'An urgent and extraordinary book. Weaving a philosophical analysis of Heidegger, Agamben and Foucault, Jan draws out the implications of their thought for a radical analysis of the ontological politics of Islam and Pakistan. Whether writing about the 'Ulama and Deoband schools, blasphemy laws, the military, beards, or the Bamiyan Buddhas, Jan provokes and challenges our thinking while unearthing the ground on which Pakistan—and our world—are built.' —Joel Wainwright, Department of Geography, Ohio State University, USA 'In this exceptionally inventive and (...) important book, Jan shows us that the problems besetting political life in Pakistan are part of a more troubling crisis in modern forms of power. Challenging accounts that cordon off "political Islam" from "the West," Jan discloses their fundamental indistinction and thus, through his practice of critical ontology, reorients our understanding of how power and violence are at work in the world.' —Joshua Barkan, Department of Geography, University of Georgia, USA The Metacolonial State presents a novel rethinking of the relationship between Islam and the Political. Key to the text is an original argument regarding the "biopoliticization of Islam" and the imperative need for understanding sovereign power and the state of exception in resolutely ontological terms. Through the formulation of a critical ontology of political violence, The Metacolonial State endeavors to shed new light on the signatures of power undergirding postcolonial life, while situating Pakistan as a paradigmatic site for reflection on the nature of modernity's precarious present. The cross-disciplinary approach of Dr. Jan's work is certain to have broad appeal among geographers, historians, anthropologists, postcolonial theorists, and political scientists, among others. At the same time, his explication of critical ontology – with its radical reading of the interlacement of history, power and the event – promises to add a bold new dimension to social science research on Islamism and biopolitics. (shrink)

This essay examines Wolfhart Pannenberg’s defense of metaphysics’ foundational importance for philosophy and theology. Among all the modern philosophers whose claims Pannenberg challenges, Martin Heidegger’s discourse against Western metaphysics receives the major portion of criticism. The first thing one concludes from this criticism is an affirmation of a wide intellectual gap that separates Pannenberg’s thought from Heidegger’s, as if each stands at the very opposite corner of the other’s school of thought. The questions this essay tackles are: is this seemingly (...) irreconcilable difference between Pannenberg and Heidegger fully justifiable? What if there is a reading of Panneberg’s and Heidegger’s view of metaphysics that can reveal deeper similarities between the two thinkers than the first reading of Pannenberg’s criticism of Heidegger allows us to see? It then answers these questions by showing that both thinkers actually share a common emphasis on the concepts of ‘time/history’, ‘self-disclosure’ and ‘anticipation’, and their reliance on these notions reveals that Heidegger’s and Pannenberg’s approaches to the phenomenon of understanding and to metaphysical ontology are not fully contradictory but rather hold noticeable hermeneutical similarities. (shrink)

El presente artículo toma como objeto de análisis las implicancias políticas de la categoría psicoanalítica de identificación en la obra de Ernesto Laclau, a partir del establecimiento de un vínculo epistemológico entre teoría política y psicoanálisis. A tales efectos, abordaré la apropiación laclausiana de las contribuciones de Sigmund Freud y de Jacques Lacan sobre este fenómeno, para señalar la especificidad de la identificación en tanto mecanismo habilitante de toda constitución subjetiva, en general, así como de toda subjetividad política, en particular.

_Feminismo para el 99% Un Manifiesto_, __publicado mundialmente el 8 de marzo de 2019, pretende configurarse como una apuesta político-discursiva capaz de trascender, tanto en su aspecto literario como en su contenido político, fronteras y territorios. Nuestra versión en castellano, traducida del inglés original por Renata Prati, convive con cerca de veinte ediciones, localizadas en distintos países, distribuidas en distintas lenguas, y que reúnen a tres mujeres con trayectorias signadas tanto por la producción académica como por el activismo político. Entre (...) la multiplicidad de preguntas que aparecen a lo largo de las páginas, una parece destacarse: cuál es el sentido o, incluso, cuál es el _deber ser_ de un feminismo cuyo horizonte coincide con la emancipación. (shrink)

