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One important theme of China from later 19th century till now is her westernization, including legal westernization, which is a fast and overwhelmingly process. Legal Orientalism may provide an external perspective to describe a National Pygmalion Effect, the combination of the Orientalization and self-Orientalization, but it is not sufficient to address some internal factors driving the progress of the westernization of Chinese law. Therefore, it’s worthy to investigate Chinese Yi-Xia distinction, a Chinese counterpart epistemology of Orientalism, to provide an internal perceptive to explain the westernization of Chinese law. After a comparative investigation between Orientalism and Yi-Xia distinction, it can be discovered that even though there is a dichotomy under both of the two epistemologies. Yi-Xia distinction emphasizes the Orthopraxy tradition supported by a more conservative feature of “Yi-Xia Major Defense”, while the Orientalism being more expansive and supporting to tame the Orient by implementing the Orientalization. By contrast, the Sinicization under Yi-Xia distinction were more limited due to the doctrine that “Yi-Di shall not be ruled”. The reverse Yi-Xia distinction in Qing dynasty further changed the substance of Yi-Xia distinction and cause the termination of Orthopraxy. The mix of all these external and internal factors jointly promoted the fast and thorough westernization of Chinese law, a nationalism process implemented by westernization.

Language ideology as a field of inquiry (Woolard et al. 1998: 3) involves, among others, the critical analysis of inequalities manifest in discursive and textual practices. This paper deals with folklore practices and language ideologies related to the project for the collection and publication of oral traditions in 1930s Greece. The institutionalization of this project relied heavily on G.Chatzidakis (1890-1923), Professor of Linguistics and N.G. Politis (1852-1921), Professor of Comparative Mythology at the University of Athens whose works arguably created an orthodox model of folklore text-making. Instead, though, of focusing on the orthodox metadiscourse or practices of these two central figures to the project, I will turn to their localization by a philologist engaged in the collection of vernacular forms in a Maniat village (Southern Peloponnese). The turn to local practices seeks to uncover features of orthopraxy (Blommaert 2003), that is adaptations which although guided by the orthodox model at the surface level, can be related to acts of identity, expressing resistance to hegemonic ideologies, revealing inequality in the distribution of resources or in gate-keeping restrictions.The analysis draws on the personal archives of I. Strilakos from the period 1930-35, which include three notebooks and a manuscript collection of Maniat lament verbal art. The approach of the archives is based on the examination of Strilakos’ entextualization practices, a term that refers to the way that textual ‘shape’ is given to extracted stretches of discourse (see Bauman and Briggs 1990). The systematic examination of local folklore entextualization practices sheds light on the mediated ways in which ‘authentic’ voices become indexes of nationally subsumed regional identities.

This paper explores grassroots historiographical writing from Congo in the context of globalization. The authors are both sub-elite writers, producing text for First-World readers, and they spend enormous efforts at producing a generically regimented text, based on borrowed models of text and textuality that are seen to offer spaces for identity-construction. Performing such models of text and textuality is a construction of Self vis-à-vis history. But in order to understand such moves into identity-constructing spaces, we need to take account of different economies of meanings and signs. The identity construction only works in one particular economy of meanings and signs, but loses ‘meaning’ as soon as it is being inserted into other economies. The shift from one frame into another involves relocations of referential and indexical meanings attached to signs, a phenomenon of semiotic mobility that needs to be addressed sociolinguistically. Detached from their local semiotic environment, such texts become ‘orthopractic’: Performances of shape detached from locally valid indexicalities.

