Authors:Ulrich Brandenburg First page: 143 Abstract: Source: Volume 58, Issue 2, pp 143 - 172The Russian Muslim Abdürreşid İbrahim (1857-1944) was not only a successful journalist and reform-minded Islamic scholar. He was also a transnational activist who became influential in different local contexts, notably Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan. During his four-month stay in Japan in 1909, he cooperated with Japanese pan-Asianists and helped found the first pan-Asianist society, which focused on building ties between Japan and Asia’s Muslims. Researchers have predominantly regarded İbrahim as a pioneering figure in an emerging anti-Western coalition of pan-Islamists and pan-Asianists, or as a Muslim missionary aspiring to convert Japan to Islam. This article will demonstrate, however, that İbrahim’s pro-Japanese pan-Asianism, as well as his missionary zeal, should both be read as flexible stances in reaction to the expectations of different publics. An ostentatious pan-Asianism and the exaggeration of his missionary success equally served the transnational activist to attract attention and assert his importance in varying local contexts. PubDate: 2018-05-15T00:00:00Z
Authors:Melanie Guénon First page: 173 Abstract: Source: Volume 58, Issue 2, pp 173 - 205This article examines the 2005 Algerian family law regulations concerning paternity and the use of DNA tests in Algerian paternity disputes. Specifically, it analyzes the relation between the methods of establishing and negating paternity recognized in Islamic law and the available genetic technology. On the basis of three judgments of the Supreme Court, the present legislation as well as legal practice in Algeria is scrutinized. The article concludes that the Algerian legislator hesitates to dissolve the conflict between genetic technology and the recognized types of evidence of Islamic law. For now, court practice remains ‘traditional’ since judges might feel too much responsibility facing unclear regulations regarding paternity. Nevertheless, the Algerian family code reform offers the opportunity to use DNA-tests to establish nasab for both legitimate and illegitimate children. Due to unclear regulations it also paved the way to use DNA-analysis for paternity negation.* PubDate: 2018-05-15T00:00:00Z
Authors:Jamal Malik First page: 206 Abstract: Source: Volume 58, Issue 2, pp 206 - 243Globalization has been made responsible for a variety of (re)invented traditions with a trend toward a new religious foundation in and of societies. With Islamic proselytism having gone global, it may resemble religious resistance to the status quo, when pious Muslims instigate homogenizing daʿwa activities and attempt to endow them with moral obligations and normative superstructure. The proliferation of standards and fledgling processes of ideological framing are traceable in what is called fiqh al-daʿwa, which includes general theorizing and ostensibly legal reasoning on daʿwa. In reality, it is more of a missionary ideology given weight by being clothed in Islamic legal terminology. This paper investigates the fiqh of daʿwa in its global setting, with an emphasis on its radical Islamist articulations. It does so by examining fiqh al-daʿwa’s legally, or rather ideologically and morally, charged treatises. In this way, the article reconstructs the genealogy of this rather new genre, as well as its social composition, its ideational grounding, and its normative potential. The condensed forms and derivatives of fiqh of daʿwa will be documented by means of certain rules, methods, and strategies of Islamist ideologues and organizations, particularly the post-Huḍaybī Muslim Brotherhood.1 PubDate: 2018-05-15T00:00:00Z