Eric Morier-Genoud, Towards Jihad? Muslims and Politics in Postcolonial Mozambique (London: Hurst & Co, 2023), 240 pp., ISBN: 9781805260431 This is a collection of previously published articles addressing the relationship between the post-colonial state under the Frelimo government and Muslims of Mozambique. The book aims at understanding the state's policies towards religion and secularity, the formation of Muslim elites and counter-elites, and inter-religious and inter-Muslim competition and conflicts between 1975 and 2022. The last chapter of the book attempts to provide (...) a historical interpretation for the origins and evolution of the current jihadi insurgency in Cabo Delgado. (shrink)

Based on fieldwork interviews with the internally displaced Muslims from the regions affected by the insurgency, such as Palma, Mocímboa da Praia, Macomia, Quissanga and others, this article unpacks the context, ideology and protagonists that gave rise and afforded sustenance to the insurgency in Cabo Delgado. After providing an overview of the historical trajectory of Islam in Mozambique, the article presents the ideological and historical underpinnings of the contemporary global jihadi movements, expanding into Africa and Mozambique. The article argues that (...) for jihadism to take roots in any place, there should exist militant protagonists and the grievances that serve as emotional entry points for recruitment. Thus, the article examines the processes by which jihadi protagonists emerged in various communities and the grievances they articulated in order to provoke the insurgency against the State. (shrink)

IN THE beginning Parmenides sought to deny the void. But he found himself trapped by his language and his thought into admitting what he sought to deny. Wisely, he counseled others to avoid the whole region in which the problem arises, lest they too be unwarily ensnared. Plato, being less easily intimidated and grasping for the first time the urgency of the paradox, unearthed each snare in turn until he felt he had found a safe path through the forbidden terrain (...) in a new conception of being and the derivation of its linguistic consequences in the Sophist. Aristotle evidently took Parmenides’ advice; and save for a few groping scholastics, perhaps Leibniz, Brentano, and Meinong, and Frege only in passing, no one else attempted the crossing before Russell made his spectacular dash through the posted ground from the completely new direction of linguistic reference. Again the problem lay dormant for half a century until Strawson constructed a new low road through ordinary language and Quine improved Russell’s high algebraic pass. Refinements of these routes have been forthcoming, especially from Searle and Kripke, until today it might appear that there are two super highways through Parmenides’ forbidden country of nonbeing. In this essay I will first argue that these new linguistic highways are no more than flimsy camouflage hiding but not resolving the old paradoxes. I will then show how Plato’s ontological way out, though more difficult, is the straight and narrow path. (shrink)

This volume offers an analysis of ethical concepts based on positive legal principles and court decisions, describing what actually happens in practice, or where there are no precedents available, what is most likely to happen. Broadly, it deals with the wide range of potentially difficult situations in which the community, as represented by the law, may come into conflict with the medical profession.

In this paper an attempt is made to establish that the parties on both sides of the disputes concerning whether reasons are causes have mischaracterized or misdescribed what is involved in acting from a reason. A characterization of acting from a reason is provided, and, as a result, it is shown why contradictory positions have been and still are maintained by opposing parties. As a consequence of this account, an attempt is made to show why all parties have missed the (...) nature and significance of empathetic understanding. (shrink)

This article revisits long-standing questions about consent, membership and emigration in Locke’s thought. Commentators such as A John Simmons have argued that Locke opens political membership to both express consenters and some kind of tacit consenters, and not just to the former, as some have suggested. Simmons’s reading seems to render Locke more sensible in that it does not exclude large numbers of people from membership or burden the few members with all the civic duties, and also in that it (...) allows at least tacit-consenting members the right to relocate, while this right is denied to express-consenting members. Against this reading, the article shows, by resolving seemingly conflicting claims in the text, that people become members only by express consent. It also responds to the criticism that the express-consent-only reading would limit membership to a few and so would render Locke’s account implausible from a practical point of view. The article then addresses the purported restriction Locke imposes on express consenters’ right to emigrate, arguing that the restriction concerns the change of membership and not the right to relocate. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Designing Academic Conferences in the Light of Second-Order Cybernetics” by Laurence D. Richards. Upshot: This commentary gives voice to Richards’s desire to move away from traditional formats, such as the paper presentation, by digressing from the OPC format by illustrating how the proposal inspires and disseminates rather than merely adding any critical commentary.

In two important articles, Thomas Hurka applies his recursive account of value to virtue. Hurka’s contention is that being virtuous is merely a matter of having the proper pro-attitude toward what is objectively good. Hurka argues that the recursive framework honors much of our traditional conception of virtue, and even if it does not capture everything involved in virtue, it “describes at least part of what virtue involves.” I argue that the recursive account of virtue is not a partial description (...) of traditional virtue, however, but a reconception of virtue. Accepting the recursive account would require abandoning the most distinctive elements of traditional virtue ethics. (shrink)