Spirit Of War Research Articles

A Study on the Activating Tradition and the Will to Practice in the LiuTao

LiuTao is one of the WuJingQiShu compiled during the Yuanfeng reign of Emperor Shenzong of the late BeiSong Dynasty (1078-1085), which delineated the vertical and horizontal aspects of East Asian military science. Throughout the history of East Asia in this period, library science and bibliography, as official books, formed a huge collection. At the end of the reign of Emperor Shenzong, due to the failure and death of WangAnshi's reform, this was a historical period that could predict the trend of imperial power in the reigns of Emperor Zhezong and Emperor Huizong for more than 40 years. It also foreshadowed a large-scale war, as the capital of the BeiSong Dynasty was relocated to Hangzhou in the NanSong Dynasty (today) due to political struggles and chaos during the war. In addition, the political, social, historical, religious, linguistic, artistic and other cultural areas in this period, in addition to the geopolitical factors in East Asia, also through the textual research of various scholars in the ChunQiuZhanGuo periods, indicate the areas where ancient customs [易俗] can change the development of knowledge and information in the Middle Ages. The distribution and staging of the gains and losses in history, regional, and sociology during the ChunQiuZhanGuo periods have played a role in the development of human civilization and the spirit of war and political humanism in the common track. This is both an economic and moral, legal and educational issue, and also lies in rediscovering the ‘TaoHai (韬海)’ of hegemonic victory to inquiry the Probability variable. In order to investigate the outcome of the ‘Wuyi (无疑)’ military expert hegemony, specifically criticized the traditional activation of military politics based on probability variables and the differences in mercenary techniques and utilitarian positions reflected in the outbreak of war.

Memento Mori: A Spiritual War traced through the character of Aswatthama in Amruta Patil’s Sauptik: Blood and Flowers

Memento Mori: A Spiritual War traced through the character of Aswatthama in Amruta Patil’s Sauptik: Blood and Flowers

After Babel, the Horizontal War: City and Technique in Jacques Ellul

Jacques Ellul is best known for his The Technological Society (1954), which outlines a sociological treatment of Technique; that is, the total technical phenomenon including but extending far beyond machines. Lesser known are Ellul’s theological works, though these relate plainly to the sociological. Of particular relevance to Technique is his theological treatment of civilisation in The Meaning of the City (1970). These two texts stand alone and yet, read together, are mutually illuminating. The present paper will follow this light from the ancient City to the Technique of modernity. This will entail first a focus on four Scriptural cities: Enoch, Resen, Babel, Nineveh. The way will then proceed via a literary route, through Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, in which the abstractions here discussed are rendered palpable as flesh and blood. This detour will attend to those aspects of war and scalp-hunting which are central to McCarthy’s text, especially in light of the epistemic enterprise of one of modern literature’s most memorable characters: Judge Holden. The relation between the City and Technique will be followed by tracing the metaphysics of inscription which is a corollary to the project of epistemic legibility that underpins the movement of Technique. This enterprise will be understood as a confluence of Babel and Nineveh, a spiritual war that seeks to exclude God by enfolding the totality of existence into a humanly-determined order. The relation between the city, this process of inscription, and the nature of Technique will then be discussed.

War Strategy of Acehnese and Dutch in the Aceh War 1873-1912

<em>Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam in the history of the struggle of the Indonesian nation is the most difficult area to conquer by the Dutch. This area was once a Sultanate area that was crowded with international traders because of its strategic location. The war began when the Dutch tried to control the Aceh region so it received fierce resistance from the sultanate and the people of Aceh. The war between the Acehnese and Dutch people lasted between 1873 and 1912 which was the largest war during colonialism in the archipelago. The Acehnese and Dutch people in this long war implemented strategies with the aim of weakening the opponent's defenses. This paper aims to explain the strategies of both sides in the Aceh War. The author uses qualitative methods with library study as well as documentation to collect historical information with historiographic techniques. The result of this research was that the strategy of the Acehnese people with the spirit of fisabilillah war, deceitful tactics, and guerrilla was able to make the Dutch with higher-tech troops overwhelmed to deal with it. Meanwhile, the Dutch used war diplomacy to gain support from regional leaders with the politics of fighting and analyze the socio-cultural aspects of the Acehnese people to weaken the opponent's defenses.</em>

