Splinter Groups Research Articles

Modernity, Civil Society, and Sectarianism: The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the Takfir Groups

By emphasizing civil society’s ambiguous relationship with modernity, the author proposes a discursive definition of civil society that draws on conflict theory. The author distinguishes between a civil society and a sectarian approach to politics from a theoretical perspective. Accordingly, a juxtaposition of the Muslim Brotherhood and its splinter groups in the Egyptian political arena epitomizes the opposing ideals of a civil society and a good society. Thus, the author moves away from the theoretical debate on the compatibility of Islam and democracy and suggests the possibility of a learning process of democratic practices by means of participating in the public sphere.

Hope, But Not for Us: Ecological Science Fiction and the End of the World in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood

It was Fredric Jameson who remarked, in a line from the preface to The Seeds of Time that has since become proverbial (as well as anonymized and widely misattributed 1 ): “It seems to be easier for...

Introduction: What Happened?The Children's Bookand the Question of History, 1895–1919

Is fiction which makes fact alive, fact too? He knew there was a good chance of him dying, and the pots dying with him. In a distinguished career spanning five decades, A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book marks her most sustained return to the world of nineteenth-century culture since the phenomenal success of Possession: A Romance (1990): a finely crafted novel that makes connections between the academic world of the 1980s and two imaginary Victorian poets. Possession, perhaps more than any of Byatt's other works, spurred the thriving scholarly industry that has developed around her expansive oeuvre.3 Like this earlier prize-winning novel, which was adapted for film in 2002 and for BBC radio in 2011–12, The Children's Book is an imposing contribution to a flourishing canon that critics have since the 1990s labelled neo-Victorian. It evinces a fascination with a wealth of information that suggests its fictional universe is historically accurate down to the smallest detail. Moreover, the narrative, which begins in 1895 and ends during the spring following the Armistice, carefully alludes to numerous real personages, including celebrity-seeking poet Rupert Brooke, homophile socialist Edward Carpenter, Carpenter's working-class lover George Merrill, as well as Oscar Wilde and countless others, in the course of weaving together the stories of several artistically inclined main characters. These protagonists, too, bear more than passing resemblances to real-life figures. In particular, The Children's Book is haunted by the life stories of children's writer E. Nesbit, Nesbit's unreliable spouse Hubert Bland and sexually abusive designer Eric Gill. Since the mid-1980s, many of these individuals have been the subject of substantial biographical studies that open readers' eyes to the creative, intellectual, and, notably, sexual shifts that took place in circles linked with progressive movements such as the Arts and Crafts Movement (dating from 1884), the Fellowship of the New Life (founded in 1883), and its influential splinter group, the Fabian Society (established a year later).4 Especially strong is the guiding presence of Julia Briggs's biography of Nesbit, whose life story at times parallels that of Olive Wellwood, the talented children's writer whose fairy stories in part account for the novel's generational title.

