Religious Legitimacy Research Articles

PERSPEKTIF ISLAM TENTANG KEKERASAN SUAMI TERHADAP ISTERI

Violence committed against the husband and wife both physically and psychologically is very difficult to disclose, because the data does not exist, and the problem is considered a private matter. But for example, in the case of nusyuz or wife against husband, there is a religious legitimacy (Alquran 4:34), for a husband to beat his wife on the grounds of disobedience wife. So widespread belief among Muslims arise, that the husband the right to beat his wife. When traced the context of the verse then beating is the last alternative for a husband whose wife nusyuz after mau'izah (give good advice and separate beds.) In fact, the concept of violence in the form of beatings should be avoided and not to be carried out because the Prophet Muhammad as a role model Muslims never do the beating of his wife.

Das Reformationsjubiläum im vierten Kriegsjahr 1917

The Anniversary of the Reformation 1917 in the Fourth Year of War: A Critical Review from the Perspective of Present-Day Challenges. The details of how the anniversary was celebrated then are being put in relation to how we celebrate the anniversary 2017. What can we learn from the mistakes in the majority of the popular publications of 1917 in which Luther was not put in an ecumenical and international context, questions of modernity and democracy were ignored and questions of the religious legitimation of violence were not self-critically discussed?

The Normative Power of Images: Religion, Gender, Visuality

In this introductory article to the special issue of Religion and Gender on gender, normativity and visuality, we establish the theoretical framework to discuss the influence of visual culture on gender norms. This introduction also provides a reflection on how these norms are communicated, reaffirmed and contested in religious contexts. We introduce the notion of visuality as individual and collective signifying practices, with a particular focus on how this regards gender norms. Two main ways in which religion, gender and normativity are negotiated in visual meaning making processes are outlined: on the one hand, the religious legitimation of gender norms and their communication and confirmation through visual material, and on the other hand, the challenge of these norms through the participation in visual culture by means of seeing and creating. These introductory reflections highlight the common concerns of the articles collected in this issue: the connection between the visualisation of gender roles within religious traditions and the influence of religious gender norms in other fields of (visual) culture.

The history of an Islamic entrepreneurship: achieving exporting-network leadership through religious legitimacy

Brazil is currently one of the top global exporters of Halal poultry to the Middle Eastern Islamic markets. This study focuses on the story of an Islamic certifier, since his initial efforts to his current successful position in the Brazilian export network of Halal poultry. We bring a specific theoretical review considering the separation of the Islamic entrepreneurship conducted by Muslims and the ones oriented to Muslims. A theoretical model with variables that characterise the Islamic entrepreneurship construct was also elaborated. Historical narratives from certifier's founder and his son (his successor) along with organisational institutional documents, the Islamic entrepreneurship construct was empirically validated and complemented by additional variables identified on field research. Afterwards, five great periods of certifier's evolution could be identified: prelude; establishment of guidelines; development; legacy heritage; apex. Each temporal era signs that its respective internationalisation and evolution cycle processes require specific Islamic entrepreneurship variables.

禅定印仏坐像の表現と配置構成

In most of the Khmer temples, constructed during the reign of Jayavarman VII (1181-1218 CE), there are Dhyāna Mudrā Buddha images represented on the decorative bas-reliefs around the doorways. This paper analyzes the representations of the images, focusing on the images of the lintels in Preah Khan’s temple complex. The analysis makes it clear that the lintels with the images can be classified into two groups mainly from the viewpoints of the stylistic features and the representations, and the tendencies of their arrangement in the central part of this temple complex, and that the difference between the two groups results mainly from the construction chronology of the temple complex, in other words the difference before and after the dedication of the principal image Lokeśa to the central main shrine. Then the paper attempts to analyze the symbolic meaning of Dhyāna Mudrā Buddha images and its chronological change, making reference to some old Khmer inscriptions engraved on the doorjambs and the descriptions of the foundation stele. The attempt shows us that the change of their meaning may be related to the change of the worldview represented in this temple, that is to say, the process of religious legitimation of Jayavarman VII’s kingship before and after the foundation of Preah Khan temple.

