internationalpolitics that could ensure justice, peace, and stability. Perhaps hisheavy engagement with how the West tries to maintain control of the internationalorder – as seen from the book’s title and discussions – weakenedthis perspective. The basic tension of what ought to be the correct rationalstructure of international interdependence, that which could enable this system“break out of the narrow view” or one-sided “perceptions” (p. 38), isnot clarified. In short, what Rogers sees as replacing the old paradox (thecold war) for the present one (“violent peace”) is actually a continuation of ...
The Arab Mind
Authors: Mozaffar Omer M.
Published: October 2020

It is Raphael Patai’s ambition to chart the fundamental components of theArab worldview that most compels the reader to leaf through the 400 pages of The Arab Mind. In one text, in less than 20 brief chapters, he seeks toprovide the elements that define the culture and mindset of the entire halfbillion-strong Arab world. For many readers, this enormous goal provokesenough skepticism to prevent any hope for objectivity before reading a singleword. In this new printing, however, Norvell B. DeAtkine (director ofMiddle East Studies, JFK Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, NC) providesa foreword that offers the highest praise for Patai’s work. Forinstance, he acknowledges that this book provides the foundation for hisown instruction and coursework.Hatherleigh Press, the publisher of this revised edition, is known forits Body Sculpting Bible series, its Living With line of health books, andits Flex series of athletic books. A more unlikely pairing reveals itselfwhen we discover that the original edition of The Arab Mind appeared in1973, the same year as Clifford Geertz’s groundbreaking TheInterpretation of Cultures. Though Patai republished this book a decadelater, and this new, current edition appears less than a decade after hisdeath, it is clear that despite his familiarity with Geertz’s writings, hechose not to embrace Geertz’s methods. Though none can deny the widthand depth of Patai’s insights, his own methods provide more problemsthan solutions ...
The Trouble with Islam
Authors: Mazid Nergis
Published: October 2020

Set up as an open letter to Muslims, Irshad Manji’s book contains one letter,nine chapters, six pages of recommended readings, and three pages ofacknowledgement. Together the 247 pages charge that “[t]otalitarianimpulses lurk in mainstream Islam” (p. 3, original emphasis) and reform iscrucial for the world’s security. Her open letter informs readers that “Islam ison very thin ice” (p. 1) with her, and asks for her charges to be heard. Shethen provides an autobiographical narrative that jumps from her days as ayoungster in a Baptist after school program to a madressa and junior highschool. It moves to her career as a journalist pioneering QueerTelevision thento 9/11 and its aftermath. Interwoven between these brief accounts are herindictments of Islam and Muslims. She ends the book with her bid for reform.In a colloquial style, Manji lays her heavy charge: mainstream Muslimsare “intellectually atrophied and morally impaired” (p. 55). Regardless oftheir location, they are universally homophobic, anti-Semitic, and misogynistic.Those arguing otherwise are ignorant, fraudulently cry racism orinjustice when criticized, and are compliant in all the gross human rightsviolations occurring in Muslim countries. Muslims who promote Islam’segalitarian message and reconcile contradictions by engaging in discourseand contextualizing the Qur’an, the Shari`ah, and the Hadith, or cite culturalinfluence to renounce stoning, rape laws, or discrimination are not, accordingto her, following mainstream Islam as they would like to think. Rather,they are acting despite it. Islam, according to Manji, is “really” a tribal religionthat is centrally controlled by Arabs who interpret the “Koran,” a contradictorybook suffering from “a mountain range of moods” (p. 228), topropagate “desert Islam.” Globally, Muslims cling to “foundamentalism,” aglorification of the Islam of the past, which actually was not as egalitarianas they claim. This, along with Arab imperialism, are responsible for thesocial ills of Muslims, not western imperialism, colonialism, or “the Jewishconspiracy.”Nonetheless, with Orientalist tropes and her western-cultivated commitmentto fairness and the individual, which, she informs, did not evolve fromIslam, Manji says there is room for Islam – as long as it reforms. “OperationIjtihad” involves questioning Islam, its tenets, and proponents by reviving ...
Political Islam in Southeast Asia
Authors: Kersten Carool
Published: October 2020

