The Kurdish question and the PKK have been among the topics that have gained massive importance for almost a century in politics, daily life, and among academics. The declaration of the PKK, the last ideological rebellion against the Turkish state, has translated the Kurdish problem into the problem of assimilation, nationalization, and standardization of the decades-long armed conflict between the Turkish army and the PKK. This article aims to present a discourse and content analysis of the master’s and doctoral dissertations (...) that were submitted to the Turkish Higher Education Institution (YÖK) between 1999–2020 in Turkey. The paper focuses on how and in which context these researchers analyzed and formulated their findings on the PKK and the Kurdish conflict. The two basic theoretical concepts on which the study is based are the “embedded journalist” used in media studies and Antonio Gramsci’s “organic intellectual.” The main argument of this study is that the theses have become an affirmation apparatus that reproduces the official ideology of the state with slight differences and feeds it to the masses, and at the same time, due to their narrative that is built with the eyes of the state, they tend to be examples of embedded journalism rather than scientific studies. (shrink)

Gramsci recognised the inestimable historical contribution of Muslim and Arab civilisations, writing on these in his newspaper articles, his pre-prison letters and the Prison Notebooks. The Islamic world contemporary with him was largely rural, with the masses heavily influenced by religion, analogous in some ways to Italy whose economy was still largely oriented towards a peasantry among whom the Vatican played a leading role. In addition to factors such as the politics-religion nexus, what Gramsci was also analysing, without saying as (...) much explicitly, was the upheaval caused by the disintegration and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, and the inter-imperialist rivalries over the spoils and the construction of new states from its ruins. Here he draws attention to the first hesitant and contradictory anticolonial stances being adopted among the traditional leaders, as well recognising the basis for more popularly-based movements. In both Catholic countries and, as Gramsci knew especially from the experience of his Comintern work, in parts of the Muslim world, these movements could at times assume a left and politically radical orientation. What emerges is a picture of conflicting hegemonies involving principally religion, class, the political ambivalence of many religious leaders, and a burgeoning nationalism contraposed to the supra-nationalist claims of religion. But the factor underlying everything is the potential of the masses who, if awakened from torpor and detached from European colonialism, were judged capable of rupturing previous imperially-determined equilibria. (shrink)

Jamel Khermimoun considers that Muslims born in France and in the West now build their identity not from an imported model but from a strong sense of belonging to the nation, which they claim at the same time as their Islam. He wants to shed light on his reading of texts guided by the spirit of flexibility and openness advocated by Islam. We must listen carefully to what he has to say to us; one must know how to (...) confront ones own point of view with ones own, and thus enter into a process of dialogue which, as he writes himself, creates real issues and is capable of appeasing the spirits (Jean Baubrot, professor emeritus of the Chair History and Sociology of Secularism [Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris] and author of several books). Through this book, the author has the merit of advocating the creation of a field of mutual acquaintance [...], a base of common values that can help Westerners and Muslims to get out of the tunnel of reciprocal prejudices, to protect together the true notion of secularism that calls for respect for individual choices and the defense of the right of expression (Claudia Mansueto, doctor of literature, professor at the University of Trieste). Jamel Khermimoun provides answers to the questions raised by the place of the Muslim religion in modern societies. For the author, Islam is not incompatible with secularism because it shares with it the most important values which make possible cohabitation, or even mutual enrichment. Instead of opposing them, it encourages us to reinvest the republican principles that make up our societies. [...] It is for those of us who want to understand the world in which they live. The links of Islam to modernity, to knowledge, to the idea of freedom, to the equality of the sexes, to violence, to fanaticism, to racism, are here dealt with frankness and clarity (Victor Loupan, journalist, author, former international reporter at Figaro Magazine). (shrink)

In this article we consider the forms of democratic participation that revolve around issues of religious faith and Islam. The context of such work is one in which a concern with the levels of participation in the political institutions of Western Europe and North America feature prominently in both journalistic and academic debate. The article speaks to debates that are concerned with the efficacy of specific forms of participation. In doing so we argue that we need to think carefully (...) about the forms of social action that constitute participation in the democratic process. We also need to think precisely about definitions of the political with which people engage. If we take the political as a domain in which the ethical settlement of society is contestable, the sorts of mobilization around faith communities that this article describes are clearly a form of political participation. Yet the article argues that the reasons many become involved in these forms of social organization in contemporary East London is precisely because they are seen as less complicit with mainstream political institutions of the British state. (shrink)

According to the 2002 census, the Muslim population of Russia was 14.5 million people. During the past decade, the idea of a Muslim demographic "threat" has spread, discussed most often by politicians with nationalist views, along with journalists and some writers. Islam remains a factor that regulates relations in society. The current revival of Islam is contradictory and diverse in terms of its consequences. Its main result is that we are dealing with a new Islam and new (...) Muslims. (shrink)

Journalistic ethics and freedom of the press according to Islam in Indonesia.

The topic of ‘global Islam’ has become a prominent focus of discussion in both academic and journalistic writing, as well as in broader political discourse. Yet the cumulative effect of this abundance of commentary has been to render the term global Islam increasingly unclear. As a response to this predicament, this essay proposes a working definition of global Islam that may serve to clarify the object/s of study and, in turn, enable future research to make sense of (...) how, where, and when the phenomena originated. Particular attention is given to the necessity of grappling with the plurality and diversity of Islamic practice worldwide, as well as to the practical analytical problems of scale. In this manner, a distinction is made between ‘global Islam’ and ‘world Islam’. Overall, the essay argues that ‘global Islam’ can serve as an analytically precise category for specific religious actors and organizations who operate in the networked places and specific timeframe of modern globalization. (shrink)

A concise and authoritative introduction to Islamic political ideas In sixteen concise chapters on key topics, this book provides a rich, authoritative, and up-to-date introduction to Islamic political thought from the birth of Islam to today, presenting essential background and context for understanding contemporary politics in the Islamic world and beyond. Selected from the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, and focusing on the origins, development, and contemporary importance of Islamic political ideas and related subjects, each chapter offers (...) a sophisticated yet accessible introduction to its topic. Written by leading specialists and incorporating the latest scholarship, the alphabetically arranged chapters cover the topics of authority, the caliphate, fundamentalism, government, jihad, knowledge, minorities, modernity, Muhammad, pluralism and tolerance, the Qur'an, revival and reform, shariʿa (sacred law), traditional political thought, ‘ulama' (religious scholars), and women. Read separately or together, these chapters provide an indispensable resource for students, journalists, policymakers, and anyone else seeking an informed perspective on the complex intersection of Islam and politics. The contributors are Gerhard Bowering, Ayesha S. Chaudhry, Patricia Crone, Roxanne Euben, Yohanan Friedmann, Paul L. Heck, Roy Jackson, Wadad Kadi, John Kelsay, Gudrun Krämer, Ebrahim Moosa, Armando Salvatore, Aram A. Shahin, Emad El-Din Shahin, Devin J. Stewart, SherAli Tareen, and Muhammad Qasim Zaman. A new afterword discusses the essays in relation to contemporary political developments. (shrink)

