Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and Niklas Luhmann: Boundary Negotiations Between Religion and Science in the Abbasid Empire

In the context of my involvement with the CASHSS Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities’ research programme, I chose Ghazali’s autobiography, and in particular his “crisis of indecision,” as an example of a pre-modern negotiation of the boundaries of religion at the micro level. The research programme suggests employing the analytical concept of secularity to investigate both non-Western and pre-modern forms of secularity, in terms of conceptual distinctions and institutional differentiations between religious and non-religious social spheres. In this essay, I would like to propose a method of pursuing these goals from my own theoretical perspective. More specifically, I will argue that in Ghazali’s reflections on spiritual religiosity, theology, philosophy and science, we can discern the individual engagement of a prominent Muslim thinker with emerging communicative realms. In the Modern Systems Theory of Niklas Luhmann, these realms are taken to represent functionally differentiated subsystems of modern society

Understanding the multiple voices of Islamic modernities: The case of Jihad

In making a contribution to the debate on multiple modernities, this article addresses the growing fragmentation of contemporary interpretations of Islamic religious traditions. It argues that the polysemic nature of these interpretations mirrors to a certain extent the increasing functional differentiation of modern society. To substantiate this argument, the paper will first present a theoretical framework of global modernity that selectively draws on theories of multiple modernities, Modern Systems Theory, and of (post-)structuralist thinking. The empirical part of the paper takes the case of the Islamic institution of Jihad as its illustrative example. From a genealogical perspective, it analyses a number of steps of the (re-)interpretation of Islamic religious traditions from the classical period of pre-modern Islamic empires, via the Islamic reform movement of the nineteenth century, to the multiple voices of Islamic modernities in contemporary times

Religious Governmentality: The Case of Hizb ut-Tahrir

In this article on the role of religion in the formation of modern subjectivities we use a contemporary transnational Islamist organization, Hizb ut-Tahrir, as our example. We examine how technologies of domination are combined with norm-setting technologies of the self in shaping new modern Muslim subjectivities among its members. First, we present our theoretical perspective and analytical framework. Then we describe the ideological roots of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the intellectual universe of nineteenth-century thinking about Islamic reform. Third, we analyse the practice of tooling or processing minds, souls, convictions, physical appearance, and behaviour among members of the organization. As our major interest lies not in Hizb ut-Tahrir as such but in the role of religion in the formation of modern social subjectivities, we conclude with some general reflections on this question

Improving the extraction of complex regulatory events from scientific text by using ontology-based inference

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The extraction of complex events from biomedical text is a challenging task and requires in-depth semantic analysis. Previous approaches associate lexical and syntactic resources with ontologies for the semantic analysis, but fall short in testing the benefits from the use of domain knowledge.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We developed a system that deduces implicit events from explicitly expressed events by using inference rules that encode domain knowledge. We evaluated the system with the inference module on three tasks: First, when tested against a corpus with manually annotated events, the inference module of our system contributes 53.2% of correct extractions, but does not cause any incorrect results. Second, the system overall reproduces 33.1% of the transcription regulatory events contained in RegulonDB (up to 85.0% precision) and the inference module is required for 93.8% of the reproduced events. Third, we applied the system with minimum adaptations to the identification of cell activity regulation events, confirming that the inference improves the performance of the system also on this task.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our research shows that the inference based on domain knowledge plays a significant role in extracting complex events from text. This approach has great potential in recognizing the complex concepts of such biomedical ontologies as Gene Ontology in the literature.</p

Edward Said, Michel Foucault og det essentialistiske islambillede

Edward Saids Orientalism blev kendt som en anvendt udgave af Michel Foucaults diskursteori. Said hævdede at være inspireret af især Foucaults Archaeology of Knowledge og Discipline and Punish i sine analyser af det essentialiserede islambillede i orientalistikken. Med udgangspunkt i Saids hævdede inspiration fra Foucault kritiserer denne artikel Orientalism’s teoretiske ramme fra et sociologisk perspektiv. Dermed følger artiklen Sadik al-Azm’s argument, at Said ikke havde øje for det fænomen, som al-Azm kaldte ”orientalism in reverse”: Islamistiske og arabisk-nationalistiske tænkeres anvendelse af orientalistiske begreber i deres egne ideologiske konstruktioner. Artiklen argumenterer for, at Said som selv-erklæret foucaultianer burde have været opmærksom på diskursers reciprokke magt. Efterfølgende vises hvordan orientalister og islamister var tæt forbundne i den diskursformation, hvorfra det essentialiserede islambillede opstod. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Dietrich Jung: Edward Said, Michel Foucault and the Essentialist Image of Islam Edward Said’s Orientalism became known as an applied version of Michel Foucault’s discourse theory. In analyzing the essentialist image of Islam as a core feature in Orientalist scholarship, Said claimed to be inspired by the work of Foucault, in particular by his Archaeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish. In using Said’s claim as a point of departure, this article criticizes the theoretical framework of Orientalism from a sociological perspective. Doing so, it examines Sadik al-Azm’s argument that Said had a blind eye to a phenomenon which al-Azm called “Orientalism in reverse”: the self-applications of Orientalist concepts in the ideological constructions of both Islamist and Arab Nationalist thinkers. The article argues that taking Foucault’s theoretical position seriously, Said should have been aware of the reciprocal power of discourses in shaping this essentialist image of Islam. The article then analyzes the phenomenon of “Orientalism in reverse” from a Foucauldian perspective, and shows the ways in which Orientalists and Islamists were closely knit together in a discursive formation from which the essentialist image of Islam emerged. Key words: Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Orientalism in Reverse, Ernest Renan, Islamic Reform

