From religious emotions to affects: historical and theoretical reflections on injury to feeling,self and religion

ABSTRACT

Images of angry Muslims have become a common sight in repeated controversies problematising the compatibility of Islam and freedom of speech. To explain such outrage, it is often put forward that Muslims reacted to the disrespect and violation of their ‘religious feelings’. In this paper, we challenge the trope of hurt religious feelings in the explanation of unrest. Referring to the writings of Schleiermacher, James and Taylor, the discussion traces how religion and feeling have become inextricably intertwined, located within the individual self and institutionalised as a dominant interpretation of religion. We introduce affect as a conceptual alternative to such understandings, which allows us to analyse the emphasis on Muslim emotionality as a relationship between Muslim and secular bodies, hence no longer reduced to the interiority of Muslim subjects. We will illustrate the potential of an affect-based approach discussing Muslim feelings’ vital role in the construction of European democracies.     

Ridwan’s conversion: kandoeri giving,moral personhood,and the re-imagining of communal difference in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article brings religious conversion and religious giving under one analytic lens in examining how ‘Ridwan’, a Chinese–Indonesian convert to Islam from the Indonesian province of Aceh, describes the process through which he became a Muslim. Ridwan frames his account of conversion in terms of religious giving, with special reference to Acehnese ritual feasts known as kandoeri. He draws attention to the way kandoeri giving constitutes a mode of relationality, in which careful attention to difference is the basis for reciprocity. His approach rests on what the anthropological theorist of The Gift, Marcel Mauss, identified as ‘moral persons’, a category that contrasts with liberal ideas of the self and identity. It reflects an awareness of the dual nature of exchange partners, who are always potentially both enemy and friend. This subtly challenges prevailing Indonesian understandings of intercommunal, especially interreligious, relations as well as common perceptions of Chinese–Indonesian religiosity and belonging.     

RELIGIOUS LITERALISM AND SCIENCE‐RELATED ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY ISLAM

The complex relations between Islam and modern science have so far mostly been examined by thinkers at the conceptual level. The wider interaction of religious scholars and preachers with the general public on science issues is an unexplored area that is worthy of examination, for it often is characterized by a literalistic approach. I first briefly review literalism in its various forms. The classical Islamic jurisprudential school of Zahirism, widely regarded as bearing the flag of juristic literalism, is also briefly presented. I then address specific science‐related issues currently being discussed in literalistic ways by many religious scholars and preachers in their general‐public discourse. I focus on the practical case of the determination of crescent‐based Islamic months and holy occasions, the conceptual issue of evolution (biological and human), and the rule for the consumption of meat by slaughter of animals. In the last part of the essay I propose a constructive alternative to the literalistic mode: the Maqasidi (objectives‐based) approach. This rather old method has seen some revival lately, mainly among Islamic jurists concerned with solving the new issues of modern times, especially for Muslims living in the West, but this approach has not yet been applied to science‐related issues. I present the main ideas of this method and show their relevance and usefulness to science‐related topics.     

BODY POLITICS AND THE POLITICS OF BODIES: Racism and Hauerwasian Theopolitics

Today dominative power operates apart from, and exterior to, those state governmentalities that the "body politics" of Stanley Hauerwas disavows as "constantinian" entanglements such as military service, governmental office, and conspicuous expressions of civil religion. This is especially true with respect to those biopolitical modalities David Theo Goldberg names as "racelessness," by which material inequalities are racially correlated, thereby allowing whiteness to mediate life and ration death. If, as Hauerwas contends, radical ecclesiology is indeed a theopolitical alternative to the nation–state's politics of violence, then it must prove itself resistant to such racialized violence. However, inasmuch as the (largely) uncontested fact of ecclesial segregation recapitulates these broader stratifications and exclusions, the church functions as a passive civil religion and itself participates in the politics of "nonviolent violence." Thus, Hauerwas must do something that he has been reluctant to do. He must talk about race and racism more directly, specifying how his ecclesiological theopolitics resists such forms of violence; more importantly, he must demonstrate how actual ecclesial congregations instantiate such resistance. In short, to be truly nonviolent, Hauerwas's body politics must become a politics of bodies.     

Introduction: the image of Islam in Russia

ABSTRACT

Russia has a long, complicated and, at times, contradictory relationship with Islam and Muslims. Islam is classified as one of the ‘traditional’ religions, along with Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism. Throughout Russia’s history across the centuries, the efforts by the state and Muslims to define their relationship have led to contradictory outcomes. This special issue grew out of a conference that took place in 2016, seeking to explore the complicated nature of the image of Islam in Russia from a multidisciplinary perspective. A collection of six contributions explore how Islam is viewed and projected in the public and media sphere in contemporary Russia, including state attempts to ‘manage’ the development of Islam, initiatives to transform the public image of Muslims and the charitable work of a mosque at the local level.     

Graced Life After All? Terrorism and Theology on July 22, 2011

On the afternoon of July 22, 2011, a white Norwegian killed seventy‐seven people in and around Oslo. A majority of those killed where Social Democratic youth, camping on the island of Utøya. Dressed as a Norwegian policeman, Anders Behring Breivik took the ferry over to the island and shot sixty‐nine children with a pistol and a semi‐automatic gun. The weapons were carved with Rune names and dedicated to Thor and Odin, the war gods in Norse mythology. About ninety minutes before the attacks, Breivik had published a 1,500‐page manifesto on the Internet, urging radical nationalists in Europe to defend Christianity by fighting back Islamic migration, multiculturalism, and feminism. I propose to analyze how a new project linking “Christian and pagan” was launched through the Oslo massacres. I also make a distinction between the sacrificial aspects of a bloody massacre, and the non‐bloody acts of love that manifested among surviving youth at Utøya, and ask if these contrary acts express, or at least involve, two radically different ways of doing religion.