La alimentación representa un ámbito de la experiencia humana que históricamente ha desempeñado un papel trascendental en la conformación, el mantenimiento y la transformación de las fronteras culturales entre diversos grupos. Esta dimensión de la esfera alimentaria nos faculta para estudiar, a través del análisis arqueológico de sus restos materiales, el cambio social y cultural resultado de la interacción entre diferentes comunidades, dinámica que en sus rasgos más generales puede definir el periodo de emergencia de la entidad histórica que conocemos como al-Andalus. En este trabajo se presentan los fundamentos teóricos y metodológicos de una línea de investigación histórica que aspira a contribuir al estudio del temprano al-Andalus, atendiendo para ello a las implicaciones que el proceso de islamización social –un fenómeno central en su conformación– pudo traer aparejado sobre un campo de la acción humana tan profundamente social y cultural como es la alimentación. En concreto, la atención se centrará sobre algunas de las posibles repercusiones y manifestaciones materiales que el abandono de la cría y el consumo de porcino pudo comportar sobre dos planos diferentes: el de la economía doméstica de las poblaciones autóctonas y el de la identidad religiosa de esas mismas comunidades inferida a partir del examen de sus prácticas socioalimentarias. A fin de ilustrar el potencial analítico de este planteamiento de estudio, se presentan igualmente una serie de resultados derivados de su aplicación a partir del análisis zooarqueológico a fin de enfatizar la utilidad del examen de las formas de producción y consumo de los productos alimentarios de origen animal y su capacidad para generar conocimiento histórico de calidad sobre la formación de la sociedad andalusí. Food represents an area of human experience that has historically played a key role in the shaping, maintenance and transformation of cultural boundaries between different groups. This dimension of the food sphere enables us to study, through the archaeological analysis of its material remains, the social and cultural transformation resulting from the interaction between different human groups. This is a dynamic that, in its most general features, can define the period of emergence of the historical entity we know as al-Andalus. This paper presents the theoretical and methodological foundations of a line of historical research that aims to contribute to the study of early al-Andalus, focusing on the implications that the process of social Islamisation –which was central to its formation– may have had on a field of human action as profoundly social and cultural as food and foodways. Specifically, the attention will be placed on some of the possible consequences and material manifestations that the abandonment of pig breeding and consumption may have had at two different levels: that of the domestic economy of indigenous populations and that of the religious identity of these same communities, inferred from the examination of their socio-alimentary practices. To illustrate the analytical potential of this approach, a series of results derived from its application to zooarchaeological analysis are also presented in order to emphasise the usefulness of examining the forms of production and consumption of foodstuffs of animal origin and its capacity to generate quality historical knowledge about the formation of the Andalusi society. Este trabajo fue elaborado gracias a una Ayuda para contratos Juan de la Cierva Formación (ref. FJC2020-044358-I), financiada por MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 y por la Unión Europea NextGenerationEU/PRTR.

The purpose the research is to determine the characteristics of political ethics in the reformation doctrine using the example of late Protestantism history in Ukraine. The research methodology is based on: general scientific methods (analytical, synthetic, paradigmatic, holistic), general historical (system chronological, historical and comparative), sociological method (content analysis). The scientific novelty consists in the fact that for the first time there has been made the attempt of a comprehensive analysis of the external factors influence on the political ethics of Protestants on the history example of the Protestantism in Ukraine during the 20th – beginning of the 21st century in modern Ukrainian historiography and philosophical science. The Conclusions. The Reformation Doctrine was formed 500 years ago. It passed the test of time during this period. Having examined political ethics as a separate component of the doctrine, the authors of the article came to the conclusion that its key points were formed during the period of early Protestantism and have remained unchanged up to this day. Expressive specificity is the reaction to the historical conditions of existence and demonstration of ethno-confessional differences. Genesis of Protestants in Soviet Ukraine is an example. Referring to the biblical thesis “All authority comes from God”, the Protestants accepted all the slogans of the Soviet power. At their congresses, they even approved a military service. Afterwards the atheistic experiment in the Ukrainian SSR gained momentum and the representatives of theomachistic authorities resorted to repressions, in the society with a dominant hostile worldview believers tried to use various survival strategies starting with the insistent demands of communities registration ending with sit-in strikes and emigration attempts to “any non-socialist country”. The Christians came to the conclusion that power from God also serves a good cause. The Protestants in modern Ukraine entered a political life slowly. Evangelical Christians most clearly demonstrate solidarity with public sentiments (participation in the Orange Revolution, the Revolution of Dignity, chaplaincy service). In the modern Protestant milieu, a blind submission to any authority is questioned therefore changes are made to pacifist sentiments and prerequisites for the formation of socio-political theology arise. Of particular values are the categories of truth, freedom and responsibility (which is the manifestation of ethno-confessional differences), and non-cult services are organized in compliance with orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

