A violence against women in Afghanistan after Taliban occupation – outline of the issue

Author(s): Katarzyna Sadowa / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2015

This publication deals with the current legal and social situation of women in Afghanistan. The author analyzes the process of formation of the legal position of Afghan women from the moment of the country’s liberation from under the Taliban occupation in 2001. She concentrates on indicating relevant legal regulations and guarantees, as well as – primarily – analyzes the degree of respecting them. Consequently, she discusses selected forms of violence against women which is persistently present on the territory of Afghanistan. The author elaborates on specific cultural phenomena and acts against fundamental women’s rights, such as baad, baadal, the so-called “honor” killings, and punishing women for running away. These points lead to the conclusion that the enacted laws are merely an empty shell and women’s situation is far from stable.

Access to Media for European Muslims

Author(s): Isabelle Rigoni / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Despite its rank as the second-largest religion in several European countries, Islam is facing severe resistance at both state and societal level. Certain conservative political and media discourses associate Islam with violence and fanaticism. For most Muslims, however, their religion is associated with notions of justice and democracy. The conflict between these two conceptualisations of Islam has reinforced defensive attitudes on both sides. While Muslim stereotypes have increased since 9/11, so have the voices in favour of civil liberties for Muslims in Europe. As is argued here, ethnic media (i.e. Muslim media) are playing a major role on both sides of the debate. These questions are of common concern to many EU member states and associated states and European institutions. They are based on three assumptions. Firstly, new information and communication technology (ICT) has reshaped the media scene, which is now accessible to increasing numbers of people, including exchanges between European countries and third countries. Secondly, the transnational mobilisations are increasingly influenced by ICT, which makes it possible for individuals to travel – both virtually and in reality – between several countries. Thirdly, the representation of the minority or marginalised groups, particularly in the case of Muslims, has become one of the key questions of European sociopolitical debate, and at the same time can be seen as a test for European democracy. I would like to propose a historical reading of the representation of Muslims and Islam in the media. It is a question of understanding how media discourse evolved as it did and how and when Muslims are portrayed in the media. Several questions can be raised: How do media technologies influence conditions within both the Muslim community and the mainstream? What are the consequences of national and EU policies for Muslim citizens and their media regarding their social and political inclusion? How do European Muslims aggregate interests in a more effective and efficient way via their own media? Do Muslim media advocate social inclusion or pursue narrow interests?

Aktuelle Verbreitung Sowie Rechtliche und Politisch-Soziale Situationen, Bedingungen und Probleme der Aleviten, Bektaschi und Anderer Heterodox Beeinflusster Sufi-Orden in Südosteuropa

Author(s): Christoph Giesel / Language(s): German / Issue: 15/2017

The Islamic mystic and heterodox groups of the Alevites and Bektashi in Southeast Europe, which are partially characterised by Shiite elements, are idiosyncratic and divergent phenomena that have so far attracted little academic or public attention. They exist in the strongly Sunni environment that characterises Islam in the Balkans and have exerted a partial religious influence on some of the originally Sufi orders that can be found in the region. After the end of Ottoman rule, the Alevites and Bektashi experienced a particularly serious loss of significance and numeric decline. Since the 1990s, modest religious revival processes occurred amongst these groups. These, however, coincided and interacted with dynamic and ambivalent processes of further religious, cultural and socio-political marginalisation and assimilation (and entailed a corresponding loss of knowledge and significance). This paper sketches the contemporary condition of the remaining Alevites and Bektashi in the Southeast European states whilst occasionally mentioning other Sufi orders which are closely related to these groups. It describes and analyses the extraordinarily diverse and complicated legal, political and social situations, conditions and problems which they face in this region.

