Toward New Democratic Imaginaries - İstanbul Seminars on Islam, Culture and Politics
Toward New Democratic Imaginaries - İstanbul Seminars on Islam, Culture and Politics

Author: Seyla Benhabib

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-09-23

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 3319418211

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This volume combines rigorous empirical and theoretical analyses with political engagement to look beyond reductive short-hands that ignore the historical evolution and varieties of Islamic doctrine and that deny the complexities of Muslim societies' encounters with modernity itself. Are Islam and democracy compatible? Can we shed the language of 'Islam vs. the West' for new political imaginaries? The authors analyze struggles over political legitimacy since the Arab Spring and the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS in their historical and political complexity across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Distinguishing multiculturalism from interculturalism and understanding multiple modernities, philosophers in the volume tease out the complexities of civilizational encounters. The volume also shows how the Paris massacres or the Danish caricature controversy do not remain confined to Europe but influence struggles and confrontations within Muslim societies. Gender and Islam are addressed from a comparative perspective bringing into conversation not only the experience of different Muslim countries with Islamic law but also by analysing Jewish family law.

Identity and the Difficulty of Emancipation
Identity and the Difficulty of Emancipation

Author: Volker Kaul

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 3030523756

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This book provides a comprehensive account of the phenomenon of identity in politics, featuring for the first time the question of individual emancipation. It addresses the burning questions of our times, viz. nationalism, populism, Islamic fundamentalism, multiculturalism, postsecularism and postcolonialism. The volume repudiates an easy reconciliation between identity and emancipation, such as it occurs in contemporary liberal and multicultural political theories. It shows that we cannot achieve emancipation without Kant’s help, whereas identity relentlessly draws us back to collective values and the community. The book urges for a new understanding of identity and a politics that instead of accommodating identities seeks to govern them. Identity is the buzzword in the humanities and social sciences, but also the most contentious and least conceptualized term. This book intends to bring theoretical clarity into the debate on how identity plays out in politics.

The Caliphate of Man
The Caliphate of Man

Author: Andrew F. March

Publisher: Belknap Press

Published: 2019-09-17

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0674987837

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A political theorist teases out the century-old ideological transformation at the heart of contemporary discourse in Muslim nations undergoing political change. The Arab Spring precipitated a crisis in political Islam. In Egypt Islamists have been crushed. In Turkey they have descended into authoritarianism. In Tunisia they govern but without the label of “political Islam.” Andrew March explores how, before this crisis, Islamists developed a unique theory of popular sovereignty, one that promised to determine the future of democracy in the Middle East. This began with the claim of divine sovereignty, the demand to restore the sharīʿa in modern societies. But prominent theorists of political Islam also advanced another principle, the Quranic notion that God’s authority on earth rests not with sultans or with scholars’ interpretation of written law but with the entirety of the Muslim people, the umma. Drawing on this argument, utopian theorists such as Abū’l-Aʿlā Mawdūdī and Sayyid Quṭb released into the intellectual bloodstream the doctrine of the caliphate of man: while God is sovereign, He has appointed the multitude of believers as His vicegerent. The Caliphate of Man argues that the doctrine of the universal human caliphate underpins a specific democratic theory, a kind of Islamic republic of virtue in which the people have authority over the government and religious leaders. But is this an ideal regime destined to survive only as theory?

The Transition of Religion to Culture in Law and Public Discourse
The Transition of Religion to Culture in Law and Public Discourse

Author: Lori Beaman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-27

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1000050556

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This book explores the recent trend toward the transformation of religious symbols and practices into culture in Western democracies. Analyses of three legal cases involving religion in the public sphere are used to illuminate this trend: a municipal council chamber; a town hall; and town board meetings. Each case involves a different national context—Canada, France and the United States—and each illustrates something interesting about the shape-shifting nature of religion, specifically its flexibility and dexterity in the face of the secular, the religious and the plural. Despite the differences in national contexts, in each instance religion is transformed into culture or heritage by the courts to justify or excuse its presence and to distance the state from the possibility that it is violating legal norms of distance from religion. The cultural practice or symbol is represented as a shared national value or activity. Transforming the ‘Other’ into ‘Us’ through reconstitution is also possible. Finally, anxiety about the ‘Other’ becomes part of the story of rendering religion as culture, resulting in the impugning of anyone who dares to question the putative shared culture. The book will be essential reading for students, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of sociology of religion, religious studies, socio-legal studies, law and public policy, constitutional law, religion and politics, and cultural studies.