The author of this brief study on the political aspects of Southeast AsianIslam is a former State and Defense Department official who originally specializedin Latin American affairs before turning his attention to SoutheastAsia. Rabasa now works for the RAND Corporation, a think tank withclose links to the American national security community.The publisher’s target audience is security policy makers. Therefore,the studies it commissions are part analysis and part policy recommendations,whereby the former is often reduced to the bare essentials. It must besaid that, in this case, Rabasa has succeeded in presenting a reasonably balancedpicture in the space of a mere 80 pages. Already in his introductionthe author observes that, apart from a sharpening divide between militantIslam and the West, the antagonism between radicals and moderates withinthe Muslim world has increased as well, and that strengthening moderateand tolerant tendencies within Islam should be supported.Rabasa sees both external and internal influences contributing to therise of Islamic radicalism. In response to the intrusion of western culture, aheightened sense of Muslim self-awareness has found expression in identity-driven politics. A further polarizing element in Southeast Asian Islam isthe Arabization process carried out by Wahhabi-inspired movements andwith financial support from the Middle East. Other auxiliary factors to theformation of transnational networks connecting Muslim radicals are theIranian revolution, the Afghan war, disillusion over the lack of progress insolving the Palestinian issue, and the eruption of ethnic conflicts involvingMuslims in such areas as Bosnia, Chechnya, and Kashmir.Shifting to internal factors, Rabasa identifies different sets of causesfor each Muslim country and Muslim-dominated region in SoutheastAsia. In the case of Indonesia, the vacuum left by an imploding statestructure following Suharto's fall led to a sharpened political competitionin which some saw Islam as a suitable vehicle to power. Malaysia witnessedincreased rivalry between the ruling UMNO coalition and the Pan-Malay Islamic Party (PAS) for the vote of rural Malays, while in theMuslim-dominated southern regions of Thailand and the Philippines ...
Intellectuals and the State in Iran
Authors: Asgharzadeh Alireza
Published: October 2020

Negin Nabavi’s Intellectuals and the State in Iran comes at a time when aprocess of soul-searching by some Iranian intellectuals that started immediately after the triumph of Islamic revolution has now faded away, withoutyielding any satisfactory results. This process was inspired by the question:What role did the (secular left-leaning) intellectuals play in the revolution’striumph, which culminated in an Islamic state inherently opposed to theactivities of these same intellectuals? This important topic, of course, givesrise to the familiar question of “What is meant by an intellectual?” whichNabavi addresses in the book’s first part. Having given a historical perspectiveon the development and evolution of intellectualism in Iran, she concludesthat a distinguishing character of the Iranian intellectual was “theintellectual’s task to take a stance and engage with issues in society” (p. 3);where “dissent” was “a necessary component in the career of any Iranianintellectual” (p. 18).In part two, Nabavi discusses the processes that led to the “radicalizationof the Iranian intellectual.” Here she explores the emergence of what shecalls “the Third-Worldist intellectual” and the cooptation of a great numberof intellectuals by the Pahlavi regime . According to her, during this period(1963-70) “the notions of the ‘native’ and the ‘authentic’ became so pervasivethat even the establishment could not remain impervious to them” (p.106). The epilogue briefly touches upon the relationships between intellectualsand the revolution, where the author concludes that the intellectuals“lost out in the year that followed the revolution” (p. 149) ...
The Making of the Modern Iranian Women
Authors: Bahramitash Roksana
Published: October 2020

The book, a detailed historical examination of an important era of contemporaryIran’s history, documents a variety of late-nineteenth-centuryviews on “the women’s question.” Amin’s attempt to review its historicalbackground is an excellent gender-perspective analysis of the politicalatmosphere existing before Iran’s constitutional revolution of 1906-08.The intellectual debate ranged enormously during this period. For example,the atheist Akhundzadeh blamed Islamic and Turkmen rule (CentralAsians tribal rulers who had invaded Iran throughout Iranian history) fortheir situation. Meanwhile, the Babist Kermani, who called Iranian women“the living dead,” saw their enslavement as the result of the corrupted Arabculture transmitted through Islam. The example of such “progressives” asTaghizadeh, who followed western ideas and used the most racist and sexistarguments against women’s equality, presents an interesting aspect ofwesternization, which is brought up in the book.Alongside these different views, Amin documents a different andequally valuable late-nineteenth-century response that sought equality forwomen within Islam. This trend, similar to that of Qasim Amin of Egypt,includes as its most notable example Jamal al-Din Asadabdi, who supporteda modern interpretation of Islam that included gender equality.Mirza Malkam Khan, publisher of Ghanon (The Law), a newspaper printedin exile, was the first person to transform the “women’s question” froman elite discussion to a matter of Iranian public discourse through the press.He argued that women must be treated as human beings with the same dignitythat was accorded to men.Amin delineates two responses to the women’s question: a misogynistview that is best illustrated by Ta’dib al Nesvan (Disciplining Women),published during 1882-89, and a reaction to it written by Bibi KhanomAstarabadi, authoress of Ma’ayb al Rejal (The Vice of Men). Astarabadi (insome ways she can be called the first Muslim feminist) condemned suchmisogynous practices as infidelity and temporary marriage, as well as thedrinking, gambling, and pedophilia practiced by some men.The most interesting part of the book is the author’s discussion ofReza Shah and his break with the Qajar dynasty. Reza Shah imposed his ...
Mediterranean Architecture
Authors: Gaber Tammy
Published: October 2020

