Muslim Power Research Articles

Historisasi Kerajaan Turki Utsmani dan Simbol Kebangkitan Umat Islam

This research aims to reveal aspects of the historicization of the Ottoman Empire as an Islamic empire that once estabilished its glory in the 13century to the 20 century.Trough the historical method, this research uses a historical approach through heuristics (source collection), verification (source criticism), and interpretation (interpretation). The fingdins of this research show that the formation of the Ottoman Empire was rooted in the collapse of Abbasid power due to attacks by the Mongol army. The collapse of Abbasid power than had implications for the political power of Baghdad, wich was the epicenter of Islamic civilization at that time. Baghdad which wa the center of sciense, also collapsed caused (source) Muslims to fall into a deep sleep during yhat time. To awaken Muslims from their slumber, the Turkish nation through the Ottoman Empire began to emerge as a new Islamic power. The Ottoman Empire became the base of Muslim power in Eastern Europa. It can be said that the Ottoman Empire as a historical milestone in the revival of Muslims after the fall of Baghdad. The succes of the kindom was the territorial expansion carried out by the kindoms leaders and their successors. There were several advances in Ottoman Turkey, namely progress in the fields of culture, progress in the military and political fields, and progress achieved in the fields of Islam economic sector.

Language and Power: How Democracy and Pluralism Shape Patterns of Minority Political Representation in Bali, Indonesia

This study aims to portray the political representation of minorities using discourse analysis as a tool to analyse the 2019 legislative election in Bali province. Bali is a province with the largest Hindu population in Indonesia. It is necessary for minority groups to take strategic steps to express their participation and existence in political contestation. The power of language and the strength of minority political candidates have led to successful competition for seats in the legislature. The ethnically and religiously heterogeneous electorate sympathized with the candidate. Using a linguistic semiotic approach, the analysis results are obtained, and the use of language as a representation of Muslim power is aimed at the diction of “Khadimul Ummah”, or servant of the public. While this study uses a qualitative approach to semiotic analysis, the diction of servant of the public is interpreted using a binary opposition approach. The results of this study show that language creates its identity and becomes a figure of interest to the Balinese people as a representation of Indonesian legislative members in the electoral district of Bali. For most people in Bali, there is a belief that this diction is something that strengthens inter-religious harmony between societies. The significance of this study lies in the fact that language may have symbolic power for both ethnic minority and majority groups.

Қазақ Ордасы хандарының төре әулеттерімен еларалық қарым-қатынас орнатудағы неке дипломатиясы

The Kazakh Khanate is a large Muslim power with the traditions of a complex economy, based, among others, on the economy of semi–nomadic horse breeding, occupying the main part of the Great Steppe in the late Turkic period. The state of Kazakh Khandyk can be judged by its relations with the largest Muslim and neighboring states of that time. Extensive scientific reviews, articles, and works have been written about it and are being written now. We will not dwell on the history of the Khanate itself, on political issues of formation, in our article we will consider one of the topical themes – the role of women in this patriarchal semi-nomadic Muslim state. Let's try to write an analytical article about the role of women in politics, the role of women in public life, the role of women in cultural and spiritual life, the role of women in the life process,and also study how dynastic marriages were built between representatives of the Tore-Genghisids, between its ruling branches – Batuids and Sheibanids, as well as Juchids from Mogulistan. Also, based on medieval historical data, articles by domestic and foreign historians, the article provides some information about Kazakh women who lived in the palaces of the rulers of neighboring states, who had an impact in international, interstate diplomacy. Often they, being representatives of the Kazakh ruling elite, ended up there as a result of dynastic marriages. Women from among the Tore Genghisids were faithful companions in their husband's life, were mothers of the children of sultans. Some of them held high positions in the State and participated in its political (including international) and public life. We can write in more detail about such women as Mihr-Sultan from the Shibanid dynasties, Chuchuk Khanym in Mogulistan, Bopai Khanym in the Kazakh Horde, Aisha Khanym in Babur's palace, Suzge Khanym in the Siberian Khanate.

