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One of the significant effects of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York was the politics of the US-led war on terror encompassing secularism and calls for Islamic reformation. The political discourse of war on terror was not limited to the Americas but was witnessed in other Western nations, such as Australia. The discourse of "Islam needs reforming" by the Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, in response to the Lindt Café siege (labelled as "Islamic terrorism") tacitly associates Islam with terrorism and represents Muslims negatively to the wider Australian society. This paper with the research question of "How does 'Islam needs reforming' discourse perpetuate Islamophobia?" carried out critical discourse analysis on the selected speeches of Tony Abbott in response to the Lindt Café siege in 2014 to find out the context and implications of Abbott's discourse in relation to calls for Islamic revolution. The study found that Abbott through the example of al-Sisi's (Egypt's president) calls for Islamic reformation forwarded his stance of the need for change in Islam to counter terrorism. Therefore, the present paper argues that the calls for Islamic reformation in response to terrorism can associate Islam with terrorism, thus, perpetuating Islamophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2015, religious freedom has become a heated and divisive political and public policy issue in Australia. While rarely defined or interrogated, 'religious freedom' does not exist as a value-neutral principle with a single meaning. Rather, its discursive constructions are varied and serve to promote certain interests at the expense of others. Offering a new perspective on the politics of religious freedom, this paper draws together four separate studies of the public discourse of religious freedom in Australia (spanning 35 years from 1984 to 2019) to chart how its framing has changed over time and to explore the implications of these changes. This analysis reveals three major discourses of religious freedom emerging over three phases: 'religious diversity'; 'balancing rights'; and 'freedom of belief'. This paper demonstrates how, once used to promote a progressive social agenda, religious freedom has become weaponised by the Christian Right and culture warriors in their battle to entrench in law the ongoing acceptability of discrimination against LGBTIQ+ people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the discourse concerning Islam and Muslims by assessing the extreme right-wing party, Vox, on Twitter. In addition, this paper examines the incidence (impact and reactions) of this party on the users of this social network. The objectives of this study are as follows: to identify themes and topics concerning this discourse; to analyze how the discourse is articulated and represented; and to understand the impact of this discourse by measuring the engagement of the most viral publications. To do so, we observed the publications posted by the party via its official account throughout 2022. The research methodology was based on qualitative and quantitative content analysis, and the publications themselves were monitored to ascertain the level of engagement. The results of this study clearly show that Vox created Islamophobic narratives; thus, Islam and Muslims are explicit targets of Vox's hate speech. Their rhetoric referred to security threats and threats to national identity, with the recurrent use of the idea that there is a "danger of Islamization" in Spain. The party uses disinformation and hoaxes, and users respond in a polarized way. The results of this study alert us to the worrying levels of radicalization and the normalization of Islamophobic racist discourse in the examined context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues how the study of religion in Japan influenced the nation's conduct during the Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945). Specifically, the paper addresses the wartime national indoctrination texts of Katō Totsudō 加藤咄堂 (a.k.a. Katō Yūichirō 加藤熊一郎, 1870–1949). Although Katō was not strictly a religious scholar, analyzing Katō's texts is significant in understanding the influence of religious theory and religious studies discourse on Japanese society during the war. To illustrate this point, this paper introduces previous studies that have discussed the movements of religious scholars during the war. It then clarifies the significance of discussing Katō's texts, followed by an introduction to what has been revealed about Katō so far. The paper then examines Katō's wartime texts that discuss the relationship between war, faith and the readiness to die. The East–West comparison of views of life and death used by Katō was characterized as a wartime application of comparative religion. It was intended to emphasize Japan's superiority over other countries. Such features agitated Japanese readers to proactively enter the fight to the death through spiritual mobilization in a total war system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xuanzang (602–664) is famous for his legendary life, his important translation works, and also his Discourse on the Realisation of Consciousness-Only (Vijñapti-mātratā-siddhi, 成唯識論). This text, which is considered as a synthesis of Yogācāra thought, has been diversely interpreted by modern scholars and is still discussed, in particular about the status of external things. Nevertheless, this issue seems to be of little interest for Yogācāra