263 research outputs found
Reimagining the Umma: Transnational Spaces and the Changing Boundaries of Muslim Political Community
Islam as statecraft: How governments use religion in foreign policy
The paper explores the religious dimensions of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, looking at howthe Islamic outreach strategies of the two governments have evolved in response tochanging regional and global environments. We assess the much-discussed phenomenonof Saudi Arabia's export of Wahhabism, arguing that the nature and effects of Saudireligious influence around the world are more complicated than we ordinarily think
Recommended from our members
Integrating religious engagement into diplomacy: challenges and opportunities
The last few years have witnessed a flurry of interest and activity around religion and religious engagement in diplomatic circles on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2013, the US State Department established a new Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives as part of a broader national strategy on religious leadership and faith community engagement led by the White House’s National Security Council. Within the same year, the European Union issued new guidelines on the promotion and protection of freedom of religion or belief; the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development opened a new office focused on similar issues; and the French Foreign Ministry sponsored a major conference on the question of religion and foreign policy with a keynote address delivered by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius
Digital Islam: Changing the Boundaries of Religious Knowledge?
The phenomenal popularization and transnational propagation of communications and information technologies (hereafter referred to as IT) in recent years has generated a wide range of important questions in the context of Islam’s sociology of knowledge. How have these technologies transformed Muslim concepts of what Islam is and who possesses the authority to speak on its behalf? Moreover, how are they changing the ways in which Muslims imagine the boundaries of the umma
Faith, Flight and Foreign Policy: Effects of war and migration on Western Australian Bosnian Muslims
This article examines the nexus between war, religion and migration
through a series of qualitative interviews with Bosnian Muslim humanitarian
entrants to Western Australia. By utilising a three-tiered model for assessing
religiosity, the interviews reveal that a substantial number of participants
placed a greater emphasis on Islam during the Balkan conflict. The way in
which individual religiosity was expressed upon resettlement in Western
Australia was largely determined by pre-migration religiosity and postmigration contact with other Muslims. In particular, migrants with a low level
of Islamic knowledge tended to internalise the values and ideas of more
conservative Muslims upon arriving in the receiver-nation. Meanwhile, those
with a well-developed pre-migration understanding of Islam tend to resist
outside influence and continue their original beliefs and practices. The
findings demonstrate that conflicts at the state level frequently precipitate
psychological crises of identity at the personal level; this in turn has an effect
on the cultural and political landscape of migrant receiving nations
The affinity between online and offline anti-Muslim hate crime: Dynamics and impacts
Following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Tunisia in 2015, and in Woolwich, south-east London where British Army soldier Drummer Lee Rigby was murdered in 2013, there has seen a significant increase in anti-Muslim attacks. These incidents have occurred offline where mosques have been vandalized, Muslim women have had their hijab (headscarf) or niqab (face veil) pulled off, Muslim men have been attacked, and racist graffiti has been scrawled against Muslim properties. Concurrently, there has been a spike in anti-Muslim hostility online, where Muslims have been targeted by campaigns of cyber bullying, cyber harassment, cyber incitement and threats of offline violence. Against this background, we examine the nature and impacts of online and offline anti-Muslim hate crime. We draw on our different experiences of conducting research on anti-Muslim hate crime, using two independent research projects in order to consider the affinity between online and offline anti-Muslim hate crime. We argue that, in reality, online/offline boundaries may be more blurred than the terms imply. For victims, it is often difficult to isolate the online threats from the intimidation, violence and abuse that they suffer offline. Moreover, victims often live in fear because of the possibility of online threats materialising in the ‘real world’. We conclude that there is a continuity of anti-Muslim hostility in both the virtual and the physical world, especially in the globalized world
- …