Study on the Secularization of the Teutonic Knights’ State

Military orders are closely related to the Crusade Movement. Their main duties were to protect pilgrims, defend Christendom, and resist Muslim power. The Teutonic Knights’ State was a special theocracy established in Prussia by the Teutonic Order. After the Protestant thought of Martin Luther spread to Prussia, however, the local nobility and town elites quickly accepted it, and the associated drive for secularization in Prussia triggered a massive peasant uprising in which Prussian society openly rebelled against the Teutonic Knights. After meeting with Luther and converting to Lutheranism, the Teutonic Grand Master Albert carried out a reformation in Prussia and successfully transformed the Teutonic Knights’ State into the secular Duchy of Prussia.

SENTIMEN KEAGAMAAN SEBAGAI PONDASI BISNIS STUDI PADA MINIMARKET 212 MART MUTIARA GADING TIMUR MUSTIKAJAYA - KOTA BEKASI

The current economic systems ruled mostly are socialist and capitalist. Islamic system or economy sharia presented Muslim power to run their own based on their belief. The unique point of 212 retail mart establishment is based on the emotional and religious feeling of
 Muslim power in the event of 212. This research focused on how this business was managed and its results after more than five years. This study aims to escalate whether religious sentiment feelings can run the business smoothly or it is only euphoria that still needs many areas of
 improvement in managing this retail mart.

SENTIMEN KEAGAMAAN SEBAGAI PONDASI BISNIS STUDI PADA MINIMARKET 212 MART MUTIARA GADING TIMUR MUSTIKAJAYA - KOTA BEKASI

The current economic systems ruled mostly are socialist and capitalist. Islamic system or economy sharia, presented muslim power to run their own based on their belief. The unique point of 212 retail mart establishment is based on the emotional and religious feeling of muslim power in the event of 212. This research focused on how this business managed and its results after more than five years. This study aims to escalate whether religious sentiment feelings can run the business smoothly or it is only euphoria which still needs many areas of improvement in managing this retail mart

A RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA UNTIL 11TH CENTURY CE

Islam spread in the African continent in phases and in different ages. The process occurred through either expansion of Muslim power as in North Africa, or trading as happened in West Africa. Falola argued that the process of spreading Islam in West Africa generally occurred peacefully through trading and preaching. In that regard, the purpose of this article is to examine the process of spreading Islam in West Africa until the 11th century CE. On the whole, this article is a qualitative research using historical study and content analysis to gather and analyse information from relevant primary and secondary sources. Research findings argue that initial contact of Muslims with the West African region began since the century 1H/7CE. From this contact, Islam began to be introduced to the inhabitants of West Africa through trade from the 2H/8CE century. This research finds that at the end of 4H/10CE and early 5H/11CE centuries, Islam was accepted by the ruling class of West African kingdoms, such as the conversion of rulers of Kanem, Songhay, Takrur and Malal. However, there were also West African rulers who did not embrace Islam such as the ruler of Ghana. Nevertheless, Muslims who resided in their territories were well-treated. Later on, this helped to spread Islam in these territories.

“Islam” in Sanskrit doxography: a reconsideration via the writings of Madhusūdana Sarasvatī

AbstractIn the ongoing debate regarding the construction of the modern concept of “Hinduism”, recent research has considered the ways in which the pre-colonial encounter with Islam may have served as a catalyst in the crystallisation of an increasingly self-aware “Hindu” identity. Andrew Nicholson (Unifying Hinduism, 2010), in particular, has examined the genre of Sanskrit doxography to affirm that such a process of crystallisation was indeed taking place, as the transformations in this genre over time indicate a nascent Hindu identity emerging in the face of the “Muslim threat”. This article reevaluates Nicholson's account with reference to the writings of one Sanskrit intellectual operating at the height of Muslim power in South Asia: the figure of Madhusūdana Sarasvatī (fl. sixteenth-early seventeenth centuries). Madhusūdana's short doxography, the Prasthānabheda, often features in arguments for the pre-colonial roots of the concept of “Hinduism”; Madhusūdana's other doxographical writings, however, are typically neglected. Based upon an analysis of Madhusūdana's Siddhāntabindu and Vedāntakalpalatikā, this article suggests that a more nuanced consideration of the different audiences and authorial intentions that different doxographers had in mind can offer a modified picture of how early modern Sanskrit intellectuals were responding to the Muslim presence in the subcontinent.

