From Caliphate to Secular State

From Caliphate to Secular State PDF Author: Hakan Özoglu
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313379572
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This insightful analysis looks at the power struggles of 1920–1926, a time during which the Ottoman Empire was replaced by a secular and modernist Turkish nationalist regime. Covering a short but eventful period in Ottoman/Turkish history From Caliphate to Secular State: Power Struggle in the Early Turkish Republic focuses on three major political and judicial maneuvers to demonstrate how opposition to and within the emerging Turkish regime was addressed during those pivotal years, and how the resulting power struggle contributed to the form of the new state that arose. The analysis begins in 1918 when the Ottoman Empire, having lost World War I, was waiting for its fate to be determined by the Allied Powers. The book examines the original intentions and vision of Mustafa Kemal (later known as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk), as well as the effects of the Kurdish uprising in 1925, which helped the new regime silence its critics. The ongoing power struggles and their consequences are examined through 1927, after which the new regime quashed any and all opposition, enabling the new Turkish Republic to emerge as a staunchly secular, modernizing Western state.

From Caliphate to Secular State

From Caliphate to Secular State PDF Author: Hakan Özoglu
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313379572
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This insightful analysis looks at the power struggles of 1920–1926, a time during which the Ottoman Empire was replaced by a secular and modernist Turkish nationalist regime. Covering a short but eventful period in Ottoman/Turkish history From Caliphate to Secular State: Power Struggle in the Early Turkish Republic focuses on three major political and judicial maneuvers to demonstrate how opposition to and within the emerging Turkish regime was addressed during those pivotal years, and how the resulting power struggle contributed to the form of the new state that arose. The analysis begins in 1918 when the Ottoman Empire, having lost World War I, was waiting for its fate to be determined by the Allied Powers. The book examines the original intentions and vision of Mustafa Kemal (later known as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk), as well as the effects of the Kurdish uprising in 1925, which helped the new regime silence its critics. The ongoing power struggles and their consequences are examined through 1927, after which the new regime quashed any and all opposition, enabling the new Turkish Republic to emerge as a staunchly secular, modernizing Western state.

The Caliphate of Man

The Caliphate of Man PDF Author: Andrew F. March
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674987837
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
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?

Islam and the Secular State

Islam and the Secular State PDF Author: Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674261445
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this ambitious and topical book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies. An-Na‘im argues that the coercive enforcement of Shari‘a by the state betrays the Qur’an’s insistence on voluntary acceptance of Islam. Just as the state should be secure from the misuse of religious authority, Shari‘a should be freed from the control of the state. State policies or legislation must be based on civic reasons accessible to citizens of all religions. Showing that throughout the history of Islam, Islam and the state have normally been separate, An-Na‘im maintains that ideas of human rights and citizenship are more consistent with Islamic principles than with claims of a supposedly Islamic state to enforce Shari‘a. In fact, he suggests, the very idea of an “Islamic state” is based on European ideas of state and law, and not Shari‘a or the Islamic tradition. Bold, pragmatic, and deeply rooted in Islamic history and theology, Islam and the Secular State offers a workable future for the place of Shari‘a in Muslim societies.

Recalling the Caliphate

Recalling the Caliphate PDF Author: S. Sayyid
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
ISBN: 178738876X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
As late as the last quarter of the twentieth century, there were expectations that Islam’s political and cultural influence would dissipate as the advance of westernization brought modernisation and secularisation in its wake. Not only has Islam failed to follow the trajectory pursued by variants of Christianity, namely confinement to the private sphere and depoliticisation, but it has also forcefully re-asserted itself as mobilisations in its name challenge the global order in a series of geopolitical, cultural and philosophical struggles. The continuing (if not growing) relevance of Islam suggests that global history cannot simply be presented as a scaled up version of that of the West. Quests for Muslim autonomy present themselves in several forms — local and global, extremist and moderate, conservative and revisionist — in the light of which the recycling of conventional narratives about Islam becomes increasingly problematic. Not only are these accounts inadequate for understanding Muslim experiences, but by relying on them many Western governments pursue policies that are counter-productive and ultimately hazardous for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Recalling the Caliphate engages critically with the interaction between Islam and the political in context of a post colonial world that continues to resist profound decolonisation. In the first part of this book, Sayyid focuses on how demands for Muslim autonomy are debated in terms such as democracy, cultural relativism, secularism, and liberalism. Each chapter analyses the displacements and evasions by which the decolonisation of the Muslim world continues to be deflected and deferred, while the latter part of the book builds on this critique and attempts to accelerate the decolonisation of the Muslim Ummah.

The Decline of the Ottoman Empire and the Rise of the Turkish Republic

The Decline of the Ottoman Empire and the Rise of the Turkish Republic PDF Author: Hakan Özoğlu
Publisher: EUP
ISBN: 9781474480376
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Immediately after World War I, Rear Admiral Mark L. Bristol was US High Commissioner in the Ottoman Empire and later the Turkish Republic (1919-27). Hakan Özoğlu examines Bristol's official correspondence to the State Department, painting an alternative picture of Turkey and the transition period from empire to nation state.