Ali drugog puta nema

Pluralnost Sarajeva između odgovorne i neodgovorne religioznosti

Author(s): Adnan Silajdžic / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 74-75/2016

Poznato je da Bosna i Hercegovina dugi niz godina prolazi kroz veoma ozbiljan proces društvenoga, političkoga, nacionalnoga i vjerskoga raslojavanja. U tom procesu, između mnogih drugih tema koje se tiču budućeg razvoja bosanskohercegovačkoga društva, pitanje pomirenja i tolerancije, odnosno međureligijskoga dijaloga zauzima najistaknutije mjesto. Zauzima, jer je, prema mom mišljenju, jedan od najvažnijih instrumenata vjerskog i nacionalnog pomirenja autentično poimanje i dosljedno provođenje načela vjerske slobode i tolerancije bez kojih nije moguće graditi niti i jedan drugi oblik tolerancije u našemu društvu. Reafirmiranjem načela tolerancije, kakvog poznaje tradicionalna religijska metafizika (lex aeterna – sveta predanja), stvorile bi se mogućnosti otklanjanja tragičnih posljedica rata i učvršćivanja mira na prostoru Bosne i Hercegovine, pa tako i u njenome glavnome gradu Sarajevu.

Amerika, islam, Europa

Author(s): Drago Jancar / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 21/2016

Postoji razlika između odlučnih izjava europskih političara o potpori Americi i dijela javnog mnjijenja u njihovim državama, neobičan deja vu iz šezdesetih godina prošloga stoljeća. No, ako je onomad Sartre, nakon što su ga pozvali da predaje u SAD-u, uskliknuo ≫protiv Amerike se valja boriti, a ne joj predavati≪, njegov se ljevičarski ideološki antiamerikanizam ipak nekako mogao razumjeti u kontekstu vijetnamskog rata i aktivnih socijalističkih utopija.

Annex: Check-list of topics and questions for interviews & REFERENCES

Author(s): No Author Specified / Language(s): English,Arabic / Publication Year: 0

Around the Bloc: Bulgarian City Bans Islamic Veils

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 05/03/2016

In the same city, 14 Muslims are on trial for extremism and spreading religious hatred.

Around the Bloc: Czech President Ridicules UN Refugee Project

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/02/2016

Project aimed at teaching schoolchildren about refugees is ‘idiotic’ and ‘naive,’ says Milos Zeman, likening it to Bolshevik propaganda.

Around the Bloc: Czech Students Defend Muslim Classmate

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/26/2016

After school principal bombarded with anti-Islam messages, he and students stand behind girl originally from Yemen

Around the Bloc: Orban: Constitution Bans Islamization

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 05/03/2016

Hungary prime minister further burnishes his anti-migrant credentials.

Around the Bloc: Poles Protest Against Abortion Ban

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/05/2016

Government backs Church proposal to tighten restrictions on terminating pregnancy, already among the strictest in Europe.

Around the Bloc: Serbia Takes Lead on Jewish Restitution

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/05/2016

Law providing for return of property whose owners are long dead could set a precedent for former communist countries.

Around the Bloc: Serbian Church Leader Threatens ‘Force’ if Kosovo Joins UN Body

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 11/10/2015

Belgrade fears Pristina would fail to protect Orthodox religious sites if admitted to UNESCO.

Avatarurile ateismului militant

Author(s): Boris Buzila / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 8/2015

Ninety years ago, the propaganda apparatus of the still young „Soviet power” launched a signal meant to radicalize the fight against religion. The opportunity for this was the Congress of militant atheists (S’ezd Voinstvuiuscih bezbojnikov), deliberately and viciously scheduled for the first day of the Passover of 1925. Once the ideology of the militant atheism was launched, it will have a longlasting career in Soviet Russia and the satellite countries, overlapping the period with the worst religious constraints and persecutions of the modern era. The so-called „militant atheism” showed its true colors from its first moment of existence, as an extremist and exterminating one: it was not enough that religion had to be „fought against”, it also had to be rendered non-existent.

