The strategy & goals of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Syrian Revolution

Issue title: Preludes to the Islamic State: contextualizing the rise of extremism in the Syrian UprisingSince the Hama events of 1982 that led to the Muslim Brotherhood’s forced exile from Syria, the group’s aim has been the return to Syria. To achieve their goals, they have made use of different negotiation channels with the Assad regime during the past three decades. However, at one point, those channels were cut, and, being ostracized not only by the Syrian authorities, but also by many in the political opposition to the regime, the Brotherhood has crossed the threshold of relative and discontinuous passivity to full-blown oppositional activity. This paper examines the different strategies they have followed, such as political activity, provision of humanitarian aid, the exertion of influence on armed groups combating the regime, and the benefitting from the ideological similarities they bear with the newly elected regimes as well as the Turkish ruling party. Building on the information we examine, it is our hypothesis that the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood seemed to be the best-organized and coherent oppositional group might not necessarily lead them to power, especially when more radical groups with a jihadist strategy have taken the lead of the Islamist field and the situation remains extremely complex.Publisher PD

Tommaso Salini revisited: two new attributions

Tommaso Salini (c.1575–1625) is a frequently forgotten Baroque artist that fell under Caravaggio’s spell, despite having a tempestuous relationship with the great painter. Salini, also known as Mao, was a friend of Giovanni Baglione, the Italian art biographer, who included Salini in his Le vite de’ pittori (1642). Salini is better remembered for his role in the Baglione libel trial of 1603 than he is for his oil paintings, which sit between Caravaggio’s innovative way of painting and Baglione’s mediocre Mannerism. Art historians have often shied away from exploring Salini’s career because the canvases that have carried his name seem stylistically dissimilar. The recent tendency has been to attribute these works to the anonymous ‘Pseudo-Salini’ painters, but this should form the topic of a separate article. The twentieth century saw art historians generously attribute an excessive amount of work to Salini, and many of these pictures were probably done decades after his death. In order for Salini’s oeuvre to be presented with accuracy, connoisseurs have had to inspect the original works that Baglione mentions being by Salini’s hand, as well as the pictures that have been successfully attributed to him. Bearing in mind what Baglione wrote, Salini can be revealed as an innovate artist and still life specialist. This article includes a newly attributed still life (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) as a forgotten Salini, as well as a refreshed attribution of the masterful Piping Shepherd Boy (Foundling Museum, London). These works add weight to Salini being a more famous and better-known painter in his own time than scholarship has shown.Publisher PD

Untold stories of Syrian women surviving war

Issue title: Sympathetic stereotypes: the Syrian Uprising in western media and scholarshipIn "I must save my life and not risk my family’s safety!”: Untold Stories of Syrian Women Surviving War, Alhayek provides several case studies of Syrian women whose lives were irreversibly changed as a result of the events that unfolded after March 2011. The stories of these women vividly illustrate how difficult it is to come up with a neat and easily accessible profile for the suffering of Syrian women. Yet, this is precisely what Western media, albeit sympathetic, has attempted to achieve. Stories on child brides being sold to wealthy old men from the Gulf, though on the surface highlighting the suffering that Syrian women have undergone, are shown by Alhayek to have grossly misrepresented not only Syrian women, who are in fact as complex and multi-faceted as their Western counterparts, but also Syrian families for being willing to take part in such arrangements in the first place. Through interviews with six Syrian women, Alhayek brings home the idea that our understanding of the Syrian Uprising must be based on stories that are collected from below rather than on stereotypes imposed from above. The case studies defy any simplified narrative that one may wish to impose on them. In one case study, for example, the army is directly responsible for killing civilians, while in the other the army is shown to have been very respectful of women, especially in the early phase of the Uprising.Publisher PD

Mary Gartside: A female colour theorist in Georgian England

The aim of this paper was to evaluate the work of Mary Gartside, a British female flower painter, art teacher and colour theorist, active in London between 1781 and 1809. Gartside's colour theory was published privately in the guise of a traditional water colouring manual. Until well into the twentieth century, she remained the only woman known to have published a theory of colour. In chronological and intellectual terms Gartside can cautiously be regarded an exemplary link between Moses Harris and J.W. von Goethe. This paper takes a closer look at her colour theory in relation to earlier theorists she credits in her writing. It also suggests that certain elements of her theory may have pre-dated some of Goethe's ideas, thus being an indicator of changing attitudes to colour in the intellectual and artistic scene of Europe. Gartside's case is particularly interesting because it highlights gender issues with regard to publishing, self-promotion and the intellectual activity of women artists in the early nineteenth century

