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In October 1985, several members of the Palestine Liberation Front hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro during its Mediterranean cruise. After the surrender of the terrorists, it came to light that a disabled passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, was killed by one of the kidnappers. The news of the attack was all the more disturbing that Klinghoffer belonged to the Jewish community. The case of abduction of Achille Lauro has been one of the most important topics in the field of international politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a long time. The idea of creating an opera based on those events came from one of the most distinctive directors of our time, Peter Sellars (1957–), who invited composer John Adams (1947–) to cooperation. Libretto was created by Alice Goodman (1958–). Stage presentation of the fate of the passengers of Achille Lauro was to be a musical background for the wider topic: Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The main aim of the authors of The Death of Klinghoffer, what they repeatedly stressed in interviews, was to present both sides: Jewish and Muslim; not only the design of the libretto and musical development, but also the right direction. Despite these assumptions, since the premiere in 1991 at the Brussels Théâtre Royale de La Monnaie, this opera is consequently dividing the audience into its hot enthusiasts and declared opponents. Demonstrations and protests, accusations of anti-Semitic content, presentation and justification of terrorism have led not only to a change in the score, but today they are almost inseparable elements of issue. This article focuses on the opinions on the opera by critics and music journalists. After presenting the context of creation, examples of the reception, analytical and creative works are shown, such as the opinions found in the reviews of the printed sources, as well as the online ones.
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The article presents funeral rites of Muslims in Bulgaria during the period of socialism. The author held fieldwork in the region of Kubrat (Northern Bulgaria). Memories about official communist policies are explored in terms of atheistic assimilatory communist policies.
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Based on published and unpublished Ottoman documents, narrative sources and results from terrain researches of the author, an attempt is made to be followed the place and role of the mystical brotherhoods of heterodox Muslims in religious life and confessional relations in Rumeli during the 15th–16th centuries. On the basis of the local centers of religious life are outlined the correlations of these brotherhoods with the central authority and local population during the establishment of the Ottoman rule on the Balkans and in the new socio-political conditions and social atmosphere during 16th century. Special attention is paid to the role of the so-called uthraquistic (dual sanctuaries) in the confessional relations between Christians and Muslims in urban and rural patriarchal environment.
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One of the essential postulates of political orientation and determination for the building of stable societies and a functioning political system in its content recognizes and imposes the need to examine the relation of relevant political actors to constitutionalism and human rights as concepts and preoccupations for any modern society. Also, constitutionalism and human rights and freedoms as its inseparable category manifest the political values and the corpus of essential and common political goals and commitments of a particular political community. Political Islam as an ideological political subject has its own sources and a valuable orientation framework through which prisms and perceptions can be interpreted or extracted by individual axiological determinants to certain issues. This paper analyzes exactly the relations of political Islam with constitutionalism and human rights, and similarly to the so-called framework it draws attention to the concepts of power, the mechanisms of control and compliance with the Sharia regulations. At the same time, the importance of human rights and freedoms in the Islamic narrative, their nature and scope, as well as the differences with the western established documents in this area are emphasized and analyzed.
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The Syrian civil war exacerbated sectarian divisions between the Alawite-ruled Syrian government and Syria’s Sunni population, straining also the relations between the Sunni majority and Alawite and Alevi minorities of the neighboring Turkey. The Alawites and Alevis of Turkey were predominantly supporting Syria’s president Bashar al-Asad, while the Turkish government greatly supported the Sunni insurgents of Syria. The paper aims at examining how Alawites and Alevis have influenced the relations between Turkey and Syria in the light of the Syrian civil war, the reasons behind the sympathy of Alevis for the Syrian government and the implications that Turkey’s Syria policy has had domestically. It finds that the Alevi / Alawite factor has had some restraining effects on Turkey’s antagonistic policy towards Syria. In the introductory part, the article touches upon the differences and the similarities between Alevis and Alawites, then it analyzes the developments in regards Turkey’s policy towards the Syrian crisis that were also reflected in Ankara’s domestic policy vis-à-vis its Alevi and Alawite minorities.
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The question of the correlation between Islam, political Islam and liberal democracy has so far been the most exposed topic in exploring the democratic capacity of political Islam and Islamic societies in general. What is particularly intriguing about the relationship between political Islam and liberal democracy is the fact of its westernized triviality that has received a pejorative tone in Islamic political circles. Simplified, the triviality of liberal democracy for the Islamic political campus implies imposing a model of democracy that cannot be fully compatible with the original Muslim notion of society and government. Hence, the following paper analyzes exactly the relations of political Islam to specific inherent categories of liberal democracy such as the rule of law, representative government, the separation of powers and secularism as diferenta specifica of liberal western democratic discourse. Through the methods of induction and deduction, the author will illustrate how appropriate tangent or divergence is illustrated and how this is reflected in the general ideological positioning of political Islam towards liberal democracy in Muslim countries through an axiological and praxeological perspective.
