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The article discusses papers published within the issue, including "Performing Muslim Womanhood: Muslim Business Women Moderating Islamic Practices in Contemporary Indonesia," by Minako Sakai et al., "Pakistan, Muslim Womanhood and Social Jihad: Narratives of Umm Abd Muneeb," by Samina Yasmeen and "The Malaysian Islamization Phenomenon: The Underlying Dynamics and Their Impact on Muslim Women," by Robert Henry Olivier.

This article investigates the portrayals of the Paulicians in early Islamic sources and specifically analyses the role that Paulician religious views play in Islamic anti-Christian writings. The study also gives insights into the nature of materials that were available to Muslim scholars and the strategies they applied in constructing coherent arguments to refute certain Christian religious beliefs. In doing so, the study touches upon Muslims’ religious needs and scholarly curiosity, which sheds light on their intellectual interactions with non-Islamic religious beliefs and philosophical ideas. The article demonstrates that references to Paulician religious beliefs can be found primarily in early Christian–Islamic polemics. Muslim polemicists, most of whom were Muʿtazilites, attempted to demonstrate the soundness and the coherence of Islamic tenets vis-à-vis inadequacies and contradictions in Christian doctrines. The reliance of Muslim polemicists on heresiographical discourse therefore constituted an important strategy to substantiate their polemical arguments. Two major issues stand out in Islamic portrayals of Paulician doctrines: the centrality of Paul of Samosata in the history of the sect, and his association with the view that Jesus was a human being devoid of divinity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article deals with the Swiss Jesuit Robert Andreas Bütler (1915–1996) and his attempts to develop Muslim–Christian dialogue in Pakistan between the 1960s and 1980s. It focuses especially on his correspondence with the Islamist ideologue Sayyid Abu ’l-Aʿla Mawdudi (1903–1979), one of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the twentieth century and a major figure in South Asian Islam. On the basis of their written exchange, the article identifies challenges to Muslim–Christian rapprochement against the backdrop of state-funded Islamization and rising political tensions in Pakistan. It demonstrates how Bütler’s efforts became entangled in postcolonial struggles for a national identity, thereby revealing the limits of Vatican II-inspired approaches to Muslim–Christian dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Secular Muslims constitute a significant group within the Muslim population of the UK, though under the prevalent multicultural policies their voice is often ignored. This article introduces some of the more outspoken secular, ex-Muslim, and atheist British Muslims and analyses their positions toward major issues that preoccupy the Muslim community and society at large. The secularists are highly critical of multiculturalism for creating mutually hostile communities controlled by conservative religious leaders. In the heated public debate on Islamism, they oppose both its militant and its more pragmatic versions. They are strongly opposed to religious terrorism, and also to the imposition of Sharia law, the wearing of hijab, and separate Islamic schools, though they may differ as to the right ways to combat them. Caught between Islamism, which is often supported by the radical left, and the far right, Muslim secularists are among the staunchest supporters of universal human values and of integration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the month of Ramadan, Muslims are required to fast from dawn to the beginning of the night. During summers in Nordic states, this means daily fasts of more than 18 hours. Two religio-juristic opinions have emerged regarding this challenge: one requires strict adherence to the commands of the Qur'an so long as night and day are distinguishable; the other encourages fasting the same number of hours as in Mecca and Medina or a nearby country where the duration of the day is moderate. This article offers an overview of these opinions, their development and how they resist common distinctions between ‘pragmatic' and ‘strict' juristic panels. On the basis of a field study conducted during 2015 in two mosques in Reykjavik, it also explores the division among Iceland's tiny minority of devout Muslims over this issue, and the contesting justifications given by leaders and attendees of the two mosques for their respective views. The discussion demonstrates the conflation of transnational and local influences (including satellite television channels) that contribute to the diffusion offatwās in Europe, and the limited utility of the labelswasaṭīandsalafīin predicting the actual practices of individuals and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on research conducted in Western Australia as part of a PhD thesis, this article looks at the shifting boundaries of gender roles in Australian Muslim households. It highlights the Islamic stance on the biological differences between men and women as the basis for understanding gender roles and responsibilities. It also uncovers how the ideal influences contemporary Muslim gender roles and the interplay of social and economic factors that impact upon Australian Muslim households in their acculturation in the more liberal Western setting. In order to capture the nuances of perceptions and accounts of how the participants in the research perceive providing and caring roles in the household unit, the primary research uses narrative enquiry as part of its methodology. The findings show that there is variance between the textual injunctions and contextual realties as Muslim women also become providers for the household. While this shows that there is congruence with the mainstream Australian society, it also has implications for how gender equality and economic empowerment of women are approached in a diverse society like Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysts have traditionally ignored women's narratives on jihad and have focused on the views of male jihadists. Research onJamat'ud'DawahandLashker-e-Toibafits this pattern, despite the growing involvement of women in the activities of those organizations. This article analyses the narratives and stories, and their implications for the jihadi project with reference to the publications of one female leader in the group, Umm Abd Muneeb. Drawing upon her publications in Urdu, the article explores her discussion ofḥayā(modesty),purdah(seclusion) and male superiority, and how these ideas are designed to guide women into accepting the need for jihad