Islam in the Colonial Policy of France: from the Origins to the Fifth Republic

History of relations between France and the Islamic world goes back to the first centuries of Hijra, when the Franks first faced the Caliphate and its troops in the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. On the eve of the New times Paris had already developed its numerous contacts with Turkey, Iran and the Arab West — the Maghreb area. The conquest of Algeria (from 1830) formed a basis of the French colonial empire in Africa and Asia with the growing role of Islam in political activities and ambitions of Paris. Millions of Muslims in French colonies contributed to growth of political and economic progress of their metropoly with its pretensions to become a great Muslim power. Meanwhile, thousands of them lost their lives during two great world wars of the 20th century. Waves of immigration gave birth to an impressive Islamic community (‘umma), in France, reaching about a million of residents by the middle of the 20th century. With the growth of Muslim immigration from Africa and the Middle East a number of Muslims among the natives of France also augmented. By the end of the last century the Muslims formed as much as about 10 % of the whole population of France. The “French Islam” born at the dawn of the 20th century. after a century of its evolution became an important civilizational reality of Europe, at times more attractive for the local youth than traditional Christian values, or the new ideals, brought with the winds of globalism, multiculturalism and a “non-stop consumerism”.

King Alfonso VIII of Castile: Government, Family and War

King Alfonso VIII of Castile: Government, Family and War

The First Step to Apostasy? (An Ethiopian Ruler’s Missive to the Sultan Baybars Re-interpreted)

Abstract A majority of the sources on medieval Ethiopia are written in the Gǝ‘ǝz language in the “genre” of history. However, some texts written in Arabic remain equally important. Among such texts the missive addressed by a ruler of Ethiopia to the Mamluk Sultan Baybars (known as al-Malik al-Ẓāhir) in AH 673 / AD 1274-75 is of considerable interest. The Ethiopian ruler can be identified as the founder of the Ethiopian Solomonic dynasty Yǝkunno Amlak. The text of this missive survived in three Arabic versions: in the Islamic “encyclopaedias” by al-Nuwayrī and al-Qalqashadī (resp. AH 730 / AD 1330 and AH 814 / AD 1412) and in the dhayl (continuation) to the Universal history by al-Makīn, compiled by the Coptic author al-Mufaḍḍal b. Abī’l-Faḍā’il in AH 759 / AD 1358. All three versions are almost identical, however, the version by al-Nuwayrī is the longest one and the closest to the original. The detailed analysis of this version supplied by the full translation into English made for the first time by the present author clearly shows that the person who wrote it was the amīr (commander) of the Amhara and not yet the king of Ethiopia. However, he had an intention to become himself with his people a subject of Baybars to obtain help from him against the Zagwe dynasty. As a consequence, the Ethiopian Christians would have been under the Muslim power. However, the Mamluk Sultan was less interested in that affair.

The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History

The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History

Passive Mediation in Persian Gulf Conflicts: An Analysis of Pakistan’s Peace Initiatives