Edward Said, Michel Foucault og det essentialistiske islambillede

Edward Saids Orientalism blev kendt som en anvendt udgave af Michel Foucaults diskursteori. Said hævdede at være inspireret af især Foucaults Archaeology of Knowledge og Discipline and Punish i sine analyser af det essentialiserede islambillede i orientalistikken. Med udgangspunkt i Saids hævdede inspiration fra Foucault kritiserer denne artikel Orientalism’s teoretiske ramme fra et sociologisk perspektiv. Dermed følger artiklen Sadik al-Azm’s argument, at Said ikke havde øje for det fænomen, som al-Azm kaldte ”orientalism in reverse”: Islamistiske og arabisk-nationalistiske tænkeres anvendelse af orientalistiske begreber i deres egne ideologiske konstruktioner. Artiklen argumenterer for, at Said som selv-erklæret foucaultianer burde have været opmærksom på diskursers reciprokke magt. Efterfølgende vises hvordan orientalister og islamister var tæt forbundne i den diskursformation, hvorfra det essentialiserede islambillede opstod. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Dietrich Jung: Edward Said, Michel Foucault and the Essentialist Image of Islam Edward Said’s Orientalism became known as an applied version of Michel Foucault’s discourse theory. In analyzing the essentialist image of Islam as a core feature in Orientalist scholarship, Said claimed to be inspired by the work of Foucault, in particular by his Archaeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish. In using Said’s claim as a point of departure, this article criticizes the theoretical framework of Orientalism from a sociological perspective. Doing so, it examines Sadik al-Azm’s argument that Said had a blind eye to a phenomenon which al-Azm called “Orientalism in reverse”: the self-applications of Orientalist concepts in the ideological constructions of both Islamist and Arab Nationalist thinkers. The article argues that taking Foucault’s theoretical position seriously, Said should have been aware of the reciprocal power of discourses in shaping this essentialist image of Islam. The article then analyzes the phenomenon of “Orientalism in reverse” from a Foucauldian perspective, and shows the ways in which Orientalists and Islamists were closely knit together in a discursive formation from which the essentialist image of Islam emerged. Key words: Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Orientalism in Reverse, Ernest Renan, Islamic Reform

Modernisering og islampolitik i det nederlandske Indien

Artiklen undersøger den hollandske kolonipolitik i Indonesien, hvis såkaldte eti-ske politik kan betragtes som en forløber for vestlige staters aktuelle involvering i stats- og nationsbygning i Mellemøsten. Det sker gennem en introduktion af Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936), som ud over at være kolonirådgiver også var Hollands førende orientalist og grundlægger af de moderne islamiske studier. Ved at fokusere på Hurgronjes liv og værk, som kan betragtes som en af Europas første områdespecialister, uddrages en række indsigter fra hans fejlslagne moderniseringspolitik, som også synes at have aktuel relevans for udenrigspoliti-ske beslutningstageres forsøg på at demokratisere Mellemøsten. Det gælder ikke mindst Hurgronjes måde at forholde sig til politiseringen af islam, der viser påfal-dende fællestræk med det ideologiske tankesæt, ud fra hvilket de liberale interna-tionalister har forsøgt at fremme demokrati i Mellemøsten

Auf dem Weg in eine neue Republik? Die Türkei nach dem Rücktritt des Generalstabs

Am 12. September 2011 jährte sich der Putsch des Militärs gegen die damalige gewählte Regierung der Türkei zum 31. Mal. Das wäre gewiss kein Jahrestag zum Innehalten, wenn der Generalstab im Jahr 1980 nicht das erklärte Ziel gehabt hätte, eine fundamentale Reorganisation der türkischen Gesellschaft einzuleiten und die Kontrolle des politischen Systems durch die Streitkräfte zu sichern. Das Ziel des Putsches scheint nicht erreicht worden zu sein: Nach dem geschlossenen Rücktritt der Armeeführung am 29. Juli 2011 blieb nicht nur das erwartete politische Beben aus, der Militärrat unter Führung von Ministerpräsident Erdoğan besetzte zudem den Generalstab schon eine Woche später neu. Die bisher letzte Konfrontation zwischen dem einst so mächtigen Militär und der in den Parlamentswahlen vom Juni 2011 eindrucksvoll bestätigten Regierung der Partei für Gerechtigkeit und Entwicklung (AKP), deren Wurzeln in der islamistischen Bewegung liegen, endete für die Generäle schmählich. Das ist deshalb von so einschneidender Bedeutung, weil die Armee seit mehr als einem halben Jahrhundert den Anspruch vertrat, als Hüterin des Erbes von Staatsgründer Mustafa Kemal Atatürk das letzte Wort in der türkischen Politik zu haben. Diese Form der „kontrollierten Demokratie“ war ein zentrales Kennzeichen der kemalistischen Republik. Das Militär scheint den Machtkampf gegen die zivilen Institutionen des türkischen Staates verloren zu haben. Damit wäre das kemalistische Machtkartell zerbrochen. Die unter Führung der AKP geplante Ausarbeitung einer neuen Verfassung könnte endgültig das Ende der kemalistischen Republik signalisieren. Hält sich die AKP an die demokratischen Spielregeln, so kann sie dem Land eine neue, demokratische Zukunft eröffnen; eine post-kemalistische Republik ist möglich. Mit dem Ende der Dominanz des Militärs über die gewählten Institutionen entfiele überdies ein Hauptkritikpunkt der EU bei der jährlichen Evaluation des Reformprozesses in der Türkei

Kein Bruch mit der >kemalistischen Moderne< – Anmerkungen zu den aktuellen Reislamisierungstendenzen der Öffentlichkeit in der Türkei

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