Organized by the Faculty of Engineering on February 15-18, 2004 at MisrInternational University, one of Egypt’s leading private universities, theDepartment of Architecture and Dean Salah Zaky Said targeted a diverseaudience of architects and professionals. The varied responses and interpretationsof the conference’s title proved that this provocative subjectallowed for multilayered discussions. The dialogue between academics,students, and professionals from different backgrounds identified meaningswith respect to the Mediterranean basin’s architecture. The followingthemes were discussed: the social impact on Mediterranean architecture,technology and crafts, urbanism and development, landscape and environment,trends in current architecture, and heritage conservation.The conference started with the keynote speech delivered by SuhaOzkan (secretary of the Aga Khan Award), who traced the landmark worksof contemporary architecture in the Mediterranean basin. The solutionspresented addressed issues not only of regional aesthetics, but also of climaticand cultural relevance. The second keynote speaker was Italian academicand architect Attilio Petruccioli (dean, School of Architecture,University of Bari, Italy), who brought up themes of typology and specificityin architecture. A rich discussion followed, with one of the sessionchairmen, Aga Khan Award recepient Abdel Halim Ibrahim (architect andprofessional, University of Cairo, Egypt), questioning and provoking theaudience with respect to the meaning of the built form and material in thisregion.The presentation of papers started with the theme of “Social Impact onMediterranean Architecture.” Papers explored ideas of cultural identity in ...
Editorial
Authors: Bullock Katherine
Published: October 2020

Just as the world united in grief after the tragic carnage of 9/11, so too hasthe world become one after the cataclysmic tsunami that has claimed,according to Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald (February 8, 2005),295,608 lives, and has affected 11 countries in the Indian Ocean region.The tsunami destroyed entire villages and families. Long after thehouses have been rebuilt and the people have returned to a kind of normalcyin their lives, the effects of this catastrophe will continue to be felt.Local economies and the infrastructures needed to support them will haveto be rebuilt, and there will be the continuing psychological impact on thesurvivors, who will always feel guilty for having survived and who willnever be free of the pain of losing their loved ones.No one has been unaffected by the tsunami, although some of us, bythe grace of God (swt), have not felt its devastation. As the English adagegoes, every cloud has a silver lining. And in the face of such an awesomenatural calamity, we have seen the best side of humanity, as people rush toprovide aid and assistance to the survivors.The tsunami has also allowed those working in poverty relief and aidprograms elsewhere to turn the spotlight on their efforts to avert othercalamities that are of the same magnitude but occur at a much slower pace.Among such people is Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary-General’s SpecialEnvoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, who pointed out during an interview on CBCradio (January 12, 2005) that more than 2 million people in Africa die eachyear of AIDS. And then there is Rabbi Michael Lerner, who reminded us inhis essay in Tikkun (January 5, 2005) of a recent UN report that 29,000 childrendie every day from avoidable diseases and malnutrition.Calamities and their accompanying suffering and struggles are tests forhumanity. They remind us that we are not in control of the universe, andthus are a lesson in humility. They remind us that life is fragile and can betaken from us at a time and in a way that we do not expect, and thus are alesson in priorities and perspective, a check against the materialism andhedonism that is overtaking our consumer capitalist lives. Who wouldreally care that they do not own the latest iPod if they knew that they wereto die tomorrow? ...
Beware of Rand Robots
Authors: Ali Tahir
Published: October 2020

For the last three years, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman hasbeen telling Muslims all over the world: “You either have to have a war withinor a war with us.” Acall for Muslim “civil war” has become the battle cryof the neo-cons. Using these “civil wars,” Muslims killing Muslims in largenumbers, the neo-cons expect to accomplish three goals: (1) the re-creationof Muslim societies in the western image, with or without democratic institutions,(2) long-term control over oil and policies toward Israel, and (3) thereconstruction of Islam on the Biblical model, reformation included.A while back, the Rand Corporation, a semi-autonomous think tank,issued a report titled Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, andStrategies authored by Cheryl Benard (http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1716/MR1716.pdf). American Muslims must take note ofthis, because it is already being implemented in “letter and spirit” by variousagencies and even “private” groups.Though the author of this report claims: “The United States has threegoals in regard to politicized Islam. First, it wants to prevent the spread ofextremism and violence. Second, in doing so, it needs to avoid the impressionthat the United States is ‘opposed to Islam.’ And third, in the longerrun, it must find ways to help address the deeper economic, social, andpolitical causes feeding Islamic radicalism and to encourage a move towarddevelopment and democratization,” its actual aims are discernable from itspolicy recommendations, detailed below.Cheryl Bernard, the author of this report [and wife of Zalmay Khalizad,the American ambassador to Afghanistan], claims: “This approach seeks tostrengthen and foster the development of civil, democratic Islam and ofmodernization and development. It provides the necessary flexibility todeal with different settings appropriately, and it reduces the danger of unintendednegative effects. The following outline describes what such a strategymight look like: ...
Fifth Seminar on the Middle East
Authors: Brieger Pedro
Published: October 2020

