Militant Democracy Comes to the Metaverse?

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Parlor are an increasingly central part of the democratic public sphere in the United States. But the prevailing view of this ensuing platform-based public sphere has lately become increasingly sour and pessimistic. What were once seen as technologies of liberation have come to be viewed with skepticism. They are now perceived as channels and amplifiers of “antisystemic” forces, damaging the quality and feasibility of democracies. If it is justified, this skepticism yields a difficult tension: How can the state protect its democratic character against unravelling pressure from actors who are usually understood as necessary components of democratic practice? What happens, that is, when the private infrastructure of democracy is turned against the project of collective self-rule? Of course, this is not the first time that a private actor understood to be a necessary component of the democratic system has turned out to pose a potential threat to the quality of democracy itself. The paradox of regulating private actors qua threats to democracy has been both recognized and theorized in relation to parties of the extreme left and extreme right in postwar Europe. The principal theoretical lens through which those earlier challenges were analyzed went under the name of “militant democracy,” a term coined by the émigré German political scientist Karl Loewenstein. The midcentury militant democracy debate, this Article suggests, offers an alternative frame for evaluating the problem of digital platforms—now Facebook, tomorrow the Metaverse—and democracy. Because this debate unfolded outside the scope of the First Amendment, it starts from different premises and provides an opportunity for considering digital platforms’ role in a democracy from a novel perspective. Of course, it is not possible to generate in some mechanical way a laundry list of effectual interventions today from yesterday’s experience with anti-systemic parties. But this Article suggests that the midcentury debate on militant democracy can illuminate by suggesting questions and issues that are marginal or ignored within First Amendment discourse. This Article concludes with five such “lessons” from that earlier debate

Roadmap to Reconciliation: An Institutional and Conceptual Framework for Jewish-Muslim Engagement

This paper calls for the establishment of a comprehensive academic and theological center to be created and located at a prestigious secular university in the United States. As the first of its kind in North America, it should be affiliated with both American Muslim and Jewish institutions. Modeled on similar Jewish-Christian centers, its mission will be to foster both a neutral ground for dialogue and the development of a theology of Jewish-Muslim coexistence

Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms

The Joint Publication 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms sets forth standard US military and associated terminology to encompass the joint activity of the Armed Forces of the United States. These military and associated terms, together with their definitions, constitute approved Department of Defense (DOD) terminology for general use by all DOD components

An examination of employment precarity and insecurity in the UK

Employment precarity and insecurity are major topics of discussion within the sociology of work and in society at large. This thesis demonstrates the limits to the growth of precarity in the UK labour force. It contests the view that employment is becoming relentlessly more precarious in the neoliberal period. Furthermore, it challenges the view expressed by some theorists, including many on the radical left, that precarity is part of a recasting of class relations undermining the capacity of workers to challenge capital. Precarity is defined here as an objective condition whereby employment becomes more contingent. It is measured through a study of non-standard employment and employment tenure, using surveys of the UK labour force. Non-standard employment has not grown substantially. Mean employment tenure has remained stable overall, having fallen a little for men and risen for women since the 1970s. While there are areas of precarious work, these tend to be hemmed in by permanent, long-term jobs. This is explained through a Marxist theorisation of labour markets, emphasising the interdependence of capital and labour, and the role of the state in securing the reproduction of labour-power. To help understand the resonance of the concept of precarity, subjective job insecurity is measured. Survey data shows little evidence of a secular rise in insecurity. However, in the 1990s, and again after the 2008-9 recession, concerns about the loss of valued features of work combined with a wider ideological climate of uncertainty to increase generalised job insecurity. The findings of this thesis contest widespread pessimism regarding the capacities of the working class under neoliberalism, leading to practical implications for the orientation of the labour movement and the radical left. Finally, the research suggests changes to surveys of the labour force that would improve measures of precarity and insecurity in the future

Green Crescent, Crimson Cross: the transatlantic 'Counterjihad' and the new political theology

This thesis explores the EuroAmerican ‘counterjihad’, a transnational field of antiMuslim political action that has grown significantly since it first became visible in the mid-late 2000s. Its key symptoms have included ‘Defence Leagues’ and ‘Stop Islamisation’ groups in various national contexts, grassroots mobilisations against mosques and minarets, campaigns to ‘ban the burqa’, as well as a very wide network of antiMuslim online spaces. The thesis argues that the counterjihad can be seen as a transnational political movement, and its discursive, aesthetic, organisational and tactical repertoires are all critically explored. It will be shown that the heterogeneous political tendencies that constitute the counterjihad are united by a shared narrative of Western crisis, decline and impending catastrophe; several overlapping conspiratorial narratives that attempt to explain this predicament; and, finally, a spectrum of compensatory political projects that seek to reinvigorate a sense of Western civilizational and white ethnic identity in a post-Cold War context where those identities are increasingly contested. The thesis also argues that the counterjihad is one aspect of a more general phenomenon: the striking reemergence in ‘late’ modernity of a number of ‘countermodern’ or ‘traditionalist’ political theologies. These new political theologies overlap with, but are not identical to, the ones that flourished during the long crisis of ‘classical’ European modernity in the early twentieth century (notably, ‘classical’ Italian Fascism and German National Socialism). Finally, the thesis considers the sociopolitical conditions that have fostered the reemergence of such phenomena today

IN SEARCH OF THE INTEGRATION OF HERMENEUTICS AND 'ULUM AL QUR'AN

One o f the controve rsial issues in the field of the interpretation of the Qur'an is whether hermeneutics that is used for the interpretation of the Bible can be used for the interpretation of the Qur' an. Some Mus-lim scholars point out that it is impossible, or even not allowed for Mus! ims, to interpret the Qur' an using hermeneutical methods. The most famous reason for this is that hermeneutics does not match with the nature of the Qur'an. Some others tend to see that it can be includ-ed into the 'Sciences of the Qur'an ( ·u/um al-Qur 'an). They argue that through it one can even improve the discipline. This essay will show that some hermeneutical theories accord with the Qur' an interpretation and therefore should be part of the 'ulum al-Qur 'an. Before mention-ing these theories, it would helpful be to give some reasons why we need hermeneutic