Scholars, Secrets, and Sultans: Clerical Authority in West Africa, 1450–1650

AbstractAvailable historical sources for West Africa's Middle Niger c. 1450–1650 reveal that the ‘indigenous’ (non-Arab) Islamic scholarly class was already a self-conscious, independent social entity long before the clerical revolutions of later centuries. The influence of Muslim scholars was not limited to urban environments like Timbuktu, and clerical elites claimed a number of mostly independent communities throughout West Africa by the end of the sixteenth century. Mostly based on a reading of Arabic texts such as Muḥammad al-Kābarī's Bustān al-fawāʾid (‘Garden of Beneficial Prayers’) in dialogue with the Tārīkh Ibn al-Mukhtār and Tārīkh al-Sūdān (‘Timbuktu Chronicles’), this article argues that Muslim scholars were engaged in a spiritual war for independence clearly on display since the beginning of the Songhay empire. Scholarly texts display deep concern for tempering unjust political power and the protection and attraction of women, discourses that reveal a perilous clerical struggle to assert community independence. Later armed jihads were thus not so much a break from earlier traditions of clerical pacificism, they were the natural evolution from this earlier spiritual jihad.

Black Muslims and the Angels of Afrofuturism

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgmentsHeartfelt thanks to Abbas Rattani, Shimul Chowdhury, and Yusuf Siddiquee,organizers of the AlHamdu/Muslim Futurism project where this work was first presented. Heartfeltthanks to the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art's Building Bridges initiative for supporting this work. And heartfelt thanks to the Sun Ra estate, Ihnfinity corporation, and Amina Baraka—as well as Camae Ayewa, Chelle Barbour, Antoinette Jackson, Jenn Nkiru, Tariq Touré, and Vanessa Taylor—for permissions, encouragement, inspiration, grace, and future consciousness.Additional informationNotes on contributorsEllen McLarneyEllen McLarney is Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center and Associate Professor of Arabic Culture working on two interrelated projects: one on “Black Muslims and Racial Justice in the American South” and another a Doris Duke Foundation’s Building Bridges initiative featuring Muslim American poets and musicians of African descent. The aim is engaging in reckoning, consciousness raising, and reconciliation through the arts while raising awareness about anti-Black and anti-Muslim bias in the North Atlantic.Solayman IdrisSolayman Idris’s Times of the Signs trilogy applies metaphysical principles, strategic planning and grand design to African American global futures. Idris’s New World Mahdist Literatures politicize weapons of spiritual war and call for establishment the newest continental African Nation State, “Orun,” as reparations for American Descendants of Slaves. A literary Ark of the Covenant Sunrise in the West, StarLogic, and Dusk Orientalis tell us how we got here and guide Us to where We’re going …

Jihad Nir Kekerasan dalam Penafsiran Sholeh Darat Pada Ayat-Ayat Qitāl

Several verses of the Qur'an, especially those discussing qitāl,, are often used as legitimacy to commit acts of violence and terror. Al-Baqarah 190-193 instructs Muslims to kill non-Muslims in the name of Allah or it is called the Holy War. Several scholars, both salaf and contemporary, have interpreted this verse with various methods and produced various ideas. In this article, the author tries to explain the Isyari exegesis method that has been used by Sholeh Darat in this verse and produces the values of Sufism and non-violence in Islam. With the isyari method, Sholeh Darat interprets the word war or qitāl,in this verse as a war within ourselves. Even though he lived during the Dutch colonial period, he did not necessarily use this verse to inflame the spirit of war but interpreted it with nonviolent values, namely self-improvement through controlling emotions, desires, and lust. This research found that war in the interpretation of Sholeh Darat focused on the spiritual, namely fighting whatever hindered the soul from reaching its God. Besides that, Sholeh Darat's response to colonialism will also be presented. He used a cultural and intellectual approach to fight colonialism rather than physical resistance. Therefore, this study concludes that the Isyari-Sufi interpretation is closely related to the values of peace and non-violence.