Studies of the Middle East and the Islamic world have developed considerablyin Argentina over the last 10 years because, among other reasons, thiscountry was targeted twice by terrorists who still remain unknown: TheEmbassy of Israel was bombed in 1992, and the central headquarters of theJewish community (AMIA) was bombed in 1994. Given that even todaywe do not know who carried out these attacks and why, the topic of theMiddle East has acquired a public dimension that it did not have before. Infact, these actions led to the creation of university study centers and chairsdedicated to the study of the Arab and Islamic worlds.1 However, their academicoutput is still in the initial stage.On 10-11 November 2004, the Fifth Seminar on the Middle East conferencetook place at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), in La Plata,Argentina. The Department of the Middle East of the UNLP’s Institute ofInternational Relations organizes this conference every 2 years, since it is oneof the few universities that has a specific department dedicated to MiddleEastern studies. Moreover, it is the only one that has, since 1997, consistentlymanaged to bring Argentine academics together to share ideas and discussthe contemporary reality of the Middle East and the Islamic world.During this conference, articles were presented on a wide range ofthemes, always searching for the best way to link together the most relevantevents of contemporary reality. For this reason, in 2002 the focus was onthe implications of the 9/11 tragedy. The current conference concentratedon the war in Iraq, a logical continuation of the discussion in 2002.Professors from 14 Argentine universities, as well as from Spain, theUnited States, and Mexico, participated in the panels. The first panel analyzedIslamic thinking and practice after 9/11. Augustín Galli (Universityof Buenos Aires [UBA], Argentina) laid out the evolution of Islamic movementsin Algeria. Damián Setton (UBA), who is investigating the various ...
Debating Moderate Islam
Authors: Khan Muqtedar
Published: October 2020

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, there have beenseveral conversations about the different interpretations of Islam, its impacton Muslim politics, and the relationship between Islam and the West. Thisdebate gained renewed vigor after the London attacks on July 7 and 21,2005. Scholars and policymakers agree that a politically angry and intellectuallynarrow interpretation of Islam – loosely referred to as militant orradical Islam – is exacerbating the already rampant anti-Americanism inthe Muslim world and encouraging terrorist responses to real and perceivedinjustices. Some analysts assert that the United States is completely innocentand thus blame radical Islamists alone for all of the problems in theworld, while others totally ignore the existence of extremism in the Muslimworld and blame the United States for all of the ills of our times. Most peopleare somewhere in between.Regardless of where one stands in this debate, there is now a growingconsensus that those on the moderate side in the Muslim world must assertthemselves and join the battle against extremism. Western governments arebeing advised to actively welcome the help and cooperation of moderateMuslims in order to ensure that the war against extremism does not become– or appear to be – a war against Islam. This policy idea of including moderateMuslims as allies against extremism in the Muslim world has generatedan interesting debate about what moderation really means and who isa moderate Muslim.In this special issue of the American Journal of Islamic SocialSciences, prominent voices from the policy community, the academic community,and the American Muslim community come together to debate whois a moderate Muslim and just what moderation means in a theological as ...
In God We Trust
Authors: Rauf Feisal Abdul
Published: October 2020

Question 1: Who are the moderate Muslims, and what are their beliefs andpolitics?FAR: The debate among the participants shows that while the term moderateMuslim is problematic, there is a need to define the attitudinal differencebetween Muslims who can be worked with from those who cannot. Isuggest that the defining feature is between those who believe in a pluralist,multicultural, multi-religious societal contract that allows for differencesof opinions within an over-arching construct, as opposed to thosewho believe in a societal contract that has no space for other religions, ethnicities,or cultures, or even intra-Islamic differences of opinion.1The latter attitude leads to the phenomenon known as “Islamist terrorism,”the modern-day version of the seventh-century Kharijites, who foughtand ultimately assassinated Ali, Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law, and who,over the following century, developed a political philosophy that justifiedmurdering fellow Muslims, including innocent women and children.Contemporary Muslims need to support that aspect of the war on terror thatis a true jihad against all forms of terrorism, known in classical Islamicjurisprudence as hirabah, and anarchic terrorism that tears the social fabricessential to well-functioning societies. But this cannot be done withoutsimultaneously purging Muslim societies of some other modern “isms” thathave “terrorized” Muslims and still continue to deny them their inalienablehuman rights under the Shari`ah ...
The Great Theft
Authors: Johnston David L.
Published: October 2020

Written creeds, which always come much later than the original revelation,invariably seek to define theological “orthodoxy” over and against the perceivedheresies of competing sects. Thus, in Islam, the Fiqh Akbar I stoodagainst the Kharajites, the Wasiyat Abu Hanifah against the Qadarites andthe first Mu`tazilites, and the Fiqh Akbar II against the later Mu`tazilites.Later on, such theological treatises as al-Ash`ari’s Al-Ibanah and `Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi’s Kitab Usul al-Din appeared.In The Great Theft, Khaled Abou El Fadl revives this tradition by statingthat in the wake of numerous “acts of ugliness” committed by Muslims,the ummah has reached a grave theological crossroads. Muslims are nowdivided along a spectrum between two extremes. Fundamentally, this schismis one between “moderates” (the extreme being defined by those most willingto reinterpret the Islamic tradition in the light of contemporary realities)and “puritans,” who, on the basis of a selective reading of Islam’s strictestschool of law (Hanbali), claim that 90 percent of human affairs are alreadycovered by God’s law (the Shari`ah). At the heart of these diametricallyopposed worldviews, he claims, is a theological decision regarding creationand the Shari`ah’s meaning.Significantly, the book’s first part is devoted to an analysis of the presentcrisis. In the first chapter (“Islam Torn between Extremism andModeration”), Abou El Fadl describes the split that divides the Islamic communityand helpfully defines the terms moderate (as opposed to modernist,progressive, or reformist) and puritan (not fundamentalist, militant, extremist,radical, or jihadist). From the beginning, he lays aside the commonMuslim objections in the face of suicide bombings or beheadings: “the problemis with Muslims, not Islam per se.” Unfortunately, he argues, all sidesclaim that they are following the precepts of Islam. What is needed is a ...
Understanding Islam
Authors: Fletcher Charles
Published: October 2020

