How Islamic Is ISIS?

2021 ◽  
pp. 149-170
Author(s):  
Sohail H. Hashmi
Keyword(s):  
Terrorist Group ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Religious Cult

The emergence of ISIS has again unleashed a debate on how “Islamic” a terrorist group is, with some analysts claiming its ideology is rooted in Islamic sources and history and others denying any connections to Islam. This chapter argues that ISIS should be viewed as a religious cult that has an apparent but slight connection with Islam. Through its ideology and actions, it has placed itself outside the broad mainstream of the Islamic tradition. Analysis of its claims regarding two key concepts, the caliphate and jihad, demonstrates just how extreme its positions are. ISIS claims it is fulfilling a religious mandate by establishing a caliphate, but this institution does not have its origins in the Qur’an or the teachings and practice of the Prophet Muhammad. As for ISIS’s claims on jihad, mainstream Muslim thought rejects ISIS’s expansive list of enemies and the indiscriminate means it uses to fight them.

Traditional Political Thought

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Crone
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One

In terms of political thought, as in so many other respects, Muslims today could be said to be bilingual. On the one hand, they speak the global political language of Western derivation marked by key concepts such as democracy, freedom, human rights, and gender equality. On the other hand, they still have their traditional political idiom, formed over 1,400 years of Islamic history and marked by concepts such as prophecy, imamate, and commanding right and forbidding wrong. The Islamic tradition is alien to most Western readers. This chapter attempts to familiarize them with it to make it easier for them to follow the other entries in this volume. The single most important difference between contemporary Western political thinking and the Islamic tradition is that contemporary thought focuses on freedom and rights whereas the Islamic tradition focuses on authority and duties. This separates contemporary political thought from that of all premodern societies, not just that of the Islamic world.

scholarly journals Introduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-402
Author(s):  
Charles Hirschkind
Keyword(s):  
Special Section ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Embodied Learning ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Learning Contexts ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Religious Lives

Abstract In the lead essay to this special section, Talal Asad explores some of the avenues opened up by Wittgenstein's work for students of religion. Highlighting some of the philosopher's key insights on the life of language, Asad argues that, instead of taking the opposition between belief and practice as a starting point, scholars should attend to the variety of ways language comes to be used in contexts of embodied learning, contexts wherein the abilities and aptitudes germane to religious life are developed and honed. Turning his focus to what Wittgenstein called the “grammar” of such key concepts as conviction, persuasion, and critique, Asad points to some of the ways that our secular understandings of these notions are inadequate for grasping their place within religious lives. In the latter part of the essay, Asad brings a Wittgensteinian perspective to bear on a key debate within the Islamic tradition concerning the “rationality” of divine speech. The article is followed by five commentaries that take up and expand on different themes found in Asad's essay and developed elsewhere in his work.

scholarly journals Epistemological critique of “Islamic reason” in the neomodernist project of Mohammed Arkoun

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-549
Author(s):  
Damir V. Mukhetdinov ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Religious Violence ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Secular Theology ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Traditional Structures

The article deals with analyzing the historical epistemology of “Islamic reason” as it is developed in the works of the French philosopher Mohammed Arkoun. The key concepts comprising the supporting framework of Arkoun’s theory are clarified. Special attention is given to the problem of historical interrelation of religion and violence, the role of “dogmatic enclosure” in legitimizing the religious violence and the “secular theology” as a possible antidote that could preserve the religion from being instrumentalized by different political actors. In Arkoun’s view, one can reach the unthought of Islamic religious tradition by consciously resorting to modern historical-anthropological, linguistic and sociological knowledge. This appeal makes it possible to reveal a special “regime of truth” and the attitude that have accompanied Islamic reason throughout history, and, therefore, to reach new horizons of thought. This whole process may be called criticism of the Islamic mind. According to Arkoun, the “deconstruction” of traditional structures performed in the course of this criticism is not identical with the destruction of the Islamic mind par excellence, but coincides with the emancipation of its content within the framework of the emergent reason, that is, with the demonstration of its inclusive and truly all-human — humanistic — potential. In the conclusion of the article, both the theoretical scientific and practical existential significance of reaching the unthought of Islamic tradition is noted.

Ethnogeriatrics: Development and Application of the Cohort Analysis Tool

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-52
Author(s):  
Melen McBride
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Cohort Analysis ◽  
Analysis Tool ◽  
Speech Language Pathology ◽  
Clinical Tool ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Practice Teaching ◽  
Language Pathology ◽  
Significant Factors

Ethnogeriatrics is an evolving specialty in geriatric care that focuses on the health and aging issues in the context of culture for older adults from diverse ethnic backgrounds. This article is an introduction to ethnogeriatrics for healthcare professionals including speech-language pathologists (SLPs). This article focuses on significant factors that contributed to the development of ethnogeriatrics, definitions of some key concepts in ethnogeriatrics, introduces cohort analysis as a teaching and clinical tool, and presents applications for speech-language pathology with recommendations for use of cohort analysis in practice, teaching, and research activities.

Review of Thinking Feminist: Key Concepts in Women's Studies.

1994 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-329
Author(s):  
Mary Crawford ◽  
Melissa Biber
Keyword(s):  
Women's Studies ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
Key Concepts

Key Concepts and Theory in Social Work

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hodgson ◽  
Lynelle Watts
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Key Concepts

Adam Smith and Rousseau

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
History And Literature ◽  
Edinburgh Review

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith are two of the foremost thinkers of the European Enlightenment, thinkers who made seminal contributions to moral and political philosophy and who shaped some of the key concepts of modern political economy. Among Smith’s first published works was a letter to the Edinburgh Review where he discusses Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Smith continued to engage with Rousseau’s work and to explore many shared themes such as sympathy, political economy, sentiment, and inequality. This collection brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of Adam Smith and Rousseau scholars to provide an exploration of the key shared concerns of these two great thinkers in politics, philosophy, economics, history, and literature.

The Vocabulary of Revelation: Divine Intent and Self-Disclosure in the Qur'an

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-215
Author(s):  
Asma Afsaruddin
Keyword(s):  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Islamic Theology ◽  
Direct Communication ◽  
Written Text ◽  
Arabic Word ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Divine Mercy ◽  
Divine Truth

This article explores how the uniqueness of the Qur'anic revelation has been perceived by primarily Sunnī Muslim commentators through time in the context of four main analytical aspects of revelation: (i) revelation as communication between God and humans that links language to divine truth; (ii) revelation as both oral and written text that points to complementary modes of divine discourse; (iii) revelation as purposeful manifestation of divine mercy and justice; and finally (iv) the idea of revelation as beautiful and inimitable text that invites the human recipient to ponder the aesthetics of divine self-disclosure which becomes reflected in Islamic theology as the doctrine of iʿjāz al-Qurʾān. These aspects are indicated by certain key concepts and terms derived from the Qur'anic vocabulary itself and are discussed in detail in order to illuminate the nature of the Qur'anic revelation—as adumbrated within the Qur'an itself and as elaborated upon by its human exegetes. The Arabic word for the phenomenon of revelation is waḥy and is, strictly speaking, applied to the Qur'an alone. In the Qur'an, the term wahy and its derivatives frequently occur with reference to God and His communication with humankind, although exceptions exist. Tanzīl is another Qur'anic lexeme that refers uniquely to God's direct communication with humanity. In the understanding of a number of influential commentators, both these terms also imply linguistic and rhetorical excellence as a component of divine revelation recognisable in all four of the aspects identified here.

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