P. K. Yasser Arafath and G. Arunima (eds), The Hijab: Islam, Women and the Politics of Clothing (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022), 272 pp., ISBN: 9789392099380 Dedicated to the 'Muslim girls and women protesting for their rights in India and Iran', historians P. K. Yasser Arafath and G. Arunima have compiled a deeply engaging collection of essays that explore the wearing of the hijab from a multitude of perspectives. The contributions traverse different national contexts and explore multiple and (...) entangled strands of the debates around the hijab, underscoring its breadth and complexity. And as the essays in The Hijab: Islam, Women and the Politics of Clothing demonstrate, not only is this is a complex debate, but also one on very rugged terrain. To dispel misconceptions, prejudices and generalities that abound on the subject, the contributors gathered here come with expertise, variously, in religious studies, sociology, English literature, law, theatre, liberal studies, political science, development studies, journalism, education and historical studies. The essays are grouped into sections - 'Context and Questions', 'Reading the Ban', 'Ethno/History/Life Writing' and 'Many Feminisms' - and read together illuminate the cross-cutting historical, ethnographical and political trajectories in which the question of the hijab is embedded. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Islamic Aesthetics: An IntroductionSulejman BostoIslamic Aesthetics: An Introduction. By Oliver Leaman. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pp. 216. Hardcover £55.00. Paper £16.99.IIf Islamic Aesthetics: An Introduction by Oliver Leaman falls into your hands,1 you may well find it hard to curb your curiosity and resist the challenge, given that "Islamic [End Page 502] topics" are so much in the forefront these days, especially in relation to global politics, but (...) no less in the widely diverse cultural, theological, philosophical, sociological, and other fields of strictly academic interest. With this conjuncture—along with the inflationary interest of the market in everyday politics and journalism, which is shaped by the crisis that has engulfed the world and the globalization of discord, by ideological conflicts and clashing worldviews, by the economic and political struggle for dominance and power, and by the simplifications resorted to by the media culture of today as it promotes a new type of instant, fast-generated, and easily digested knowledge—issues are frequently vulgarized, reducing serious, unresolved questions of understanding cultures and civilizations to the superficial discourse of stereotypes and prejudices and their manipulation in and by everyday politics.The counter or alternative to this conjuncture and its mundane political motives, which are highly diverse and often marked by opposing interests, ought to be an entirely new cognitive and hermeneutic strategy designed, with regard to the sociocultural and spiritual sciences falling within the term humaniora, both to ensure academic objectivity and methodological dependability and to further a nonviolent hermeneutic openness to the Other—the existential, social, and historical connections and interactions between individuals, societies, cultures, knowledge, belief, and so forth—in which our human lives run their course. This hermeneutic need, however, is not convertible with the new and mutually contradictory developments in globalization—to the extent that globalization means not merely interconnection and political, technological, and economic standardization, but also a leveling down designed to obliterate difference and lead to bland uniformity. To the contrary, this hermeneutic does not mean aspiring to eradicate differences, but rather necessarily involves a dialectic of recognition based on the premise of a nonviolent will for understanding and entente. What is needed, in fact, is a new culture of mutual recognition, for which neither mere spontaneous sympathy for today's much-vaunted "dialogue" nor the moralistic incantations by which public discourse pays lip service to it will be sufficient. Such a culture demands the ability critically to reassess established orders of knowledge, a critique of prevailing clichés and stereotypes, and a positive, systematic knowledge of and familiarity with the material being presented and discussed. In other words, a culture of recognition inevitably presupposes a culture of knowledge, from which alone one may expect cognition, exchange, understanding, and concord.Clearly, knowledge acquired in the domain of historical, cultural, spiritual, or humanist studies, the domain of the social sciences, is not of the same nature as the positivism and objectivism of the natural sciences, nor does it share the latter's universality, since matters concerning our past existence and our creations and inventions, with their historical mutability and temporal nature, their historical, social, or cultural relativity, are resistant to absolute objectivization and reduction to the cognitive norm of unambiguity. If the hermeneutic task, in its encounter with the current historical material of human thought and formation, is faced with the dangers of an adverse, relativistic infinity in which everything is convertible with [End Page 503] everything else, then, in the absence of a uniform criterion of truth and knowledge and its purposes, one must conclude that "unity of sense" or "unity of meaning" is impossible. Despite this danger, the hermeneutic experience—with, as its basis, the unity of experience of understanding to be found in the postulate of human historicality and finitude, which suggests to us the bond between us in the open human "communication through historical time"—invokes the indispensable openness and free flow of the most diverse human expressions, works, and meaningful acts, in which people in their diverse historical groupings and circumstances, social environments and differing experiences, and languages and cultures meet in the same historical, existential play—the transformation of primal chaos into... (shrink)

In 1978, as the protests against the Shah of Iran reached their zenith, philosopher Michel Foucault was working as a special correspondent for _Corriere della Sera_ and _le Nouvel Observateur_. During his little-known stint as a journalist, Foucault traveled to Iran, met with leaders like Ayatollah Khomeini, and wrote a series of articles on the revolution. _Foucault and the Iranian Revolution _is the first book-length analysis of these essays on Iran, the majority of which have never before appeared in English. (...) Accompanying the analysis are annotated translations of the Iran writings in their entirety and the at times blistering responses from such contemporaneous critics as Middle East scholar Maxime Rodinson as well as comments on the revolution by feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. In this important and controversial account, Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson illuminate Foucault's support of the Islamist movement. They also show how Foucault's experiences in Iran contributed to a turning point in his thought, influencing his ideas on the Enlightenment, homosexuality, and his search for political spirituality. _Foucault and the Iranian Revolution_ informs current discussion on the divisions that have reemerged among Western intellectuals over the response to radical Islamism after September 11. Foucault's provocative writings are thus essential for understanding the history and the future of the West's relationship with Iran and, more generally, to political Islam. In their examination of these journalistic pieces, Afary and Anderson offer a surprising glimpse into the mind of a celebrated thinker. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rushdie’s Dastan-e-Dilruba: The Satanic Verses As Rushdie’s Love Letter to IslamFeroza Jussawalla (bio)Meheruban likhoon ya dilruba likhoon hyran hoon ke apke khat me kya likhoonYe mera prempatr padh kar ke tum naraz na hona ke tum meri zindagi ho ke tum meri bandagi ho[Should I address you as respected one Should I address you as beloved one I am so distraught about how I should address youWhen you read (...) my love letter You should not be disappointed Because you are my life and you are my “life’s work”]—Popular Hindi film song from Raj Kapoor’s Sangam (1964) [my translation]Salman Rushdie has been classified as a postcolonial 1 writer whose fiction depicts the hybrid nature of postcolonials in their migrations and movements, their merging and mixing. Rushdie has variously been called a “Third World Cosmopolitan” [Brennan, Salman Rushdie viii], a “metropolitan intellectual,” and “a hybrid” but most often a [End Page 50] “postcolonial,” because of his “birth” as a “Midnight’s child”—a child born as India was gaining independence at midnight on 14 August 1947 2 —his subsequent education in England, and the making of his home in metropolitan London. Such a perspective is eurocentric and does not provide complete answers to Rushdie’s complex works or the complicated response to his work. For the very hybridity that Rushdie manifests results from his being not only a “post-British” colonial but also a “post-Mughal” colonial.The British were not the only colonizers of India. In fact, Indian historians have traditionally identified several waves of colonization. Journalists Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre best summarize the two major waves of colonization as follows:Hinduism itself had been brought to India by the Indo-European hordes descending from the North to wrest the subcontinent from its ancient Dravidian inhabitants.... The faith of the Prophet had come much later, after the cohorts of Genghis Khan and Tamurlane had battered their way down the Khyber Pass to weaken the Hindus’ hold on the great Gangetic Plain. For two centuries, the Moslem Mogul emperors had imposed their sumptuous and implacable rule over most of India, spreading in the wake of their martial legions the message of Allah, the One, the Merciful.[Freedom at Midnight 36]While the British were actually occupying India, post-Mughal colonialism in the form of Persian poetry, literature, and the general “sumptuousness” of its art and architecture held sway. The Persian language begot Urdu, often described by linguists as a “camp language” of the Muslim invaders of the Subcontinent. However, Persian, Arabic, and Hindi had come together to create a new language for the poetry, literature, arts, and in general the “high culture” of today’s Indian Muslims. Jawaharlal Nehru, in his definitive history of India entitled Discovery of India, wrote,The Mughals were outsiders and strangers to India and yet they fitted into Indian structure with remarkable speed and began the Indo-Mughal period.... Their dynasties became completely Indianized with their roots in India, looking upon India as their homeland, and the rest of the world as foreign.[236]A synthesis worked itself out: new styles of architecture arose; food and clothing changed; and life was affected and varied in many other ways.... The Persian language became the official court language and many Persian words crept into popular use.[237]Persian was the lingua franca of the incoming Muslims from AD 1193 onward, and Persian literature became the favored literature of India for approximately five centuries [Ali 3–4].It is in this tradition of post-Mughal Urdu high culture that Rushdie grew up. In a 1983 interview with Michael Kaufman, Rushdie said,My grandfather, my father’s father, was a good Urdu poet. My father is not a writer but he’s a very literary and literate man, a student of both Arabic and Persian Literature and of Western Literature. At Cambridge he was quite scholarly. So I grew up in an atmosphere of books. And both my parents, in their different ways, were very gifted storytellers. [End Page 51]My mother, in common with most Eastern women and perhaps even women of the West, was the... (shrink)

Activist, journalist, and theorist, Eqbal Ahmad was admired by and consulted by activists and policymakers. He inspired new ways of thinking about militant Islam, the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the Cold War. This intellectual biography relates Ahmad's life to the political transformations that occurred globally in the second half of the twentieth century"--Provided by publisher.

Codes of ethics in journalism in the light of Koran and Hadith (Islamic traditions).

Nombre d'évidences circulent dans la pensée musulmane contemporaine au sujet de la violence, de la paix, de la loi, etc. Cet ouvrage étudie ces évidences par la contextualisation historique et l’analyse philologique de ces notions à la croisée de l’épistémologie, de l’histoire des idées et de l’islamologie. Vingt notions principales de la pensée musulmane, largement mobilisées dans les débats de la pensée musulmane et de l’islam en Europe sont analysées, allant de la dignité humaine et de la liberté à (...) l’éthique et à la spiritualité. L’ouvrage pourrait être utile aussi bien aux musulmans animés par la réflexion sur la grande crise du monde musulman qu’aux chercheurs sur l’islam, aux personnes engagées dans la compréhension ou le dialogue avec l’islam, et aux journalistes confrontés aux réalités musulmanes. (shrink)

Koranic teachings on ethics of journalism and mass communications.