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) that can generate content such as texts, images, videos, sounds, etc. While GenAI tools have been utilized in various contexts, their utilization in the academic context is still a controversial topic. Scholars observed that many universities have banned GenAI due to the potential for unethical usage. In this opinion article, we promote the utilization of GenAI tools as feedback agents to alleviate challenges in conventional feedback provision. Feedback is a (...) valuable learning source, especially in writing instructions. However, conventional feedback provision is challenging due to the increase in teacher’s workload and social irritation issues in peer feedback. Utilized ethically, GenAI tools can alleviate these challenges. A few critical considerations are briefly presented. (shrink)

On religious life in Islam; conduct of life for Muslims and on Islamic ethics.

The contemporary Qur’anic studies have been marked by amazing development. Various methods and approaches to understand the Qur’an are offered by the scholars. One of the prominent figures in this field is Nashr Hamid Abu Zayd. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943–2010 M) is a highly controversial contemporary thinker. He is an Egyptian scholar who is accused of being apostate, because of his theory of qur’anic hermeneutic (the textual of Qur’an). This is reflected in his stances towards contemporary religious discourse and (...) the approach to reading religious texts, especially the Quran, which requires reading according to a hermeneutic mechanism. His books ‘Naqd al-Khitab al-Dini (Criticism of Religious Discourse)’ and ‘Al-Takfir fi Zaman al-Takfir (Thinking in the Time of Atonement)’ caused a great uproar in the early nineties of the last century. Abu Zayd was accused of criticising atheists because of their stances on the text. Therefore, this study aimed to discuss Abu Zayd’s position on contemporary religious discourse and his new approach to reading religious texts, and also aims to discuss why Abu Zayd’s theory has been string up Islamic world and ending by his expulsive from his native country. To deal with this problem, this article discusses Abd Zayd’s biography and some cultural framework of his people. The methodology of Qur’anic hermeneutic is the least his. Having examined the topic, the author finds that Abu Zayd believes that modem literary theory and criticism denote the way to understand and interpret the Qur’an ‘objectively’. The contribution of this research is discussing Abu Zayd’s contemporary religious discourse and his new approach to reading religious texts. Contribution: The contribution of this research is discussing Abu Zayd’s contemporary religious discourse and his new approach to reading religious texts. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The most remarkable feature of the character of the Persian people is their love of Metaphysical speculation. Yet the inquirer who approaches the extant literature of Persia expecting to find any comprehensive systems of thought, like those of Kapila or Kant, will have to turn back disappointed, though deeply impressed by the wonderful intellectual subtlety displayed therein. It seems to me that the Persian mind is rather impatient of detail, and consequently destitute of that organising faculty which gradually works (...) out a system of ideas, by interpreting the fundamental principles with reference to the ordinary facts of observation. The subtle Brahman sees the inner unity of things; so does the Persian. But while the former endeavours to discover it in all the aspects of human experience, and illustrates its hidden presence in the concrete in various ways, the latter appears to be satisfied with a bare universality, and does not attempt to verify the richness of its inner content. The butterfly imagination of the Persian, flies half-inebriated as it were, from flower to flower, and seems to be incapable of reviewing the garden as a whole. For this reason, his deepest thoughts and emotions find expression mostly in disconnected verses (Ghazal), which reveal all the subtlety of his artistic soul. The Hindu, while admitting, like the Persian, the necessity of a higher source of knowledge, yet calmly moves from experience to experience, mercilessly dissecting them, and forcing them to yield their underlying universality. In fact the Persian is only half-conscious of Metaphysics as a system of thought; his Brahman brother, on the other hand, is fully alive to the need of presenting his theory in the form of a thoroughly reasoned out system. And the result of this mental difference between the two nations is clear. In the one case we have only partially worked out systems of thought; in the other case, the awful sublimity of the searching Vedanta ... (shrink)