Amidst the current struggle to accurately apprehend and explain Islam, variousworks have appeared since the 9/11 tragedy. Into this array of publicationscomes Jerald Dirks, who offers his contribution as an attempt to presentan undistorted introduction to Sunni Islam based almost exclusively onthe Qur’an and the Sunnah and aimed primarily at the western Christianreader. Dirks is an American Christian convert to Islam who has written onsuch diverse topics as clinical psychology, Arabian horses, and, recently,inter-religious issues: The Cross and the Crescent: An Interfaith Dialoguebetween Christianity and Islam (amana publications: 2001) and Abraham:The Friend of God (amana publications: 2002).Divided into ten chapters, Understanding Islam attempts to outlineIslam’s beliefs, doctrines, and practices in a manner accessible to the averagenon-Muslim western reader. One could offer a broader outline, notingthat chapters 1 to 3 deal with the basic history of Islam unfolded throughprophetic history; chapters 4 to 6 cover the faith’s sources, doctrines, and rituals; and chapters 7 to 9 focus upon the singular issue of jihad, its meaningand applications as “war” within the teachings of Islam and in wider history.The final chapter acts as a simple summary and exhortation to learnmore through recommended Qur’an translations and other materials.The introduction discusses Islam’s two primary sources, the Qur’an andthe Sunnah, along with the overall purpose and preview of the book’s contents.This is followed, in chapter 2, by a systematic comparative summary ofsuch major pre-Islamic events as creation and God’s revelation through Hisprophets. Here, the author compares and contrasts Islamic, Christian, andJewish accounts, including such non-Biblical sources as the pseudepigraphaland the apocryphal writings. The third (and longest) chapter, coveringroughly a third of the book, introduces Prophet Muhammad, his life and callto prophecy through to the Makkan and the Madinan periods, and ends withhis death. Dirks tries to locate Muhammad’s coming within the Jewish andChristian scriptures and tries to focus on issues that a western reader mightbe biased against, such as the Prophet’s multiple marriages and the treatmentof Madinah’s Jewish tribes. He acknowledges more than once the inadequacyof covering Muhammad’s life in such a brief chapter, and thereforerefers interested readers to more complete biographical accounts ...
Contemporary Chaos and Muslim Youth
Authors: Schleifer S. Abdallah
Published: October 2020

Why should I, your after-dinner speaker, a time for dessert – for sweetness– be the bearer of exclusively bad news, of chapters from the contemporarychaos that seemingly surrounds us. “The Darkness that Surrounds Us,” tocall upon the words of a great American poet Robert Creeley, who, I imagine,never would have imagined that his own troubling personal visionwould become an easily recognized metaphor to be invoked, as I invoke it,at a gathering of Muslim social scientists. Well, there are some good signs,like a nice after dinner mint that one discovers tucked just under one’s plateat the end of the meal, and I will get to them.My assumption is that I am really not here to tell you of things youknow, living as you do in the United States … things you know far betterthan I, particularly since, as a journalist, I feel on safest ground when I reportto you from personal experience. I cannot and will not even begin to addressthe many moments of humiliation and pain that many American Muslimshave experienced in the backlash to 9/11 and the events that have followed,precisely because I have been personally spared any those experiences. So,I will address experiences from which I have not been spared.I have lived abroad, in what could be called the Arab-Islamic world, forforty years. And for me, the trajectory of contemporary chaos and the crisisconfronting the Muslim youth has been a long one, long before 9/11. Morethan half of those years in the Middle East were spent as a journalist, mainly ...
Uzbekistan and the United States
Authors: Kalyoncu Mehmet
Published: October 2020