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-97) was a pan-Islamic thinker, political activist, and journalist, who sought to revive Islamic thought and liberate the Muslim world from Western influence. Many aspects of his life and his background remain unknown or controversial, including his birthplace, his religious affiliation, and the cause of his death. He was likely born in Asadabad, near present-day Hamadan, Iran. His better known history begins when he was 18, with a one-year stay in India that coincided with the Sepoy Mutiny (...) of 1857-59. In what would become a life of constant travel, he soon went to Mecca to perform Hajj, before returning to Afghanistan to join the service of the country's ruler, Dost Mohammad Khan (1793-1863). He later sided with Dost's son Mohammad Aʻzam, who ultimately lost in a power struggle with his British-supported brother Sher Ali. Al-Afghani's political activism eventually took him to Paris, London, Tehran, Saint Petersburg, and Constantinople. It was during his second stay in Egypt (1871-79) that he cemented his role as a reformer. He found in Cairo a class of young intellectuals who gathered around him, established newspapers, and used these papers to disseminate his ideas. Chief among al-Afghani's Egyptian disciples were scholar Muhammad ʻAbduh, journalist ʻAbd Allah al-Nadim, and nationalist politicians Mustafa Kamil and Saʻd Zaghlul. Al-Afghani's influence on both modernist and traditionalist Islamic thought continues to the present. An activist who sought to effect change through political journalism and public speaking, he did not write many books. This treatise, entitled al-Radd ʻalā al-dahrīyīn (Refutation of the materialists), was a rebuttal of the views of the pro-British Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, who had argued that science is more important than religion in the rise of civilizations. First written in Persian following al-Afghani's exile from Egypt to India, it was translated into Arabic by his student Muhammad ʻAbduh, with the help of al-Afghani's assistant Arif Efendi. (shrink)

Recent protests in Iran (and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa) have clearly shown the extent of humanism there. Whilst resistance to dictatorship and Islamism has always been in existence, the 2009 Twitter revolution in Iran gave people everywhere an insight into a social movement that is deeply humanist, modern, and secular. What it has also shown is the irrelevance and antithetical character of Islamism with people’s demands and desires. This is what many of us have been saying (...) for a very long time. Recent events, broadcast via citizen journalism, however, have given the world an opportunity to see it for itself. There are several factors contributing to this rise. (shrink)

Ever since the Arab Spring revolutions started, numerous journalists, academics and Middle East experts have been appearing on news channels, websites and radio talk shows warning of an impending and inevitable Islamist takeover should free elections be held in the post-Arab Spring Middle East. Their winning of free elections would almost certainly be followed with the implementation of the strictest interpretations of shariah. Was it so? The aim of this article is to answer the following question: Did the ‘Arab Spring’ (...) pave the way for shariah-based constitutions? At the time of this writing (mid-2013) certain reversals of the Arab Spring are obviously taking place, hence this article is restricted to the immediate post-Arab Spring period. (shrink)

Existe un consenso general en torno a la condena de los textos de Foucault sobre la revolución iraní, a los que se considera un error manifiesto, ya sea debido a que el entusiasmo por la revolución islámica lo habría alejado imprudentemente de sus verdaderos intereses teóricos, ya sea debido a que ellos revelan un trasfondo totalitario, ingenuo y hasta misógino de su filosofía, lo cual, por supuesto, ahorra a los comentadores un trabajo hermenéutico sobre la inserción de tales escritos en (...) una obra cuya apuesta general aún es objeto de disputa académica. En este trabajo proponemos una vía alternativa de comprensión que no toma estos textos como un error, sino como parte de un diagnóstico al que se busca echar luz a través de la dimensión del viaje, el periodismo radical y la heterotopología como elementos fundamentales de una apuesta filosófica por la alteridad. There is consensus in disapproving the journalistic articles written by Foucault about the Iranian revolution. They are considered clear mistakes. Some say that this is so because the enthusiasm of Foucault towards the Islamic revolution moved him away from his true theoretical interests; others say that what those texts reveal is a totalitarian, naive, and even misogynistic background of his philosophy. By doing this, commentators spear themselves a hermeneutical work on the incorporation of those texts into a work whose general bet remains the subject of academic discussion. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach to the issue; one in which the texts are not considered a mistake but rather they are seen as part of a diagnosis that can get some light from the ideas of travel, radical journalism and heterotopology. These considered as fundamental elements of a philosophical bet on alterity. (shrink)

Based on the communication ethics of Ptahhotep and other inclusivist communication value systems, including several additional non-Western (Confucian, Buddhist, Aborigine, Cree, San, Māori, Ubuntu, and Islamic) as well as Western ones (Stoic, Christian, Kantian, socialist, liberal, and journalistic), we propose seven principles as common ground for the future regulation of media communication on a global scale. All seven are formulated in a manner similar to Ptahhotep’s, providing a flexible range of norms allowing, for example, hate speech to be dealt with (...) by criminalization, or in civil law, or by means of ethics rules and self-regulation, depending on the severity of the involved threats to humanity, to human beings, or to other core values. We reject an often-paralyzing comparative intercultural juxtaposition of individualism versus collectivism, instead suggesting an inclusivist and interculturally principled common ground for the regulation of communication. (shrink)

Throughout Iran’s modern history, control of the public sphere has remained in the hands of the state. With virtually no trace of a civil society, public opinion has played only a minimal role in influencing state affairs. The 1979 Islamic revolution could be viewed as a break in this historical trend, but public opinion retreated into the background once the clerics solidified their power -- and then kept it by invoking religious orthodoxy to deflect any challenges. Thus, it should have (...) been no surprise that the press revolution, which began in the late 1990s as Mohammad Khatami came to power, collapsed a few years later. While an array of newspapers and journals are still published in Iran today, the persecution of leading editors and publishers with pro-reform sympathies has successfully cleared the field of any real threat to the status quo.The early theorists of the reform movement that came to be identified with President Khatami saw a free and independent press as a vital part of an Islamic Repub lic. For centuries, they argued, the state had used its control over the media -- first the publication of books, then newspapers and finally radio and television -- to push society toward the rulers’ desired ends. In contrast, the reformers saw a free press as the best way to foster open debate and political and social pluralism, unleashing forces that would allow society at large to determine its own fate. In other words, there could be no pre-determined end, shaped by fiat. Their chosen weapon in the battle for a civil society was the newspaper, a medium with a rich history in Iran of social and political activism. Persian newspapers, particularly those published abroad and smuggled into Iran in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, had been responsible for remarkable changes in the political landscape. They introduced liberal social and political ideas from Europe and provided readers with a new, simplified language in which to debate such notions. Most important of all, the early press helped create the very idea of society as a political actor in its own right. Within months of Khatami’s move to the Presidential Palace, his new appointees in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance unleashed a “press revolution.” They quickly streamlined the issuing of publication licenses; countered Iran’s traditional centralism by encouraging the rise of local and provincial newspapers; eased the financial hardships of independent publishers; and sought protection under the existing Press Law for controversial editors and commentators facing the hostility of the ruling clerics. The result was a wave of entrepreneurial and journalistic creativity unmatched since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911.By the spring of 2000, the hard-line clerics had had enough. They used their almost complete control of the public space to shut the door on the “press revolution” and to drive their critics, including many learned clerics, back into private dissent. Dozens of newspapers were closed and prominent journalists were prosecuted, most for violating so-called Islamic norms; anything like public discourse was forced back into the shadows. The ease with which the clerical establishment crushed the free press reflected the basic weaknesses and miscalculations of the reform movement. The senior theologians had established themselves as far back as the Constitutional Revolution as the final arbiters of freedom of expression under Islam. Without a wholesale re-evaluation of the role of the clergy and the very concept of freedom in a religious system of government, this power was destined to go unchecked. The reformers had also put too much emphasis on a free press, in the absence of any other real building blocks of civil society. Newspapers were expected to play the roles of political parties, of independent think tanks and, in the case of Jameah and Tous, of exemplars of social, political and economic independence. It was a burden the Iranian press was simply unable to carry. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSuicide attempt rates are on the rise in predominantly Islamic Republic of Pakistan. However, there exists an indigenous academic apathy toward exploring media-suicide relationships. This study, using content analysis and interviews, examines the lack of compliance with international ethical guidelines for suicide reporting by Pakistani newspapers. In 553 reported suicide cases, 2,355 guideline violations were detected. The overall tone of suicide news stories remained overwhelmingly irresponsible, and analysis indicates that both Urdu and English language newspapers made similar violations. Largely ignorant (...) of international standards, Pakistani journalists report attempted suicide cases just like any other crime. This study suggests a prompt action on the part of appropriate bodies to amend relevant codes of ethics and eventually educate relevant journalist fraternities to report suicides in a socially responsible way. (shrink)