The Global American Civil War and Anglo-American Relations in China's Treaty Ports

AbstractTaking a global approach to the American Civil War from the vantage of China, this article explores the nineteenth-century transnational connections and disconnections that linked the American community there to distant diplomatic crises unfolding in the Atlantic. Such episodes as the raiding of the Confederate privateer Alabama and the Trent Affair reached China's Americans through newspaper articles and correspondence that described an Atlantic theatre dominated by the spirit of war. Such reports had an ambiguous effect in China. On the one hand, they undermined American mercantile enterprises that had been poised to expand into China's interior. On the other, they created only ephemeral ripples of discontent amongst a wider Anglo-American community ultimately bound together by common interests and a sense of racial and cultural solidarity. I argue that while rumour and speculation were powerful forces capable of crippling the United States’ merchant marine, colonial society in ports such as Hong Kong proved surprisingly resistant to metropolitan socio-political crises. Through the central case-study of the Alabama and related debates sustained in 1860s China, this article accordingly explores the extent to which (semi)colonial societies were susceptible to or insulated from metropolitan crises.

Eenheid en gelykheid uitgedruk deur die metafoor van die wapenrusting in Efesiers 6:10-18

The Holy Spirit and the Word of God are gifts to the whole church. Every believer in Jesus Christ is part of the body of Christ, the temple of God, the household of the Father and the army of the Spirit. One of the main themes of the letter to the Ephesians is unification in Christ between Jews and Gentiles. The author concludes his letter in Ephesians 6:10 with the metaphor of the armour of God: ‘In conclusion, be strong in the Lord [be empowered through your union with Him] and in the power of His might.’ (AMP). Our union with Christ, which should be reflected in our union with other believers, empower us to be strong in our fight against evil in this world. Unification cannot be complete if the value of each member is not acknowledged. Though roles may differ, the value of each member is measured by the price that Christ paid on the cross for our redemption. Equality unite; inequality divide. Equality for all members of Christ’s church is essential in the fight against evil powers like domination and inequality.The writer of Ephesians uses metaphors to convey the message of unification and equality, especially between Jews and Gentiles, in the newly formed first century church. Unfortunately the position of slaves, woman and children in the church are still subject to cultural norms and values of the time.The message of this letter should be filtered through the lens of patriarchy in the first century Mediterranean world. According to Osiek the whole Mediterranean society was patriarchal (2006:832). The metaphor of the Roman soldier’s armour is a male image used to describe a spiritual war in which all believers are involved. The equality in today’s society should not be limited by cultural first century boundaries, in Ephesians the fight against evil should be an example of the unification and equality of gender, ethnicity, social status and age groups.ContributionThe metaphor of the armour of God describe the spiritual fight against evil powers and although the image of a male Roman soldier is used, the fight is not limited to male members of the church. Every believer is valuable enough that Christ died for him/her and therefore every believer should be equal in the army of God. The empowering strength of the Holy Spirit should bring equality and unity in the church.

Theology of Supernatural

The main research issues of the article are the determination of the genesis of theology created in Supernatural and the understanding of ways in which this show transforms a traditional Christian theological narrative. The methodological framework of the article, on the one hand, is the theory of the occulture (C. Partridge), and on the other, the narrative theory proposed in U. Eco’s semiotic model. C. Partridge successfully described modern religious popular culture as a coexistence of abstract Eastern good (the idea of the transcendent Absolute, self-spirituality) and Western personified evil. The ideal confirmation of this thesis is Supernatural, since it was the bricolage game with images of Christian evil that became the cornerstone of its popularity. In the 15 seasons of its existence, Supernatural, conceived as a story of two evil-hunting brothers wrapped in a collection of urban legends, has turned into a global panorama of world demonology while touching on the nature of evil, the world order, theodicy, the image of God, etc. In fact, this show creates a new demonology, angelology, and eschatology. The article states that the narrative topics of Supernatural are based on two themes, i.e., the theology of the spiritual war of the third wave of charismatic Protestantism and the occult outlooks derived from Emmanuel Swedenborg’s system. The main topic of this article is the role of monotheistic mythology in Supernatural. The author concludes that the case of Supernatural shows how the classical monotheistic narrative, in its orthodox and heterodox formats, is hugely attractive for the modern audience. A wide distribution of the occulture that has become a basis of modern mass culture and easily combines, by virtue of historical specifics of its genesis, with monotheism makes the classical monotheistic mythology more flexible and capable of meeting the audience’s different demands.