Minorities and Populism – Critical Perspectives from South Asia and Europe
Minorities and Populism – Critical Perspectives from South Asia and Europe

Author: Volker Kaul

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-02-28

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 3030340988

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This volume assembles renowned scholars to address, for the first time, the relationship between minorities and populism in South Asia and Europe from a critical perspective. Despite the very different and to some extent opposite historical and political trajectories, there is today a convergence on nationalist affirmation and on majoritarian politics between South Asia and Europe. In India, the Hindu majority rebels against wide-ranging minority rights anchored in the Constitution. In Europe, the refugee crisis and Islamic radicalization bring to the forefront the postcolonial legacy. Despite all rhetoric, there are obvious dangers of majoritarianism. Populist parties are divisive, partisan, disregard minority rights, engage in lynching, social division, stigmatization and exclusion, turning minorities into second-class citizens. There is a profound structural connection between minorities and the current rise of populism in India and Europe. But there remains a deep perplexity and also anxiety: Does the presence of minorities necessarily have to trigger majoritarian policies? Are there no solutions to this dilemma? Many observers considered multicultural policies and affirmative action programs in India as a possible model for Europe to adopt in order to achieve greater integration. But eventually they seem to have failed. Why so? Are multiculturalism and the recognition of differences still options today? On the other hand, most scholars in India typically reject the European model of liberal democracy and secularism as impracticable in India and locate the reason for the current malaise in the west. But is liberal democracy really so bad in dealing with pluralism? This volume, collecting a selection of the Reset DOC Venice-Padua-Delhi dialogue series, is going to answer two fundamental questions. First, what precisely is the nexus between minorities and populism in South Asia and Europe? Starting from those case studies, the authors will also draw some general theoretical inferences about the nature of populism. Secondly, given the dangers of populism for minorities, the volume will look for the most adequate and feasible solutions.

Islam in der Moderne, Moderne im Islam
Islam in der Moderne, Moderne im Islam

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-04-10

Total Pages: 627

ISBN-13: 9004364048

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This Festschrift brings together a range of scholars who congratulate Reinhard Schulze on the occasion of his 65th birthday, by shedding light and reflecting on the relation between Islam and modernity. Scholars from the fields of Islamic studies, religious studies, sociology and Arabic literature connect in various ways to Reinhard Schulze’s work to constructively criticize a Eurocentric understanding of modernity. The more specific aspects dealt with under the overarching topic of Islam and modernity make for the four thematic sections of this volume: the study of religion, Islam, and Islamic studies; Islamic knowledge cultures and normativity; language and literature as media of modernity; Islam and Islamic studies in the public sphere. Die Beitragenden zu dieser Festschrift gratulieren Reinhard Schulze zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, indem sie mit der Beziehung zwischen Islam und Moderne ein Lebensthema des Jubilars beleuchten. Vertretende der Islamwissenschaft, Religionswissenschaft, Soziologie und der arabischen Literaturwissenschaft beziehen sich in verschiedener Hinsicht auf Reinhard Schulzes Werk, um ein eurozentrisches Verständnis von Moderne konstruktiv zu kritisieren. Die unter dem Oberthema Islam und Moderne näher behandelten Aspekte sind aus den vier thematischen Sektionen des Bandes ersichtlich: Islam(wissenschaft), Religion und der Eigensinn der Moderne; islamische Wissenskulturen und Normativität; Sprache und Literatur als Medien der Moderne; Islam(wissenschaft) in der Öffentlichkeit. Contributors are: Mona Abaza, Hüseyin Ağuiçenoğlu, Aziz al-Azmeh, Katajun Amirpur, Monica Corrado, Ahmad Dallal, Peter Dové, Susanne Enderwitz, Anne Grüne, Stephan Guth, Kai Hafez, Albrecht Hofheinz, Michael Kemper, Hans G. Kippenberg, Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz, Felix Konrad, Gudrun Krämer, Volkhard Krech, Anke von Kügelgen, Jamal Malik, Jürgen Paul, Frank Peter, Stefan Reichmuth, Armando Salvatore, Johannes Stephan, Anna Trechsel, Yves Wegelin, Florian Zemmin.