The need for renewal felt in various fields with the Tanẓīmat, and the changes and modernization activities realized in accordance with it, and the nature and boundaries of these activities are important issues that determine the period's intellectual agenda. Some of the proposals for a solution to save the state are related to the renewal of religious thought. The bad situation in the Ottoman Empire stems from the way religion is understood, not from religion itself, and one of the names (...) that produce ideas about the necessity of changing this way of thinking is Ḥüseyin Kāẓım Kadri. He believes that Fiqh and Exegeticsshould be based on the work of updating the content of Islamic Sciences within the framework of contemporary needs. Claiming that the basic need of society is not Science of Kalām but Catechism, Kadri claims that the attempt of the science of Kalām, regulated to respond to the needs of the age will not result in even will cause religious conflict among people. In this article, Ḥüseyin Kāẓım Kadri'sintellectual background, his suggestions for the renewal of religious thought and his objection to the new Science of Kalām are discussed.Summary: What defines the history of late Ottoman period is the concept called change. There have been reform attempts in order to canalise the military, economic, socio-cultural change and transformation due to political turmoil starting from the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th century. Basic argument regarding these reforms finds its base on Qanūn al-Qadīm and the idea of returning to Sharia. Along with the Declaration of the Imperial Edict of Reorganization (Edict of Gulhane) the previous reforms which were made earlier changed dimension and westernization became a government policy. During the ongoing process, the change in terms of Westernization became a current issue within every segment of Ottoman society. Need for innovation in various areas, and therefore the change and modernization movements and accordingly these movements’ nature and boundries set the intellectual agenda of the era. Some of the suggestions are associated with renewal of the religious thought which are to keep the State from difficult situation it is in. Solutions proposed in this context creates a rich intellectual discussion environment within Western, Islamist, and Turkist intellectuals. Islamists in general terms are of the opinion that the difficult situation Ottoman is in does not stem from the religion itself but the way of understanding religion; and they are of the opinion that this way of thinking should be altered; when they bring about their suggestions, it is seen that the way of thinking is their starting point. What causes the Islamists fall apart within themselves is the nature of renawal. Islamist intellectuals, supporting the idea which is the content of islamic knowledge should be updated according the needs of era, suggest various ideas in terms of which dicipline should be in charge for the needs in question. While some intellectuals are of the opinion Kalām should be prioritised, some are of the opinion Fiqh and Exegetics should be prioritised. Ḥüseyin Kāẓım Kadri, who wrote under the pseudonym of Shaykh Muḥsin-i Fānῑ ez-Ẓāhirῑ, is one of these intellectuals coming up with an idea. Kadri suggests a renawal in thinking based upon Fiqh and ExegeticsḤüseyin Kāẓım Kadriis one of the most prominent intellectuals of Constitutional Period. Working as a governor of an Ottoman province, deputy, and minister and engaging in journalism, Kadri compiles a series of work in religion, language and agriculture. All of his efforts are to find ways of saving Ottoman from its difficult situations. Thus, Kadri questions the quality of the knowledge which was brought about in religious thinking and proposes solutions. What lies under his solution is the need for a dicipline for society’ s practical problems. He bases his opinion on opposition to new theology movement. According to Kadri, ever since Kalām was codified, it has never been useful to Muslims, on the contrary it has impaired the Muslims. Renowation of Kalām creates nothing but problem. In his opinion, due to using Greek philosophy content and method, Kalām is not a dicipline authentic to Muslims, besides it is a harmful dicipline which aims to damage the essence of Islam.One of the reasons why Kalām is out of Islamic thinking tradition is because of the Mu'tazila wises are the founders of this dicipline. Kadri is of the opinion that the wises/intellectuals belonging to this school and their theories regarding to understand the existence do not contribute to the field of faith. Admitting the function of Ahl-al Sunnah school generated after the Mihna Period, Kadri states the insufficient side of that function. To him, hence the subjects such as substance (cevher) –accident (araz), hudûth-eternality, wujud (vücûd)-nothingness (adem) etc have been discussed but at that time the subject in question could not be renovated in regard to needs. Another criticism of Kadri raised against Kalām is he considers this field the reason why Muslims are divided. Especially during the times when Muslims need to be in unity and solidarity, Kadri is worried about new discursion which will occur due to the renovation of Kalām attempts. This concern of Kadri causes him to object Kalām with a pragmatic motive.Kalām which is called Usulu'd-Din is another reason why Ḥüseyin Kāẓım Kadriis against Kalām. In his opinion, theologians complicates the subjects such as amalgation and adjectives of Allah instead of making it clear with ijtihad. Kadri who considers offering proof in terms of faith as faithlessness is of the opinion that faith is not a matter of reason but a matter of sense which has no doubt among people. Criticising the struggle for the enquiry of faith, Kadri puts an emphasis on the significance of the reinterpretation of the principles, for example in the field of Fiqh which deals with the practical area and says it is the most prominent religious duty. He also criticises the imitation of the past and remarks the importance of reason in Fiqh. As an alternative to Ilm-i Kalām, he claims a new Catechism and adds, it is going to provide the religious knowledge people need. It is an ideological contrast of Ḥüseyin Kāẓım Kadrito think Kalām is the reason for all the misfortune Muslims encountered. This opposition causes him to ignore all the accumulation in Kalām field. Moreover, it is the reason why he makes emotional deductions conflicting with historical facts. Kalām plays a role just like the other fields who could not contribute to Islamic Thinking and its renovation process in accordance with the needs of time. However, it is not realistic and reasonable to think Kalām is the only one responsible. (shrink)

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, founded July 1, 1978, at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, was established by the American scholar, industrialist, and philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner. Lectureships are awarded to outstanding scholars or leaders in broadly defined fields of human values and transcend ethnic, national, religious, or ideological distinctions. Volume 30 features lectures given in 2010 at Princeton University; Yale University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Utah; Stanford University; Clare Hall, Cambridge University; Harvard University; and Brasenose (...) College, Oxford University. CONTRIBUTORS: Bruce Ackerman, “The Decline and Fall of the American Republic” Bruce Ackerman is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale and the author of fifteen books that have had a broad influence in political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy. John Adams, “Doctor Atomic and His Gadgets” John Adams is a musician, composer, writer, and conductor whose work stands out for its depth of expression, its sonic brilliance, and the profoundly humanist nature of its themes. Isabel Allende, “In the Hearts of Women” Isabel Allende is a social activist and feminist whose novels and memoirs have established her as one of the most res-pected writers of our time. Abdullahi An-Nacim, “Transcending Imperialism: Human Values and Global Citizenship” Abdullahi Ahmed An-Nacim is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory Law School and an internationally recognized scholar of Islam and human rights in cross-­cultural perspectives. Mark Danner, “Torture and the Forever War” Mark Danner is a writer, journalist, and professor who has written for more than two decades on foreign affairs and international conflict. Sir Christopher Frayling, “Art and Religion in the Modern West: Some Perspectives” Sir Christopher Frayling is a historian, critic, and an award-winning broadcaster on British network radio and television. He has written seventeen books on the arts and popular culture. Jonathan Lear, “Becoming Human Does Not Come That Easily” Jonathan Lear is the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor at the Committee on Social Thought and the Depart-ment of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. His research and writings focus on philosophical conceptions of the human psyche. Ahmed Rashid, “Afghanistan” and “Pakistan” Ahmed Rashid is a reporter from Pakistan whose unique knowledge of this complex region allows him a panoramic vision and nuanced perspective that no Western writer can emulate. (shrink)

English summary: Jean-Francois Revel (1924-2006) was an essential intellectual and author of the twentieth century. His work explored the ideological sources that fed the various forms of totalitarianism, from Communism to Islamism. The present biography sheds light on the multiple aspects of this combative thought couched in the will affirm the principals of both economic and political liberal democracy. French description: Loin de n'avoir ete qu'un polemiste de talent, Jean-Francois Revel (1924-2006) a ete, de Pourquoi des philosophes? (1957) a L'Obsession (...) antiamericaine (2002), l'auteur d'une oeuvre de premiere importance, jalonnee par de fracassants succes populaires et internationaux. Allant bien au-dela du seul engagement anticommuniste, la force et la singularite intellectuelles de sa pensee n'avaient jamais, jusqu'ici, fait l'objet d'une synthese exhaustive qui aurait permis d'en eclairer la place dans l'histoire contemporaine des idees - une beance que le present ouvrage vient enfin combler. Avant tout anime par la passion des faits, ce philosophe s'est constamment employe a pourfendre et a deconstruire les impostures ideologiques dont se sont nourries les diverses tentations totalitaires qui ont marque le XXe siecle, jusque sous leurs recents avatars de l'islamisme et de l'antiracisme devoye. Philippe Boulanger, dans cette passionnante biographie intellectuelle, expose les etapes successives et les multiples aspects de cette pensee de combat qui trouve son unite profonde dans la volonte de reaffirmer sans concession l'insigne valeur des principes d'une democratie liberale, en economie comme en politique. Chaque jour qui passe semble en rappeler l'intempestive et remarquable pertinence. (shrink)