The Religious Legitimacy of Socioeconomic Human Rights among Suriname Youth

This paper is about the extent to which Suriname youth support the socioeconomic rights which are inscribed in todays’ Suriname constitution. First some of this constitution’s highlights are presented (1). Then this constitution’s main socioeconomic rights are described from the perspective of international human rights declarations and treaties (2). After that a report is given about the endorsement of these rights by Suriname youth, divided into three different groups, Christian, Muslim and Hindu higher secondary education students. The so-called classic socioeconomic rights appear to be well supported by them, whereas the refugee rights are surrounded by negatively oriented ambivalence (3). The paper ends with a short conclusion.

Priming Strategic Communications: Countering the Appeal of ISIS

Abstract: This article examines the Islamist rationale used by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to recruit and sustain its members. It proposes counter-narratives using Islamist thinking to challenge the veracity of ISIS thought and action. A counter-ISIS information campaign is proposed to persuade potential recruits and current members that joining ISIS violates basic Islamic principles. ********** his September 10, 2014 address to the United Nauons, President Obama said of the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. (1) The president then announced that the United States would lead an air campaign against ISIS targets, partnering with Arab and European forces, Iraqi forces would conduct the bulk of the ground combat. The application of military force alone is not likely to defeat ISIS, especially given the reluctance of the United States and other regional powers to commit ground forces. The United States must reach for other instruments of power, including the use of information operations to increase its capacity to degrade and defeat ISIS. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey makes this point specifically, calling for a whole of government approach challenging ISIS' religious claims: In particular, stripping away their cloak of religious legitimacy behind which they hide. (2) The real vulnerability of ISIS is not its brutality, which seems to draw followers, but rather its claim to be a true Islamic group, when its operations significantly violate fundamental Islamic tenets. The writings of the very Islamic theorists who are considered foundations of jihadi Sunni Islam contradict ISIS's claims concerning the religious legitimacy of their actions, and the most legitimate source of Islam, the Qur'an, specifically forbids many of ISIS' actions. (3) Remove its claim of religious legitimization of murder and destruction, and ISIS becomes only a criminal enterprise. As ISIS uses Islam to recruit and motivate members, its embrace of Islam may ultimately expose it as a naked emperor, who has distorted the core of Islam to the point where ISIS members may be guilty of the very crime it attaches to its Muslim victims--apostasy. (4) The confrontation with ISIS is the latest in a series of hostilities that the United States has had with radical Islamist-inspired groups, and US policy makers have almost always developed a counter-radical Islam operation as a part of a larger strategy to defeat these groups. Previous campaigns have tried to block Islamist messages, or offered pro-American missives (including American music and cooking), or using de-radicalized Muslims to counter radical imagery. Other operations have killed the messenger (Bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaqi, for examples). Current campaigns show no changes--in August 2014, the US State Department's Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications launched a media campaign to counter ISIS. It distributed videos showing a beheaded corpse and other savagery committed, calling upon potential recruits to think again, turn away. contrast, ISIS wages a slick social media campaign offering all the advantages of jihad (jihad is a cure for depression, and you can even bring your family). The effectiveness of the State Department's campaign can be measured even in social media; an ISIS jihadi got 32 favorites for his recruiting hashtag, at the same time, the State Department's posting got zero. Efforts to counter ISIS propaganda continue to fall short, as ISIS recruiting success indicates; ISIS enrolled over 6,000 new members in June 2014, according to one source. (5) It is time to invest more heavily in counter-ISIS information campaigns that use Salafiyya Islam itself to counter the ISIS appeal. This essay briefly discusses Salafiyya thought, the supposed source of ISIS thinking and inspiration. …

