ISLAM AND BIOETHICS IN THE CONTEXT OF “RELIGION AND SCIENCE”

This paper places “Islam and bioethics” within the framework of “religion and science” discourse. It thus may be seen as a complement to the paper by Henk ten Have ( 2013 ) with which this thematic section in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science opens, which places “Islam and bioethics” in the context of contemporary bioethics. It turns out that in Zygon there have been more submitted articles on Islam and bioethics than on any other Islam‐related topic. This may be a consequence of the global nature of the bioethical issues, driven by advancement in science and technology, which allows for conversation across cultural and religious boundaries even when the normative references and argumentative methods are tradition‐specific.     

GLOBAL BIOETHICS: TRANSNATIONAL EXPERIENCES AND ISLAMIC BIOETHICS

In the 1970s “bioethics” emerged as a new interdisciplinary discourse on medicine, health care, and medical technologies, primarily in Western, developed countries. The main focus was on how individual patients could be empowered to cope with the challenges of science and technology. Since the 1990s, the main source of bioethical problems is the process of globalization, particularly neo‐liberal market ideology. Faced with new challenges such as poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, hunger, pandemics, and organ trafficking the bioethical discourse of empowering individuals is no longer sufficient. Global bioethics nowadays is concerned with applying and implementing a universal ethical framework. Islamic bioethics has contributed to creating such framework (exemplified in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights) while at the same time it is continuously articulating and interpreting this framework in specific settings and contexts.     

Remembering Karbala in the diaspora: religious rituals among Iraqi Shii women in Ireland

Memory studies have gained much popularity in the humanities and social sciences since the 1980s. Particularly after the seminal work of Danièle Hervieu-Léger on ‘religion as a chain of memory’, discussions arose around how theories of memory can be applied in the Study of Religions. Few scholars, however, have discussed the intersection between religion, particularly Islam, and memory. In this article, the focus lies on Shii Muslim communities in Ireland, for whom remembering constitutes an important part of their identity and legitimises their particular sectarian existence within Islam in general. This article discusses Iraqi Shii women's engagement in ‘collective remembering’ (Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; J.V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) expressed through constantly performed religious rituals and practices.     

The influence of populism on tolerance: a thematic content analysis of the Dutch Islam debate

Historically, religious tolerance has been an integral part of Dutch identity. Yet, this image has changed, particularly in the last 20 years due to the influence of populism that predominantly focused on the stigmatisation of Islam. This paper examines how this development has changed the meaning of tolerance in the public debate about Islam and what this change means for the social and political conditions for integration in the Netherlands. An analytical framework was used, breaking down the term ‘tolerance’ into five components: subject of tolerance, object of tolerance, hierarchy of values, power to interfere and limits to tolerance. The results show that while mainstream opinion leaders received more attention in public debate, populists managed to shape the tolerance discourse, changing the subjects and objects of tolerance, emphasising contradictions between different values, shaping the hierarchy of values and proposing intolerance for Islamic intolerance as limit of tolerance.     

Islamist attitudes to the current world order

The subject of Islam and politics raises problems of definition and categorisation of its religio‐ideological content and of the different groups and parties which uphold that Islam and politics are inextricably linked. There is a general consensus in the more recent literature on Islam that Islam is not monolithic. There are frequent references to the ‘variety of Islams’, ‘the Islam of the state’, ‘the Islam of radical Islamist groups’ and ‘sufi and popular Islam’. But is it so ordered? Have we gone from one extreme, that of defining Islam as monolithic, and replaced it with a set of rigid and compartmentalized notions of the different spheres and interpretations of Islam? It appears that the perceptions and practice of Islam are much more fluid and tend to overlap and that there is a common and integrated world‐view amongst Muslims that can be delineated.     