Abstract In 2006, the Turkish Harun Yahya Enterprise published and distributed thousands of copies of its anti‐evolutionary text Atlas of Creation to educational institutes in the West. Although this was little more than a publicity stunt, it resulted in Harun Yahya becoming a mainstay in discussions about creationism in Europe. Although Yahya is often presented as the “go to” representative of European Muslim perceptions of evolution, one would be hard pressed to find the literature about Islamic creationism in Europe (...) that does not engage in a discussion of Harun Yahya. However, little evidence exists to support the notion that Harun Yahya warrants such extensive attention, or that Harun Yahya has a substantive influence among European Muslims. This article will explore existing claims about the popularity of Harun Yahya, before drawing on recent research into Muslim perceptions of evolution to argue that Harun Yahya is relatively unknown among Muslims, at least in the British context, and is not influential even among those who are familiar with his work. (shrink)

Tolerance is claimed not just as central to liberalism, but increasingly as the sole preserve of a liberal order. This essay opens up a critical space for examining the naturalized relationship between liberalism and tolerance by focusing on the political thought of Javed Ahmad Ghamidi (1951–), a prominent Pakistani public intellectual who is often labeled as a “liberal” Islamic thinker. Ghamidi has never identified himself as one. Using as an investigative opportunity the disjuncture between his self-identification and how his ideas (...) are labeled, and placing Ghamidi’s ideas within the wider tradition of Islamic thought, this essay elaborates on his vision of non-liberal tolerance predicated on individual responsibility infused with humility and shari’a-inspired state minimalism. Insight into the depth of nonliberal conceptions can facilitate a reconsideration of the relationship between liberalism and tolerance. (shrink)

Muslim Medical Ethics draws on the work of historians, health-care professionals, theologians, and social scientists to produce an interdisciplinary view of ...

In more than 20% of countries, a single religion is recognized in the constitution. This article argues that there are good reasons for opposing such ‘mono-recognition’ as it fails to show due concern to members of constitutionally unrecognized religions. Yet rather than opting for disestablishment as Sweden did in 2000, I show that there may be a better alternative in many cases: To constitutionally recognize a variety of religions. After distinguishing synchronic forms of plural recognition whereby multiple religions are constitutionally (...) recognized simultaneously from diachronic forms whereby state religions are rotated, I defend the latter option. On this approach, a multi-religious state might have Catholicism as the state religion during the first part of the year, then Islam, then Judaism, and so on, whereby I argue that there ought to be differences in the amount of time that religions are recognized depending on differences in the strength of their claims to constitutional recognition. Besides being fairer than mono-recognition and synchronic plural recognition, I show that when some religious groups are marginalized, diachronic plural recognition has significant advantages over non-recognition of any religion as constitutionally recognizing these groups’ religions sends valuable signals that their members belong to society. (shrink)

This book proposes a theory of reference--answering the question of whether Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptures refer to the same God--within a semantic framework acceptable to atheists and fideists.

In almost every country in the world there are Muslim communities, numbering over one billion. Much of the Muslims are concentrated in the Middle and Middle East, where there are various political and civic organizations that take an active part in the life of the Islamic world and influence the development of modern society. Among them are organizations that provide regional stability and coordinate interstate relations. These are the League of Arab States, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and (...) several others. International non-governmental organizations, such as the League of the Islamic World, the People's Islamic Congress, and numerous non-governmental religious and political organizations, are constantly active. There are many charitable, educational, cultural or political organizations within the laws of their countries. (shrink)

Religion's historical mistrust of sexuality shapes people's behavior by inhibiting liberal sexuality. Still, it is unclear whether this inhibitive role also includes common, normative sexual behavior, particularly in secularized contexts. Moreover, the possible mediating effects emotions, affects, and thoughts have on the association between religiosity and restricted sexuality have never been integrated into a single model. Finally, cross-religious differences in common sexual behavior have still yet to be documented. We addressed these three issues in two studies, with samples of Catholic (...) and Muslim tradition (total N = 446). Consistently across samples, religiosity predicted, either directly or indirectly, less frequent common heterosexual behaviors and masturbation, partly through sexual guilt and inhibition, and/or decreased sexual fantasy and the search for sexual pleasure. However, married Muslims’ religiosity, unlike Catholics’, did not directly undermine fertility-oriented sexuality and the search for pleasure. Religion's role in restricting sexuality seems to be rooted in deep psychological rationale. (shrink)