by male members of their families. The article establishes that ideas of piety are often linked to the political project in narratives of Muslim women affiliated with jihadi groups and that it is necessary to understand the language used by these women in their particular socio-political environment. Such understanding provides a holistic view of how women support and sustain jihad within the family environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opening years of the century saw in America the increasing visibility of observant Muslim stand-up comics who engaged with the various realities affecting their community. The material they have produced is not exclusively aimed at the larger American society: a considerable part of it is designed for ‘inner’ purposes. Acknowledging the versatility of the genre, this article focuses on insider–insider relations and offers a discourse analysis of six practicing American Muslim comedians' material in order to highlight their endeavor to edify the American Muslim community and elevate their coreligionists to a determined ideal of Islam. The artists under consideration are Azhar Usman, Preacher Moss, Mohammed Amer, Azeem Muhammad, Baba Ali, and Omar Regan. The selection of iterative subjects in the comedians' jokes puts forward some of the community's priorities and its current state of affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative attitudes about Americans pervade the Muslim world. And many Americans hold negative views of Muslims. Although prior literatures provide many explanations for the sources of antagonism in each population, scholars have yet to provide a direct comparison between the two. Thus, instead ofexplainingthe attitudes themselves, this researchcomparesthem. When the same questions are asked of Americans and Muslims, are the same variables significant predictors of antagonism? We use 2008 and 2011 survey data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project and ordered probit models to answer this question at two distinct points in time. The results illustrate the importance of domestic politics for both populations, providing insight into the potential utility of foreign policies designed to improve attitudes. Additionally, we find that the story of religion's influence on anti-American attitudes is a complex one, which changes depending on how religiosity is operationalized. This research represents a first step in bringing the literatures on anti-Muslim and anti-American attitudes together, while also revealing important similarities and differences in the sources of antagonism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the British Mandate in Palestine, there existed among the majority Muslim Arab population a perception that the British favoured Christian Arabs for administrative positions. While such a preference was arguably justifiable during the early years of the Mandate, inasmuch as Christian Arabs were initially more qualified from an educational standpoint, over the ensuing years, the number of Muslim youths with a suitable, secular-based education very quickly increased. There nonetheless persisted a perception of Christian favouritism – that is, that Christians still enjoyed preferential treatment with respect to government employment – and this soon came to define a significant Muslim grievance, one that would periodically prove divisive between Muslim and Christian Arabs, not least within the context of the Palestinian nationalist movement. This article seeks to ascertain whether, on the basis of a statistical analysis of the actual numbers of Muslim and Christian Arabs employed by the British Mandatory government and their respective educational qualifications, Christian Arabs did in fact constitute a privileged group. Also considered (in light of certain sociological concepts regarding group and national identity) are the ramifications of such a perception – regardless of whether reflective of the actual reality – with respect to Muslim–Christian unity, the shaping of Palestinian Arab national identity and the relationship between Arab national identity and Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the sense of Jewish vulnerability and exclusion in Europe that has resulted from manifestations, and Jewish perceptions, of the “new anti-Semitism,” and the role of Islamic communities in Europe in propagating this form of hatred of Jews. First emerging in 2000 with the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada, and tied in with the Middle East conflict, anger at Israel is directed at Diaspora Jewish communities. This “new anti-Semitism” targets the Jewish collective with the characteristics of anti-Semitism previously aimed at individual Jews. The article focuses on the wave of anti-Semitism that erupted as a result of the 2014 Israeli–Hamas War. Based on an analysis of European Jewish communities, it considers the active part played by European Muslim communities in perpetrating the new anti-Semitism. Using an analysis of survey data, emigration statistics and newspaper opinion articles by leading European Jewish intellectuals, the article considers how the new anti-Semitism is adversely affecting Jewish–Muslim relations and the concomitant sense of “belonging” of European Jewry. The article considers what is required to overcome the new anti-Semitism propagated by Muslim communities to restore a greater sense of Jewish belonging to, and identification with, Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article sets out to explore how Muslims in Sweden identify with and create social life in the place where they live, that is, in their neighbourhood, in their town/city and in Swedish society at large. In a paradoxical religious landscape that includes a strong Lutheran state church heritage and a Christian free-church tradition, in what is, nevertheless, a very secular society, Muslims may choose different strategies to express their faith, here roughly described as “retreatist,” “engaged” or “essentialist/antagonistic.” Focusing on a non-antagonistic, engaged stance, and drawing upon a combination of authors' interviews, and materials published in newspapers and on the Internet, we first bring to the fore arguments by Muslim leaders in favour of creating a Muslim identity with a Swedish brand, and second give some examples of local Muslim individuals, acting as everyday makers in their neighbourhood, town or city. Third, we also give attention to an aggressively negative Islamophobic stance expressed both in words and in physical violence in parts of Swedish society. In conclusion, we reflect upon the challenges and potentialities of an emotionally engaged, dialogue-orientated Muslim position facing antagonistic interpretations of Islam, and an ignorant, sometimes