The international politics of tolerance in the Persian Gulf

ABSTRACT

Since the early 2000s, wide-ranging initiatives geared towards the promotion of tolerance, moderation and interfaith dialogue have proliferated throughout the Persian Gulf, culminating most recently in the establishment of the world’s first Ministry of Tolerance in the UAE. For more than a decade, Qatar has hosted annual interfaith conferences on themes such as ‘Steps Towards Tolerance’. Oman and Bahrain have been prominent advocates, pursuing their respective tolerance agendas through academic publications, travelling delegations, exhibitions and international conferences. Even Saudi Arabia, notorious for its intolerance at home, has been a prominent advocate on the world stage. Talk of tolerance, it seems, is everywhere, but what is behind this regional trend? This article situates the emergent political discourse of tolerance in the broader post-9/11 geopolitical context, wherein the ideal of tolerance has been embraced by both the West and the Muslim world as an antidote to the global problem of terrorism. I suggest that Gulf tolerance initiatives are best understood in terms of a broader politics of representation that coheres around the promotion of ‘moderate Islam’, and that in the context of what has been described as the Western ‘civilisational discourse’ of tolerance, Muslim-majority countries are responding with a civilisational discourse of their own.     

Dissociation,the true self and the notion of the frozen baby

Abstract

The widespread ‘trauma talk’ that is prevalent in the social sciences, has, in recent years, become increasingly commonplace in psychoanalytic writings, especially in attachment theory and relational psychoanalysis. This paper examines dissociation, a key concept in ‘trauma theory’, in conjunction with the Winnicottian term ‘true self’, in the context of a particular discursive and theoretical combination of the two. This discursive formation is named ‘the frozen baby discourse’, and it is presented and analysed. A critique is offered of the way ‘true self’, understood as a humanistic concept, is often used together with dissociation, in order to create a theoretical construct that is far removed from Winnicottian theory. This paper begins by exploring definitional issues, both around dissociation and ‘true self’. It is subsequently argued that this contemporary usage of ‘true self’ in combination with dissociation has important implications for psychoanalytic practice.     

Translating Islam into the language of the Russian state and the Orthodox Church

ABSTRACT

This contribution analyses the discursive strategies exercised by Russia’s state-appointed Islamic authorities. It draws on a linguistic corpus that consists of speeches and sermons by Mufti Ravil’ Gainutdin, the head of a major Muslim Spiritual Directorate in Moscow. A multi-levelled analysis shows that the mufti’s lexical and rhetorical choices correspond to the discourse of the Russian Orthodox Church elites. This affinity is a discursive strategy that allows Gainutdin to position himself as the authoritative leader of Russia’s Islamic community and to construct Islam as Russia’s ‘familiar’ and ‘traditional’ religion.     

The Return Of The Religious

Recents discussions of expansion in the European Union and the possibility of envisioning a Muslim country in it has exacerbated the deep-seated anxiety about Islam among the liberal and extreme right in Europe. This paper suggests that there are recurring elements in the discourse of European cultural identity and one of these elements is the representation of Islam in its alterity to European identity and civilization. Questioning the thesis of a radical break with the Christian past, this paper questions whether the European cultural identity which is being formed today signifies a break with a religious form of identification. The liberal and extreme right opposes Turkish membership on the grounds that the differences between ‘European values’ and ‘European culture and lifestyle’ and Turkey's culture are what makes the latter essentially and fundamentally external to the essence of Europe. Tracing the remnants of Christian discourse in the contemporary fashioning of European identity, this paper discusses how Christianity, with its secularized versions, which are now displaced to culture and lifestyle, still holds a privileged position as a unifying theme in Europe. It suggests that one of the tests that awaits Europe is whether it will be capable of articulating a new but democratic identity for Europe, one that is responsive to the differences of the other or whether it wants to continue to be European by way of its old methods of exclusion.     