Recent political and social events as well as advances in science and technology have posed challenges to the traditional Muslim discourse on ethics. In this latest in the series of Occasional Papers produced by the Institute of Ismaili Studies, Amyn B. Sajoo examines these challenges, and through a critical analysis of the implications of emerging initiatives in political pluralism and civic culture, in bio-medicine and environmental conservatism, considers how the contours of public ethics in Islam may be redefined to (...) provide shared conceptions of the good in pluralist societies. (shrink)

Whereas in the first half of the 20th century, proclamation was the focal point of pastoral care in Germany, the 1970s witnessed an embracing of the American pastoral care movement. From then on, pastoral care was increasingly understood as accompanying patients whilst adopting the spiritual dimension. Nowadays, Christian chaplains are encountering an increasing number of patients from different religious communities. Various models have been proposed to help Protestant chaplains find an authentic form of pastoral care suitable for all religions. Until (...) a clear position is assumed with regard to Christianity's demands of absolutism, however, none of these approaches can be satisfactory. (shrink)

Over the last decade, digitalisation has been a subject of increasing attention among scholars and practitioners. The effect of culture and religion on advertisements, consumerism and marketing, is deniable. The main goal of this research is to present a comprehensive conceptual model based on cultural and religious diversity in digital marketing. This research mainly includes introduction creolisation concept and the elements (religion, music, clothes and custom) as the most important factor in digital advertisement and branding. In this regard, this study (...) examines Instagram consumer products users from five different subcultures in Iran (Lor, Kurdish, Baluch, Arab and Azeri) and considers the impact of creolisation elements on digital advertising, brand identity and brand globalisation. Data were collected by sending 1200 questionnaire via email to subcultures and then analysed using LISREL software.Contribution: The results demonstrated that Islamic religion between participants affects their brand loyalty, therefore the Islamic worth in advertising is necessary. It was suggested that creolisation elements significantly affect digital advertisement, brand identity and brand globalisation. Consequently, all hypotheses were accepted. On the other hand, the impact of brand identity and digital advertisement on the brand globalisation was also confirmed. Discussion and managerial implications concerning creolisation were explained. (shrink)

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] edited volume is based on the proceedings of an international workshop held in 2009 on the theme of ‘Material Evidence and Narrative Sources’ during the fourteenth annual gathering of the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, focused on ‘Interdisciplinary Studies of the History of Islamic Societies’. Fifteen articles seek to integrate (...) material and textual evidence for the medieval and modern Middle East, deliberately adhering to a trend of interdisciplinarity that began in the 1970s, exemplified in the approach of specific studies by Michael Cook, Leor Halevi, Peter Brown, Oleg Grabar, and Jacob Lassner, as well as in the recent publications of the editors, D. J. Talmon-Geller’s Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria: Mosques, Cemeteries and Sermons under the Zangids... (shrink)

Some clerics (ulama) in the Islamic world are of the view that practical politics is closely related to Islam, which regulates how an order of state is run. This view historically departs from Islamic constitutional jurisprudence texts that justify political Islam. Likewise, some Islamic boarding schools’ (pesantren) clerics, better known as kyai in Indonesia, are of the view that practical politics is not only a world affair but also an activity based on the application of Islamic legal principles in achieving (...) public welfare. This study aims to determine the academic basis of pesantren ulama in making decisions to be active in practical politics in Indonesia. Using a qualitative approach through interviews, the results of this study indicate that the political decisions of pesantren ulama are strictly based on the perspective of political Islam and fiqh principles that justify the involvement of ulama in politics. Furthermore, the conclusion leads to three perspectives in political motivations for pesantren’s ulama: to gain power, to preach Islamic values, and to demonstrate the existence of ulama in modern state administration.Contribution: The contribution of the study is to describe the permissibility of politics as an alternative to preaching and to show the existence and ability of ulama in state administration. (shrink)