Islamophobic, environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the lead-up to Australia committing military resources and personnel to the coalition opposing the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL), Prime Minister Tony Abbott consistently categorized the al-Qaeda splinter group as a “death cult.” Examining Abbott's official rhetoric on ISIL and the threat it poses to Australia and the world, this article argues that his use of the term “death cult” reflects patterns in Western political demonology and demonizing enemies, namely, creating adversaries as monsters by highlighting the atrocities they commit in order to garner support for (often lethal) actions against them. In traditional political demonology, establishment representatives often target minority or marginal groups as these pariahs. However, in demonizing ISIL, Abbott deliberately made distinctions between it and its members and the majority of Muslims, including Australian Muslims, and utilized political demonology differently. In so doing, he affirmed this religious minority's status within the parameters of Australian citizenship. This is indeed commendable. However, Abbott rarely mentioned Muslims outside of references to terrorism. Despite the fact that Abbott acknowledges that only a comparative handful of Muslims are indeed violent, he has not yet fully engaged with the broader notions of Australian Muslims’ contributions to Australian society and their citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 9/11, 2001, a new form of religious extremism has arguably emerged, one which paradoxically portrays itself as a counter to another perceived extremism regarded as a real and imminent threat. Within North America and Western Europe, as elsewhere, there is an upsurge of various forms of reactionary rhetoric and opposition expressed towards Islam and Muslims. An increase in extremist behaviour, even violence, is appearing from quarters opposed to, or varyingly fearful of, Islamic extremism if not Islam or Muslims. Islamophobia, as a manifestation of fear of an exclusionary Islam, manifests as exclusionary or negatively reactive behaviours with Muslims and Islam as the target. This article explores the idea that Islamophobia can be regarded as a manifestation of religious extremism and, further, that such extremism is construable as “reactive co-radicalization.” It focuses on two European cases – the 2009 Swiss ban on the building of minarets and the 2011 Norwegian massacre carried out by Anders Breivik – as examples of this “reactive co-radicalization.” This term, I suggest, is an apt denominator for the exclusionary reaction to the rising presence of Islam within otherwise secular, albeit nominally Christian, Western European and North American societies, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the overmediatization of Islam and Muslims in Europe has only worsened the perception of them and relationships with them. Communities have been stigmatized by the media because of inappropriate behaviours attributable to many players in the game. All this fear of Islam (Islamophobia) has increasingly transformed into an attitude of rejection towards this paradoxically close and distant Other, which has become a sort of “enemy.” Islam is essentially perceived through the claims of a quite visible minority who believe they have the potential to call into question “European values” (to be defined) in the name of their faith, which is considered by some as aggressive and in search of conquest.This article proposes a change of focus towards being more creative when speaking about Muslims and favouring a more civic approach. Before being Muslims, they are people who enjoy a legal framework that assures them of their dignity and their individual freedom in exchange for fulfilling their civic duties towards the State and their fellow citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The phenomenon of Christian–Muslim dialogue has had a very chequered history. At varying times, three broad modes of engagement can be said to have operated: antipathy, affinity and inquiry, and these three modes can be found still in today's world. In some places, hostility and antipathy abound. In others, voices and actions express cordial friendship, détente and affinity. In this latter climate, the prospect of engagement in mutual inquiry and cooperative ventures is not only theoretically possible, but actively pursued, and in the first decade of the twenty-first century, a number of notable initiatives in the arena of mutual inquiry have taken place. This article addresses aspects of the context and development of Christian–Muslim dialogue as a modern phenomenon, and then turns to a review of three twenty-first century developments – the Building Bridges seminar series; the Stuttgart-based Christian–Muslim Theological Forum and the “Common Word” letter. It also reflects on the models and theology of dialogue, including not only theology for dialogue, but also theology in and – importantly – after dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the dialectical relationship between liberating trust in reality and religious faith in God, interpreted from a Christian–Muslim perspective. An underlying conviction is that liberation constitutes a necessary mutual correlate of a “true” religiosity, i.e. liberation is to be conceived as both prerequisite for and realization of a genuine religiosity, and vice versa. As opposed to a “true” religiosity, born from liberating trust and finding its fulfilment in prophetic action aimed at liberation of human realities, religious belief and practice that stem from fundamental mistrust are likely to deteriorate into either religious fundamentalism or indifferentism. The article focuses on fundamental trust in reality as capable of evoking the liberating and uniting force of religious theory and praxis. It aims to render explicit the religious and ecumenical potential (hitherto not fully realized) of the theological–ethical considerations of Hans Küng, in particular within a Christian–Muslim framework. The first part of the article, more conceptual in character, examines Küng's views on fundamental (mis)trust and its religious implications. The second part seeks to identify theological insights that shed light on the specifically Christian and specifically Muslim interpretations of liberating trust. My hope is that this study may contribute to a truly global ecumenism whose objective is to render religion an instrument of liberation, not oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights the scholarly contribution of the Iranian-born Muslim scholar-activist Ziba Mir-Hosseini to the academic field of gender and Islam. In the first part, Mir-Hosseini's thought is positioned