Sectarianism has become more prominent as a dangerous problem among Muslims again in the contemporary period, dating back to the Iranian revolution, and in the new millennium since the invasion of Iraq, and then the uprising in Syria leading to a civil war which has been characterised along sectarian lines. Before delving deeper into ideological … Continue reading Muslims, Islam and the Question of Sectarianism
Islam
Muslims, Islam and Liberal Democracy
This hegemony of the superiority and universality of democracy has underlain much of the approach to analysing the politics of Islamic individuals and groups across the Middle East and general Muslim world. ... This assumption is standard fare, with undergraduate books on comparative politics dividing governments into “democratic” on the one hand, with various models and shades, and anything completely outside the democratic category generally considered “authoritarian”. The promotion of democracy is considered to be an explicit objective of the West, and it could be argued that for any political discussion to be taken seriously requires the adoption of the slogans that aspire towards democracy and freedom. Alternatively it could be argued that the adoption of such slogans, whether by the general Muslim population or Islamic movements, obscures what is really being said by all sides involved.
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Betrayal of the Inheritance – Contemporary Muslim Scholars and the Jurisprudence of Capitulation
Numerous well known scholars have become interlocutors for the current regimes across the Middle East and Muslim countries, forsaking leadership of the oppressed in the name of a wisdom they claim monopoly over, promoting a perversion of normative Islamic thought under the guise of a traditional Islam that they have ceased to represent, if they ever did.