Uzbek president Islam Karimov has gotten away relatively easily with hisbrutal suppression of the Andijon uprising (May 13-14, 2005), in which thestate security forces opened fire on protesters and killed about 700 of them.Despite the fact that this book was written before this event, ShahramAkbarzadeh’s Uzbekistan and the United States: Authoritarianism,Islamism & Washington’s Security Agenda articulates quite well howKarimov came to the point where he could find the courage to becomeincreasingly authoritarian despite Uzbekistan’s bad record of human rightsabuses and failed democratic reforms. The author argues that Karimov’salready existing authoritarianism has intensified and yet has been relativelyignored as a result of his close cooperation with the United States in theAmerican-led “war-on-terror.” He argues that the common threat of Islamist extremism has brought the United States and Uzbekistan togetherand has become a pretext for the latter to continue its repressive policies,which have caused Uzbekistan’s human rights and democratization recordsto falter even further.Akbarzadeh takes the reader through a series of sociopolitical transformationsby which Karimov has sought to consolidate his power. Theseinclude the domestic restructuring of the Uzbek political system in the post-Soviet era; regional alignments and power struggles, most notably againstRussia; and, finally, Tashkent’s long-sought bilateral relations with theUnited States, which gained a whole new dimension after 9/11 and throughoutthe American-led “war on terror.” The author concludes that the cooperationbetween Tashkent and Washington in the fight against Islamistextremism and, consequently, the latter’s downplaying its concerns aboutdemocratic reforms in Uzbekistan, would only encourage Karimov to bemore repressive and less accountable toward the citizens of Uzbekistan.The book contributes to the understanding of political developments in thenewly independent states by probing the interaction between Uzbek domesticpolitics and the international political and security agendas ...
The Management of Islamic Activism
Authors: Ghori Faisal
Published: October 2020

In his first book, The Management of Islamic Activism, Quintan Wiktorowiczexamines the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis throughthe lens of social movement theory. Unlike some political scientists who dismissIslamic movements because of their informal networks, Wiktorowiczcontends that social movement theory is an apt framework through whichIslamic movements can be examined and studied. In this regard, his workleads the field. Yet for all its promise, this book largely fails to deliver.The book is divided into four primary sections, through which he tries toconstruct his conclusion: Jordanian political liberalization has occurredbecause of structural necessities, not because of its commitment to democratization.In addition, the state has been masterful in what he dubs the “managementof collective action,” (p. 3) which has, for all practical purposes, stifledany real opposition. While his conclusion is certainly tenable, given hisextensive fieldwork, the book is poorly organized and much of the evidenceexamined earlier in the work leaves many questions unanswered.The first chapter focuses rather heavily on the advent of Jordanian charitableNGOs and the state bureaucracy’s ability to effectively manipulate and control them. Although a key component of his argument is that the statebureaucracy has hampered and controlled the functionality of IslamicNGOs, he fails to explain what distinguishes Islamic NGOs from their counterparts.He clarifies: “The activities at most Islamic NGOs in Jordan do notdiffer substantially from those of secular and non-Islamic voluntary organizations”(p. 85). If this is correct, then what differentiates Islamic NGOsfrom non-Islamic NGOs? He explains: “What differentiates Islamic NGOsfrom their secular counterparts is … the volunteers’ beliefs that they are promotingIslam through their work. It is an insider belief in the mission, morethan the activities themselves, that distinguishes them” (p. 85) It is quiteremarkable that Wiktorowicz was privy to this “insider” belief. In a Muslimnation such as Jordan, it is hard to imagine that Islam is not a motivating factorin charitable work to some extent. The author argues that the statebureaucracy hampers Islamic NGOs, but is this indeed the case, or does thebureaucracy hamper all NGOs equally? This question remains unasked andunanswered. He would have us believe that the state bureaucracy has takenit upon itself to control Islamic NGOs, but does not thoroughly differentiatethem from the non-Islamic NGOs ...
Editorial
Authors: Bullock Katherine
Published: October 2020

The “war on terror” has become one of those discursive moral high groundsthat, in reality, serve as a smokescreen to conceal the imperial ambitions of apolitical elite. While the corporate media generally supports this elite by(mis)informing the general public about the war’s “progress,” more pertinentthreats fail to attract the same kind of political attention (and general handwringing) associated with the “green menace.” I could be referring to globalwarming, which some scientists consider one of the greatest threats to humanlife, or to the spread of such deadly diseases as the H1V avian flu virus.Actually, I am referring to organized crime and its links to biker gangs.On 8 April 2006, the worst mass murder in recent Ontario historyoccurred near Shedden, a small southwestern town where the bodies of eightmen were found in a local farmer’s field. Police arrested five people, includinga Bandido motorcycle club member. The killings were club related, as thevictims were members or associate members of the club. The Bandidos are a“outlaw” biker motorcycle club, held to represent that 1 percent who engagein criminal activity. As is usually the case, this minority wreaks havoc by itsmembers’ involvement in car/motorcycle theft, drugs, prostitution, gun trafficking,and similar criminal activities. They also contribute to gun-relateddeaths and maimings, drug addiction, and theft.Given this reality, biker gang-related activities are of grave concern tocommunity health and safety. And yet the West’s public venom is mostly preservedfor Muslims, most of whom are peace-loving people seeking to livequiet productive lives in safe neighborhoods. It is this overarching discourseof the supposedly “evil” scourge of Muslims against the backdrop of themore tangible, long-term, and widespread threats of organized crime that isworrying on at least two fronts. First, its demonization of Muslims makestheir lives in the West an increasingly problematic experience and, second, itfocuses the public’s attention on an abstract threat (“terror”) while divertingattention from more tangible (if intractable) threats, thereby allowing theUnited States’ neoconservative imperial ambitions to proceed.Maligning Muslims and Islam is reaching a dangerous level of acceptabilityin the United States and elsewhere in the West, even at the level ofpolitical discourse, and is buttressed by a largely supportive general public.The result: no-fly lists, racial profiling, and the jailing and torture of Muslims ...
Beyond Violence
Authors: Tourage Mahdi
Published: October 2020