Democracy and Islamist Violence: Lessons from Post-Mubarak Egypt

This article explores the contentious relation between the absence of democracy in the Middle East and the use of armed violence by Islamist groups in light of the Arab Spring. Its main objective is to decipher the evolving positions of former and current groups who used or promoted violence and to relate them to broader academic debates on violence and democracy on the one hand, and deradicalization on the other. This research demonstrates that the large majority of former Islamist militants in Egypt reject any sort of violence in post-Mubarak Egypt, even if they have not all renounced their religious legitimization of violence in the past. Second, it reveals that even if they maintain a religious opposition to democracy in Egypt, the opening of political opportunities and their progressive joining of the political process has favorably led most of them to accept democratic practices in reality. Third, it adds that the voice of those currently promoting violence in Egypt has been marginalized and that their main alternative has been the promotion of armed violence in Syria; and last, it stresses two potential security threats unrelated to the opening of political opportunities in post-Mubarak Egypt and to the general debate on democracy and violence. First, local grievances in Sinai have led to violence in the past and are still to be dealt with. Second, the current political deadlock can potentially lead to localized and specific armed activities that could start a cycle of violence. This research is based on field research in Egypt and uses repeated interviews of leaders and members of the two main former militant groups, al-Jama῾ah al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) and Jama῾ al-Jihad (the Jihad Group) as well as interviews with militants of the salafi jihadi trend and their supporters in Cairo.

Political legitimacy and Islam in the Ottoman Empire

This article explores the role of religion in Ottoman political legitimation. It shows that the Ottoman rulers were interested in a much more expansive, diverse form of political legitimation that included Islamic religious legitimation, but also used toleration and sultanic law to construct a more capacious form of political legitimation that included Muslim and non-Muslim populations of the empire.

Islamist Versus Islamist: Rising Challenge in Gaza

Islam's diversity is a direct result of centuries of schism and factionalism, and presents a challenge to the original spirit of unity as envisaged by its founder, the Prophet Mohammed. Rivalry within Islam undermines the precedent notion of unity through communal belonging (tawhid and ummah). Yet in the twenty-first century this diversity is ignored, and political Islam is represented as being more of a monolith than a spectrum of ideas and aspirations. Generally, the materialization of new Islamist groups is a challenge to those who hold that unity is all. In the Gaza Strip, specifically, the dominant Islamist actor, Hamas, is facing internal challenges from other Islamist elements. These rival Islamists are also influenced by events across their border in post-revolutionary Egypt where a plethora of new Islamist actors are vying for political space and power. This article deals with Hamas's Islamist rivals, and the effects they have had on Hamas's governance of the Gaza Strip, and political and religious legitimacy within it. It will focus on ideological and violent disputes between the Islamist elements in Gaza, and the means by which Hamas and its security elements have tackled newly emerging rivals.

RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE AS A FACTOR OF STABILITY OF POLITICAL SYSTEMS. A STUDY OF TWO NORTH AMERICAN THEOCRACIES

The article theorizes theocracy – political power based on religious legitimation – in terms of the theory of social exchange, as arising out of unequal access to and control over religious goods. It then identifies the factors of stability of a system as the actions the rulers must take to successfully counter various attempts by the ruled to neutralize unequal conditions of exchange in which the power relation is grounded. Two empirical examples are offered of the use of religious doctrines to protect the stability thus conceived. The idea of covenant was used by the authorities of 17thcentury Massachusetts to justify the persecution of dissenters as a means of maintaining the purity and unity of the community, and thereby the necessary condition of fulfilling the society’s contract with God. The doctrine of continues revelation, on the other hand, gave Mormon leadership throughout 19th century, and especially during the crisis over polygamy, the much needed flexibility to adapt to external pressure without compromising the legitimacy of their God-granted power and the stability of the system.