Remarks by Larry May

Jus bellum is a relatively new term in international law debates, although the term has deep roots in the Just War tradition. Indeed, there were historically three branches of the Just War: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus bellum, as we can see from the early seventeenth-century scholastic writer Francisco Suarez, who said that due proportion must be observed in [war's] beginning, during its prosecution, and after (1) In my recent book, I argue that there are six categories of the jus bellum: reconciliation, retribution, rebuilding, restitution, reparations, and proportionality. (2) Unlike the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello, the jus bellum is still only a matter of lex ferenda, not lex lata, although documents about transitional justice probably come closest to what some of jus bellum lex lata might look like. Achieving reconciliation at the end of armed conflict or war is generally quite difficult. But achieving reconciliation in a society where terrorism has reigned is especially challenging. In my remarks I will explain some of the special difficulties faced by post-war societies after terrorist armed conflict. I will focus especially on when the bellum period begins, how to think of justice in such situations, and how to conceive of the role of criminal trials in such a period. The guiding idea will be how to achieve reconciliation in a society that has seen civilians targeted and where such strategies may resume in the near future. FIRST PAST THE POST Deciding when war or armed conflict has ended is not always easy. Short of an official truce signed by all parties, which rarely happens today, wars and armed conflicts often peter out rather than come to an abrupt end. Of course, this raises interesting conceptual questions about whether the jus bellum can be a distinct period or set of issues since the post in jus bellum is itself so hard to determine and seems to blend with the jus in bello. This is also a potential practical problem because how prisoners are supposed to be treated depends on whether war is still raging or is now over. And terrorism changes many things, making what is hard to see during the fog of war even more shadowy. The first, and arguably most difficult, jus bellum question faced when there has been a terrorist war or armed conflict is when it can be said to have ended. Because of the irregular nature of terrorism, as contrasted with armed conflicts among states, it is very unclear whether terrorist armed conflict can ever be said to have ended unless there has been total victory. And even then it is not clear what victory means--since terrorist cells may merely be temporarily inactive rather than actually defeated. The organizational structure of terrorist groups, especially terrorist groups that are highly decentralized, means that there is often no leadership that is authorized to call for a truce. And even if there is such a structure, there are often splinter groups that do not necessarily follow the dictates of that leadership. Such difficulties are real and important but do not necessarily cause intractable problems, at least in certain domains. When considering reconciliation especially, it does not matter whether the armed conflict has ended for good--reconciliation needs to be started as early as possible, as it often takes so very long to be achieved. Political reconciliation involves bringing parties to the point where they respect each other's rights and can live peaceably together. Starting the process of reconciliation before armed conflict or war has ended can often be a very good thing, although often highly dangerous. Reconciliation takes a long time to be achieved because the animosity felt between two peoples after armed conflict or war is not something that can quickly dissipate. Terrorist violence will make such animosity worse since terrorism almost always involves the targeting of innocent civilians, or at least disregard for their safety. …

Apocalypticism and Popular Culture in South Africa: An Overview and Update

Abstract Apocalypticism, in the form of premillennial dispensationalism, based on foundational texts in Daniel, 2 Thessalonians and the book of Revelation, took root in South Africa through missionaries from the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. At first associated with Pentecostal churches and splinter groups from traditional churches belief in an imminent rapture followed by the tribulation, the millennium and final white throne judgment characterise an ever-widening circle of so-called charismatic groups. This heightening of expectation can mainly be ascribed to the influence of Hal Lindsey during the 70s and 80s and Tim LaHaye during the first decade of the 21st century. Rapid growth in media technology and the popularity of religious fiction has resulted in a merging of apocalyptic expectation with popular culture. This article probes the nature of “popular culture” and its relation to religion in South African context, and indicates a route for further enquiry and research. It concludes with the question, “What obligation does this lay on the scholarly guild?”

Antislavery in Print: The Germantown Protest, the "Exhortation," and the Seventeenth-Century Quaker Debate on Slavery

"Antislavery in Print" reexamines the first two North American antislavery petitions in terms of colonial print culture and Quaker politics. It also argues that there is an authorial link between these two important texts. The first antislavery protest was composed in 1688 by German-Dutch immigrants in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and was circulated in manuscript form within the Quaker community. The second document, the Exhortation and Caution to Friends concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes , was published by William Bradford in 1693 and has been widely attributed to George Keith, a schismatic Quaker who was expelled from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1692. This essay argues that the Exhortation should not be ascribed solely to Keith. It was a communal effort that should be attributed to the Christian Quakers, the splinter group founded by Keith. The Christian Quakers were nonelite English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, German, and Dutch Quakers, a number of whom were directly involved in the creation of the Germantown Protest. Keith himself never expressed radical antislavery sentiments, either before or after the publication of the Exhortation , but he did play an important role in arranging for its publication. Once printed, however, the Exhortation lost credibility within the orthodox Philadelphia Quaker community because it became part of a polemical print war that George Keith was waging against the orthodox Quakers.

Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda (review)

Sverker Finnstrom, Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. 304 pp. There is abundant media coverage including newspaper reports, documentaries, and films concerning the plight of the civilian population in northern Uganda (the Acholi) who have been living in war-ravaged conditions since 1986. Publicization of the atrocities committed by the rebel group Lord's Resistance Army/Movement (LRA/M) and its splinter groups has drawn both local and international attention. These atrocities led the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant for the arrest of LRA/M leader Joseph Kony in 2005. Additionally, the LRA/M was listed as a terrorist group in 2001 by the US government (the Bush administration) after the 9/11 attacks. Media reports, however, have not investigated the war in the context and fashion of Sverker Finnstrom. He narrates the complex nature of the war in northern Uganda by describing the situation in which civilian noncombatants, the rebels (LRA/M), the governmental (especially the army) and international agencies find themselves. He challenges the simplistic explanations rooted in ethnic stereotypes and religious fanaticism. Living with Bad Surroundings is written with sensitivity for the historical background of the Acholi people and their day-to-day realities. It highlights the impact of colonialism, independent Ugandan government regimes established after independence from Britain in 1962, and the local peoples' expectations and realities. Finnstrom aims, figuratively speaking, to address both sides of the coin, thus providing a more comprehensive understanding of the war's ramifications. Often, writers approach the subject of the war in northern Uganda from an outsider's perspective without integrating the realities rooted within the community-such an approach lends itself to inherent biases. A writer is often caught up in narrating the stark realities of the war's impacts, especially on the civilian population, thus obstructing a clear inquisition of the cause of the war and the roles of all stakeholders. The book's central theme is to understand the context in which the civilian population finds itself, these bad surroundings or what the author calls piny marac. He offers the contemporary Acholi youth's insight through their everyday experiences and struggles-success or failure. The book addresses their effort to attain good surroundings, or piny maber, given the prevailing conditions. Finnstrom describes, for instance, Tonny's (a coworker) struggle to purchase land in the Masindi district and have his mother and wife move from Gulu to this safer environment. In another instance, he depicts families' struggles to keep their children safe from rebel attacks by taking them to the overnight boarding facility at the mission before dark. He delivers a complete picture of the war in northern Uganda, clearly outlining the piny marac in which the noncombatant population is embedded. Media reports, especially those controlled by the Ugandan government, tend to portray the LRA/M as a terrorist rebel group whose ideology is based on fundamentalist Christian values and lacking a political agenda. Finnstrom not only discusses the religious motivation of the LRA/M, but also the political agenda driving the LRA/M and splinter groups. The book provides insight into the political arm of the LRA/M and its demands for justice for the Acholi. The attempt to legitimize their atrocities against civilians by citing the creation of a new religious and political order creates a scenario that conflicts with their goals-at least so far as they are outlined in their manifestos which supposedly fight for Acholi justice. The author writes with an ethnographer's perspective, providing a fresh viewpoint on the war. Language mediates identity-who people think they are-and thus his focus on the linguistic context in which words and phrases are used centers his narrative in a cultural context around which everything else revolves. …

Unmanned aircraft systems as wingmen

This paper introduces a method to integrate Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) into a highly functional manned/unmanned team through the design and implementation of 3D distributed formation/flight control algorithms with the goal to act as wingmen for a manned aircraft. The proposed algorithms are designed to increase UAS autonomy, dynamically modify formations, utilize standard operating formations to reduce pilot resistance to integration, and support splinter groups for surveillance and/or as safeguards between potential threats and manned vehicles. The proposed work coordinates UAS members by utilizing artificial potential functions whose values are based on the state of the unmanned and manned assets including the desired formation, obstacles, task assignments, and perceived intentions. The overall unmanned team geometry is controlled using weighted potential fields. Individual UASs utilize fuzzy logic controllers for stability and navigation as well as a fuzzy reasoning engine for predicting the intent of surrounding aircrafts. Approaches are demonstrated in simulation using the commercial simulator X-Plane and controllers designed in Matlab/Simulink. Experiments include staggered trail and right echelon formations as well as splinter group surveillance.