This book contains six essays presented at an international conferenceentitled “Beyond Violence: Religious Sources of Social Transformation.” It brings together academic and activist Jews, Christians, and Muslims toexplore the potential of each religious tradition as a source of peaceful socialtransformation. The book thus problematizes the assumption that violence isminimized by excluding religion from public life.The book appropriately opens with Charles Taylor’s (McGill University)paper, which draws heavily on the thoughts of French philosopher ReneGirard Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress: 1979). Taylor explores the modes of transition of violence from purifyingkilling with metaphysical roots to political “categorical violence,”which makes ethnic cleansing possible. He gives a tripartite solution to violence:building ordered democratic polities that are likely to be less violent,spreading the benefits of such a society widely to prevent the formation ofdesperate excluded groups, and denouncing the self-righteous reconstitutionof violence for revenge by those who have suffered. These first two solutionsinvolve political and economic correctives at the governmental level,which may not hold true in the face of evidence. For example, violencecould be caused by a most democratic polity that finds no incentive to spreadits benefits, even to the most desperate of its own people. Taylor’s third solution,however, can resonate on a very personal level with many who, as aresult of suffering, feel entitled to revenge. It is forgiveness, he argues, anda recognition of a common, flawed humanity that may suppress the madnessof revenge and violent categorization (pp. 38-40) ...
An Imagined Geography
Authors: Launay Robert
Published: October 2020

The civil war in Sierra Leone broke out just as JoAnn D’Alisera arrived withthe intention of studying a rural Islamic community. Instead, she eventuallydecided to study Sierra Leonean Muslims in Washington, DC. Based on herethnographic research, An Imagined Geography is a sensitive depiction ofimmigrants who must negotiate their accommodation and allegiance to threeseparate imagined loci: the United States, in which they live; their SierraLeonean homeland; and the ummah, the global Islamic community of whichthey are a part.Much of the book centers on the experiences of five individuals, twomen and three women, through whose eyes the author explores the tensionsinvolved in being Muslim and African in the United States. Such a closegrainedfocus allows her to provide a very visceral depiction of how theylive out their religious commitments in their everyday interactions witheach other, with other Sierra Leoneans, and with Anglo-Americans. Themen, for instance, are particularly apt to choose driving taxis as a career, even though some of them are highly educated and qualified for more prestigiousand more remunerative jobs. However, their taxis allow them to constructa religious space that they can decorate with Islamic paraphernalia orkeep a supply of religious pamphlets to hand out to interested passengers,and to align themselves with religious time so that they can take prayerbreaks and even drive to the mosque to pray. The many women-run hotdogstands provide women with a similar freedom, if admittedly less mobility ...
Social Cohesion and the Five Pillars of Islam
Authors: Schumm Walter R. , Kohler Alison L.
Published: October 2020

A great deal of animosity exists between the western world (andits perceptions of Islam) and the Muslim world (and its perceptionsof the West). In an attempt to break down stereotypical perceptionsamong non-Muslim university students, instruction in aclass on “Understanding Islam” includes numerous aspects of thelogical wisdom of Islam. One such illustration concerns the roleof the Five Pillars in supporting and maintaining social cohesionamong monotheists. A model of social cohesion and the FivePillars is presented for discussion and reflection ...
Dialogue vs. Conflict
Authors: Tatari Eren
Published: October 2020

The “Second International Conference on Islam,” held at the University ofWisconsin-Madison on 24-25 April 2006, focused on the broad theme ofIslam and globalization through the lens of dialogue and conflict. Therewere four keynote speakers and more then thirty presentations on a widerange of topics related to Islam and the experiences of Muslims throughouthistory as well as in the contemporary world. The conference was markedby its multidisciplinary diversity and strong emphasis on constructive intellectualexchange among scholars.The four keynote speakers, Jocelyne Cesari (Harvard University),Thomas Michel, S.J. (Georgetown University), Scott Alexander (CatholicTheological Union), and Kemal Karpat (University of Wisconsin-Madison),touched upon various aspects of Islam at the age of globalization. Cesari’stalk, entitled “Global Islam between Fundamentalism and Cosmopolitanism,”presented a typology of three forms of Islamic identity that are emergingin the global age, namely, diasporic, pan-Islamic, and cosmopolitan. Inher words, diasporic refers to the localized relationships of Muslims whochoose to maintain strong ties with their country or city of origin, pan-Islamic emphasizes the effectiveness of the ummah concept in today’s world,and cosmopolitan refers to a worldview that is reflexive, in a sense definedby the status of being “other.”In his speech, “Confrontation and Dialogue: A History of Catholic-Muslim Relations,” Alexander outlined the history of this relationship sincethe advent of Islam, pointing to elements of dialogue and confrontation.Kemal Karpat discussed a most current topic in his speech, “Turkey and theEU: The End of a Millennium of Confrontation?” and analyzed the positiveconsequences of Turkey’s membership in the European Union (EU).The first panel, “Global Islam and the West,” accommodated papersexemplifying the responses and contributions of Muslims to globalization ...
Review Essays
Authors: Armijo Jackie
Published: October 2020