Justifying Prison Breaks as Civil Disobedience

I argue that given the persistent injustice present within the Prison Industrial Complex in the United States, many incarcerated individuals would be justified in attempting to escape and that these prison breaks may qualify as acts of civil disobedience. After an introduction in section one, section two offers a critique of the classical liberal conception of civil disobedience envisioned by John Rawls. Contrary to Rawls, I argue that acts of civil disobedience can involve both violence and evasion of punishment, both of which are necessary components of prison breaks. In section three I outline the broad circumstances in which escape attempts would be justified, which are when individuals have either been incarcerated on unjust grounds (such as coercive plea bargains, draconian laws, or institutionalized discrimination) or when individuals are subject to inhumane conditions within prison (such as physical or sexual abuse, inadequate medical care, and overcrowding). Although this framework is formulated with the U.S. criminal justice system in mind, it is potentially applicable to other instances of incarceration if they’re similarly unjust such as prisons in other countries, migrant detention centers, or psychiatric wards. I then outline four requirements which must be met for these prison breaks to qualify as civil disobedience. First, escape must be attempted as a last resort. Second, violence and other law-breaking must be reasonable, meaning it is done with precision, discretion, and proportion. Third, escapees hold the burden of proving they have been subject to injustice. Fourth and finally, the act of escape must contain other key components of civil disobedience such as persuasion, communication, and publicity, which will most likely be accomplished via coordination with non-incarcerated individuals. In section four I address the distinction between prison reform and abolitio

De Jure Rigidity

The rigid designation of proper names and natural kind terms is the most well-known doctrine of Kripke’s Naming and Necessity (1981). On the basis of rigidity, Kripke has shown that proper names and natural kind terms do not refer via a description as argued by descriptivists. In response to Kripke several people have argued that all general terms could be interpreted rigidly, which would make the notion of rigidity trivial. This leads to the ‘rigidity problem’: the notion of rigidity cannot be used to argue against descriptivism anymore. I will show that the rigidity problem appears on a larger scale: firstly, because it appears independently of the trivialisation problem, secondly, because it appears for descriptions acting like singular terms as well. I will argue, however, that proper names and natural kind terms differ in an important manner from rigid descriptions. While the first are de jure rigid, the latter are de facto rigid. I will show that the rigidity problem indeed appears for de facto rigidity, but not for de jure rigidity, with the result that Kripke’s argument against descriptivism can withstand

The normativity problem as a serious obstacle to modelling gender

In this paper, I explore Sally Haslanger’s (2000) proposed approach to modelling gender which she intends to overcome several problems for such a project. I specifically focus on what Haslanger calls the normativity problem, in which definitions meant to overcome oppression only reinforce oppressive norms. I argue that the normativity problem is a serious one for defining gender and that Haslanger does not successfully overcome it with her definitions of man and woman. In §§1 and 2, I offer background for and explain her account of the problem before offering my own formal reconstruction of it as what I call the normativity argument that (a) we ought not marginalise individuals in our defining of social categories, (b) definitions encouraging normative behaviour do this, and (c) any model of gender encourages such behaviour. In §3 I then give an account of her proposed definitions of man and woman along with her theoretical objections to the normativity argument—suggesting that only certain kinds of marginalisation are undesirable within the constraints of a particular feminist project and that her definitions do not encourage normative behaviour. I then offer my responses to her objections in §4, suggesting that her definitions are normative and do marginalise in a way incongruous even with her particular feminist project. Before concluding, I briefly discuss in §5 where my criticisms of Haslanger’s approach to defining gender fit into some existing criticisms, in order to give my position an even clearer shape. This paper concludes in §6 by sketching some possible ways forward in the philosophy of gender responding to this problem

Tak the hand

In this paper David Scott discusses the theology and rites of ordination of the Scottish Reformed tradition and goes on to reflect on more specific aspects of ministry. His paper takes its title from his examination of the rites of ordination according to Knox’s liturgy whereby, rather than being set apart by the laying on of hands, new ministers were welcomed by colleagues who came forward to ‘tak the hand’ of the ordinand. Following on from a historical survey, the paper includes a critical review of the terminology of ministry in the contemporary Church of Scotland and reflects on issues relevant to ministry today such as assessment, training and the nature of ordination.Publisher PD

#FeesMustFall

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Taking Darwin seriously

Professor Neil Spurway considers Darwin’s theoretical development of evolution by natural selection alongside the picture presented in the creation narratives in Genesis, before undertaking a survey of the reception of Darwinism by theologians and others up to the present day. Rich in quotations from writers as diverse as Charles Kingsley, Austin Farrer, Teilhard de Chardin, Sarah Coakley and Simon Conway Morris (amongst many others), this wide-ranging discussion covers a great deal of territory as it considers how theology has responded to the perceived challenges posed by evolutionary thought.Publisher PD