Microbial Forensics: A Powerful Tool for Pursuing Bioterrorism Perpetrators and the Need for an International Database

th 2001 in the U.S.A. with the anthrax-letter attacks. Bioterrorism is the deliberate use of living organisms or their byproducts (toxins) to inflict harm to susceptible humans, animals, plants, the environment or material by individuals, state-sponsored groups, insurgent/rebel, Doomsday/cult-type group, nonaligned terrorists, splinter groups, or lone offenders, in order to cause societal panic or menace societal safety and stability. The motives behind bioterrorism can be political, ideological, religious, or criminal, and sometimes only for personal reprisal. It is different from biological warfare, which is also the use of living organisms or their byproducts (toxins) to inflict harm, but it has been used by armies for military purposes [2]. Both bioterrorism and biological warfare can have devastating effects on all kinds of biodiversity, including humans, animals, plants, and other life. They can also be directed against resources, for example water or food supplies [3] and, in modern applications, against natural and manufactured materials [4]. Other expressions, including biocrime (biological crime), bioattack (biological attack), biological incidence, biothreat (biological threat) and biowar (biological war) have also been used to describe bioterrorism or biological warfare. Bioterrorism or biological warfare is not a new concept because history offers several, if not many, examples of the intentional use of biological agents or diseased cadavers as weapons for inflicting harm upon enemies. We can trace examples back to the 14 th century’s siege of Kaffa (now in Ukraine) for the earliest recorded biological war, which occurred between the Tatars and Kaffa. The Tatar forces catapulted plague corpses into the besieged city for spreading this disease. A plague outbreak was documented in Kaffa and it has been postulated that the fleeing citizens (as well as rats) of Kaffa who escaped via ship to various Mediterranean ports aided in the development of the second plague pandemic in the mid-1300s [5]. Another example of using disease as a biological weapon was the distribution of blankets or handkerchiefs used by the British smallpox victims as gifts to the hostile Native Americans by British troops in the 18 th

Menorah, Jüdisches Familienblatt für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur (1923-1932): Materialien zur Geschichte einer Wiener zionistischen Zeitschrift (review)

Reviewed by: Menorah, Jüdisches Familienblatt für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur (1923-1932): Materialien zur Geschichte einer Wiener zionistischen Zeitschrift Richard Hacken Menorah, Jüdisches Familienblatt für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur (1923-1932): Materialien zur Geschichte einer Wiener zionistischen Zeitschrift, by Isabella Gartner. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009. 356 pp. €48.00. Menorah, the Viennese cultural monthly that is the topic of Isabella Gartner's book-length presentation, only appeared in print for a total of ten years before the worldwide depression—apparently to a greater degree than the rise of Nazism—hastened its demise. The book's German-language title translates as "Menorah, Jewish Magazine for Science, Art and Literature (1923-1932): Materials on the History of a Viennese Zionist Journal." The journal under investigation originally had matching bilingual subtitles as "Illustrated Monthly for the Jewish Home / Illustrierte Monatsschrift für die Jüdische Familie." The use of English may have been in part a tip of the hat to New York's Menorah Journal founded in 1915 (later boasting such contributors as Louis Brandeis, Max Brod, Martin Buber, Felix Frankfurter, Luigi Pirandello, and Isaac Bashevis Singer), to which the Viennese journal shows clear parallels and with which it shares similar Jewish cultural goals. Though the first issues of the Viennese journal included articles in English and Hebrew, the publication increasingly limited itself to use of the German language. Paul Josef Diamant—about whom little is known—founded the journal, directing it mainly to the educated Jewish middle class and particularly to its base unit, the family. His initially stated goal was to create a unified Jewish cultural atmosphere that could bridge the gulfs between various social and political factions. The only propaganda he promised to deliver would be that of common cultural goods. After one year, in 1924, through a transaction not firmly documented, Norbert Hoffmann and his wife Josefine (for both of whom, according to the author, biographical data were also rare and difficult to gather) took over publication for the final nine years of the journal. Hoffmann, who developed a close relationship with Vladimir Jabotinsky and the latter's Revisionist Zionist Party, contravened the founding editorial policy of nonpartisanship pronounced by Diamant. In fact, the Menorah can be seen in its later years as a documentation source for an extremist splinter group of Viennese Zionism in the 1920s and early 1930s. [End Page 188] The journal was not well known even in its time, and today it can scarcely be found in an intact full run through antiquarian dealers or in libraries and archives. A website cosponsored by the author is accessible at http://menorah.literature.at that presents an online supplement to the book at hand with a short English abstract of the book, browsable metadata elements for individual articles of the Menorah monthly (issue by issue) and alphabetical lists of authors, publishing houses, and keyword concepts. The same categories are Boolean searchable in the site's central database. Should both the book and the database leave you frustrated to see and read the actual Menorah facsimiles themselves rather than short quotes and metadata, the journal has been digitized in its entirety at Compact Memory, the scholarly web portal for Jewish studies http://www.compactmemory.de/. Gartner's book contains more preparatory, primary, explanatory, appendix-worthy, or apparatus materials (pp. 1-36; 56-84; 115-132; 235-356) than discussion or analysis (pp. 37-56; 84-114; 133-234), and even the analytical chapters are richly interspersed with journal quotes or excerpts from unpublished correspondence. This fact is not meant as a negative criticism but as an indicator of content level: Gartner's book is a reworked dissertation serving with exquisite detail as the transcribed autopsy of a defunct journal, an annotated database in print format that provides a baseline from which further scholarly investigations can be launched. Certain chapters do investigate individual themes and currents within Menorah, and central among them are the journal's place in the circle of Zionist Revisionists (Chapter 8), its seemingly inexcusable distance from topics of antisemitism or fascism (Chapter 9), its tendency towards literary selections depicting Eastern shtetl life, and aversion for works of the...

