During the two decades that preceded the 2011 revolutions in Egypt and Syria, animated debates took place in Cairo and Damascus on political and social goals for the future. Egyptian and Syrian ...intellectuals argued over the meaning oftanwir, Arabic for "enlightenment," and its significance for contemporary politics. They took up questions of human dignity, liberty, reason, tolerance, civil society, democracy, and violence. InEnlightenment on the Eve of Revolution, Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab offers a groundbreaking analysis of thetanwirdebates and their import for the 2011 uprisings. Kassab locates these debates in their local context as well as in broader contemporary political and intellectual Arab history. She argues that the enlightenment they advocated was a form of political humanism that demanded the right of free and public use of reason. By calling for the restoration of human dignity and seeking a moral compass in the wake of the destruction wrought by brutal regimes, they understoodtanwiras a humanist ideal. Kassab connects their debates to the Arab uprisings, arguing that their demands bear a striking resemblance to what was voiced on the streets of Egypt and Syria in 2011.Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolutionis the first book to document these debates for the Anglophone audience and to analyze their importance for contemporary Egyptian and Syrian intellectual life and politics.
One of the great transformations presently sweeping the Muslim world involves not just political and economic change but the reshaping of young Muslims' styles of romance, courtship, and marriage. ...Nancy J. Smith-Hefner takes up the personal lives and sexual attitudes of educated Muslim Javanese youth in the city of Yogyakarta to explore the dramatic social and ethical changes taking place in Indonesian society. Drawing on more than 250 interviews over a fifteen-year period, her vivid, well-crafted ethnography is full of insights into the real-life struggles of young Muslims and framed by a deep understanding of Indonesia's wider debates on gender and youth culture.
The changes among Muslim youth reflect an ongoing if at times unsteady attempt to balance varied ideals, ethical concerns, and aspirations. On the one hand, growing numbers of young people show a deep and pervasive desire for a more active role in their Islamic faith. On the other, even as they seek a more self-conscious and scripture-based profession of faith, many educated youth aspire to personal relationships similar to those seen among youth elsewhere-a greater measure of informality, openness, and intimacy than was typical for their parents' and grandparents' generations. Young women in particular seek freedom for self-expression, employment, and social fulfillment outside of the home. Smith-Hefner pays particular attention to their shifting roles and perspectives because it is young women who have been most dramatically affected by the upheavals transforming this Muslim-majority country. Although deeply personal, the changing aspirations of young Muslims have immense implications for social and public life throughout Indonesia.
The fruit of a longitudinal study begun shortly after the fall of the authoritarian New Order government and the return to democracy in 1998-1999, the book reflects Smith-Hefner's nearly forty years of anthropological engagement with the island of Java and her continuing exploration into what it means to be both "modern" and Muslim. The culture of the new Muslim youth, the author shows, through all its nuances and variations, reflects the inexorable abandonment of traditions and practices deemed incompatible with authentic Islam and an ongoing and profound Islamization of intimacies.
From Belonging to Beliefpresents a nuanced ethnographic study of Islam and secularism in post-Soviet Central Asia, as seen from the small town of Bazaar-Korgon in southern Kyrgyzstan. Opening with ...the juxtaposition of a statue of Lenin and a mosque in the town square, Julie McBrien proceeds to peel away the multiple layers that have shaped the return of public Islam in the region. She explores belief and nonbelief, varying practices of Islam, discourses of extremism, and the role of the state, to elucidate the everyday experiences of Bazaar-Korgonians. McBrien shows how Islam is explored, lived, and debated in both conventional and novel sites: a Soviet-era cleric who continues to hold great influence; popular television programs; religious instruction at wedding parties; clothing; celebrations; and others. Through ethnographic research, McBrien reveals how moving toward Islam is not a simple step but rather a deliberate and personal journey of experimentation, testing, and knowledge acquisition. Moreover she argues that religion is not always a matter of belief-sometimes it is essentially about belonging.From Belonging to Beliefoffers an important corrective to studies that focus only on the pious turns among Muslims in Central Asia, and instead shows the complex process of evolving religion in a region that has experienced both Soviet atheism and post-Soviet secularism, each of which has profoundly formed the way Muslims interpret and live Islam.