The Dutch and British Public Debate on Islam: Responses to the Killing of Theo van Gogh and the London Bombings Compared

Since the beginning of this century, Islam has become the subject of an intensive debate within Europe. Major triggers of this debate were, in the Netherlands, the assassination of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh on 2 November 2004 and, in the UK, the London bombings on 7 July 2005. Both violent actions were committed in the name of Islam. This article examines and analyses the national debate that emerged about Islam in both countries in response to these events. Four differences — with respect to diagnoses, remedies, openness and ‘temperature’ — are noted between the debates in the two countries. A point of common ground is the weakness of the voice of Muslims and Muslim communities in both the Netherlands and the UK. The differences relate to the balance of power between the pro-assimilation and pro-multiculturalism discourse in the two countries in the period previous to these events and to the attitudes towards Muslims of the Dutch and British people during that period. These attitudes are connected to mechanisms of ‘selfing’ and ‘othering’ and are linked to factors of (un)familiarity with and fear of Muslim immigrants and a lack of trust in the national government to overcome the problems associated with these immigrants.     

Teasing ‘Islam’: ‘Islam’ as the Other Side of ‘Tolerance’ in Contemporary Dutch Politics

This article deals with the role of ‘Islam’ in contemporary Dutch political discourses on tolerance. I will show how Islam is described as an ideology (and not as a religion) competing with liberal values. I argue that political disputes are not at all about Islam as a living religion, but about ‘Islam’ as a culturally presumed menace to, or negative projection of, dominant Dutch imaginaries, such as tolerance and free speech, that are taken as elementary conditions for a liberal democratic state. The first part of this article deals with the staging and development of ‘Islam’ in Dutch politics since the 1970s. Part two develops a theoretical understanding of the framing of ‘Islam’ as the opponent of ‘tolerance’ and argues that this position shows a typical modern stance.     

Taha Jabir Al-‘Alwani: A Study of His Views on Ethics of Disagreement in Islam

This paper is an attempt to provide its readers/listeners the views of Taha Jabir Al-‘Alwani on Ethics of Disagreement in Islam. Taha Jabir Al-‘Alwani is one of the renowned scholars and reformists of the contemporary Muslim world. He presented in terms of views on the ethics of disagreement in Islam, an explanation of the etiquette envisioned by Islam for all those engaged in discourse and intellectual dialogue, and he also exposes a higher number of principles and purposes of the Shariah which provide Muslims with perspectives far vaster than those afforded by pedantic debate over points of law and procedure or fine distinctions between conflicting theological arguments. Above all, he analyzes that what today is going in the world is totally a contrast trend to the teachings of Qur’an and Sunnah. After stressing the paramount duty of affirming the oneness of Allah (Tawhid), both the Qur’an and the Sunnah stress on one thing above all: the unity of Muslim Ummah.     

Islam offline—living ‘The message’ behind the screens

This article is an ethnographic account of the Social Section of Arabic language Islam Online. It focuses on what Krüger has called the ‘hidden knowledge’ of religious websites. Drawing on longitudinal fieldwork in the Islam Online offices in Cairo, Egypt, this article brings forth and analyzes rich data about Islam Online employees’ work practices and meaning-making activities. Drawing on an organizational ethnographic approach, this article highlights new aspects of this influential Islamic website. More specifically, the author employs Linde’s concept of an ‘institutional narrative’ to conceptualize and analyze the strong institutional identity and corporate values that are in play in everyday work practices. Focusing on key tropes such as ‘the message’, ‘professional’, ‘pluralistic’, and ‘pioneers’, the article demonstrates how Islam Online’s Islamist institutional narrative includes a creation story and set of organizational values that play out in the execution of work tasks. Moreover, the author argues that the objective of the emic concept of “the message” is to contribute to both self- and societal-reform in the Arab world, and that Islam Online’s own work environment represents a micro-cosmos of this ideal.     

The limits of religion: liberalism and anti-liberalism in the Islamic Republic of Iran

This essay investigates the ways that ‘religion,’ as a particular category of discourse, organised Muslim debates in the Islamic Republic of Iran during the 1990s and early 2000s. Recent work in the study of religion has highlighted not only liberalism’s privatised and largely protestant notion of religion, but also the ways that understanding of religion affects the representation of Islam in the West. Studies of Islam, continuing the critique of liberal assumptions regarding religion, often uphold a traditionalist understanding of Islam as an equally valuable way of being in the world. This article, in contrast, explores the ways that liberal religion figures in both liberal and anti-liberal Muslim debate. Specifically, it traces the ways that Muslim theology (kalām) draws upon and contests the rationality and secularity of the world and, in so doing, turns the gaze back to continuing discontents with liberalism in the West.     

The Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD)

The article presents the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD). SKAD, which has been in the process of development since the middle of the 1990s, is now a widely used framework among social scientists in discourse research in the German-speaking area. It links arguments from the social constructionist tradition, following Berger and Luckmann, with assumptions based in symbolic interactionism, hermeneutic sociology of knowledge, and the concepts of Michel Foucault. It argues thereby for a consistent theoretical and methodological grounding of a genuine social sciences perspective on discourse interested in the social production, circulation and transformation of knowledge, that is in social relations and politics of knowledge in the so-called ‘knowledge societies’. Distancing itself from Critical Discourse Analysis, Linguistics, Ethnomethodology inspired discourse analysis and the Analysis of Hegemonies, following Laclau and Mouffe, SKAD’s framework has been built up around research questions and concerns located in the social sciences, referring to public discourse and arenas as well as to more specific fields of (scientific, religious, etc.) discursive struggles and controversies around “problematizations” (Foucault).     

How Islam Influences Women’s Paid Non-farm Employment: Evidence from 26 Indonesian and 37 Nigerian Provinces

Studies on women’s employment in Muslim countries often mention Islam, but its influence is undertheorized and tests simply compare ‘Muslim’ women and areas to ‘non-Muslim’ women and areas. Here, multilevel analyses of Indonesia and Nigeria show this focus is not tenable: non-farm employment of Muslim women is not consistently lower than that of non-Muslim women, nor is it lower in Muslim-dominated provinces than in other provinces. A new theoretical frame conceptualizes religion’s influence in terms message and messenger. It is shown how different manifestations of Islam influence women’s non-farm employment, inside and outside the home. Empirically, the ideological strand of Islam is more important than differences between Islam and Christianity. In addition, when a conservative Islam is codified through Shari’a-based law women’s employment outside the home seems to be lower, but the presence of Islamic political parties seems to foster women’s access to the labor market through their focus on support for the poor.     

Islam,secularism and danger: a reconsideration of the link between religiosity,radicalism and rebellion in Central Asia

In equating political Islam with radicalism and rebellion against the state, security analysts make a number of assumptions about the religious, the secular and security. Within the Central Asian context, the discursive fusing of religiosity with radicalism produces a bogeyman in which national and foreign governments, although offering quite different countermeasures, have found a common enemy. This securitisation of Islam distorts our understanding of these movements whose approach is seldom ‘radical’ in form. We identify six claims which are axiomatic to both international and national secularist security discourses with respect to Islam in the region. We then demonstrate that popular Muslim discourse and political practice – in the findings of an original survey and ethnographic research in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – provide a more complex picture than that found in elite discourses. While the six propositions can be refuted in objective terms, they remain relevant to how the problem is subjectively produced and reproduced in elite discourse and practice. As particular secularist claims about Islam, they inform national and international policies towards religious freedom and Islamic movements across Central Asia. Many of these themes appear in weaker and ambiguous forms in popular discourse and continue to limit Muslim political participation.     

Sense of community among Muslims in the Brazil–Paraguay border: narratives of belonging and generational differences

ABSTRACT

The so-called ‘Triple Frontier’—the border between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina—is the ‘host society’ of an important Muslim community, composed mainly of Lebanese immigrants and their descendants born in Brazil and Paraguay. In less than two decades, Shi’i and Sunni Arab Muslims created mosques, religious centres, a cemetery, and three schools. Mosques, schools, and religious centres are spaces for the production of a sense of community. The institutional discourse of these entities emphasises the connection between religion and community origin, considering Islam as part of ‘Arab culture’. Taking generational differences into account, this article aims to analyse the narratives of plural identity expressed in the meanings attributed to the immigrants’ self-identification as Muslims. Based on fieldwork in the South American border area, this work aims to shed light on the way in which immigrants and their descendants reinterpret their religious belonging, informed by the new experience of living in multi-religious societies.