Books Reviewed: Sachiko Murata, Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light: Wang Taiyu’s“Great Learning of the Pure and Real” and Liu Chih’s “Displaying theConcealment of the Real Realm.”Albany: SUNY Press, 2000; Maria Jaschokand Shui Jingjun, The History of Women’s Mosques in Chinese Islam: AMosque of Their Own. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2000; Jean A. Berlie,Islam in China: Hui and Uyghurs between Modernization and Sinicization.Bangkok: White Lotus, 2004; Sheila Hollihan-Elliot, Muslims in China.Philadelphia: Mason Crest Publishers, 2006.With a population conservatively estimated at 20 million (and, according tosome sources, as high as 50 million), the Muslims of China remain one ofthe least studied and most misunderstood Muslim communities in theworld. After decades of relative neglect, however, over the past few yearsseveral books have been published that seek to shed light on differentaspects of the historic, religious, and contemporary lives of China’s Muslims.This review essay will survey four recent works written by a wide range ofscholars.Research on Islam in China has been hindered by many factors, includingthe difficulty of gaining expertise in both Chinese studies and Islamicstudies, learning both modern and classical Chinese and Arabic, the longstandingprejudices of Han Chinese scholars regarding the country’s minoritypeoples, together with the similarly long-standing prejudices of manywestern scholars regarding Islam. The earliest major work on the Muslimcommunities of China was published in 1910, by Marshall Broomhall of theChina Inland Mission. Titled Islam in China: A Neglected Problem, its mainpurpose was to educate Christian missionaries in China about the location,customs, and history of the indigenous Muslims in order to facilitate proselytizationactivities among them ...
Jihad in Paradise
Authors: Ali Muhamad
Published: October 2020

Jihad in Paradise explores cultural and religious interaction in Singapore andcompares this with the intolerant radical Islamism threatening the countryand Southeast Asia in general. Millard, a senior journalist who first workedon East Asia and then Southeast Asia, artfully conveys his descriptive yetanalytical narrative of how Southeast Asia underwent radical change due, in large part, to the influence of global and regional terrorism. Meanwhile,Singapore has yet to move forward by allowing greater political freedom anddeveloping mutual dialogue and cooperation between its different religiouscommunities. The Malay minority must also adjust itself to such pragmaticeconomic and political climates. Singapore’s future depends on how well itmanages multicultural diversity and balances its economic progress andpolitical democracy.The book is divided into six chapters. In his introduction, Millardobserves how Singapore and Southeast Asia were generally prosperous andpeaceful until the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, 9/11, and the 2002 Balibombings. He realizes that his book is not an “inside story,” for he regardshimself as only journalist who is deeply interested in human realities andtheir regional and global dimensions ...
Terrorism, Geopolitics, and Multinational Security Cooperation in Central Asia
Authors: Azizian Rouben , Davis Elizabeth Van Wie
Published: October 2020

On 22-24 February 2006, the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies(APCSS) held this conference on the complex security environment ofCentral Asia as the region continues to struggle with the phenomena of terrorismand religious extremism, poverty and corruption, political instabilityand authoritarian governance, as well as great power (China, Russia, and theUnited States) suspicion and rivalry. These challenges are not uniquelyCentral Asian, but the region seems to be particularly vulnerable to them asits young nations are undergoing a significant political, social, and economictransformation. How the region copes with these issues will extend importantlessons to the world as a whole.This forum examined the trilemma posed for Central Asia and thebroader Asia-Pacific region. First, for the war on terror in the region to besuccessful, it must evolve into well-implemented stabilization and reconstructionefforts as well as dramatic improvements in governance andhuman rights. Second, no country on its own can alter the situation inCentral Asia, for such an effort requires cooperation between all of the majorpowers and stakeholders in the region (India, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey).The magnitude of the problem of terrorism, which affects most if not allcountries in the region, should preclude another variation of the Great Game.Finally, while the number of regional organizations and security forums inCentral Asia has been growing, the low degree of coordination among themtriggers counterproductive rivalries and plays into the hands of extremistelements. Since terror knows no borders, what happens in Central Asia significantlyimpacts developments elsewhere.Although the counterterrorist effort in Central Asia has successfullymarginalized the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the localization of the terrorist threatmeans that new autonomous extremist cells continue to emerge in CentralAsia. The sources of proliferation of radical Islam can be found in socioeconomicdeprivation, widespread corruption, and political ...