Terrorism and the Decline of Italian Communism: Domestic and International Dimensions

This essay looks at two recent Italian books about the evolution of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Drawing on archival materials, the books trace the conflict between the radicals and the reformers within the PCI's ranks, a conflict that gave way to violent splinter groups that regarded the PCI as too staid and conciliatory. As the far left took a violent turn in Italy in the late 1960s, it paved the way for the spasm of grisly far-left and far-right terrorism in Italy in the 1970s and early 1980s. The books lend weight to the view that the PCI, through its exaltation of Communist revolution and its demonization of the Christian Democratic establishment, facilitated the emergence of extremist groups that perpetrated more than 8,400 terrorist attacks in the latter half of the 1970s.

Preaching Religion, Family and Memory in Nineteenth-Century England

This article explores the religious selfhood of an exemplary Bible Christian woman, Mary Thorne (1807–1883). Founded in 1815 as a splinter group of Wesleyan Methodism, the Bible Christian denomination invoked an epistemology which stressed the correlation between religious and familial obligations. A close study of Mary Thorne's private writings suggests the tensions which existed within this ideal at the level of everyday life. Her writings open a window on a religious woman's negotiation of her public identity alongside her experiences of marriage, sexuality and motherhood. They show the impact of age, life cycle and memory in the process of self-imagining and commemoration. Critically, they also show how dependent Thorne's self-realisation and presentation were on material signs of her identity. In understanding the varying constructions of Mary Thorne's religious selfhood, I argue we might more fully understand the material cultures that underpinned evangelical religion and domesticity in nineteenth-century Britain.

Autobiography of a Schism

In my youth, I was a member of Yogi Bhajan’s Healthy Happy Holy Organisation (3HO), a new religious movement that blends kundalini yoga with Sikhism. In the process of leaving that organisation, I formed a short-lived splinter group – the Spiritual Dawn Community – that lasted less than a year. In the present article, I recount the narrative of this splintering, and then reflect on the split in terms of different theoretical discussions of schisms and apostasy. Though prior theorizing provides certain insights, no analyst has thus far adequately captured the dynamic and fluid situation that leads up to a schism. From the perspective of someone who has experienced the schismatic process from the inside, it is clear that there are any number of different points at which a schism could have been prevented – even in cases where the split appears to have been inevitable.

How Flora got her cap: the higher education of women in Edinburgh

The Edinburgh Association for the University Education of Women (EAUEW) was an association providing women with higher education in a time when they were denied access to the Scottish universities. The article will give an outline of its history before assessing the performance of its mathematical class. This article is based on a lecture given at the History Splinter Group at the British Mathematical Colloquium in York, March 2008.

Fifty years of Australian gastroenterology and hepatology: A golden era of contributions to the region

Fifty years of Australian gastroenterology and hepatology: A golden era of contributions to the region

The Founding of the Association for Psychological Science: Part 1. Dialectical Tensions Within Organized Psychology.