Unlike histories emphasizing conflicts between religion and technology, this article brings to light a series of religio-technological innovations. It analyzes a dataset of international patents inspired by the practice of Islam, from the first electronic Islamic wristwatch to "The Muslim Xbox." Starting in the 1970s with a few Euro-Muslim inventions, incremental innovations addressing the "needs" of devout Muslims grew exponentially over the course of three decades as inventors from the United States to China aimed to profit from an Islamic revival and emerging "Islamic market." These inventors' devices are described here as "prescriptive machines," arguably designed not for religious flexibility but rather as disciplining mechanisms to train imagined Muslim consumers to conform to a version of orthopraxy. The article ends with an appendix explaining the methodology of researching massive international and multilingual digital databases to establish the dataset of ostensibly "Islamic" patents.

Using the latest European Social Survey (ESS) data, the authors of the study examined the current religious composition of Serbia, and compared the empirical data obtained in Serbia with the ones acquired in other religiously homogeneous European societies. In the first part of the study, the data obtained in the ESS research in 2018 were observed in light of the historical continuum of religion development in Serbia since the First World War. In the second part of the study, the authors applied Grace Davie’s model and a comparative model to compare Serbia with nine religiously homogeneous societies where the ESS research had also been conducted in 2018. This structure of the paper accomplishes a double objective and scientific contribution. On the one hand, an insight into the current state of religiosity in Serbia is obtained, and on the other hand, a theoretical framework previously used for Western-European societies is applied to Orthodox countries (including Serbia). The authors suggest the following main hypotheses: the stabilisation of religious composition is currently underway; there is a discrepancy between religious and denominational declaration and religious practices; and the theoretical framework defined by Davie can be applied in the case of Serbia.

Religious diversity is a possible feature of any human society. Even in a religious homogenous society, there are factions and sects within a particular religion. The diversity in religious conviction gives rise to a lot of options based on religious inclination. The society in which the religion is practiced need to be at peace for the religion to thrive and be propagated hence, dialogue is necessary as to see how the orthodoxy and orthopraxy can lead to peaceful co-existence as they define the societal norms and values. It is in this respect that this paper examines the issues of dynamism of religious dialogue or inter-faith meeting in the light of growth of Christianity in Nigeria, being a multi-faith, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society Using the historical and phenomenological perspectives, the paper found out that since the 19thcentury inter-religious dialogue have been in progress and will need to continue. The foundation for religious dialogue and peaceful co-existence was laid by Chief Shodeke on December 5 1842 in Abeokuta when the three contending religious leaders - Islam, traditional religion and Christianity were invited to explain their philosophies. It was discovered that inter-religious dialogue melts the walls of in-difference and enhances understanding of the religious world view. We therefore conclude that inter-faith dialogue which offers opportunity for understanding and respect of non-Christian neighbours should be sustained for the acceptance and growth of Christianity in Nigeria. Key words: Dynamism, dialogue, ecumenical, inter-faith, growth.

Racial reconciliation, far from being about civil conversation, requires whites to listen to the painful truths blacks have to tell about race in the United States. James Cone’s critique of the white church is held up as a truth that the white community must embrace even if it has substantial objections to the rest of Cone’s theology. Reconciliation means listening to the kind of hard truths Cone has to offer.

This article focuses on religious pedagogies as an essential part of the practice and the making of modern religion. It takes the case of the Syrian Orthodox communities in Kerala, South India to examine how shifts in pedagogical models and practice have reframed their understanding of knowledge and God. The paper highlights two moments of transformation—the nineteenth-century missionary reforms and twenty-first-century Sunday school reforms—that brought “old” and “new” pedagogies into conflict, redefining the modes of knowing and religious subjectivities they presuppose. For this I draw from historical and pedagogical materials, and ethnographic fieldwork in churches and Sunday schools. The paper diverges from widespread narratives on the missionary encounter by showing how colonial efforts to replace ritual pedagogies with modern schooling were channeled into a textbook culture that remained close to Orthodox ritualism. The “new” pedagogy turned learning into a ritualized practice that continued to emphasize correct performance over interiorized belief. Contrasting this with todays’ curriculum revisions, I argue that educational reforms remain a privileged mode of infusing new meanings into religious practice and shaping new orthodoxies, especially under the threat of heterodoxy. This reflects a broader dynamic within Orthodox Christianity that takes moments of crisis or change as opportunities to turn orthopraxy into orthodoxy and renew the faith. The paper engages with postcolonial debates on religion, education, and modernity, and points to more pervasive assumptions about what makes Orthodox Christianity and the modes of knowing and ethical formation in Eastern Christianity.