Coping with Defeat

Coping with Defeat PDF Author: Jonathan Laurence
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691219788
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 606

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Book Description
The surprising similarities in the rise and fall of the Sunni Islamic and Roman Catholic empires in the face of the modern state Coping with Defeat presents a historical panorama of the Islamic and Catholic political-religious empires and exposes striking parallels in their relationship with the modern state. Drawing on interviews, site visits, and archival research in Turkey, North Africa, and Western Europe, Jonathan Laurence demonstrates how, over hundreds of years, both Sunni and Catholic authorities experienced three major shocks and displacements—religious reformation, the rise of the nation-state, and mass migration. As a result, Catholic institutions eventually accepted the state’s political jurisdiction and embraced transnational spiritual leadership as their central mission. Laurence reveals an analogous process unfolding across the Sunni Muslim world in the twenty-first century. Identifying institutional patterns before and after political collapse, Laurence shows how centralized religious communities relinquish power at different rates and times. Whereas early Christianity and Islam were characterized by missionary expansion, religious institutions forged in the modern era are primarily defensive in nature. They respond to the simple but overlooked imperative to adapt to political defeat while fighting off ideological challenges to their spiritual authority. Among Laurence’s findings is that the disestablishment of Islam—the doing away with Islamic affairs ministries in the Muslim world—would harm, not help with, reconciliation to the rule of law. Examining upheavals in geography, politics, and demography, Coping with Defeat considers how centralized religions make peace with the loss of prestige.

Religious Difference in a Secular Age

Religious Difference in a Secular Age PDF Author: Saba Mahmood
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691153280
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
How secular governance in the Middle East is making life worse—not better—for religious minorities The plight of religious minorities in the Middle East is often attributed to the failure of secularism to take root in the region. Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges this assessment by examining four cornerstones of secularism—political and civil equality, minority rights, religious freedom, and the legal separation of private and public domains. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Egypt with Coptic Orthodox Christians and Bahais—religious minorities in a predominantly Muslim country—Saba Mahmood shows how modern secular governance has exacerbated religious tensions and inequalities rather than reduced them. Tracing the historical career of secular legal concepts in the colonial and postcolonial Middle East, she explores how contradictions at the very heart of political secularism have aggravated and amplified existing forms of Islamic hierarchy, bringing minority relations in Egypt to a new historical impasse. Through a close examination of Egyptian court cases and constitutional debates about minority rights, conflicts around family law, and controversies over freedom of expression, Mahmood invites us to reflect on the entwined histories of secularism in the Middle East and Europe. A provocative work of scholarship, Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges us to rethink the promise and limits of the secular ideal of religious equality.

The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State

The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State PDF Author: Noah Feldman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400824079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Perhaps no other Western writer has more deeply probed the bitter struggle in the Muslim world between the forces of religion and law and those of violence and lawlessness as Noah Feldman. His scholarship has defined the stakes in the Middle East today. Now, in this incisive book, Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the shari'a--the law of the traditional Islamic state--in the modern Muslim world. Western powers call it a threat to democracy. Islamist movements are winning elections on it. Terrorists use it to justify their crimes. What, then, is the shari'a? Given the severity of some of its provisions, why is it popular among Muslims? Can the Islamic state succeed--should it? Feldman reveals how the classical Islamic constitution governed through and was legitimated by law. He shows how executive power was balanced by the scholars who interpreted and administered the shari'a, and how this balance of power was finally destroyed by the tragically incomplete reforms of the modern era. The result has been the unchecked executive dominance that now distorts politics in so many Muslim states. Feldman argues that a modern Islamic state could provide political and legal justice to today's Muslims, but only if new institutions emerge that restore this constitutional balance of power. The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State gives us the sweeping history of the traditional Islamic constitution--its noble beginnings, its downfall, and the renewed promise it could hold for Muslims and Westerners alike.

The Impossible State

The Impossible State PDF Author: Wael B. Hallaq
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231530862
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Wael B. Hallaq boldly argues that the "Islamic state," judged by any standard definition of what the modern state represents, is both impossible and inherently self-contradictory. Comparing the legal, political, moral, and constitutional histories of premodern Islam and Euro-America, he finds the adoption and practice of the modern state to be highly problematic for modern Muslims. He also critiques more expansively modernity's moral predicament, which renders impossible any project resting solely on ethical foundations. The modern state not only suffers from serious legal, political, and constitutional issues, Hallaq argues, but also, by its very nature, fashions a subject inconsistent with what it means to be, or to live as, a Muslim. By Islamic standards, the state's technologies of the self are severely lacking in moral substance, and today's Islamic state, as Hallaq shows, has done little to advance an acceptable form of genuine Shari'a governance. The Islamists' constitutional battles in Egypt and Pakistan, the Islamic legal and political failures of the Iranian Revolution, and similar disappointments underscore this fact. Nevertheless, the state remains the favored template of the Islamists and the ulama (Muslim clergymen). Providing Muslims with a path toward realizing the good life, Hallaq turns to the rich moral resources of Islamic history. Along the way, he proves political and other "crises of Islam" are not unique to the Islamic world nor to the Muslim religion. These crises are integral to the modern condition of both East and West, and by acknowledging these parallels, Muslims can engage more productively with their Western counterparts.

From Religious Empires to Secular States

From Religious Empires to Secular States PDF Author: Birol Başkan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317802039
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
In the 1920s and the 1930s, Turkey, Iran and Russia vehemently pursued state-secularizing reforms, but adopted different strategies in doing so. But why do states follow different secularizing strategies? The literature has already shattered the illusion that secularization of the state has been a unilinear, homogeneous and universal process, and has convincingly shown that secularization of the state has unfolded along different paths. Much, however, remains to be uncovered. This book provides an in-depth comparative historical analysis of state secularization in three major Eurasian countries: Turkey, Iran and Russia. To capture the aforementioned variation in state secularization across three countries that have been hitherto analyzed as separate studies, Birol Başkan adopts three modes of state secularization: accommodationism, separationism and eradicationism. Focusing thematically on the changing relations between the state and religious institutions, Başkan brings together a host of factors, historical, strategic and structural, to account for why Turkey adopted accommodationism, Iran separationism and Russia eradicationism. In doing so, he expertly demonstrates that each secularization strategy was a rational response to the strategic context the reformers found themselves in.