Public Policy Making in Turkey
Public Policy Making in Turkey

Author: Fatih Demir

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-03-26

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 3030687155

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This volume discusses public policy making in Turkey. Using Turkey as an overarching case study, the author presents foundational concepts of public policy analysis. The method followed in the book is from general to specific: in each chapter, the relevant public policy stage or concept is explained and discussions from international literature are provided first. Then, Turkish cases are presented and clarified using theoretical concepts and debates. Additional examples from other municipalities are included for a comparative perspective. This volume will be of use to researchers and students studying public policy, policy analysis, and global public administration as well as professionals, policymakers, and diplomats working in the Turkish public sector.

Exile, Statelessness, and Migration
Exile, Statelessness, and Migration

Author: Seyla Benhabib

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2018-09-11

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0691167257

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An examination of the intertwined lives and writings of a group of prominent twentieth-century Jewish thinkers who experienced exile and migration Exile, Statelessness, and Migration explores the intertwined lives, careers, and writings of a group of prominent Jewish intellectuals during the mid-twentieth century—in particular, Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Hirschman, and Judith Shklar, as well as Hans Kelsen, Emmanuel Levinas, Gershom Scholem, and Leo Strauss. Informed by their Jewish identity and experiences of being outsiders, these thinkers produced one of the most brilliant and effervescent intellectual movements of modernity. Political philosopher Seyla Benhabib’s starting point is that these thinkers faced migration, statelessness, and exile because of their Jewish origins, even if they did not take positions on specifically Jewish issues personally. The sense of belonging and not belonging, of being “eternally half-other,” led them to confront essential questions: What does it mean for the individual to be an equal citizen and to wish to retain one’s ethnic, cultural, and religious differences, or perhaps even to rid oneself of these differences altogether in modernity? Benhabib isolates four themes in their works: dilemmas of belonging and difference; exile, political voice, and loyalty; legality and legitimacy; and pluralism and the problem of judgment. Surveying the work of influential intellectuals, Exile, Statelessness, and Migration recovers the valuable plurality of their Jewish voices and develops their universal insights in the face of the crises of this new century.

Public Management Reform in Turkey
Public Management Reform in Turkey

Author: Fatih Demir

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-02-24

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 3030416488

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This book discusses the Europeanization of Turkish public administration since the early 2000s, offering an analysis of the transformation and basic features and problems of Turkish public administration in relation to the EU accession process. The book consists of six chapters and a conclusion. The first chapter sets the stage by evaluating the public administration reforms in Turkey from the perspective of Europeanization and the European Administrative Space (EAS). The second chapter discusses the administrative procedures based on the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, and explains the EU’s relationship with accountable government and democracy. The third and fourth chapters examine the steps taken to improve civic participation in decision-making processes, and assess local governance reforms in Turkey with reference to Europeanization processes and the “policy windows” approach developed by Kingdon. The next chapter addresses regionalization in Europe and its parallels in Turkey, especially in the context of the foundation of regional development agencies. Lastly, the book presents the reactions to the fragmentation of government envisaged by New Public Management (NPM) reforms and describes practices beyond fashioning an integrated administration. It also explores the transformation of the executive organ in terms of its change in status, in relation to other centers of political power. The conclusion provides an overview of the apparent oscillation of Turkish public administration in the 21st century, in terms of Europeanization processes. This book is useful for academics studying public administration, public management reforms, Turkish politics, and the European Union, as well as government and diplomatic professionals in Turkey and the EU, especially those dealing with enlargement issues.