This chapter offers vignettes of Protestant and Catholic communities in Shanghai, to try to give an idea of the strange combination of “isolation” and “outreach” that somehow defines the engagement of Christian churches with society at large in Shanghai and in other parts of China. These churches negotiate, on the one hand, the various local and global church traditions and, on the other hand, the specificity of a Chinese megacity environment, in order to painstakingly and hesitantly fashion a new orthopraxy. The social and spiritual impact of churches ultimately depends on the way Christians staying or entering into them understand and craft their presence and mission.

This paper introduces the term AI Orthopraxy as the correct practice of AI and a framework that aims to unify some aspects associated with AI ethics. These include standards, legal, and measures of fairness. We draw from existing tools that have been peer-reviewed by academics and discussed in recent literature to provide a mechanism for assessing the level by which a model or AI technology follows the correct practices of ethical AI. This paper describes a preliminary, ongoing, study and shows the early stages of a prototype framework, including a visual representation of the level of AI Orthopraxy of a model using hive plots. This work can potentially help create fair and trustworthy AI built upon the core tenets of accountability, transparency, and fairness. One of the current limitations is that it requires validation of peers that are willing, able, and trained to evaluate an AI model or technology using standards and other novel frameworks.

Major religions maintain adherence to the guiding force of a literary canon in shaping morality and ethical behaviour in the believer. Hinduism's various strains of orthodoxy and orthopraxy create a pluralistic confusion for the casual onlooker attempting to systematize a code of conduct for practising Hindus. Doctrinal beliefs such as samsara, karma, reincarnation, moksha, and practices of various meditations, yogas, or dietary restrictions, are recognizable features of Hinduism in popular culture. However, the variation in religious ideology among believing individuals should be assessed in light of contemporary philosophy and social science. The purpose of this article is to investigate, through qualitative interviews, the contemporary negotiation of religious beliefs and practices in two Hindu communities in order to provide a context to a dialogue of what it means to be Hindu in the United States.