The vertiginous rise of right-wing populism, especially in its “nationalist, xenophobic and conservative form”, and some “racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and sexist” drifts associated with this phenomenon – whether real or perceived as such – make the mainstream media play a double role. On the one hand, the mainstream media reflect the struggle for political hegemony between different vested interests; on the other hand, they engage in the fight against right-wing populism blasting both right-wing populist candidates and their voters or supporters. (...) Many mainstream journalists ask citizens to realize a “sanitary cordon”, a “wall” or a “republican front” to block far-right populism and preserve liberal democracy. Moreover, they urge people to be wary of all attempts to “dediabolize” or “normalize” some tokens of right-wing populism. The main idea of this article is that right-wing populism is more harmless than is generally believed and, if excessive, negative media coverage doesn’t baffle but feed it. Populism is essentially a latent side effect of liberal democracy. Populism rises and becomes obtrusive only if a significant part of society perceives a regime of illiberal majoritarianism instead of one of liberal democracy. Right-wing populists are chiefly frustrated “ci-devants” who feel dispossessed of their past, identity, properties, qualities, privileges or titles. Inasmuch as the causes of collective frustration are many and varied (e.g. the real or just perceived corruption of the elites, the “system”, the deep state, the relocation of jobs, immigration, national sovereignty, national identity, communitarianism, radical Islamism, the status of some traditional institutions, some chapters of official history, etc.), there will always be right-wing populists, whether they are self-declared or covert. By adopting David G. Hackett’s thesis that the media are “agents of hegemony”, we applied the critical analysis of discourse to a set of 346 media articles in order to reveal the discursive sources of power, domination, inequality and partiality. The articles appeared in The New York Times and Le Monde during the period 2016-2017, at the time when the presidential elections took place in the United States and France. The articles were selected according to the occurrence of the keywords “Donald Trump” – “populism” and “Marine Le Pen” – “populisme” within the titles. The analysis of these articles reveals a divisive discursive structure that correspond to a real political cleavage in society. It is true that populism presents a “Manichean outlook”, in which there are only friends and foes” and no compromise is possible. It is also true that mainstream media reinforce this Manichean perspective on society and make populists feel marginalized and politically disempowered. The mainstream media may appease right-wing populism if they treat its followers as legitimate and equal political actors. For this, they have to give up the narrative structures that underscore insurmountable divergences and irreconcilable interests. In a liberal democracy, mass media should chiefly play the role of mediator. They may not aim to defeat or re-educate certain categories of citizens just because they advocate “wrong” political solutions. (shrink)

For decades, the ecstatic rituals of the Sufi brotherhood of the ‘Isawa have attracted the attention of European travelers and journalists as they pass through the Maghreb. Through the texts of these external observers, I will show the paradoxes of these images of the ‘Isawa centered on emphasizing the violent and irrational character of their ritual practices, while at the same time awakening a morbid curiosity to find an explanation for what the witnesses presented as pathological extravagances. With the rise (...) of Islamic reformism and the interests of Franco-Spanish colonial policy, rituals were progressively domesticated from the 1930s onwards, and partially converted into spectacle, with the aim of avoiding a corporal and ritual disorder that challenged the new colonial order. (shrink)

In 2017, the Finnish Immigration Service received approximately 1,000 asylum applications and appeals based on conversion from Islam to Christianity. The applications claimed that converted asylum seekers would face mortal danger if returned to their countries of origin. The applications posed an unprecedented dilemma for the Finnish Immigration Service: how was it, as a secular state institution, to evaluate these claims of conversion? This question also became an object of significant public and media debate. In this article, I examine (...) how journalists writing for a religious media publication, Kirkko ja kaupunki, the newspaper of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Helsinki region, sought to intervene in the debate on asylum seekers’ conversions. I focus my analysis on one central line of argument in their reporting: a call for the better- inclusion of and engagement with religious expertise on Christianity by the Finnish Immigration Service when evaluating conversion-based asylum applications and appeals. I show that this call both positioned religious expertise as an antidote to the challenges that efforts to evaluate conversion-based asylum appeals posed to Finnish Immigration Service employees in this time period, and constituted expertise as a site for negotiations over the ‘proper’ relationship between religion and state. (shrink)

This book analyses the state of development of Muslims at the regional level. It explains the linkages between the findings of global, national, and state-level studies with regard to the current status of Muslims and broadens understanding of Muslims and their participation in virtually all major sectors, including the economy, housing, demography, health, migration, state policy, and affirmative action. The book presents the challenges faced by the community and reflects upon the socio-economic and educational conditions of Muslims in Telangana State. (...) It presents a comparative analysis of mortality data, maternal health, delivery care, and child immunization, as well as reproductive health aspects and children’s nutritional status. It shares valuable insights into the impacts of emigration and internal migration on health among local Muslims and presents a detailed analysis of data from the Census of India, NSSO, and Commission of Inquiry on Socio-Economic and Educational Status of Muslims regarding the social, economic, and demographic situation of Muslims in Telangana, as well as their opportunities for development under the newly formed state government. The book would be of great interest to scholars and researchers in development economics, sociology, politics, history, cultural studies, minority studies, Islamic studies, and policy studies, as well as policymakers, civil society activists, and those working in media and journalism. (shrink)

Despite a proliferation of research on Islam and Muslims in the media, very little work has focused on Muslim women, a much-debated social group that merits special consideration. This article aims to investigate how Muslim women are represented in BBC News website texts using a purpose-built corpus. The research employs analytical tools from the discourse-historical, socio-cognitive, and sociosemantic approaches to critical discourse studies. These are combined with corpus-based methodologies to investigate the semantic macrostructures that tend to be associated with (...) Muslim women and the discursive strategies employed in the representation of the hijab. The study is novel in its exhaustive approach to identifying salient and underreported issues related to Muslim women in news discourse. It also introduces a more integrated analysis that combines manual and automated techniques and tackles the quantification of qualitative results where possible. Findings suggest that Muslim women’s representations are largely restricted in terms of regional coverage. Semantic macrostructures related to conflict and crime are prevalent. The hijab remains a nodal discourse surrounding Muslim women whose function as a descriptive feature is often unclear, raising serious questions about its relevance. A number of recommendations are made for journalists to become cognizant of their own context models when reporting on Muslim women. (shrink)