within the larger processes of the shifting loci of authority and normativity in contemporary Islamic discourses, particularly with reference to the emergence of what will here be termed critical-progressive Muslim scholar-activists. There follows a brief justification as to why a study of Mir-Hosseini's thought in relation to gender and Islam warrants examination. Mir-Hosseini's personal journey in the field of gender and Islam is then outlined and her major contributions to the field are noted. This is followed by a discussion of the support Mir-Hosseini finds for her ideas in the hermeneutical theories employed by reformist male Muslim scholars, and then an examination of her views on the relationship between Islamic feminism discourses and (neo-)traditional expressions of Islam. Mir-Hosseini's deconstruction of the assumptions governing classical Muslim family law and ethics that have been re-appropriated and legally enforced by some contemporary Muslim majority nation states is presented next, followed by a discussion of her proposals for the reform of Muslim family law and ethics. The final section discusses Mir Hosseini's activism with special reference to her involvement with Musawah, the global movement for equality in Muslim family law based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Malaysia, freedom of religion has clear limitations, especially regarding Muslims wishing to leave Islam, who may currently find it difficult to secure legal acceptance. However, such applications are received under a Sharia legal provision in Negeri Sembilan – the only state in Malaysia that allows a Muslim to change his religion for reasonable cause. The application is made at the Sharia High Court, and is then forwarded to the Mufti's Department, which in turn arranges a consultation for the applicant to reconsider his decision. This article critically reviews this process of application to leave Islam and also provides a clear mapping of principal court decisions and an analysis of the legal rationale for accepting some applications and refusing others. The paper is critical of the disproportionate discretion afforded to Muslim bureaucrats in the Mufti's Department with regard to determining an individual's religious rights and argues that, in Malaysia, the power to legally determine or classify religion should be confined to the Sharia Court. Finally, the article evaluates how “applications to leave Islam” are reconciled with and distinguished from the Islamic prohibition of “apostasy” and so is relevant to Islamic countries beyond Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of an exploratory, mixed-method study on imams in Flanders. The research question was mainly who are they?, in an attempt to draw the first picture of their socio-demographic background, ethnicity, functions, and expectations with respect to their position in Flanders, or in Belgium more broadly speaking. The first three sections give context information about Muslims, Islam, and mosques in Belgium and Flanders. In the next sections, the research design and the results are presented. This presentation focuses on four issues: imams as immigrants; their tasks and workload; their job situation and attitude towards official recognition and payment; and finally their ambiguous attitudes towards government initiatives. We give also some reflections in dialogue with research on imams in other Western European countries. The conclusion discusses the challenges for imams and the government to become real partners within the further integration process of the Muslim community in Flanders and Belgium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The initial premise of this article is that the lasting influence of nineteenth-century Protestant liberalism on the modern conceptualization of religion has confined our understanding of a variety of traditions to a narrow evolutionary scope in which purer religious forms in line with scientific rationalism are seen as arising out of earlier impure systems akin to magic. The article presents the instrumentality of the Qur'an as an alternative lens through which to acknowledge what has often been labelled as “magic” in Islam. Recognizing that this modern conceptualization of religion has been appropriated as an ideal by Muslim modernist reformists, the article particularly intends to show that, through the use of this alternative analytical instrument, the modernist project of emancipatory “disenchantment” can be viewed as an instance of the modernization of magic just as easily as it can be seen as religious purification, the intention of this exercise being to further problematize our current distinction between religion and magic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including Islam, Christian relations and Muslims.

This article presents an alternative to the analysis of Thai merit-making rhetoric (tham bun) that associates it with Theravada Buddhism and syncretic anomalies. A review of the processes through which Islam became an authentically Southeast Asian religion suggests that this merit-making conundrum is a recent example of the adoption and adaptation of Indic terms by Southeast Asian Muslims. These were central to the creation of Islamicate cultures. The concepts Indic and Islamicate are capable of pushing through conceptual cul-de-sacs such as syncretism and shared cosmologies. In addition to the specific generation of merit erroneously assumed as its only meaning, the article reveals thattham bunalso denotes undifferentiated religious actions, and is code for a range of feasts unrelated to merit-making. It argues that the co-option oftham bunby Thai-speaking Muslims is an example of a search for equivalents. It also suggests the presence of an authentically Islamic economy of merit in Southern Thailand, confirming Islam's ability to speak the language of Indic Southeast Asians and to scratch where they itch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Myanmar (also known as Burma), the Rohingya are a persecuted Muslim minority living mainly in northern Rakhine State. Aung San Suu Kyi, the iconic leader of Myanmar's opposition party the National League for Democracy (NLD), is championed as the voice of the people. However, on the matter of the Rohingya's persecution she has been notably silent. This article examines the possible reasons for Suu Kyi's silence and argues that Buddhist–Muslim political relations in Myanmar are central to understanding the reasons behind Suu Kyi's position on the Rohingya. It is suggested that various factors, including the history of the Rohingya in Myanmar, the NLD's attitude towards the Rohingya, Suu Kyi's sense of obligation to her father's political legacy, and Suu Kyi's views on ethnicity, are creating a political