Reading the book under review has truly taken me down memory lane. Some 20 years ago I encountered the academic study of Islam primarily through reading the books of Professor Fazlur Rahman (including the ‘Serbo-Croatian’ translation of his book Islam) all of which left a deep and indelible impression on me both as a Muslim and as an aspiring academic. In that sense I wish I had myself authored this or a similar book. Generally speaking, Ahmed appraises and frames the theological thinking of Rahman from the perspective of considering him a significant contributor to the “Islamic theology of modernity” (jadid ‘ilm al-kalam) in the tradition of Muhammad Iqbal, the famous twentieth-century phi- losopher of the Subcontinent (xiv-xv). Rightfully so, this reviewer would add! The main aim the author sets himself in the book is to “scrutinise” Rahman’s contribution to traditional kalam, theology proper (ilāhiyāt), and prophecy (nubuwwat) but with an eye on assessing the implications Rahman’s theological thought has on “modernization and reformation of ‘ilm ul kalam” (xv). Methodologically, Ahmed considers his approach as falling in line with “the constructivist method” associated with Albert Hou- rani’s Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1967), “wherein the emphasis is placed on the importance of locating ideas within their unique intellectual context” and maximum attention is awarded to the influences, personality traits and circumstances that have had a bearing on the intellectual under analysis (xvi). The book under review consists of an introduction and four chapters. The first chapter is a biographical overview of Rahman’s life and his major works. It also helpfully positions Rahman’s ideas in the context of his two major interlocutory traditions, namely, what the author of the book terms (perhaps problematically) as Orientalism and Islamic orthodoxy. Finally, the chapter provides an outline of the intellectual “sources” of Rahman’s Islamic thought (Qur’an, Sunna, ijmā‘, and ijtihād) with special attention given to how his approach to these sources plays out in relation to major issues in Islamic intellectual history including the conceptual, epistemolog- ical, and hermeneutical relationship between the concepts of hadith and Sunna and his position on the issue of the closing of the gates of ijtihād. Drawing upon Rahman’s work Revival and Reform and Islam and Modernity in particular, Ahmed in the second chapter examines Rahman’s thinking on the issues pertaining to the emergence and the development of Islamic theology (kalām) and the major debates that have animated them (e.g., islām and īmān; qadar and jabr, irjā’, al-ḥusn wa-l-qubh) and the role of the major theological groups and scholars in the development of Sunni theology during the formative and post-formative stages of kalām and up to the modern period. Here Ahmed argues that Rahman’s analytical method is to seek “a synthesis between Modern Orientalist methodology and the history of kalam literature” (71), which is also evident in other aspects of Rahman’s Islamic thought—especially in his views on the nature and scope of the concept of Sunna and its relationship with the hadith literature. Chapter three, titled “Concept of God,” is dedicated to Rahman’s con- ceptualization of what constitutes an Islamic worldview and the necessary approach for arriving at it. Ahmed argues that Rahman’s thematic and con- textualist approach to the Qur’an and his dynamic concept of Sunna are the only sources he considers as normative in formulating such a worldview. In this respect Ahmed paints a picture of Rahman’s theology as having af- finities with ideas underpinning liberation theology, with its emphasis on orthopraxy, God’s concern for the poor and the marginalized, and the cre- ation of a just (socio-economic) order. As such, Rahman’s Qur’anic worl- dview, for Ahmed, points to the essentially ethical nature of the Islamic message. I fully concur with this assessment. The chapter also positions Rahman’s thought on the concept of God in relation to major ideas de- veloped by Islamic philosopher-jurists and mystics (Sufis). Ahmed, in this respect, argues that some of Rahman’s ideas were influenced by those of Ibn Sina (on whom he wrote his doctoral dissertation) but that in essence Rahman’s concept of God was different from that of both the Islamic phi- losopher-jurists and Sufis. For Rahman, in Ahmed’s view, the concept of God was that of “a God of creativity” (158). In the final chapter, Rahman’s theory of prophethood takes front stage. Ahmed argues that the roots of Rahman’s theory of prophethood are to be found in the thinking of Ibn Sina, with important modifications and addi- tions rendering theology on equal footing with philosophy (218). Ahmed also describes Rahman’s thinking on related issues such as historical de- bates on the doctrine of miracles and prophetic infallibility. The book importantly brings into discussion in one volume all of the main topics that Rahman wrote on during the course of his life, and provides an informed discussion of Rahman’s thinking as well as the major influences on his thought. Moreover, the author has also more or less successfully con- textualized Rahman’s thinking both in relation to Islamic intellectual histo- ry and the context in which Rahman himself wrote and worked (though as with all other books of this nature and scope, I am sure that specialists may take issue with how Ahmed interprets Rahman’s views). However, in this respect, the reviewer considers that no justice was done to the reception of Rahman’s ideas in the writings of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars who engaged with his ideas from the 1990s through the present. For example, one could mention the ideas of Abdullah Saeed (e.g., Reading the Qur’an in the Twenty-First Century, 2014) on contextualizing the Qur’an, inspired by Rahman’s work on the interpretation of Qur’anic ethico-legal injunctions; that of Amina Wadud (The Qur’an and Woman, 1999) and Asma Barlas (Believing Women in Islam, 2002) on producing gender-egalitarian inter- pretations that are rooted in Rahman’s double movement theory; some of my ideas on the nature and the scope of the concept of Sunna (“The Relative Status of Hadith and Sunna,” 2014) that build further on those of Rahman; and the work of other twenty-first century progressive Muslim scholars like Ebrahim Moosa and Muqtedar Khan. This of course could fill another full book but at least warranted mention here. I hope the author will consider writing a separate volume on this topic. The writing style is, at times, awkward, in part due to the book’s pri- marily descriptive orientation, for the author is often referring to the ideas of others discussed by Rahman in his own work (so that the voices of dif- ferent authors are sometimes confused). Occasional typos are present too. I would recommend this book to all those interested in Islamic intellectual history at less advanced levels and of course those who are keen to get a broad overview of the theological thinking of one of the most important Muslim academics and intellectuals of the twentieth century. However, I would still recommend a direct engagement with Rahman’s works. Adis Duderija, PhDLecturer, Study of Islam and SocietyGriffith University