State and secularism Siam-Heng, Michael Heng; Liew, Ten Chic
2010., 2010, 20100203
eBook
The concept of a secular state is important in many parts of Asia and how this is resolved has important implications for the social, economic and political development of various Asian countries. ...Unfortunately, problems of the secular state have all along been studied based on the historical experience of state formation in Europe, with little (or no) input from the Asian perspective. This book will for the very first time, present mainly Asian perspectives, while drawing on Western experience as well. Conceptual issues are discussed together with detailed accounts on how different countries and traditions understand and seek to implement the ideas of a secular state.
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: This paper raises the question of how religious education may address the variety of worldviews. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The concept of worldview seems to be able to ...reconcile religious education with a society that is both secular and religiously plural. Such education, however, is defined by its focus on religion. Even when religion is seen as sub-category of worldview, religious education still does not include secular worldviews. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: It therefore first clarifies the concept of worldview by relating it to the German term of “Weltanschauung”. Worldviews represent a comprehensive perspective on the world that originates from an individual’s aesthetic and intuitive understanding of daily life and gives meaning to this life. Then, it delineates the basic didactic characteristics of three models of religious education, namely the denominational, the pluralist-informative, and the interpretative-dialogical models. Based on these models, the paper finally discusses the challenges and obstacles of religious education which attempts to address the plurality of worldviews. RESEARCH RESULTS: The analysis shows that none of the models is able to comprehensively grasp this plurality. The advantages and disadvantages of each of the three models, however, indicate that the main tasks of worldview-conscious religious education are to clarify the constitutive rationality of worldviews and to find a balanced representation of both organized and personal worldviews via classroom interaction. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The realization of these tasks is basically the job of the teacher and does not at all depend on the model of religious education itself.
In the early nineteenth century, as amateur archaeologists excavated Pompeii, Egypt, Assyria, and the first prehistoric sites, a myth arose of archaeology as a magical science capable of unearthing ...and reconstructing worlds thought to be irretrievably lost. This timely myth provided an urgent antidote to the French anxiety of amnesia that undermined faith in progress, and it armed writers from Chateaubriand and Hugo to Michelet and Renan with the intellectual tools needed to affirm the indestructible character of the past.
From Paris to Pompeiireveals how the nascent science of archaeology lay at the core of the romantic experience of history and shaped the way historians, novelists, artists, and the public at large sought to cope with the relentless change that relegated every new present to history.
In postrevolutionary France, the widespread desire to claim that no being, city, culture, or language was ever definitively erased ran much deeper than mere nostalgic and reactionary impulses. Göran Blix contends that this desire was the cornerstone of the substitution of a weak secular form of immortality for the lost certainties of the Christian afterlife. Taking the iconic city of Pompeii as its central example, and ranging widely across French romantic culture, this book examines the formation of a modern archaeological gaze and analyzes its historical ontology, rhetoric of retrieval, and secular theology of memory, before turning to its broader political implications.
La motivación principal del artículo es precisar la singularidad de la revolución zapatista de Chiapas, en contrate con otras revoluciones, a cuyo efecto la redacción recorre el proceso ...revolucionario adentrándose en las causas, objetivos, exigencias y problemas de la revolución con la fi nalidad de extraer de esta confl uencia de elementos las señas de identidad de la revolución, concretadas en las conclusiones, en las que se destaca la relevancia de la sociedad civil, tanto mexicana, como internacional, en el proceso revolucionario en un doble papel: como referente de los zapatitas en su lucha, que no pretenden una revolución militar, sino política, con la fi nalidad de que la sociedad conozca la lamentable y secular situación de vejación que soportan las comunidades indígenas, y como factor impulsor de la fi nalización de la guerra y comienzo del dialogo entre representantes del ejército zapatista y del Gobierno mexicano. Asimismo se destaca el carácter singular de la revolución zapatista, que emprende una guerra como solución última, necesaria y justa para que las comunidades indígenas de Chiapas puedan salir de la situación en que se encuentran, sufriendo represión, amenazas, hambre, miseria, pobreza y engaños, y alcanzar los objetivos que se concretan en los derechos humanos más básicos.