thinkers compared to other topics such as the Noble Path, or else the three types of wisdom (trividhā prajñā, 三慧): learning (śruta, 聞), reasoning (cintā, 思), and cultivating (bhāvanā, 修). As emphasized in recent research, this topic represents a major issue for Buddhist practitioners. In an attempt to analyse it in Xuanzang's Discourse, and more generally in Yogācāra thought, this paper will first discuss Asaṅga's and Vasubandhu's thought on the three types of wisdom. Secondly, since it is important to replace the three types of wisdom in the general argumentation of Xuanzang's Discourse, we will present the structure of his text which is modelled on a "path" leading progressively to Supreme Awakening. Then, we will present the main elements of the Noble Path and situate the three types of wisdom into it. Finally, we will explain that Xuanzang follows Asaṅga's and Vasubandhu's conceptions and eventually confirm the importance of the three types of wisdom in Yogācāra thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the Japanese Nichiren Buddhist organization, Soka Gakkai (SG), whose members have supported the political party known as Kōmeitō, or Clean Government Party, in Japan for over half a century. SG members have often been criticized as 'impure' political actors, undergoing frequent public questioning of their motivations for engaging in electoral politics in light of their 'religious' status. The paper shows how the SG members' support for Kōmeitō at a qualitative level indeed transcends the typical demarcations of the 'secular-religious' binary system. However, they also simultaneously challenge the term 'religion' that has functioned as an ideology in the creation of statecraft and in their competition for legitimacy. The current paper is based on long-term fieldwork, extensive interviews, and doctrinal analyses that highlight how socially productive this discourse on religion has been. It also shows how a counter-episteme, rooted in Nichiren's theory of the Risshō Ankoku Ron and the idea of kōsen-rufu, sought to bring a 'Buddha' consciousness to bear on individual and collective action as a model for alternative 'politics'. Contrary to many claims, this did not entail contesting the modern institutional separation of 'church' and 'state', but is rather an attempt to find legitimacy for participating in 'Japan-making' in ways that cannot easily be understood or confined to explanations framed within the 'religious-secular' binary system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1945, official Catholic discourse around nuclear weapons has condemned their existence on the one hand and supported them as deterrents on the other. This paper argues the largely abstracted discourse on nuclear weapons within the World Church has been disrupted by voices of Urakami in Nagasaki since at least 1981, as the Vatican has re-considered both memory and Catholic treatments of the bombing of this city since the end of World War II. On 9 August 1945, a plutonium A-bomb, nicknamed 'Fat Man', was detonated by the United States over the northern suburb of Nagasaki known as Urakami. Approximately 8500 Catholics were killed by the deployment of the bomb in this place that was once known as the Rome of the East. Many years on, two popes visited Nagasaki, the first in 1981 and the second in 2019. Throughout the period from John Paul II's initial visit to Pope Francis's visit in 2019, the Catholic Church's official stance on nuclear weapons evolved significantly. Pope John Paul II's contribution to the involvement in peace discourses of Catholics who had suffered the bombing attack in Nagasaki has been noted by scholars previously, but we should not assume influence in 1981 was unidirectional. Drawing upon interviews conducted in the Catholic community in Nagasaki between 2014 and 2019, and by reference to the two papal visits, this article re-evaluates the ongoing potentialities and concomitant weaknesses of religious discourse. Such discourses continue to exert an influence on international relations in the enduring atomic age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion and science are often set up as polar opposites in Western philosophical and religious discourse and seen as representing different epistemological perspectives that juxtapose rationality with faith. Space exploration is largely viewed as a scientific and engineering problem and, thus, has tended to set aside the issue of religion as it relates to human movement off-planet. However, as we have moved increasingly toward the idea of colonization of the Moon and Mars, social scientists and philosophers have increasingly come to recognize that human movement into space also needs to be understood as a social phenomenon. As a social phenomenon, there is an inherent necessity to consider how religion may play a role in or influence the process of human exploration and settlement of space. However, what do we mean when we say "religion?" One of the fundamental problems of thinking about the relationship between religion, science, and space exploration is that the meaning of the word religion is rarely well-defined. Do we mean faith-based religions such as Christianity or Islam? Or do we mean practice-based religions such as Shinto and some forms of Buddhism? This paper will explore the question of religion and science from the perspective of Japanese religions as a way of problematizing the manner in which we think about and define religion as it relates to the practice of space exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]