Pakistan is a highly significant country for the Persian Gulf due to its geostrategic location, large workforce, being the only Muslim nuclear power and centuries of religious and cultural affinity. It is the second largest security guarantor of Saudi Arabia after the US and shares a border with Iran. Islamabad not only helped the Arab countries in institution building during their formative years, but also provided them support during security crises in the 20th century. Since 2001, regional dynamics changed Pakistan’s foreign policy towards Afghanistan vis-à-vis Iran. Islamabad decided to adopt the role of a passive mediator in Persian Gulf conflicts. For this purpose, it decided to stay neutral in the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen in 2015, which was a highly unexpected decision for the Saudi and Emirati ruling elites. In 2016, Pakistan defused tensions between the two Persian Gulf rivals, i.e., Saudi Arabia and Iran. Later, Islamabad opted for neutrality in Qatar’s diplomatic crisis in 2017. With this backdrop, this study hypotheses that since 2001 Pakistan has successfully prevented conflict escalation in the Persian Gulf through ‘passive mediation’. The study will focus on the following questions: what are Pakistan’s peace initiatives in Persian Gulf conflicts? How have these initiatives helped to de-escalate tensions and averted armed conflicts? What are Pakistan’s limitations in its mediation efforts during these conflicts?

The non-translation strategy in translating ISIS radical discourse

Abstract This paper examines the contribution of translation to the shaping of ISIS concepts and discourses circulated through its media machine, which includes Dabiq Magazine and the Al-Furqan Foundation. It will explore propaganda strategies used by ISIS to disseminate radical thought through professional digitalized media by drawing on a corpus of texts published in such outlets – including political speeches given by ISIS leaders, as well as online reports, all of which are translated by ISIS’ own translators, the mujtahidun (the industrious ones). A comparative analysis of the original and the translated texts reveals a number of translation strategies that ISIS deploys to construct radicalized knowledge, to serve a violent agenda, and to appeal to a large number of potential foreign fighters. It will be argued that non-translation is a particularly important strategy employed to achieve these objectives. It will also be suggested that Islamic concepts such as Khilāfah, Jamā’ah, Ummah, Hijra, Bay’ah, Da’wah, Jihād, tawāghīt, and other motifs saturated with an ancient Islamic register tend to be left untranslated as a way of reinforcing perceptions of Muslim unity, power, allegiance, and brotherhood against the enemy. The analysis further reveals that particular ideological concepts are left untranslated when ISIS propagandists advocate fighting against the “unbelievers”, arguably in an attempt to galvanize the group’s followers – whether by appealing to their religious fanaticism or by promoting the uncritical reproduction of symbolic discourses grounded in Islamic history. These strategies highlight a need for awareness of the importance of language use in the reproduction of radical systems of thought and the use of (non-)translation for recruitment purposes. This socio-political linguistic study draws on Critical Discourse Analysis – incorporating the work of Fairclough (1995), Gramsci (1971) and Bourdieu (1991) to unravel the connections that exist between language use and the power of ISIS as a group, and to illustrate how specific translation techniques are adopted to reinforce the Caliphate’s hegemony.

When the World Came to Banten

This paper aims to demonstrate that pluralism has always been part and parcel of ordinary human lives in Indonesia, and that is was the normmas far back as the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries when Muslim power was at its height in Java and the rest of the archipelago, long before themadvent of European colonial-capitalism and long before the decline ofmMuslim political-economic power. It hopes to provide a counterfactual argument that shows that cosmopolitanism and pluralism were indeed part of daily political-economic life then, and that Indonesian Muslims were in fact able to live in such a cosmopolitan environment where pluralism was not regarded as a threat or a reason for mass-scale moral panic. The opposite was the case that when Muslim economic-political power was at its height in Java, Javanese Muslims were at their most accommodating and welcoming towards foreigners of diverse ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious backgrounds. In order to highlight such pluralism evidence, our reference will be the work of the writer Johann Theodorus de Bry, whose work Icones Indiae Orientalis was published in 1601.Keywords: Pluralism, Cosmopolitanism, Banten, Theodorus de Bry, Seventeenth Century

Monjes y profecías cristianas próximo-orientales en Al-Andalus del s. IX

La llegada de Jorge, un monje palestino, a Córdoba así como la difusión de una profecía de origen oriental y norteafricano sobre la próxima destrucción del poder islámico, explican mejor el surgimiento del violento movimiento martirial de los mozárabes cordobeses del 850-859, así como la vinculación del mismo con un previsto levantamiento general de los mozárabes de al-Andalus.