From the mountain sanctuary to the nation

Reflecting on a long itinerary of research in the Aurès begun in the 1970s, and the significance today of the ‘high’-cultural model of nationalism advanced by Ernest Gellner (which drew on Weberian sociology in principle and the example of Algeria empirically), this article considers the historical roots and the long-term consequences of the incorporation, via the Islamic reformist (islah) movement of Abdelhamid Ben Badis and his followers, of local cultural producers and local social spaces into an Algerian nation-state politically defined by the hegemony of the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale (FLN)). Close examination of local and familial strategies for the accumulation and reinvestment of spiritual capital reveals both the local importance, beginning in the 1930s, of linkages to the emerging national sphere and the absence, at a national level, of competition for religious and cultural legitimacy that would contest the imposition of a uniform, hegemonic vision of national community. The reformist movement itself would suffer from the monopolisation of control after independence by the FLN party-state. While the limitations of this model, and the artificial consensus it created, were subsequently revealed in the obstacles to a critical intellectual life and the more radical disaffection of younger generations, it seems that there were few or no other ways, in the 1930s–50s, to articulate local society and national aspirations effectively.

The Relationship between Naguib Mahfouz and the Islamists: The Real, the Exaggerated and the Fabricated

The attitude of the so-called Islamists towards the Egyptian Noble Laureate is often represented as one of tension and resentment. However, the current study argues, this monolithic representation of the attitude the Islamists presumably have always had towards Mahfouz is oversimplified and misleading because it conceals an extremely complex and multifaceted reality. More precisely, the researchers show that although the Islamists have had their disagreements with the writer, and although they repeatedly objected to some of his works on religious grounds, they have also played an important role in discovering the talented writer and introducing him to the public; creating and renewing (whether intentionally or unintentionally) curiosity and interest in his works; and providing approbation of (that sometimes amounts to religious legitimization to) some of his most controversial works. Quite often the over-dramatization, and at times fabrication, of the conflict between the Islamists and Mahfouz is carried out in order to serve political and ideological ends.

The establishment of a political-educational network in the State of Israel: Maayan Hahinuch Hatorani

Maayan Hahinuch Hatorani is a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) educational network for elementary aged children in Israel, founded by Shas, a Sephardi ultra-Orthodox political party. The network's beginnings were in the second half of the 1980s, during the Shas' first Knesset term. It then consisted of around 30 small Talmudei Torah (Haredi elementary schools for boys), set up independently by Sephardi Haredi educational activists. This article describes their motives and activities in establishing schools for the Mizrahi community and explains the decisive contribution of two additional factors to the establishment of Maayan Hahinuch Hatorani: the senior Sephardi rabbis who awarded religious legitimacy, and the Shas Movement which provided political and financial support.

PERSEPSI DAN KETAATAN UMAT ISLAM TERHADAP ULAMA

People’s refusals and disobediences upon fatwa (released by MUI or ulama with their own opinions), followed by influence decreases of religious figures ( ulama ) towards Muslim community, were being such of phenomenal realities in Indonesia nowadays. This mass behavior might redefine their perceptions and thoughts about “ the legitimate ulama ”, according both; syara’ (religious legitimation), and social system. The research was located in Pekalongan Regency, thought-out known as “Kota Santri”, and plenty more, many Pesantren and Kyai have lived there. The result revealed that ulama and Muslim Community mostly had the same perception and view in understanding the meaning of Hadist “ al-ulama’ waratsat al anbiya” (ulama are heir of prophets). Ulama’ as informants added ulama’ were religious successor leader after the end of Muhammad’s saw prophetic era. But, in another sides, there were some differences, especially in interpreting social label: Kyai, KH, or Ustadz. Muslim Community mostly thought that a person who had such social label was ulama. Meanwhile ulama noted Kyai, KH or Ustadz was just social label, no more. So, it seemed to be weird and screwy if we looked up the sosial fact of fidelity of Muslim Community in Pekalongan Residence. It also could be said that Muslim community in Pekalongan Residence were standing still their obidiece toward kyai, KH, Ustadz or another ones, not toward ulama yet.