environment in which Suu Kyi is presented with pragmatic political reasons for staying silent. Given Suu Kyi has the potential to become a future national leader, an understanding of her behaviours towards a sizeable persecuted Muslim minority is important. This is particularly the case when consideration is given to the contemporary pressures on Muslims to embrace radical politics and the implications this could have for Myanmar and the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion is surely not the most important factor in explaining the conflict in the Southern Philippines. Economic, political and criminal issues also contribute to explaining the violence in the country. Yet the religious narrative influences the narration of the conflict, impacting on its frame of understanding both within the country and from the perspective of global audiences. This study presents the results of field research on three Facebook pages in English (and therefore addressed to global audiences) related to resistance movements in Southern Philippines, notably BIFF and MNLF, which openly include neojihadist symbols and contents in their narratives. How do these narratives depict and affect Christian–Muslim relations within the local movement and the local society in Mindanao? And how does the local version of the global neojihadist narrative contribute to shaping Christian–Muslim relations in the global Muslim public sphere? This article shows the potential impact of the neojihadist ideology on the narration of the resistance movement, highlighting the consequences for the negotiation of Christian and Muslim identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a spectrum of views within Muslim discourse on questions such as: “Is non-hetero predilection congenital and as such created by God?,” “Are non-hetero feelings/actions sinful as such?,” “Should the authorities in Muslim states punish homosexual acts?,” “Should lesbian and gay Muslims marry partners of the opposite gender?” The stances presented are based on texts by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Heba Gamal Kotb, Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Amreen Jamal and Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle. Stances presented by various Muslim internet sites are also considered. The review is grouped into a four-way typology: strongly traditional; moderately traditional; moderately progressive; and strongly progressive. The second part of the article reflects on how non-hetero Muslims cope theoretically and practically with their religious and sexual identity. The various stances and practices are grouped into six types based on the correlation/tension between “right” (divinely revealed) and “good” (in a human sense): (i) rejecting all kinds of non-hetero identities, feelings and practices; (ii) accepting feelings and identity, but rejecting practice; (iii) unsuccessful efforts to reject practice; (iv) accepting one's identity and practice due to interpretations of the Qur'an and theological reflection; (v) accepting non-hetero practices without regard to religious rules pertaining to this issue; (vi) accepting non-hetero identity and practices combined with (secretly) rejecting Islam due to the question of homosexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the legacy of Godfrey Dale, who in 1923 published a Qur'an in Swahili, with the intention of letting people “know what the Qurʾān does say.” The work of his successors is explored. It discusses the proposals for work amongst Muslims submitted by lay and ordained members of the Diocese of Zanzibar for consideration at the 1944 Diocesan Conference, as the Diocese prepared for the situation after World War II. Finally, it examines the role of the Diocese with particular reference to Christian–Muslim relations as Tanganyika and Zanzibar prepared for Independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Islam Hadhari, as a model for development officially inaugurated during the administration of Malaysia's fifth Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (2003–9), encountered failure. Its lack of success was significantly due to the rise of Islamist conservatives, who deliberately interpreted Islam Hadhari as a political instrument to impose Islamization from above in a manner not conducive to living in a spirit of peaceful coexistence in a multi-ethnic society. While on the one hand it promoted an Islam that cherishes the values of inclusivity, moderation and inter-religious tolerance, on the other hand Islam Hadhari unfortunately triggered defensive responses from Islamist conservatives. This ad hoc conservative alliance comprised religious leaders associated with the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), state religious functionaries, scholars affiliated to the opposition Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS:Parti Islam SeMalaysia) and Islamist non-governmental organizations. The rise of this Islamist conservatism aggravated ethno-religious relations during Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's premiership, leading to the setbacks experienced by his government in the general elections of 2008. By then, the death knell had been sounded for Islam Hadhari. It was steadily consigned to the graveyard of history by the administration of Najib Razak, who took over from Abdullah in April 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of Muslim minorities upon the modes of regional electoral politics in Russia. In particular, the interweaving of ethnic and religious aspects proved to be a significant factor in electoral mobilization, determining the levels of electoral activity and success. At the same time, a significant variation observed between the cases of Ulyanovsk and Astrakhan provinces turned out to be impossible to explain without using the characteristics of regional political regimes as explanatory variables. This led to the development of a multifactor model of ethnic Muslim activism. The model starts with the external factors of the political context, and then incorporates factors directly related to ethnicity and religion. The categorization of regional political regimes follows the general distinction between the consensual and conflictual types as developed by Arend Lijphart. The analysis demonstrates that the latter type impairs the conventional political participation and legislative representation of Russia's ethnic Muslims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the polemic on the concept ofal-walāʾ wa-al-barāʾ(commonly translated as “loyalty and disavowal”). While existing academic literature focuses on the usages of this concept by jihad activists, the article centers on the role “loyalty and disavowal” plays in debates between contemporarysalafīandwasaṭījurists