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Černý, Karel. Velká blízkovýchodní nestabilita: Arabské jaro, porevoluční chaos a nerovnoměrná modernizace 1950–2015. Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2017, 577 pp., ISBN 978-80-7422-595-6; English edition: Instability in the Middle East: Structural changes and uneven modernisation 1950–2015. Prague: Charles University – Karolinum Press, 2017, 476 pp., ISBN 978-80-246-3427-2. An abridged English version of this review has been published in the online version of the British Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 46, No. 3 (2019). The book by Karel Černý, published simultaneously in English and Czech (with the title "The great Middle Eastern instability: The Arab Spring, post-revolution chaos, and uneven modernization 1950–2015"), offers, in the reviewer’s opinion, a unique and original analysis of a broad spectrum of issues which the Middle East region has had to face roughly since the end of WW2. The author analyses modernization processes in local politics, economies, education, and media, as well as demographical changes and urbanization, finding the roots of the regional instability in a disharmony of the above spheres. He sets his studies of these regions into several macrohistoric-sociological comparative frameworks illustrating both specific and general aspect of the modernization process in the Middle East. In doing so, he evaluates the roles of Islam and post-colonialism as two indispensable factors of the situation in the Middle East in responsive and unconventional manner. Černý backs his analysis and conclusions by a broad selection of secondary published sources and a firm theoretical anchoring, but also by original and detailed empirical research and his own productive theoretical model. Thanks to the above, the author is able to present to us an accurate and convincing picture of the processes and events leading to the tumultuous Arabian Spring and subsequent events.
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. Since early times, Muslims have speculated on the nature of Revelation and the Divine Speech. This has resulted in Muslim scholars developing divergent approaches to this problem. With the constitution of the orthodoxy, the former school became dominant and it postulated that the Quran is the Word of God dictated to Prophet Muhammad through the angel Jabrail. However, during the last decades in Iran emerged scholars, such as Abdulkarim Soroush, who proposed new approaches to understanding and interpreting Revelation. This paper discusses the hermeneutical project put forward by Soroush by discussing his article on the “Expansion of Prophetic Experience”. In this article, the author argues that his modern hermeneutics is radically different from orthodox theology and problematizes that the idea that the Quran as a human creation brings about other implications outside theology, such as for instance opening the Muslim thought and liberating it from scriptural readings.
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Communication research has systematically pointed to the disparities in news coverage of political candidates from women and minority groups. These differences may hurt the chances of these candidates at being elected. Recently more migrants are entering the political arenas in their adopted Western countries. Migrants have become the center of debates over the rights and wrongs of multiculturalism. In particular, Muslim women, in liberal democracies have been turned into an allegory for undesirable cultural difference. The November 2018 US Congressional race saw an unprecedented number of women especially minority women run for office. Ilhan Omar (representing Minnesota) and Rashida Tlaib (representing Michigan) are the first Muslim women elected to Congress. Both Omar and Tlaib won by large margins. This study examines if local news coverage of Omar and Tlaib’s candidacy was congruent to prevalent schemas in representations of Muslim women and minorities in American media.
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In order to expand their economy and exports and attract foreign investments, tourists and talents, governments are increasingly adopting nation branding strategies as part of their public diplomacy to promote their image and build their reputation on the international scene. Some Arab countries, mainly countries from the Gulf region, have massively invested in branding strategies to raise their profile and build their image abroad. However, Arab countries face negative images related to, among others, gender equality and women’s rights. This paper tries to highlight the impact of gender gap on nation branding, image and reputation building of three Arabic countries: United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the importance of including this dimension when nations are addressing their image and reputation.
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It has become more and more important to study the interconnections across the cultural and security sector and imagine how changes in one sector can disrupt operations in the other one. This paper is trying to chart the eVol.ution of cultural influences over state security, arguing that security interests are defined by leaders who respond to cultural factors.Also, by analyzing the basic cultural dimensions, we will be able to see in what measure citizens coming from different states, with a different history, values, ideology, politics, religion, can influence the security policy and strategy of the state where they are relocating.
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This paper observes some of the most distinguished characteristics of the Islamic State related to the use of modern technology and tries to drawn some important conclusions between the terrorist’s quasi state, modernity and technology. After the examination of the functioning of IS at the peak of its powers between 2014 and 2017, the analysis turns to terrorists’ various online activities. All of them are showing the Islamic State’s reliance on modern technology, especially IT, as one of the most important aspects of its terrorist activities that greatly contributed not only to the effectiveness, but to the essential definition of first modern terrorist quasi-state. The second part of the paper deals with the Islamic State`s fully reliance on technology in its own legitimization (both among Islamist rivals and “infidels”). The celebration and the fascination with modern technology as main IS characteristics make it different from other Islamist terrorist groups, and trying to establish relations between modernity and terrorism based on religious fundamentalism. The paper also tries to find answers to the question whether IS’s ultra-modern techno approach is responsible for its transformation from a classical fundamentalist terrorist group into some kind of modern political ideology and a social movement with totalitarian and murderous characteristics.
