The article attempts to ponder on the prevalent religious beliefs, urban (vernacular) legends, everyday customs and traditions related to the figure of the jinn and its origins. The study will ...discuss the mentioned from the point of view of official Sunni Islam, in order to better unweave the disposition Islam towards superstitions and vernacular beliefs. The aim of study is to provide the generic Islamic concept about the jinn and to place it into a context within the framework of individual interpretations of the interview subjects who reside in Kuwait, are Sunni Muslims, men, and women, between the age of 18-65. The applied resources were the Holy Quran, websites marked authentic for Quran interpretations, and contemporary and past literature written on the subject. Further, several interviews with the local Arabic community, blogs, articles of urban legends, and Ruqyah are the backbones of the present paper.
A tanulmány a dzsinn alakjával és eredetével kapcsolatosan elterjedt vallási hiedelmek, városi (népi) legendák, mindennapi szokások és hagyományok bemutatására tesz kísérletet a hivatalos szunnita iszlám szemszögéből, annak érdekében, hogy jobban kibogozhassuk az iszlámnak a babonák és a népi hiedelmek iránti hajlamát. A tanulmány célja a dzsinnről alkotott általános iszlám koncepció ismertetése és kontextusba helyezése a Kuvaitban élő, 18-65 év közötti szunnita muszlim férfiak és nők egyéni értelmezéseinek keretein belül. A felhasznált források a Szent Korán, a Korán-értelmezések szempontjából hitelesnek mi-nősített weboldalak, valamint a témáról írt kortárs és korábbi szakirodalom voltak. Továbbá a helyi arab közösséggel készített több interjú, blogok, városi legendákról szóló cikkek és a Ruqyah képezik a tanulmány gerincét.
The traditional gender binary constitutes an integral aspect of Islamic social ethics, which has a pivotal role in shaping religious obligations, legal proceedings, and interpersonal judgments within ...Muslim communities. Within the familial sphere, this gender binary underscores fundamental responsibilities encompassing parenthood, filial duties, and inheritance rights. Recent years have witnessed a growing challenge to the traditional concept of the gender binary within Islamic societies. This shift is driven by increasing social libertarianism that emphasizes gender fluidity and individual choice. Hence, this article aims to critically scrutinize evolving discussions and controversies about the rights of intersex and transgender individuals, particularly issues relating to sex reassignment or gender-affirming surgery, marriage, and reproduction, from the perspective of the Sunni tradition of Islam. To support the various interpretations and insights presented here, a comprehensive and rigorous analysis is carried out on various religious texts and scholarly sources to elucidate the theological and jurisprudential positions on gender issues. It is thus concluded that Shariah offers greater flexibility in the treatment of intersex individuals compared to those with gender dysphoria because the intersex condition is viewed as a physical impairment that is not the choice of the afflicted individual. By contrast, in the case of individuals with gender dysphoria, they are willfully attempting to change their recognized biological sex, that God had naturally given to them at birth. Therefore, it is recommended that such transgender individuals deserve respectful psychological and social rehabilitation with help and guidance from religious authorities, their families, and communities.
The ongoing 17 October 2019 Lebanese protests mark a critical moment that historicises the struggle of a people, from different sectarian and religious backgrounds, against political corruption. ...Tripoli, a conservative Sunni-majority city in Northern Lebanon, has caught the attention of researchers as its protests took the form of a 'rave party' held in its main public square, known as al-Nur Square. This article investigates the Tripolitan protests through the lens of Agamben's Profanations to highlight the dynamics of the al-Nur Square protests that seem to conflate the religious and the political. The article specifically argues that the protestors reconfigure the space around the square in an attempt at profaning the sectarian apparatus that takes the 'Allah' icon as its centre. In their spatial attempt at profanation, however, the protestors seem to preserve the religious intact, thus giving credibility to their de-sectarianising act. Such an analytical reading of the protest sheds light on the spatial dynamics inherent in any Lebanese attempt at reform, including the 17 October 2019 protests. These protests become historical records that trace the protestors' continuous negotiation of the religious and the political that embeds the attempt at de-sectarianisation within every demand they have for political reform.