Framing Islam: Faith, Fascination, and Fear in Twenty-First-Century German Culture, special issue of Colloquia Germanica: Internationale Zeitschrift für Germanistik ed. by Heidi Denzel de Tirado and Faye Stewart

Reviewed by: Framing Islam: Faith, Fascination, and Fear in Twenty-First-Century German Culture, special issue of Colloquia Germanica: Internationale Zeitschrift für Germanistik ed. by Heidi Denzel de Tirado and Faye Stewart Erika Berroth Heidi Denzel de Tirado and Faye Stewart, editors. Framing Islam: Faith, Fascination, and Fear in Twenty-First-Century German Culture, special issue of Colloquia Germanica: Internationale Zeitschrift für Germanistik, vol. 47, nos. 1–2, 2014 (recte 2017). 179 pp. Paper €45.00. Framing Islam offers seven articles representing cutting-edge scholarship on a topic of ever increasing relevance: the multifaceted representations of Islam and Muslim identities in German literature, film, and popular culture. All contributors work in US higher education contexts, adding to and engaging with scholarship coming out of Germany and from scholars who identify as Muslims. Realities in Germany, where multiple generations of Muslims have backgrounds and histories in diverse geographies, do not prevent their representation as a homogeneous mass. In interdisciplinary and intersectional readings, scholars provide insights into how the diverse representations of Muslim identities and of Islam are constructed and connected to a real or imagined spectrum of reactions of fascination and fear. The editors' introduction provides a rich context for the subsequent discussions of individual works, genres, and authors. Acknowledging the sustained presence of Islam and its pivotal role in the German imagination since the eighteenth century, as well as the variety of Muslim identities and belongings in German culture, the introduction highlights [End Page 155] the impact of contemporary national political discourses that include Islamophobia, the racialization of faith, and stereotyped perceptions. Close readings and critical analyses reveal deep and intricate cultural connections and powerful tensions. The first two articles draw on Enlightenment traditions. David Coury's "Ways of Belonging: Navid Kermani and the Muslim Turn in Contemporary German Literature" demonstrates how humanistic traditions in Kermani's oeuvre counter Islamophobia. Coury examines how Kermani, recognized as one of Germany's most prominent scholars of Islam, envisions Muslim ways of belonging in a post-secular and post-national Germany in children's books, fiction, and in his essayistic work. Priscilla Layne's "Between Play and Mimicry: The Limits of Humanism in Verrücktes Blut" investigates resistance to the racialization of Islam in a play by Nurkan Erpulat and Jens Hillje, where plays by Schiller and Molière serve as intertexts, debunking discourses deeming Islam incompatible with German values. Similarly, in "Reframing Islam: The Decoupling of Ethnicity from Religion in Turkish-German Media," Berna Gueneli's case studies of Fatih Akin's films, episodes in the Tatort crime series, and Feridun Zaimoğlu and Günter Senkel's Schwarze Jungfrauen (Black virgins) emphasize that Islam needs to be decoupled from ties to a particular ethnicity. With "'Don't Panic, I'm Islamic': Voicing Resistance through Documentary," Olivia Landry turns to the genre of documentaries. She demonstrates the genre's potential as resistance narrative and integrates pop-culture strategies as evocative verbal gestures opposing racist Islamophobia. In "'Islam Light': Girly Muslim Power and Moderate Islamic Men in German Sitcoms," Heidi Denzel de Tirado's analysis of representations of teenage Muslim girls in German sitcoms reveals second-and third-generation "Islam Light" Turkish-German identifications and their connections to discourses of belonging around the contested concept of Leitkultur. Islam as a marketing brand is the topic of Lindsay Lawton's "Truth in Advertising: Representations of Faith and Belonging around 'Muslim' Women's Memoirs." Lawton reflects on the commodification of best-selling memoirs by women who describe nuanced varieties of engagements and experiences with Muslim faith. Although they can be seen as post-Muslim women, they are lumped together and marketed as Muslim women victims of religious violence, thus reiterating the trope of Islam as a threat. Faye Stewart's insightful analysis in "Filming Faith and Desire: Encoding and Decoding Identities in Angelina Maccarone's Fremde Haut" reveals the compounded and complex challenges the [End Page 156] Iranian gay Muslim woman protagonist faces in a homophobic and Islamophobic environment. Close readings of significant scenes reveal Muslim identities coming into and out of focus as multifaceted and fluid, contributing to understanding queer Muslim pluralism and intersections of queer identities with Islamic faith. This volume...