“Spiritual Warfare” or “Crimes against Humanity”? Evangelized Drug Traffickers and Violence against Afro-Brazilian Religions in Rio de Janeiro

Since at least 2005, drug traffickers in the cities and favelas of the state of Rio de Janeiro have been carrying out systematic and violent assaults on Afro-Brazilian religious communities. Motivated by their conversion to sects of Evangelical Christianity that regard Afro-Brazilian religions as devil worship, the traffickers have forcibly expelled devotees of these faiths from their homes and temples, destroyed shrines and places of worship, and threatened to kill priests if they continue to practice their religion. Scholars have often described this religious landscape as a “conflict” and a “spiritual war.” However, I argue that Evangelized drug traffickers and Afro-Brazilian religions are not engaged in a two-sided struggle; rather, the former is unilaterally committing gross violations of the latter’s human rights, which contravene international norms prohibiting crimes against humanity and genocide.

The Satisfaction Level of the Beneficiaries of Social Safety Net Programmes (SSNPs) in Bangladesh: A Practical Observation at Field Level

Abstract:
 Bangladesh government allocates an amount of money in its national budget every year for the wellbeing of citizens. With the spirit of liberation war and the independence of Bangladesh the present government in its roadmap of development “Vision 2021” has incorporated strategies for the banishment of poverty, inequality and human deprivation. To ensure the sustainable development the Government of Bangladesh has started a total of 126 Safety Net Programmes in the FY 2019-20. To explore the extent and to identify the satisfaction level of the beneficiaries of Social Safety Net Programmes (SSNPs) in Bangladesh, a field study has been conducted in the selected two union councils. Total 70 respondents have been interviewed in this regard. They all have enjoyed different types of benefits of SSNPs. In this study, researchers have been noticed that how many beneficiaries are satisfied after getting the benefits of SSNPs and how many beneficiaries are not satisfied after getting the benefits. The study also found that how the socio-economic conditions of beneficiaries have been changed by getting the benefits.

Benjamin Constant’s history of philosophy

The article analyses the concept of a prominent representative of early French Romanticism, considers his division of the historical process into periods and his idea on the meaning of history. According to Constant, history is not uniform in a political sense. The lack of understanding this important truth by the rulers has always brought untold sufferings to their subjects. Constant’s philosophy of history is based on the idea of improving the human race, typical for the intellectual culture of the Age of Enlightenment, to which he gave a new sound, contraposing the spirit of war with the spirit of trade. Distinguishing between two types of freedom, he associated the first variety with the tradition of ancient people’s assemblies, collective direct decisions, and the second with the system of representative government. His periodization of world history concretizes the idea of progress as a fundamental law of nature. He included psychological elements into his interpretation of the meaning of revolutionary events. Treating inequality as the basis of social adversity, he attributed independence in deeds, choice of life’s priorities, personal security, the right to own property, and the ability to express and defend different opinions as the most important human freedoms. Expressed clearly in a number of Constant’s works is the desire to distance himself from the various opposing parties, to appear as an unbiased observer, and a sage guiding his efforts to the common good. This corresponded greatly to the ideal of a philosopher represented on the pages of d’Alembert and Diderot’s famous “Encyclopédie.” At the same time, his doctrine represents a certain rethinking of the Enlightenment legacy, carried out through the lens of the experience of revolutionary times. Hence the demand to limit popular sovereignty, criticism of Russoism, a unique concept of the evolution of religion.

Portraying the Contemporary Spirit of War and Violence in Easterine Kire’s, Mari

Easterine Kire has projected in her novel the element of violence in the Naga society from a seventeen year old girl to that of a woman with a contemporary spirit. Violence enables her to redefine an identity for herself that is different from the way she is identified in the beginning of the Naga society. The novel Mari details the war and violence in Kohima 1944, on the lives of the innocent people represented by her life’s story. Her attempt to establish a new identity which enables her to further beyond the challenges and help her to develop a new perspective towards her own life. The undertaken journey with her sisters made her to be responsible which she was not earlier. But the task is by far out and away made her life difficult to carry on. She like other contemporary women hold within the battle and trouble and make her way out into courageous woman. The paper attempt to study the representation of violence and conflict from an identity perspective. It also attempts to project the problems and difficulties faced by them and their ability to endure the situation in a heroic manner and evolve amidst it.

Politics in the Temple. Religious Doctrine and Conservative Activism in a Neopentecostal Church in Montevideo. A Brief Approach

This work approaches briefly the relations between politics and religion in the context of the neopentecostal church Mission Life for the Nations, understanding that both are transversal dimensions of human experience. In this way, we can find them imbricated in religious doctrine, such as the Spiritual War, political activism developed in the so called “public sphere”, but also on other aspects of human experience that are usually perceived as “private” from a liberal perspective, such as sexuality. Religious discourses about the world and humans destiny function as narratives that, being adopted by the faithful, are enacted in different spheres of action. In this way, religion cannot be conceived as a separated dimension of the social world. Not merely metaphysical or discursive, as it implies action—or inaction—it involves politics.