AZƏRBAYCANIN ORTA ƏSRLƏR SİYASİ HÜQUQİ FİKRİNDƏ QANUN VƏ QANUNÇULUĞA DAİR İDEYALARA İSLAMIN TƏSİRİ

Author(s): Aqsin Quliyev / Language(s): Azerbaijani / Issue: 12/2011

Fight against religious fanatism has appeared belonging to yourself in definite forms. These has been phrase of the ignorance forms by patriot and humanist thinkers in the scientific photo from opposition of people showing resistance to religious organizations from development without return of the worldly sciences and culture, -Azerbaijan sharp critical.

Basics of religious freedom roger Williams (1604?-1683) and the concept of religious freedom

Author(s): Ciprian Simut / Language(s): English / Issue: 10/2016

The problem of religious freedom can be studied from various perspectives. This kind of freedom can be complete, or limited. Roger Williams proposed complete religious freedom, which would extend to all Christian denominations, but also to non-Christian religions. This happened in a time when such perspectives were inconceivable by the state and the Church. Williams believes that church and state should be separate, but the state has the right to punish any individual or religious group, on the grounds of threatening the civil peace. However, the state has no right to dictate what and in whom must the citizens believe. The focus of the paper is to present the basic ideas of Williams’ concept of religious freedom and to present their relevance today.

BREAKING THE WAVES

HOW THE PHENOMENON OF EUROPEAN JIHADISM MILITATES AGAINST THE WAVE THEORY OF TERRORISM

Author(s): Denys Proshyn / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

David Rapoport’s Wave theory of terrorism is one of the most often cited theories in the literature on terrorist violence. Rapoport is praised for having provided researchers with a universal instrument which allows them to explain the origin and transformation of various historical types of terrorism by applying to them the concept of global waves of terrorist violence driven by universal political impulses. This article, testing the Wave theory against the recent phenomenon of homegrown jihadism in Europe, uncovers this theory’s fundamental weaknesses and questions its real academic and practical value.

CATHOLICISM AND REPUBLICANISM: SHAPING THE REASON OF THE CITIZEN IN EARLY 19TH CENTURY ARGENTINEAN SCHOOLING

Author(s): Ezequiel Gomez Caride / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2016

The goal of the article is to explore what often is placed in opposition—the secular and the theological—in order to interpret their historical intersections in the production of Argentinean citizens. Through a genealogical discourse analysis, I investigate how religious discourses become interrelated and even undistinguishable as a system of reasons that shaped the Argentinean citizen in the early 19th century. In fact, theological patterns of ordering and interpreting human experience shaped to a large degree the conditions, possibilities and limitations of the early Argentinean citizen. In order to analyze how Catholic narratives shaped the Argentinean republican citizen, the article examines Spanish Colonial narratives and republican ones.

Cezaropapizm a rzeczywistość Imperium Romanum IV–V wieku

Author(s): Rafal Marek / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2016

The relationships between the secular authorities and the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the Roman Empire of the discussed epoch do not follow the simple pattern known as “caesaropapism” or other similar models of sovereign’s supremacy over the church hierarchy within the “State church”. The reality was much more complex then, since a new model, known as “symphony” began to develop. The notion of “symphony” should be understood as a kind of close cooperation of both powers within the uniform Christian society. Popes strongly affirmed the primacy of Rome within the church. At that time the theory of Pope Gelasius and the doctrine of St. Augustine played a prominent role. Nevertheless, these ideas were not widely received in the East. Later on, the Gelasian and Augustinian theories begun to be studied and appreciated in the scholastic milieu, where the new model of the relationship between the secular and papal power was developing.

№ 47 - Borba za patrijarhovo nasleđe

Author(s): Editorial Board Helsinki Charter / Language(s): English,Serbian / Publication Year: 2009

The funeral of Patriarch Pavle was more than a burial of a church dignitary. The entire obsequial scenario – including memorial ceremonies – was above all designed to demonstrate national unity and show that the entire Serb nation was mourning as one.