Since 2008 I have been closely following the conceptual/performance/video work of Daniel Peltz. Gently rendered through media installation, ethnographic, and performance strategies, Peltz’s work reverently and warmly engages the inner workings of social systems, leaving elegant rips and tears in any given socio/cultural quilt. He engages readymades (of social and media constructions) and uses what are identified as interruptionist/interventionist strategies to disrupt parts of an existing social system, thus allowing for something other to emerge. Like the stereoscope that requires two (...) identical images to create an illusion of a three-dimensional image, Peltz sometimes visualizes two separate elements to create an object or moment that requires space and depth to focus on its varied layers. They say your brain has to process and make meaningful sense out of all that visual information before it can accept the illusion. I say your brain has to do a similar thing when looking and seeing the divine, magical, and faithful (social) art making of Daniel Peltz. Daniel Peltz is Associate Professor of Film/Animation/Video at RISD. He divides his time between Rhode Island and Sweden and is currently at work on an exhibition at Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm opening February 2013 and a new project to be included in the IASKA: Spaced Biennial (Australia) in 2014. This interview took place on Skype and is part one of a two-part interview. Feliz Lucia Molina: Are you in Providence, RI? Daniel Peltz: I’m at my house in Providence. I’ve been back for six days teaching winter session at RISD and doing this workshop series—these investors’ drum circles with a group of wealth managers. a client of the firm, 2013, photo Shirin Adhami FLM: The wealth managers were all drumming together? DP: They were all drumming in response to the performance of their retirement portfolios. FLM: Is this part of the “Unrealized Gain/Loss” piece? DP: Yes, it’s part of a show I’m working on in Sweden. I can show you because it was just today. I’ll show you some of this. Lets see—share screen [click, click, click]. This is the room. I’ve been using the camera system that’s already installed in the conference rooms to record them. So the video is being recorded directly by the wealth management office’s tech staff. These are the people I worked with in the last workshop. This conference table is less wondrous. They’ve been learning to drum in response to their retirement portfolios. I started by bringing in my little bit of wealth for them to propose a management strategy, I came to the follow-up meeting with a counter proposal, which was this workshop. So they agreed to do this series of workshops instead of managing my wealth. FLM: Does everybody in the room manage your wealth? That’s kind of a lot of people. DP: That woman in the back there and Craig —they handle new client business. So when you come there with your wealth, they sit down with you and suggest to you how they would manage it. They’re very nice, responsible people. FLM: And where is this? DP: This is in Providence and the one I was showing you is in Waltham, where I was today. Then I’m going to Newport for the last one on Friday. So I will have done four of them. This is the group in Waltham that I just played with today. I played directly with the two groups in Providence and I’m working with an ethnomusicologist at Brown, Asha Tamarisa, who is facilitating the last two. She’s helped develop the workshop in terms of figuring out how to train a group to do this and thinking about the compositional challenges of working in response to retirement portfolio data. FLM: Screensharing helps me to figure out tiny bits here and there about the project. DP: I might even be able to play you a little of the audio I’ve also been working with a group of professional percussionists on what will become a quarterly public investors’ drum circle event. Their stuff was really nice, but I want you to hear what we sounded like in the workshops. They’ve all been recorded by the a/v system in the offices. We use a simple structure where the drummer investors interpret the sensation of gain or loss as embellishments to a base heartbeat rhythm. The group holds the heartbeat and, as each person experiences gain or loss, they embellish that rhythm. "Screensharing helps me to figure out tiny bits here and there about the project" FLM: Is the process all very spontaneous? DP: Its actually quite structured. We produce a custom stock ticker that shows the performance of their collective portfolios. In advance of the workshop each participant submits assets in their retirement portfolio. Then we make a stock ticker that shows the real-time performance of their assets so that they can respond to almost live data. FLM: Are they reading the stock ticker projected up on the screen in the room? Do people drum in correspondence to the visual live data of the performance of their assets? DP: Exactly. They’re looking at the stock ticker as opposed to each other, so it’s a slightly shifted drum circle. They’re looking at the ticker but they’re listening to each other—that’s what we’re practicing. For example, NVO—the price is 172.08 but it’s down -1.16 and as that moves across the screen, the person who’s retirement is invested in that asset starts to embellish when that arrow first appears, based on their experience of loss. They stop when it exits the screen and return to the heartbeat. You could have one ticker for each retirement portfolio, but the way the workshop is constructed is that we just isolate one asset from each person’s portfolio so that everyone in the group is represented in a single ticker. So they’re drumming and looking at the ticker, but they’re hearing each other experience gain and loss. We’ve removed direct visual engagement from the social structure of a drum circle but the oral engagement is still there. FLM: So they had their own sound interpretation of gain and loss? DP: Yeah and that part is quite spontaneous as you were saying. In some of the preparatory exercises we’ve been working to give the participants more strategies for interpreting the sensations of gain and loss. We’re trying to develop their capacity to embellish a heartbeat or base rhythm but I’m not invested in having a melodious result. I’m quite curious about what this kind of structure will result in without any desire for a particular result. FLM: For context, can you talk about the project you did a couple years ago in Bali, “Unrealized Gain/Loss” in relation to this current wealth management project? DP: The workshops I’ve been doing use a similar strategy to the other components in this project. It started in Indonesia on my sabbatical and I was really trying to understand where I was physically and where I was being on sabbatical—this kind of strange jubilee structure where every seventh year you’re supposed to renew your self. And it was around the time of the global financial crisis. I was on sabbatical for the global financial crisis. I remember watching my father, in particular, respond to the financial crisis by monitoring his retirement portfolio and trying to make sense of it. I realized on a visit to their home that he checked his retirement portfolio every single day and I was really struck by that because in some way our parents are mysteries to us as children, especially their moods. We know how important their moods are but we don’t know what governs them. And somehow it was like I’d figured it out, it’s the performance of the DOW! So I think there was something in that. Then I was in Indonesia and I had been drawn there by an interest in their highly ritualized Hindu culture, where so much of life is driven by a ceremonial calendar. I was interested in Bali as this predominantly Hindu pocket within a predominantly Islamic country and life there being organized by this ritual calendar functioning as a kind of resistance to the dominant global religion of free-market capitalism. So I started to explore that correlation between the ways in which this culture that I was living in was sort of “living for the afterlife” and this idea within certain segments of American society of “living for the afterwork life”. The idea that your wellbeing in the “afterwork life” is tied to forces that are unseen and largely beyond your control has strong similarities to many religious understandings of the universe. So I started to explore that and the crafts and materials that were around me were primarily Batik and percussion. Percussion is a huge part of daily life in Bali. These gamelan troupes were everywhere. And I also happened to be there for Nyepi, the day of silence, which is preceded by a very elaborate procession and construction of demonic statues. These were the things that were around me and I started studying Batik with one of the Batik artists there and also started a conversation with two master Batik artists, one who is American and her Indonesian husband. I developed these patterns that were based on symbols from the performance of my retirement portfolio and worked with the batik artists to produce two sarongs. d. peltz - 2012 In producing the designs, I treated the performance of my retirement portfolio since my arrival at RISD [7 years] as a significant interval and then I looked at the ways in which decisions are made within retirement portfolios as having an extension outwards from the individual assets that underlie the retirement portfolio, which are kind of like the base elements of the retirement world. Then there’s the allocation of your assets, which is a global way of understanding an individual according to typologies, which are often referred to in terms of risk—this notion of a ‘risk profile’. What type of ‘person’ you are is determined by your attitude towards risk, or potentiality, and I found that to be a really fascinating way of understanding the universe. I remember looking at the tabs in my retirement portfolio and finding this one for viewing ‘Unrealized Gain/Loss’ and that’s often how I work—is just going through the Cambridge Parking Code, for example, and finding this section of the code that was called ‘Crossing Non-Signalized Locations’ and just feeling “I can’t do any better than that,” you know? That’s what I was talking about in terms of ready-mades that exist in the social sphere. So I found that tab, actually, a long time ago, and I pulled it out of a journal when I was there [in Bali] working on these pieces and I wound up making these two sarongs and later on a series of porcelain vessels for holding one’s unrealized gains and losses. At the time, I knew that I wanted a performance to come out of them, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I was inspired very much by this sort of thing: Pulls out a TIAA-CREF brochure with a man in a suit seated at a table. This guy is probably an actor, and [the brochure] says “TIAA-Cref announces “Individual counseling sessions at the Rhode Island School of Design. Individual counseling sessions at no additional cost to you. You can discuss your personal financial situation with an experienced TIAA consultant on a confidential basis. We are available to help you discuss how to achieve your financial goals by investing in financial solutions such as mutual funds, brokerage, life insurance, and annuities...etc....What retirement benefits best fits your situation?” Often I encounter this and I think O.K., this is one way to prepare for the after-work life and it seems inadequate to me. But, I also find it really inspiring. I really like the visual language of it. I kind of want to be that man. I’d like to see if I could maybe buy his clothes. FLM: What it is about the man on the brochure that interests you? DP: He’s offering personalized objective advice and a detailed evaluation of everything you need to know and do. Who wouldn’t want that? But he’s also something of a contemporary priest or priestess, mediating between the unseen all-powerful universe of global capitalism and the common worker. So I started off developing Unrealized Gain/Loss directly from the charts that represent the performance of my retirement portfolio. Then I came home and I wanted to use those. I had this word in my journal “unrealized gain/loss vessel.” I had this notion of vessels that would contain unrealized gains and losses. That felt really important to me that they would have somewhere to go. I had been thinking a lot about altars and making offerings—that somehow this really fickle, massive, difficult-to-comprehend-universe of the financial world—that somehow it might be nice if you could making an offering to it. [In Bali] they made such beautiful elaborate offerings. So I studied offering making as well with one of the women there and she taught me some of the standard forms created by folding leaves and the significance of the floral arrangements. I started working in clay and then moved to porcelain and I made these unrealized gain/loss vessels. I made a few of them, they have holes on either side that you can’t get your fingers in. But something can go in there and something can go out of there. It’s a nice size for putting on an altar. Then I got this commission from Artists in Context who was interested in my doing something for this project “Artists Perspectives for the Nation” project. I proposed initiating these investors’ drum circles as a new public performance form. I’m interested in bringing together those two symbols—the symbol of the djembe and the drum circle. unrealized gain/loss vessel - d.peltz - 2012 FLM: I can imagine the public digital stock ticker performing like a soft fleeting stream of information, a kind of (meaningless) illusory comfort blanket. DP: In some way you have to understand its relevance outside of the obvious, right? Because the obvious is illogical. Nobody is actually using that data to day trade, for example. People aren’t sitting there with their computers watching the market data in Times Square or setting up an outdoor office and being like “OK it’s up 3 points or it’s up 1.56, trade! Ok now buy, Ok now sell!” That would be a kind of a nice performance, actually. But actual day traders would want more up to date data than that. To understand what that data is doing is really important. And that’s something I’ve realized—that I’m interested in a particular kind of data visualization, which is not about what data can tell people, but what data can tell people who are visualizing it. For example, in the Cambridge Project “Crossing Non-Signalized Locations” I was interested in the 10,000 excuses archive of data recording five years worth of excuses for why people thought they shouldn’t have received their parking ticket. I was not interested in making that excuse wall so that the public could see and understand this data. Inevitably the data will be seen by others but I was really interested in what the action of visualizing the data told those who were visualizing it. The parking attendants themselves were writing those excuses on the wall—I was interested in what that kind action of writing the excuses on the wall told them about the data. Similarly, I’m interested in designing a way to allow people to pass this data from the unseen universe of the market, through their own bodies, which happens through the merging of the drum and the stock ticker. I’m interested in those two also as symbols; the drum as this symbol of the earth, the body and a pagan counterculture, and the stock ticker referring to the ethereal world of global markets—bringing those two together and making them dependent. I’m often drawn to conceptual propositions that I become invested in testing in a sincere way—at first they often they sound humorous to others, but I have to remember that there is humor in them. I don’t sit around and laugh about these things. I stop finding them funny at all. I’m interested in the proposition that we could know something about the after-work life by drumming in response to our retirement portfolio. So then I become really interested in how to craft that into a viable performance form for myself and others. FLM: The aspect of using sound in “Unrealized Gain/Loss” as a way of embodying the information to the asset holder is really intriguing—using sound as a means of embodying the asset data. Was sound a medium that made sense to use immediately or were you considering other means of attempting to embody it? DP: Well I do use other mediums within the project like textile, ceramic, and batik patterns. I was first drawn to the history of Batik patterns as a socio-economic stratification system and the vessels as a way of embodying or manifesting this data of unrealized gain and loss. My first approach was to work with meditation actually—a meditation workshop with my colleagues. I was going to offer this “Unrealized Gain/Loss” workshop where you would explore the sensations of gain and loss by adapting the way yogi-nidra brings you into contact with your physical surroundings and stretches your perception. FLM: At Naropa University there are/were business & compassion workshops—a sort of mash-up of business and compassion and how compassion could be incorporated into a business model. This process and engagement of “embodying data” also has to do with “Participatory Democracy and the Future of Karaoke” you created at the DNC in Denver in 2008. DP: That kind of appropriation and instrumentalization of spiritual practice could be disturbing and thus compelling as a strategy. For various reasons, I’ve come to be drawn to both the form of a quarterly public performance and the established performance form of a drum circle. Its something I’ve seen myself do before, that is to mess up a really good functional social system like a drum circle or karaoke. I remember I was developing language for the karaoke project and started calling it “Participatory Democracy and the Future of Karaoke” and one of my assistants on the project, who’s an incredible artist, said, “but don’t you think the future of karaoke is guitar hero?” and I realized that maybe he thought I was trying to improve the form. I’m just trying to get people to have this shifted embodied experience, I need to craft the performance context so that they can do that. In the case of the karaoke project, for example, what did I need in order to be able to do this [a person to stand up in front of a bar and deliver a karaoke speech]? I realized that the body is very vulnerable so I built a podium so that the speaker can feel secure enough to do this, otherwise you couldn’t get to this state achieved by passing these speeches through the body. Then I was, like, well you need to be able to practice the lyrics because you don’t know all the “songs” by heart, which became an insert to the massive track books carried by most karaoke VJs. And then sometimes the crowd in the bar isn’t there with me, so I needed to extract the voice of the crowd cheering from the original venue and I needed the local audience to cheer if they wanted to. I’m interested in both where the form succeeds and fails. In particular, one of the most interesting things is this auditory gap between the space where you are, the reduced scale of applause in your own little bar, and this grand scale of applause at the convention center where the speech was originally delivered. FLM: How did the concept of “Participatory Democracy Karaoke” come about and why did you use karaoke as a means of engaging what was happening at the DNC in 2008? DP: I was looking at a lot of different readymade media infrastructures within the city at the time. I was interested in the emergency broadcast systems and I developed a proposal to repurpose that system and karaoke became an important symbol because it was this populist form that was already engaged in exploring the sensation of celebrity but also visualizing the gap between ourselves and those with more power and influence. So it had this readymade capacity to play with power and celebrity and I felt like the Obama presidential campaign, the first one in particular, had some very curious overlaps with this culture of celebrity. Obama of course rose to power partly based on his oratory abilities and I was interested in how karaoke as a vehicle was so adept at offering people all that was left of authentic expression in a political speech. Managing a politician and constructing their identity is such a developed practice that it becomes, kind of automatically, a metaphor for the way that our own identities are constructed. Of course the Obama campaign was very hip and savvy and deploying this notion of grassroots. It was really pioneering in its use of social media and this deployment of notions of populism. I was interested at that time in the capacity of karaoke to track speech patterns, precise tempos of anyone’s delivery, and that to me was a way of thinking about what might be left of the authentic self. I was interested in karaoke’s capacity to extract that authentic component and offer it to others. So not just to stand up and be them, but to [literally] pass their speech patterns through your own body. A long time ago, it started to strike me as odd that one would make media at all. It struck me as a kind of un-contemporary way of going about making art in an age of media overflow. That logic extended into my thinking on delivery devices and installation as well. Why would one buy a screen or even set one up when there are so many out there? And the way in which these media displays function in karaoke bars and bars in general is very interesting to me. I’m drawn to this passive consumption of media where your primary social interaction is with the bartender or a few other individuals but these screens are around you and your attention is shifting back and forth between these spaces. So much political rhetoric is spoken to a half-listening audience. I was interested in what was happening in the slippage and that karaoke was a kind of slippage amplifier. So if you put people in a bar and they are delivering a Kucinich speech and Kucinich comes up on a screen then your getting a sound bite of Kucinich and an image of Kucinich and your friend is talking to you— FLM: A kind of magic takes place in that incongruency between sound and image and the karaoke participant who’s relaying the speech-text at the same time. DP: Exactly and there’s some kind of truth in that experience of reality. FLM: Yeah, there’s something uncanny about seeing the body close-up like that as though it can’t lie to you in that moment or context. It’s a weird moment of luminous clarity. The work you’ve done and all of what you’re saying about karaoke is so very interesting to me. Growing up, my dad and uncles sang karaoke a lot (and still do) and being first-generation Filipino American is a different cultural subtext entirely. I’m also seeing it from the position of witnessing family members who are carriers of these stories and songs. And seeing them cherish these Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley songs so much, I also see how their bodies are literal vessels of popular music that signifies something greater—it signifies their cultural and socioeconomic place in the world. The way that they cherish these American 1950s and 1960s pop songs is similar to having a certain kind of reverence for their spiritual faith or Catholicism. It’s a similar kind of care, focus, and attention exerted in karaoke and Catholicism—that these two structures and systems give something to focus on. Setsuko, Seiji and Hitoshi in Obama, Japan as Obama in Indiana — d. peltz — 2008 DP: Sure there something about the relationship we have to our candidate or the way we go about choosing a candidate, which is very similar to a deity or idol. I learned a lot about karaoke culture through this project. I’d never done karaoke. I’d never been interested in it as a form and then I travelled to Japan as part of the project when I made “Setsuko, Seiji and Hitoshi in Obama, Japan as Barack Obama in Indiana” and it was quite fascinating because my image of karaoke had always been this very public forum in a karaoke bar and then I discovered there’s this whole other world of karaoke where people even go on their own, they go and rent a room or cubicle and sing, or they go on a date—just the two of them go and sit in a room and do karaoke together. FLM: I’m interested in issues that take place within or as a result of specific karaoke culture(s). In the Philippines within the last several years there’s been occurring the “My Way Killings” phenomenon. Apparently baklas or gay men are employed by karaoke establishments to help “smooth over conflicts over karaoke singing”—these social forms of conduct, or lack thereof that arise out of the infrastructures of this social sport. In this one rural part of the Philippines there’s a village karaoke machine that the whole village shares—the Aeta indigenous people have an appointed “keeper” of the karaoke machine. I also see karaoke as a proxy to the confessional box in Catholicism where one goes to pour out their sins (minus the penance and redemption). The karaoke machine enables one to literally sing out whatever’s going on internally, but through highly saturated popular song lyrics. While karaoke is a public and social sport, it can also be a private one. Karaoke is a means of communion with each other. DP: Right, this preference for this kind of mediated communication. In Japan I was trying to organize people to work on this project and I was talking about throwing a party and they were like, well, we have to rent a karaoke machine because what else are we going to do? And I think its kind of serving that function of surrogacy—emotional surrogacy. FLM: And karaoke tools can be read as ritual tools—the magic mic that holds everything. There’s got to be some overlap at some point—between religious ceremony and devotion to the karaoke machine. DP: The way I designed the piece was so that it could slip right on top of the ready-made karaoke infrastructure. There was a flat-packed podium and it was made of a single sheet of plywood with no fasteners that slotted into itself. Those were sent out to a network of karaoke bars that I invited to become “karaoke convention centers.” The local VJs downloaded our custom-made, speech-extracted tracks that were designed to play on their existing equipment. In this sense the piece is a permanent installation. If you go to Denver today, some of the VJs still have the tracks in their library of offerings, the Ramones and Romney. It was this notion of re-purposing readymade infrastructure to create a distributable populist form. Obama was coming and the convention was in the Pepsi Center and 30,000 people were coming including 10,000 journalists. The impetus behind the larger art project that commissioned international artists to make works in Denver, was that local people weren’t going to have much access to this convention. It was like an invasion, the city was being descended upon, but if you lived a block away from the site, you had the same access as people in Zimbabwe&mash;30 second media bits excerpted from the speeches. So it seemed to me that the fundamental gesture was how do I take that signal, which was travelling out of the convention center, and create a local interruption? FLM: Is that what you mean by ‘intervention’? The term is frequently used to help describe your work. DP: It depends on the day. Around that karaoke project I had a conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko and he was proposing that maybe rather than intervention, we should consider the word interruption. Because intervention is kind of an overused term in the field of art and it has militaristic and therapeutic associations outside of the art context. Fundamentally, the idea of intervening speaks to the readymade social world as your primary material. So it’s basically suggesting a kind of subtractive process, which gets back to this question: what is the role of the contemporary media artist in a world that’s so saturated with media? You can’t work additively in a saturated field. If you want to make a visible mark you have to work subtractively. That’s what intervention is about to me, just another way of saying “to work subtractively.” FLM: So the interventions or interruptions aren’t necessarily adding or subtracting, but are they putting orange cones there? What are they doing exactly? DP: I think you’re right about that, they’re not really subtracting. They’re adding to the scope of possibility. I’ve been thinking (with this exhibition I’m mounting next month) about the work as explorations and expansions of social possibility. Maybe it’s more insertion. I started calling the pieces ‘insertions’ that I was making in Rejmyre—a small town in Sweden where I’ve been working for six years now. My favorite site to install there is the tourist bureau. I started calling the video pieces that I made for the tourist bureau, video insertions. This idea that you’re inserting something into the readymade media infrastructure of the world resonates with me. Insertion leverages a context, creating a possibility that the inserted object might be naturalized in the process — that someone can encounter my video in Rejmyre as tourist information. And then all of a sudden tourist information can include some American guy prostrating through town and it can include really bad relationship advice. Maybe insertion is a better word. tourist information – d. peltz 2009-present  . (shrink)