Letters of Controversy: Religion, Publication, and the Public Sphere in Seventeenth-Century France

This article attempts to bring together religious history and the history of the public sphere. It proposes to reinterpret the historical significance of doctrinal controversies by examining the relationship between a regime of publicity and an ecclesiastic regime. For instance, seventeenth-century French theological controversies were characterized by the frequent publication of letters, which indicates just how strongly the religious legitimacy of a given controversy was called into question. The publication of letters appears to have offered a means of responding to the destabilization of publishing practice caused by these controversies. It also attests to both the religious refusal to transform the church into a public sphere and how the ecclesiastic aspect of doctrinal controversies made them difficult to resolve. The relationship between publicity and religion thus appears particularly relevant for both historians of early modern Catholicism and historians of the public sphere.

A pilgrimage to Arawān: Religious legitimacy, status, and ownership in Timbuktu

ABSTRACTNorthern Mali has been shaken by drought and conflict since the 1960s, leading to gradual redefinitions of notions of status, social hierarchy, and rights in land and people. These changes indicate a fundamental shift from genealogical to territorial visions of the world: from notions of infinite encompassment and concomitant hierarchy to conceptions of rights as derived from “indigeneity” and exclusive categories of ownership and belonging. The recent discovery of oil in the area lends further urgency to these issues, as shown here through an analysis of a pilgrimage to Arawān, north of Timbuktu, undertaken by the all‐too‐cosmopolitan descendants of a regional saint.

Confucian Humanism and Theodicy

This article explores the puzzle of Confucian “divine humanism” in light of the Weberian scheme of religious rationalization. Relating the Confucian humanistic orientation to current discussions of the phenomenon of “amoral familism,” I argue that the Confucian puzzle calls into question the cornerstone of Max Weber’s comparative religion, namely his influential contrast between religious legitimation and theodicy. In particular, the puzzle suggests that in pre-Confucian China, there was no legitimate cosmic-social world order to which Confucianism managed to adjust, let alone to affirm. As a matter of fact, it was the Confucian solution to the problem of theodicy that laid the foundation for the legitimacy of the ethical polity. Hence, inverting what Weber and neo-Weberian theorists have asserted about the religious breakthroughs in the Axial Age, theodicy constituted the religious prerequisite for political legitimation.

Post‐Islamism, the Failure of an Idea: Regards on Islam and Nationalism from Khomeini’s Death to the Arab Revolts

Abstract«Post‐Islamism» remains a controversial concept in Western academia. Both the definition itself and its applicability have led to an intellectual debate that may be partially deemed a failure. Such a failure relates not only to the difficulty implicit in establishing its theoretical boundaries (which has in turn led to an internal response within academia itself),1 but also to the rather limited effect and repercussions that the notion itself has had in the Arab‐Islamic world.2 Twenty years into the development of a post‐Islamist theoretical framework, the prevalence of post‐Islamism as a useful analytical tool in sociopolitical terms now faces the challenge of having to confront the 2011 Arab revolts. The revolts have challenged the theoretical underpinnings that served as a basis for the post‐Islamist discourse, which argued for the decline of Islamism as a valid political alternative. Post‐Islamist theoreticians had argued that Islamism would eventually be replaced by an individualistic experience of Islam based on the vindication of civil rights and the separation of the realms of political and religious legitimacy. The latest election results in North Africa show the strength and diversity of political Islam (under permanent questioning and re‐elaboration) as well as the appropriateness of the «post‐» categories of analysis («post‐Islamism, post‐modernity, post‐nationalism»).

Secular Buddhist Lineages

Although the Buddhists, according to the logic of the life-story of the Buddha, could not claim a direct lineage of descent from the Exalted One himself—his only direct offspring, Rahula, having become a celibate monk—the family background of the Buddha could not escape the general temptation to create a family connection, as in the case of other important religious or cultural founding figures. This paper traces and discusses these attempts, expressed in and transformed into narratives, which are spread across a broad variety of Buddhist sources. It argues that the urge to create such (mostly incomplete) lineages resulted from another necessity: that of political and religious legitimation.