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This study examines the normative hypothesis explaining the nexus between terrorism and Abrahamic religious tradition, particularly the Boko Haram Islamic fundamentalist sect in North-Eastern Nigeria. It is methodologically structured in quantitative and qualitative methods, where data and information are retrieved from primary and secondary sources. These were presented in a tabular form and analyzed descriptively within the context of the subject matter under investigation. The findings reveal that, beyond the classical arguments usually provided by the Abrahamic religious tradition school, the real reason behind global terrorism is for some overzealous religious bigots to establish a caliphate that will enable them to influence the international system. Based on these findings, the study concluded that the war against global terrorism would be a mirage unless national governments and international organizations fully address these fundamental issues.
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The understanding of ethnonationalism as the foundation of terrorist groups was long suspected to be true, yet only in the last decade, could the research prove to be so. These non-statal actors, which do not act in a violent manner, can become important threats for the national of international security, if provided with the right interest. Stating this, the implications for the regional and European security can be tremendous, as the civilian society will suffer greatly as an aftermath of a terrorist attack. Following this study, knowledge will be gained that will help to better understand the dynamics of relations developed between statal and non-statal actors. This paper is also an instrument underlying the concept of ethnonationalism and the connection of the term with terrorism, as we presently know it. From a methodological point of view, a qualitative method of research was used – the analysis of a case study, alongside a brief specialty literature review, in which research results regarding the topic were described. This article is open to any and all society members and can raise awareness of the public regarding the phenomenon of transformation of a non-statal actor, by providing some well-needed indicators.
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The article describes as a “good practice ” the experience of University of Library Studies and IT – Sofia, in conducting two courses for the acquisition of “Teacher of Religion – Islam and Non-denominational Education” additional professional qualification during 2018/2019 and 2020/2021 academic years. The results of the courses are analyzed through pedagogical diagnostics and commented on in comparison with the current European experience for training teachers in “Religion – Islam”.
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In the post-Ba’athist era, stability and national security remain the two key goals. Iraq has suffered from many extremist terrorist groups on several separate stages from 2003 to 2017. The most threatening terrorist group was ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), which has enormous impacts on Iraqi society, given the vast geographical areas that it controlled, and the dangers, crimes and violations suffered by the Iraqi people with all its components. The main aim of this study is to determine the impacts of ISIS on Iraqi national security. The study relied on Content Analysis Method to analyze the collected data and achieve its aims. Also, the primary research question is about the impact of ISIS on Iraq’s national security from 2014 to 2017. Correspondingly, an international coalition of more than a hundred countries was formed to stop the rapid expansion of ISIS. The number of victims who lost their lives and were affected at the psychological and humanitarian levels was explained in this study. According to the research results, ISIS was seeking long-term goals. The most important was the preparation for disseminating this new extremist ideology. The intelligence and the exploitation of poverty, ignorance, and political conflicts that ISIS used aimed to implant the extremist mentality in the most significant number of attention.
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In the perspective of socialization and self-determination, a society builds its identity on the basis of common values, morality and ethics. Ethos has been identified on this basis and on the basis of national identity. The question is – how people, who profess different religion from the one officially recognized in a country, are being built as a person and socialized in the society. How is the social and national identity build on, if the idea of “the other”, the non-belonging to “us” is underpinned by education? How, children who are educated in the tradition of Islam, with its attributes: language, mentality and religion, create an authentic image of a citizens of one country? This research is based on assumptions and hypotheses, mainly related to the assertion of women professing Islam, in regions with mixed population in Bulgaria, like city of Djebel, and the small villages - Rogozche and Pripek. The emphasis is put on the upbringing of young Muslim girls, who are more restricted than boys in freedom to be what modernity offers as options for their personal self-realization. It is important to see how Islam allows to women to define themselves as a person with equal rights and obligations in the society. How the different influence of cultural identity affects young Muslim women, if its main characteristic is traditional upbringing? Her godliness consists of a long list of duties, which the girl is obliged to observe during all of her life. In regions with mixed population, the main problem with secular education is the language. Most children who attend secular school for the first time - do not know the Bulgarian language. The reason is that until this moment, children are familiar only with their “mother” language – in this case – Turkish. Some of them are used to visit muslim religious school, where they study Arab alphabet, which helps them to learn some Quranic prayers. So in this case - secular education is important and everyone needs to have access to it and to be adequate to communicate with the modern world on higher level. To imagine the everyday life of a woman grown according to the Islamic traditions and even to try to put ourselves in the place of the “other woman”, in this different occasion in the perspective of modernity, we should go in “her shoes”, to walk with her steps and to experience the other, “not ours” sense of reality. The education of Muslim women, being secular or religious, is very interesting topic. It is important to explore the changing lifestyle and daily practices of modern Muslim women in Bulgaria in the context of education, in the view of their religious formation and emancipation under the influence of family, environment, ethnicity and so on.
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The international volume ”Aspects of Islamic Radicalization in the Balkans After the Fall of Communism”, published in 2023 by the Peter Lang Publishing Group represents a genuine assessment of the Islamic fundamentalism way spread in the Balkans since communism` fall, among the Muslim population, which add to the already existing literature. The studies included in this volume bring to the fore specific issues regarding certain geographical areas: Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Serbia, as well as holistic approaches within the role of Islam in the Balkans and the related connections with the historical, religious, political, economic, and social aspects in terms of radicalization.
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