The Question of Salvation of Non‐Muslims: The Exegesis of Muhammad Asad

This article applies Alan Race's typology of Christian thought in relation to the salvation of non‐Christians to that of the Islamic tradition and uses the exegesis of Muhammad Asad as an example. It argues that Asad's exegesis of the relevant qur'anic verses places him firmly into the pluralist camp as defined by Race.     

郭璞易占与道教关系探考

郭璞不仅精通易学,而且深谙道家道教学说及其方术。在长期的易占实践中,他往往把这二者有机地结合起来,相得益彰,获得极大成功。本文从阐析郭璞易占的具体筮例入手,深入探考了道教与易占之间的特殊关系,庶几有助于人们对魏晋时期易象数学的发展状况有较为全面的了解。     

Alternative religion kids: spiritual and cultural identity among children and youth involved with new religious movements

ABSTRACT

The term ‘new religious movement’ (NRM) has come to replace the more provocative term ‘cult,’ however this shift of scholarly language has not resulted in a softening of public perception towards those in religious groups perceived as ‘weird’. This perception leaves a distinct mark on the identities of children raised in these communities.Children from alternative and controversial religions comprise a unique subculture.. The experience of growing up in a new religious movement has an important impact on a young person’s cultural and spiritual identity. Drawing on and expanding Useem and Downie’s model of ‘third culture kids’ (TCKs) the model of ‘alternative religion kids’ (ARKs) is developed. It is proposed that ARKs are a subculture in their own right and share a sense of belonging and identity based on their experience of being religious ‘others’. ARKs may be able to connect through a powerful, shared experience not paralleled with other peers.     

THE PRESENT STATE OF THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS: An Update

A survey of developments over the last forty years suggests that little progress has been made in the development of comparative religious ethics as a discipline. While authors working in this field have produced a number of interesting works, the field lacks structure, including an agreement on the basic purpose, terms, and approaches by which contributions may be evaluated as better or worse. I provide an account of this history, suggesting that a way forward will involve marrying ethicists' interest in arguments with close attention to the more and less formal structures by which groups of people organize the giving and taking of reasons.     

COMPARATIVE ETHICS,IDEOLOGIES, AND CRITICAL THOUGHT1

After the publication of my book and various articles about comparative religious ethics, obstacles in the field's further development seemed to mount as swiftly as practical issues seemed to trumpet the need for global ethics more loudly. Driven by impatience, I wondered if I were fiddling in unending discussion while the planet burned. As others persevered and evolved productively in addressing developmental issues in the field directly, I began to work through the lens of a less direct, but complementary, perspective: ideologies and critical thought. The following essay seeks to connect my parallel approach to ongoing obstacles and solutions within the prolific development of comparative religious ethics, especially its urgent pursuit of common moral grounds sufficient to support peaceful coexistence and living.     

A Preface to Ethics:

This essay outlines a new preface for ethics demanded by the massive developments of the global age. It does so in and through the comparative use of “myths” to explicate the lived structure of experience. The essay begins by isolating main features of global dynamics, including proximity, the compression of the world and the expansion of consciousness, and also global, cultural reflexivity. In the second step of the “preface,” it is argued that globality itself is a moral space in which peoples must orient their lives. It is a moral space defined by the massive extension of human power in the modern world. In light of the challenge that global dynamics and the extension of human power now pose, the essay then isolates, methodologically, options for developing a global ethics, and advocates a distinctly hermeneutical approach. This approach is practiced in the last section of the “preface” by engaging ethically the biblical “myth” of creation and its reinterpretation in an epitome of Jesus's Torah teaching. The intention is to show how current religious thought can speak to massive challenges in a distinctive way. It is, again, to offer a preface to ethics.     

Religious freedom and cultural asymmetry: Some pitfalls of secularism

ABSTRACT

Disputes concerning state interference in the religious practices and traditions of citizens have created uproar in public debate in India and Europe during the past decades. The contributors to this colloquium on Europe, India, and the Limits of Secularism point to the importance of two domains in addressing these disputes: the comparative study of court decisions and the budding domain of comparative political theory. In this response, I discuss several issues that emerge from these domains and argue that the problem of cultural asymmetry continues to create major pitfalls in the debates on secularism and religious freedom.     

Discussions about indigenous,national and transnational Islam in Russia

ABSTRACT

Transnational Islam is increasingly presented in the Russian political rhetoric as a security threat. Therefore, Russian politicians and authorities attempt to support indigenous or national forms of Islam. Similar policies are implemented in several western European countries. Yet they tend to disregard the heterogeneity of the Muslim community, they create exclusions and they are often conceived as imposing outside evaluations and interpretations on Islam. This contribution analyses initiatives intended to develop a national Islam in post-Soviet Russia. While the aims, methods and problems in different countries are often quite similar, the values and norms underlying these initiatives vary and reflect the societies from which they emerge. This contribution argues that since the 1990s, the changes in the political line of the Kremlin have impacted the project for a ‘national’ Islam by placing less emphasis on liberal values and more emphasis on adherence to loyalism and political conservatism.     

The gifts of allurement: anti-conversion legislation,gift-giving,and political allegiance in South Asia

ABSTRACT

The last decade has seen an escalation of various acts of anti-conversion legislation in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and in different states of India. Several scholars comment that the upsurge of anti-conversion legislation can be linked to the ascension of religious nationalism in India and Sri Lanka, yet recent trends indicate that such laws are also proposed by moderate political forces. What is notable about this anti-conversion legislation is that it criminalizes ‘improper’ conversions along the lines of force, fraud, and allurement/inducement. While Article 18(2) of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) protects against coercion, and thus forcible conversions, and while the concepts of force and fraud are already covered by the penal codes of the respective countries, the remaining element of controversy of anti-conversion legislation is that of allurement and/or inducement. ‘Allurement’ is defined as the offer of any temptation for the purpose of converting a person professing one religion to another religion, in the form of: “(i) any gift or gratification whether in cash or kind, (ii) a grant of any material benefit, whether monetary or otherwise, (iii) the grant of employment or grant of promotion in employment” (Owens 2006–2007, 337). Yet, despite critical remarks from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Freedom of Religion or Belief, Asma Jahangir, that these anti-conversion proposals are vague in their formulations and may lead to religious persecution, the legislative attempts are persistent in their demand to criminalize the allegedly religious gifts of allurement. This article argues that the rationale behind anti-conversion legislation stems from a threefold objective: (1) the dislike of gifts from the religious Other in particular and proselytization in general, (2) legislation as a regulating mechanism of majority religious bodies vis-à-vis religious minorities, (3) anti-conversion laws demanding the complicity of the state in relation to the majority religions, accentuating state patronage as a tacit form of state religion bill.