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Abstract
Investigating the potential compatibility between the ongoing shariʿa-compliant cyber reforms with the standards enshrined in the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles, the article regards the contemporary European digital agenda as a point of reference to examine the variegated Muslim responses to modern technologies, including virtual Islamic (e-)counseling. Comparing Western and Islamic attitudes toward the usage of robotics and a (human-centric) artificial intelligence, it becomes clear that these tools must support individuals, being Islamic scholars or Western legal professionals. While skillfully relying on different languages and transcending domestic borders, European Islamic bodies can also engage in synergetic collaborations with state institutions at inter/national levels by aligning themselves with the cyber reorientation of the digital public space.
الخلاصة
تعاملت الأدبيات السياسية الإسلامية المعاصرة مع موضوع الانتخابات من منظور تأصيلي يسوغ مواقف إيجابية مسبقة، وكان من نتائج هذه المنهجية أنها أغفلت التداعيات السلبية التي تلازم العملية الانتخابية. ومن هذا المنطلق تتبنى هذه الورقة مقاربة نقدية من شأنها أن تحفز العقل الفقهي المعاصر على التعامل العقلاني مع هذا الموضوع بهدف الإسهام في تخليق المشاركة السياسية بدلًا من تكريس أخطائها. والتصور الذي تقترحه هذه الدراسة هو تقييد الانتخابات العامة بضوابط أخلاقية ومعرفية من شأنها أن تقلل من التداعيات السلبية التي تلازم ظاهرة التحزب السياسي. وهذا التصور يحظى بتوافق كل من الفقهاء المسلمين ورواد النظرية الإبستقراطية، وكلاهما يقدم أفكارا متقدمة تشكل تحديًا لتقاليد الممارسة الديموقراطية على مستوى المشاركة السياسية.
Abstract
This article aims to explore how the entanglement of Protestant Christianity and race and racism is manifested in contemporary Dutch society, and to identify which themes for introspection this yields for majority white Dutch Protestant churches. We argue that introspection on perceived superiority of white Dutch Protestantism is crucial to uncover subtle, unconscious mechanisms and ideas that are present in majority white Dutch Protestant churches and that contribute to maintaining racism. Furthermore, we argue that contemporary topical issues such as racism and colonial history run the risk of being pushed to the margins again as long as there is no systematic review of power and privilege of white Dutch Protestantism.
Abstract
This article presents positions on the digitability of religion as they are lived and reasoned about by digital natives who claim to be religious, spiritual, and/or searching and curious in this regard. Data were collected through explorative participant observations and semistructured interviews with digital natives with transmigratory biography elements in Switzerland. Examples of the borders that interlocutors drew between digitable and nondigitable aspects of religion are also presented to provide an overview of the emic assumptions about the possibilities and limits of religious digitability in the field. The analysis revealed that digital natives tended to see almost all aspects of religion but not all aspects of the religious community experience as digitable, and sometimes value the nondigitability of certain nuances of community explicitly.
Abstract
There are 120 Jains living in Switzerland today. Desiring to exchange information about their religion and to expand their knowledge, they started to meet in 2008. This initiated a community-building process in which Jains of different branches took part. Such a process, as well as the diaspora situation itself, is always connected with negotiations and religious transformations, which is also evident in the Swiss context. Following the common meetings, a distinct form of Jainism was created in Switzerland. This new form is supradenominational and universal and based on aspects such as vegetarianism, environmentalism, and nonviolence. Additionally, the Swiss Jains developed new strategies of knowledge transfer. This article focuses on not only the formation of a Swiss Jain community but also its dissolution as no common gatherings have taken place since 2016. Therefore, factors are named that can lead to the dissolution of a community.
Abstract
The role of religion in Western societies has gained renewed attention in recent years. While choirs have been studied to varying extents in the social sciences, the geography of choirs has received little attention, particularly in human geography. Using questionnaire responses from secular choir members, this exploratory study examines the possible differences and/or similarities of secular choir’s sacral and/or secular activity in urban and rural spaces in Sweden. The study reveals two primary findings. First, it reveals that secular choir members engage in a mixture of secular and sacred activities, suggesting that these activities can be considered postsecular. Second, the data challenges the geographical perception of rural environments as more sacred/traditional, as they have a high proportion of secular activities. Likewise, the results questions the geographical perception of urban environments as secular/modern, as they demonstrate an even distribution of sacred activities.
Abstract
Khwāja Muḥammad Zamān Luārvī (i.e., of Luārī or Lowārī) was a much-revered eighteenth-century Sufi shaykh (master) who spent his entire life in Luārī and Thatta in lower Sindh. Spiritually affiliated with the Naqshbandī Silsilah, he was also an eloquent Sufi poet. Though small in volume, his poetic compositions are highly symbolic and replete with complex Sufi philosophical and cosmological themes. This article identifies and analyzes the Sufi doctrines in his poetry by undertaking a poetic exegesis of his verses within a Sufi framework. It briefly introduces the life and poetry of the Khwāja, analyzes the articulation of Sufi doctrines in his poetic verses, and assesses his poetry’s characteristics.
Abstract
The Māturīdīs think that, without revealed law, human beings can grasp through speculative reasoning that some actions are good (ḥasan) and some are bad (qabīḥ). This article addresses the ontological aspect of such ethical rationalism. An analysis of the texts of legal theory shows that the sixth/twelfth-century Māturīdīs approached moral values in a non-realist way. Specifically, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (d. 539/1144?), who identifies himself as a true successor of Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), demonstrates that goodness (ḥusn) and badness (qubḥ) are neither real accidents nor divine command and prohibition; rather, “good” and “bad” just express one’s natural or rational approval and disapproval of objects and actions, and Prophetic law shapes some of the natural likes and dislikes. On this account, I conclude that al-Samarqandī’s view, shared by his contemporaneous fellow Māturīdīs such as Abū l-Thanāʾ al-Lāmishī (d. after 539/1144) and Najm al-Dīn al-Nasafī (d. 537/1142), challenges the current standard interpretations of the Māturīdī ethics as realism or divine command theory.