and theologians, specifically in their conflicting agendas for Muslims living as minorities.Salafīs, relying on several qur'anic verses and Prophetic traditions, promote an understanding of “loyalty and disavowal” that requires Muslims to refrain from befriending or loving non-Muslims, or imitating their beliefs and customs. Relying on counter-verses and traditions, in particular Q 60.8,wasaṭīs have interpreted the concept of “loyalty and disavowal” more narrowly, arguing that it applies only to non-Muslims who fight against Muslims; as part of their integration-oriented doctrine for Muslims in the West, they have in recent years dedicated considerable efforts to refuting thesalafīinterpretation ofal-walāʾ wa-al-barāʾ. The article examines the juristic methodologies utilized in the debate, and how it has affected religious decisions (fatwās) on Islamic life in Western societies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses linkages and parallels between economic ideas of Muslim scholars and Christian scholastics with the objective of finding common ground in the history of the subject that may increase understanding of our traditions, boost cooperation and strengthen the bonds between our associations. It also aims to provide material that may counteract the divisive elements in the West-centric thesis that propagates the clash of civilizations. By way of introduction, it begins with an account of the contexts in which Muslim dialecticians and European scholastics emerged and the foundations on which they based their work. It then traces the links that brought them close to each other and presents a number of cases on which the two traditions have similar views. The article concludes with a note that ethics and human values were the overriding considerations of both scholastics and Islamic scholars, and that, in spite of enormous changes in economic principles and practices, this concern for humanity has not changed. If economics is enriched with these values, they will surely increase efficiency, justice and stability, leading to harmony and peaceful co-existence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hardly any region has recently captured the global geopolitical imagination as much as the Arab world after the so-called Arab Spring and very likely no state more so than Egypt. Finally it seemed that democracy was coming to the region, that this would spell the end of radical Islam, and of any local aspirations of creating Islamic states, and mark the beginning of a rapprochement between East and West. This article analyses and links those dynamics, with particular reference to the transition process in the wake of the so-called Arab Revolution, and gauges what may be at stake for members of non-Muslim faiths. It particularly traces the rift between theoretical Muslim discourse about Islamic tolerance towards other faiths and its implementation or the absence thereof in practice. It concludes that so far no real progress has been made and that, for the relationship to evolve, Islam needs to proceed to a state in which it sees itself as no more than an equal to other religions. The recognition of its tradition-based nature and of the consequences that flow from such a realization for the treatment of its fundamental sources, the Qur'an and the Sunna, will be addressed. To evaluate the current situation and the outlook, we shall use the example of the famous eighteenth-century German play by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,Nathan the Wise, about the occupation of Jerusalem by Saladin. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article contributes to the study of the image of Islam among French anti-Semites at the end of the nineteenth century. More specifically, it analyses D. Kimon's bookLa pathologie de l'islam, in which the author advocates the need to destroy Islam by annihilating one-twentieth of the world's Muslim population and subjecting the rest to a regime of semi-slavery until they finally convert to Catholicism. Various issues are analysed in the course of this case study: the attitude of anti-Semites towards ethno-cultural groups other than Jews, specifically Muslims; the relationship between anti-Semitism and racism; and the relationship between Islamophobia and racism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The interplay of religion and politics has been a consistent theme within the literature of political radicalism and religious violence in the contemporary Muslim world. Indonesia, which has long paraded its multi-layered history of religions, recently emerged as one of the main sites of Muslim–Christian violence. The religious volatility that has characterized Indonesia over the past decade has, however, left variations in vitality between faith-based organizations under-researched. In order to examine how the Christian churches undergird their institutions in the world's largest Muslim country, this article takes as its case study Salib Putih (White Cross) in the Javanese city of Salatiga and traces how a legal issue comes to transcend the boundary between religion and politics at local and national levels. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Australia's most popular spectator sport is Aussie Rules football, administered by the Australian Football League (AFL). The 2012 debut of a professional Aussie Rules team for a growing and culturally diverse part of Sydney represents the culmination of efforts by the AFL to make inroads into the rugby-league-obsessed, poor and predominantly refugee and migrant neighbourhoods on the “wrong” side of the tracks in Australia's largest city. In the months before the siren sounded on the Greater Western Sydney Giants' first game, the researcher produced a long-form radio documentary for a religious affairs programme broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It discussed how a religiously diverse part of Australia juggles its negative reputation with a growing, strategically important population, which the sport of Aussie Rules is trying to reach out to, but whose identity is wrapped up in the “rival” football code of rugby league. The documentary's findings are that affiliation with a sport or team is fluid and thought of as a component of Australian Muslim identity; that it reflects attempts by existing power structures to connect with the shifting demographics of the region that is the focus of the documentary; and that it reflects failure or success on-field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Far from being an exclusively present-day, let alone post-9/11, phenomenon, Islam in Indigenous Australia has a set of historical precedents. Focusing on three early waves of Muslim sojourners and immigrants, the article begins with an