A superb introduction to the ethical aspects of war and peace, this collection of tightly integrated essays explores the reasons for waging war and for fighting with restraint as formulated in a diversity of ethical traditions, religious and secular. Beginning with the classic debate between political realism and natural law, this book seeks to expand the conversation by bringing in the voices of Judaism, Islam, Christian pacifism, and contemporary feminism. In so doing, it addresses a set of questions: How (...) do the adherents to each viewpoint understand the ideas of war and peace? What attitudes toward war and peace are reflected in these understandings? What grounds for war, if any, are recognized within each perspective? What constraints apply to the conduct of war? Can these constraints be set aside in situations of extremity? Each contributor responds to this set of questions on behalf of the ethical perspective he or she is presenting. The concluding chapters compare and contrast the perspectives presented without seeking to adjudicate their differences. Because of its inclusive, objective, comparative, and dialogic approach, the book serves as a valuable resource for scholars, journalists, policymakers, and anyone else who wants to acquire a better understanding of the range of moral viewpoints that shape current discussion of war and peace. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Joseph Boyle, Michael G. Cartwright, Jean Bethke Elshtain, John Finnis, Sohail H. Hashmi, Theodore J. Koontz, David R. Mapel, Jeff McMahan, Richard B. Miller, Aviezer Ravitzky, Bassam Tibi, Sarah Tobias, and Michael Walzer. (shrink)