Quintan Wiktorowicz’s typology and other methods of classification developed by other scholars from his approach have been the most popular when studying Salafism. However, such typologies, ...especially when examining Salafism in non-Middle Eastern and minority contexts, have their shortcomings. The first main problem with current typologies is that they discuss distinct Salafi factions at a specific time and local context, but intend to be universal. However, these factions often tend not to be conceptually different, as in many cases, their participants only behave differently due to different circumstances in different localities. Second, these typologies were devised by scholars who chiefly study the Middle East and distinguish different Salafi groups based on their discourses on issues often relevant only in Middle Eastern contexts. This article tests the applicability of the existing classifications of Salafism by drawing on three ethnographic case studies from Cambodia. In Cambodia, Salafism emerged in a Muslim minority context. With the expansion of its networks, fragmentation occurred within the movement due to disagreements such as how to deal with the Muslim (non-Salafi) other and the non-Muslim majority. The article argues that classifications should be set up based on observing local group dynamics instead of being universal. This is because differences among Salafis, just as in other social movements, mainly arise due to the participants’ interaction with the local realities and issues.
This article examines Salafism as part of what it defines as ‘Islamic politics’, a modern phenomenon of activism and human agency based on an ideological conception of Islam—the ‘Islamic political ...theology of the praxis’—that is both a comprehensive vision of the world and its pro-active implementation. This article’s starting point is Wiktorowicz’s 2006 seminal article, ‘Anatomy of the Salafi movement’. This article highlights the epistemological underpinning of his work. Analysing Wiktorowicz’s broader intellectual contribution, especially his 2004 book on ‘
Islamic activism
’, it is possible to emphasize that Wiktorowicz was interested in epistemologically centring the study on Islamic activism (Islamism and Salafism together). From this starting point, the article argues that both Salafism and Islamism should be considered part of the practical activity of ‘doing politics’ within an ideological vision of Islam. The term proposed here is thus ‘Islamic politics’, a frame through which the development of both Islamism and Salafism is examined. In line with Wiktorowicz, this article supports the contention that the context matters, but it also argues that ideology as also a relevant factor.
In this study, I offer a categorization of Salafism based on the concept of vanguardism. Vanguardism suggests how Salafis inhabit the political domain, by posing as the vanguard of a privileged group ...endowed with a historical mission. Relatedly, I summon the Gramscian concept of “philosophy of praxis.” With this, I intend to reconfigure Wiktorowicz’s classificatory scheme predicated on too stark an opposition between
‘aqīdah
(theory) and
manhaj
(method)
.
The philosophy of praxis accounts for the inherent tension between these two domains. Such tension is manifest in Salafis’ ambiguities, compromises, internal rifts, ideological adjustments, and revisions. Two related Gramscian concepts, historical bloc and modern Prince, bring such considerations more immediately into the political. They highlight, respectively, the political-historical context in which Salafis operate and the political-historical role they play as instances of vanguardism. I then put forth my classificatory scheme in the form of a typology. One axis is represented by the attitude towards the “historical bloc” (pro or anti) and the kind of vanguard posturing that emerges out of it (support, creation, or activation). The other axis is represented by the specific framing of the “Enemy” category on the part of the Salafi vanguard (historical/institutional or essential/identitarian), and the stance they consequently assume towards it (compromise/accommodation or rejection/denunciation). The resulting classification offers six categories (
accommodationists
,
partisans
,
delayers
,
agitators
,
mobilizers
, and
belligerents
). Stressing the fundamental political nature of contemporary Salafism—its vanguardism—they account for its inscription in a specific, modern way of thinking and acting the political.
This article focuses on contemporary Salafism in the European context and how it speaks to the categories Wiktorowicz put forth in his seminal 2006 article. Specifically, it examines how we can ...identify, describe, and classify the main forms of Salafist religiosity in the context of Western European countries. Furthermore, by examining the relationship to politics, preaching, and orthodoxy and orthopraxy in several European societies, this analysis contributes to the debate on the typologies of Salafism and proposes new ways of conceiving and distinguishing the forms of attachment to this vision of Islam in the context of countries where this religion is a minority. It also shows that the fundamentalist and radical currents are even more attached to it despite or because of the strong attention they receive from the public authorities and the media.
Using the case study of Egypt’s largest Salafi movement, the Alexandrian
Da‘wa Salafiyya
and its party
al-Nur
, this article revisits Wiktorowicz’s typology which identified three dominant factions ...within Salafism: purists, politicos, and jihadis (2006). Based on this Egyptian case study, I show that there is no clear boundary between the purists and the politicos. This article also makes the case for an additional category: voluntary co-optation. Instead of fitting into immutable categories,
Da‘wa Salafiyya
leaders move between religious and political identities depending on what they deem to be the most effective strategy for political survival. Egyptian Salafis have adopted three different strategies to ensure their political survival since the movement’s inception: quietism under Sadat and Mubarak, political activism following the 2011 Revolution, and finally co-optation by the military regime since 2013. Wiktorowicz’s categories are best interpreted as time-bounded pragmatic political strategies rather than finite and static identities.