The founding of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) did not represent the first time a group of psychologists broke away from the American Psychological Association, the parent association of organized psychology in the United States. In fact, the history of organized psychology is replete with examples of splinter groups that sought to better represent the needs and interests of their specific constituencies. All of these breakaway efforts have occurred amid intradisciplinary tensions-the continual push and pull between unity on the one hand and autonomy on the other-that reflect some of the enduring challenges of the field. A historical examination of this dialectic provides a useful framework within which to understand the founding of the APS, its most recent instantiation.

Explaining Strategic Violence after Wars

This article aims to explain why strategic violence against targeted groups emerges after some civil wars but not others. It argues that when one side has captured the coercive apparatus of the state, and the potentially hostile losing side is less vulnerable to predation, the leaders of the victorious group can reward their domestic constituents and conduct in-group policing to prevent opportunistic violence. But when an armed group fails to achieve state capture and the losing side remains in a vulnerable position relative to its former enemies, neither side can credibly guarantee their domestic allies a share of the resources of the state or conduct effective in-group policing of potential extremists. Using Kosovo and East Timor as case studies, this article shows that in these cases, strategic violence is less a function of a concerted attempt to spoil a settlement than of the internal bargaining of new splinter groups.

Stumbling into Crossfire: William Carlos Williams,Partisan Review, and the Left in the 1930s

Though actively involved in leftist causes and committees throughout the 1930s, William Carlos Williams had an almost uncanny knack for getting between warring factions and alienating power centers of the Left, particularly Partisan Review. This paper examines three such incidents: two in which PR intentionally humiliated the poet in 1936–37, and one in which Williams joined, signed petitions, then resigned from several leftist splinter groups battling each other in 1939. Among the reasons considered for these mishaps are: Williams’s political naïveté about factionalism and editorial good faith; his skepticism regarding communism; his desire to be published in the leading leftist magazines; and the byzantine political alignments of the late 1930s. Ironically, Williams’s own poetry and fiction in the 1930s show a genuine empathy (without cant or cliché) for the working class — a quality that was more talked about than achieved in leftist circles.

Stumbling into Crossfire: William Carlos Williams,Partisan Review, and the Left in the 1930s

Though actively involved in leftist causes and committees throughout the 1930s, William Carlos Williams had an almost uncanny knack for getting between warring factions and alienating power centers of the Left, particularly Partisan Review. This paper examines three such incidents: two in which PR intentionally humiliated the poet in 1936–37, and one in which Williams joined, signed petitions, then resigned from several leftist splinter groups battling each other in 1939. Among the reasons considered for these mishaps are: Williams’s political naivete about factionalism and editorial good faith; his skepticism regarding communism; his desire to be published in the leading leftist magazines; and the byzantine political alignments of the late 1930s. Ironically, Williams’s own poetry and fiction in the 1930s show a genuine empathy (without cant or cliche) for the working class — a quality that was more talked about than achieved in leftist circles.

Religious Splinter Movement from Historical Perspective

This article tries to analyze splinter groups of Islamic religion in Indonesia. Islamization in Indonesia has been building in the framework of universal values that containes democracy, i.e. hifdz-din, hifdz-nafs, hifdz-nasl, hifdz-mal, and hifdz-aql. Political change occurred in 1998 had triggered the emergence of splinters of Islamic religion; they were Salamullah, Isa Bugis, Baha’i, Madi in Palu, Qur’an Suci, and al-Qiyadah al-Islamiyah. They used atmosphere of pluralism and inclusivism to form their splinters’ community of religion. But, Ahmadiyah in historical perspective is different, because Ahmadiyah had existed before Indonesian Independence, and took part in resisting against Western colonization. The believe code of splinters of Islamic religion are deviant. They do not accepted Muhammad as the last prophet, change ‘shahadat’ and ‘shalat’. However, some people do not agree to punish or accuse them as being “sesat (deviant)”, because there still some chances to conversion.Keywords: Islam, doctrine, democracy, splinter group or movement, and violence.