This study highlights various totalitarian and undemocratic practices in which Bangladesh’s current Awami League-led coalition regime engages. It shows that since its inception in early 2009, the regime has tried to mobilize and manipulate public support from within through—among other means—creating the discourse of “war crimes” and to obtain international support through the discourse of “Islamism” and terrorism. Although “a secular plan” to combat and replace “Islamism” may soothe the nerves of many in the international community, its deployment in Bangladesh (...) has paradoxically produced a dangerous culture of disappearances and extrajudicial killings, infringements on freedom of speech and the stifling of dissenting voices, and the interception of opposition programs and the torture of opposition leaders and activists. The regime has also made a mockery of the law and the country’s judicial system. Many commentators believe that the country’s law courts are now simply an extension of the regime’s political clout. In these circumstances, political repression continues unabated, and victims of persecution are left with inadequate legal recourse. In the name of combating “Islamic terrorism,” Bangladesh’s ruling regime has resorted to a reign of terror that is in many respects tantamount to what we know as fascism. (shrink)

Animals have encountered cruelty and suffering throughout the ages. It is something perpetrated up till this day, particularly, in factory farms, animal laboratories, and even in the name of sports or amusement. However, since the second half of the twentieth century, there has been growing concerns for animal welfare and the protection of animal rights within the discourse of environmentalism, developed mainly in the West. Nevertheless, a recently developed Islamic Ecological Paradigm rooted in the classical Islamic traditions contests the ‘Western’ (...) monopoly of modern environmentalism, sug­gesting that there is much in Islamic traditions dealing with environmental issues in­cluding non-human animal species. IEP asserts that several centuries ago Islamic traditions significantly focused on and strongly advocated for animal welfare and animal rights. This paper explores and examines animal rights within the broader spectrum of Islamic environmentalism or Islamic eco-ethic. While the philosophical roots of IEP concerning animal rights date far back in seventh century, it can potentially make both ethical and educational contributions to the twenty-first century environmentalism and animal rights movements. (shrink)

Social practices of quantification, or the production and communication of numbers, have been recognized as important foundations of organizational knowledge, as well as sources of power. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated digital tools to capture and extract numerical data from social life, however, there is a pressing need to understand the ethical stakes of quantification. The current study examines quantification from an ethical lens, to frame and promote a research agenda around the ethics of quantification. After a brief overview (...) of quantification research and its uses in state and market organization, I discuss quantification in terms of three core subprocesses—capture, specification, and appropriation, illustrating and identifying ethical concerns around each process. Linking these processes to the performative effects of measures, I present a working model of quantification from which the discussion builds ideas for developing a research agenda around quantification. (shrink)

Following their violent suppression of the Indian Revolution of1857, the British founded and consolidated their secular empire in the IndianSubcontinent, which marginalized and bypassed religion as far as possible,particularly Islam, which had been the official religion of the Mughal ancienrégime. Contemporaneous Ottoman efforts to counter European imperialism ledto Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s policy of pan-Islamism, particularlythe call for Islamic unity against the Russian aggression against Turkey in1877. It was at this critical juncture that some Indian Muslim scholars gallantlyvolunteered to (...) counter this threat, and to preserve the Islamic faith and heritageworldwide, despite the severe problems faced by the Muslims in India itself.This study highlights the role of an eminent scholar in this movement, namelyAllama Shibli Nu’mani, who in 1914 conceived the idea offounding the world-famous Islamic research institute Darul Musannefin ShibliAcademy in his home town of Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India. Shibli was veryactive and instrumental in collecting donations from the wealthy landowners among the Muslim elite in his hometown of Azamgarh for theOttoman cause, raising 3,000 rupees, which was handed to Husain HasibAfendi, the Ottoman Consul in Bombay in 1877. Furthermore, his eloquentpoetry rallied Muslims across India to support the valour and heroism displayedin the jihad by Ghazi Usman Pasha against the Russians. Shibli travelled toIstanbul in 1892 and met with the Pasha, on whose efforts Tamgha-i Majidi was granted to Shibli on 13th Muharram, 1310/7th August, 1892.This article is based on Shibli’s major works in Urdu, particularly his arousingeulogies, Turkish archival reports, newspapers and magazines, andsecondary sources in Urdu and English. (shrink)

Perspectives of Islamic philosophy; articles.

Decision-makers in governments, enterprises, businesses and agencies or individuals, typically, make decisions according to various regulations, guidelines and policies based on existing records stored in various databases, in particular, relational databases. To assist decision-makers, an expert system, encompasses interactive computer-based systems or subsystems to support the decision-making process. Typically, most expert systems are built on top of transaction systems, databases, and data models and restricted in decision-making to the analysis, processing and presenting data and information, and they do not provide (...) support for the normative layer. This paper will provide a solution to one specific problem that arises from this situation, namely the lack of tool/mechanism to demonstrate how an expert system is well-suited for supporting decision-making activities drawn from existing records and relevant legal requirements aligned existing records stored in various databases.We present a Rule-based reporting systems architecture, which is intended to integrate databases, in particular, relational databases, with a logic-based reasoner and rule engine to assist in decision-making or create reports according to legal norms. We argue that the resulting RuleRS provides an efficient and flexible solution to the problem at hand using defeasible inference. To this end, we have also conducted empirical evaluations of RuleRS performance. (shrink)

In this editorial essay, we argue that business ethics research should be aware of the ethical implications of its own methodological choices, and that these implications include, but go beyond, mere compliance with standardized ethical norms. Methodological choices should be made specifically with reference to their effects on the world, both within and outside the academy. Awareness of these effects takes researchers beyond assuring ethics in their methods to more fully consider the ethics of their methods as knowledge practices that (...) have broader institutional consequences. Drawing from examples in published research, we examine five ways in which authors can formulate their methodological approaches with purpose, care and reflexivity. (shrink)

Ethical principles are among the topics that are widely emphasised in the Islamic society. Ethics is a set of values, do's and don'ts that can play an important role in the effective management of organisations. If employees of organisations, especially medical staff, are working in the atmosphere of Islamic ethics, they show functional behaviours in line with the goals and missions of organisation. Due to the direct relationship and treatment of nurses with recipients of medical services, nurses' behaviours have significant (...) impact on the quality of services provided by medical centres. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between Islamic ethics and commitment of 1100 Muslim nurses in Indonesia in 2021. This study was performed by descriptive-analytical correlational method. Data were collected using Islamic ethics and organisational commitment questionnaires and measured by Pearson correlation coefficient in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and structural equation modelling analysis (SEM) in linear structural relationships (LISREL). The results indicate that Islamic ethics have significant and positive relationship with nurses' commitment as p = 0.542 and t = 5.63. CONTRIBUTION: According to the research findings, it can be concluded that commitment of nurses can be improved by applying Islamic ethics in medical centres. (shrink)

This paper aims at helping trainees to overcome the difficulties they face when dealing with Arduino platform by describing the design of a desktop based intelligent tutoring system. The main idea of this system is a systematic introduction into the concept of Arduino platform. The system shows the circuit boards of Arduino that can be purchased at low cost or assembled from freely-available plans; and an open-source development environment and library for writing code to control the board topic of Arduino (...) platform. The system is adaptive with the trainee’s individual progress. The system functions as a special tutor who deals with trainees according to their levels and skills. Evaluation of the system has been applied on professional and unprofessional trainees in this field and the results were good. (shrink)