The “Trojan Horse” Plot and the Fear of Muslim Power in British State Schools

In 2014, an alleged “Trojan Horse” plot to Islamise education in a number of schools attended predominantly by diverse Muslim pupils in the inner city wards of Birmingham raised considerable questions. Ofsted investigations of 21 schools explored these concerns at the behest of the then Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove MP. At the head of this so-called plot, a certain Tahir Alam, once a darling of New Labour’s policies on British Muslim schools, faced the brunt of the media and political furore. Based on a series of face-to-face interviews with Alam in 2015 and 2016, this paper provides a detailed insight into the allegations, the context in which they emerged and the implications raised for young Muslims in the education system. Ultimately, as part of the government’s counter-terrorism policy the accusations of the “Islamisation” of education in these “Trojan Horse” schools foreshadowed the additional securitisation of all sectors of education. However, there was neither the evidence nor the legal justification to ratchet up anti-extremism education measures that eventually followed; namely the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. The consequences of the negative attention heightened existing Islamophobia but, paradoxically, they also limited the opportunities for de-radicalisation through education.

Political and economic transition of Ottoman sovereignty from a sole monarch to numerous Ottoman elites, 1683–1750s

The aim of this paper is to reveal the transformation of the Ottoman Empire following the debacles of the second siege of Vienna in 1683. The failures compelled the Ottoman state to change its socioeconomic and political structure. As a result of this transition of the state structure, which brought about a so-called “redistribution of power” in the empire, new Ottoman elites emerged from 1683 until the 1750s. We have divided the above time span into three stages that will greatly help us comprehend the Ottoman transition from sultanic authority to numerous autonomies of first Muslim, then non-Muslim elites of the Ottoman Empire. During the first period (1683 –1699) we see the emergence of Muslim power players at the expense of sultanic authority. In the second stage (1699–1730) we observe the sultans’ unsuccessful attempts to revive their authority. In the third period (1730–1750) we witness the emergence of non-Muslim notables who gradually came into power with the help of both the sultans and external powers. At the end of this last stage, not only did the authority of Ottoman sultans decrease enormously, but a new era evolved where Muslim and non-Muslim leading figures both fought and co-operated with one another for a new distribution of wealth in the Ottoman Empire.

Reel Accidents

In this paper I focus on the Muslim video compact discs (VCDs) that circulated in wartime Maluku during the religiously inflected conflict that wracked these eastern Indonesian islands in the early 2000s. Characterized by an aesthetics of seriality and repetition, scenes of urban warfare and rampant destruction serve as backdrop for close-ups of the vulnerable Muslim body rent asunder by Christian aggression. Unfolding as repeated rupture across the VCD’s frames, such films visualize the ummah as a body in parts rather than a coherent unity. Of particular concern is the VCD’s mode of interpellation, the aesthetic of accident that violently undermines any narrative framing, and the relation between postnarrative appeal and public making. Within a wider media ecology, Malukan “Muslim Power” murals featuring Sunni and Shia big men from different times and places appear to counter the VCDs’ visions of the ummah in shreds with the strong image of a transnational, transhistorical ummah. Yet such murals also echo the VCDs’ indeterminacy and displays of vulnerability as they also aim to contain them through the defensive lineup of Muslim strongmen. While ethnographically focused on Indonesia, the argument has implications for understanding the appeal of Muslim genres of mediated spectacular violence elsewhere and more broadly.