Bautizando el colonialismo: las políticas de conversión en México después de la conquista

Este artículo examina la historia política de la conversión indígena al cristianismo después de la conquista. Utilizando fuentes de archivo, anales indígenas y comunicaciones mendicantes ofrezco una revisión a la interpretación espiritual de la historiografía de las primeras décadas de las misiones en México. Sostengo que el fenómeno de las conversiones a escala masiva se debe a una compleja combinación de oportunismo político, violencia iconoclasta y la búsqueda de refugio de la violencia colonial por parte de líderes indígenas. Entre los descalabros y vacíos de poder tras la conquista española y la epidemia de viruela, los señores indígenas en los altepetls del centro de México crearon alianzas a nivel local con frailes mendicantes a fin de legitimizar su autoridad y fortalecer sus ambiciones territoriales. Al mismo tiempo, los frailes emprendieron una guerra espiritual utilizando a los hijos de los propios señores. Los frailes y sus acólitos nativos desataron una ola de actos violentos que acabaron con el poder público de las élites religiosas indígenas. A pesar de esta violencia religiosa, la misión mendicante también representaba una solución para reducir la violencia colonial. Los frailes ofrecían proteger a las comunidades indígenas de la violencia, la explotación y la esclavización de los colonos españoles. Ya para los años 1530, las conversiones a escala masiva resultaron de un consenso entre los pueblos indígenas de que la misión sería la forma más eficaz de preservar sus vidas, propiedades y comunidades. A través de las aguas del bautismo, las comunidades indígenas empezaron a reconstruir el mundo mesoamericano.

Eleventh Parliamentary Election in Bangladesh: An Empirical Study

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of the government. This will be expressed in a periodic and transparent election which shall be by equal suffrage and held by secret vote. Through this, the pace of socio-economic and human development of a country is accelerated alongside the strengthening of the democratic process and Bangladesh is not so far from this process of democracy. To sustain the democratic process of Bangladesh it was a challenge for the ruling Awami League to conduct the 11th parliamentary election under constitutional law because of the non-cooperation of the opposition. But Awami League overcame that challenges and it was a landslide win which was largely attributed to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s dynamic leadership, her humility and the people’s rejection of anti-liberation forces. Majority of the people of Bangladesh, with the spirit of liberation war, wanted to see “Sonar Bangla” a long-cherished dream of the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and it was reflected in the results of election.

Make America Great Again as White Political Theology

“Trumpism” is not a coherent socio-political doctrine. Where it does cohere is in its symbolic attempts to parry the cultural shocks endured by the self-perceived victims of liberal progressivism – those who see whiteness not as a privilege, but as a state of fragility, those who also narrate this fragility as constitutive of the end of Christian America or, more broadly, Judeo-Christian civilization. The rationale for Trumpism is not simply policy-based, or economic. Rather, resonating under Trumpism and the promise to Make America Great Again (MAGA) is a white political theology which is deployed in a new “spiritual war” for the soul of America and indeed, the soul of the West. More troubling is how this “spiritual war” articulates itself in the new culture wars and, for some, the inauguration of a geo-political apocalypse which finally resolves the clash of civilizations. This article investigates how MAGA functions as white political theology both within the White House and amongst Trump’s base. Following from this, we explore this political theology as a vast ideological apparatus engendered by neo-liberalism in spiritual-racialist terms.

Lucretius and Memmius: De Rerum Natura 1.42

These lines (28-53) from Lucretius' first proem appeal to Venus to make the poem attractive and thus bring peace to the troubled state of Rome through its and her capacity to calm the spirit of war, here symbolised by her erotic domination of her lover Mavors (Mars). The poet calls on Venus to speak words via the poem which will bring peace to the Romans, words evidently parallel with the Epicurean message of tranquillity in the DRN itself . At this point in the text of Lucretius two problems emerge.---Original in English. ---DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22409/cadletrasuff.2018n56a581

The Protestant Activities and Spiritual War Power in an Army during the Korean War : Focused on Chaplains and Protestant Soldiers

The Protestant Activities and Spiritual War Power in an Army during the Korean War : Focused on Chaplains and Protestant Soldiers