overview of the long and complex history of Indigenous engagement with Islam. Introducing readers to a broad spectrum of Indigenous identification with Islam, it examines the kin-based or informal absorption of Islamic values that occurs particularly among those with Muslim forbears (a process termed “kinversion”). The article then turns from the primarily historical material to an investigation of the contemporary experience of Islam in Indigenous Australian lives. As Islam is among the fastest growing religions in the world today, an increased rate of conversion to Islam among Indigenous communities might simply be a sign of the times. This is not, however, the case. There are uniquely Australian circumstances that inform it, and for some Indigenous people an identification with Islam has provided an alternative route back to their Indigenous roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The violent clashes between young Muslim men and police that occurred in and around Sydney's central business district on the evening of Saturday, September 15, 2012 have acted as a catalyst for an increasingly visible political struggle among different sections of the Australian Muslim population in the post-9/11 decade. The protests, ostensibly about the filmInnocence of Muslims, have brought the contested nature of Islam and being Muslim in Australia firmly into the sphere of public political debate as Muslims aligned both against and with the protestors. This article aims to explore the extraordinarily open exchanges and contestation primarily between Muslims born and raised in Australia in the immediate aftermath of the protests and the mechanisms utilized to contest power, authority and legitimacy. In doing so, it reveals important insights into the debates defining Muslim political identity and considers the broader implications for Australian Islam and multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic accounts of Muslim integration and inclusion in multicultural Australia are often at pains to emphasize that Muslim identity and Australian national identity are compatible with each other. While this political manoeuvre remains both important and relevant, it nevertheless chances reinscribing the very terms of debate it seeks to contest and worryingly aligns closely with prevalent governmental techniques to “domesticate” Muslim difference. Furthermore, it risks presenting both “Muslim” and “Australian” identities as self-evident, taken-for-granted categories. In this article, I consider two Muslim Australian popular cultural productions – namely, the television programmeSalam Caféand the stand-up comedy showFear of a Brown Planet– in order to explore how Muslim and Australian identities, and the relationships between them, are performed, contested and rearticulated. What is most salient about both productions, the article argues, is that they present the identity of “Australian” as a site of political and cultural contestation, with the “nation” a contingent site through which multicultural politics are actualized. Such a move is salient for Australian multiculturalism more broadly, but is especially so for Muslim communities – not least because it undermines the West/Islam dichotomy altogether. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses various reports within the issue on topics including syncretic spirituality, Islamic schools in Victoria and the social conditions of Australian Muslims.

Andres Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 22/7/11 terrorist attacks in Norway, was profoundly inspired by what has become known as the Eurabia genre. Behring Breivik's 1516-page cut-and-paste tract,2083: A European Declaration of Independence, makes extensive reference to Eurabia authors, and most prominently to the blog essays of the Norwegian extreme right-wing blogger “Fjordman,” also known as Peder Are Nøstvold Jensen. A popular transnational genre found in both film and literature, the Eurabia genre is central to understanding the worldviews of extreme right-wing “counter-jihadists.” It is a conspiratorial genre in which a central rhetorical trope is that Europe is on the verge of being taken over by Muslims. It alleges that European Muslims want to establish continent-wide Islamic domination in the form of an Islamic state or a caliphate, using higher fertility rates and immigration as their main means of achieving this. The Eurabia genre has, however, hitherto received limited academic attention. In this article, I use the insights of critical discourse analysis in order to analyse some central contributions to this profoundly Islamophobic genre and its popularization and political mainstreaming in Norway in the past decade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this article is to encourage Muslim readers to consider the possibility of seeing the crucifixion as an actual historical event whose occurrence can be affirmed on the basis of qur'anic teachings. Following a description of the difficulty that arises for someone with a Christian mindset who encounters the qur'anic denial (or seeming denial) of the crucifixion, given its centrality to the Christian message, the article summarizes qur'anic exegeses that allow for an affirmation of the crucifixion based on Q 4.157–158. This is followed by discussions of: the relevance of the crucifixion to the human condition; the factors that have contributed to a denial of the crucifixion based on Q 4.157–8; Christian and Islamic themes that have the potential to facilitate a view from within Islam of Christ's death as redemptive; and what Christ's death may be seen to reveal about the divine nature. Lastly, the article presents ways in which Christians down the ages have experienced the crucifixion and resurrection as events and as symbols, and as an inspiration for service and the love of God. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article polygyny is used to illustrate how the ideal of benevolent patriarchy and the “good” Muslim man as the benevolent patriarch tends to create a discrepancy between the legal and the moral in Islamic legislation as well as in Islamic discourse. The study is based on fieldwork in the West Bank in 2011 when 49 Islamist and Islamic-oriented women were interviewed. The main finding of this study is that Islamist women tend to accept the Islamic gender system as the divine will, and they also accept its legal expression, Personal Status Law. However, there is a little awareness of the lack of legal consequences for men who do not behave according to the moral code, which is not explicitly but only implicitly assumed in the law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to examine two major issues: (1) religious roots of reconciliation and forgiveness, which are often unfortunately forgotten in the academic discussion of peacebuilding and peace policy-related issues, and (2) Christians' and Muslims' attempts to quell interreligious violence and prevent renewed outbreaks in the conflict zone of Ambon of the Moluccas (Maluku) in eastern Indonesia. More specifically, it discusses the role of Ambonese Christian and Muslim leaders in the process of interreligious peacemaking and reconciliation. A comparative study of conciliation within Islam and Christianity, the piece investigates factors underlying Christian–Muslim collaboration for establishing peaceful settlement in the region. Unlike most previous analyses and studies, which have tended to undermine the contribution of religion in the conflict settings of Ambon, the article shows that religious identities, discourses, and actors have contributed to and also enhanced the chances for peace and reconciliation. Why and how Ambonese Christian and Muslim leaders were willing to unite to fight against religious extremism and eagerly pursue pacification becomes the central question of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present article is a critical analysis of the South African organization Positive Muslims' ‘theology of compassion’, put forward by its proponents as a Muslim religious initiative to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS and the stigmatization of those affected by the disease. The article addresses the hermeneutics applied and the results reached in relation to a wider contemporary Muslim religious discourse on HIV/AIDS. It also connects the ‘theology of compassion’ to a broader transnational movement of progressive Islam, of which the ‘theology of compassion’ is a practical, grass-roots application. The main analytical focus, however, is on the way in which certain features in this theology are shaped by basic assumptions on the part of its producers concerning the beliefs, emotions and background knowledge of its main stated consumers: believing Muslims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an examination of the work of Constance Padwick (1886–1968), who served as a ‘literature missionary’ with the Church Missionary Society and the International Missionary Council in Egypt and Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century. Through a study of Padwick's life-long engagement with popular Muslim devotional prayers, the article demonstrates how she was inspired to use language, devotion and liturgy to call for a richer, bolder and deeper Christian presence in the Muslim world. Formed by the prevailing Evangelical tradition of the epoch, Padwick was drawn to Islam's mystical tradition. Her commitment to teasing out underlying similarities between the two traditions influenced the theology of mission that she developed, as her study of Muslim devotions led her to encourage a greater emphasis on the contribution that Arabic Christian devotional literature could make to Protestant missions in the Muslim world. In addition to shaping a specific missiological approach, the experience of Islamic popular piety led her to exhort her colleagues to cooperate more closely with the Eastern churches in order to build up and strengthen the ancient Christian presence in the Arab world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We live in a world where religion is not confined to the private sphere and where faith-based acts, from Qur'an burning to terrorist activities, affront not only believers but also non-believers. Indonesia, where moderate Islam has long enjoyed its compatibility with other religions, has recently emerged as a hot spot of Muslim–Christian violence. In order to examine the social face of faith in ‘unfavourable’ circumstances, this article analyses church growth in Muslim Java by addressing the sociological issues related to what makes a church strong. Through an empirical investigation into the Java Christian Church, the article demonstrates that a church manages to establish a firm foothold in a Muslim society by developing the porosity of the religious frontier at the organizational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theme of Islam and the Sermon on the Mount belongs to a lively, controversial field of discourse, in which representatives of the major monotheistic religions conflict in their claims to truth, and it has formed a central point in their encounters. For example, representatives of the Salafiyya saw in the Sermon a barrier to the secular order. Through their criticisms, they tended even to appropriate the Sermon for the purposes of Islam. However, the ethical message of the Sermon has usually not been interrogated as such. Form-critical, symbolic, structural and intentional similarities in Muslim remarks point to this appreciation. Nevertheless, Muslims seem much more concerned with the specific contextual meaning of the Sermon and its historicity rather than considering its principle of love for enemies or its legislative nature. Thus, positive receptions of the Sermon, such as al-Ghazzālī's or the recognition discourse of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, if not forgotten, have fallen into the background. In the atmosphere of Christian missionary and colonial experience and the post-colonial aftermath, this reception history and its semantic transformations are certainly understandable. However, they first offer a fertile ground for inter-religious dialogue when the mutual understanding processes are revealed and the discursively produced internal and external allocations, so rich with meaning, are exposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article distinguishes various ways in which the term ‘pray together’ might be understood and focuses on ‘interreligious prayer’, by which is meant here praying together using the same words with two religious groups united in heart and mind, rather than ‘multireligious prayer’, which refers to prayer in the presence of another religious group. The article argues that, in the early literature on the matter, there is a danger of conflating the two different types, and then shows that some Catholic communities, following the initiatives of Pope John Paul II, have reached a consensus that interreligious prayer is problematic, while multireligious prayer is not. The article goes on to consider an essay by Joseph Ratzinger, which discusses the preconditions for interreligious prayer and is very sceptical about its possibility, except perhaps for Christians and Jews. Finally, one of Ratzinger's preconditions for interreligious prayer is used to examine the possible grounds for interreligious prayer between Christians and Muslims, and the article argues that the door is as yet neither closed nor open. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]