Pan-Islamism

The Islamic Period Museum of Iran was established, almost 16 years after the Islamic Revolution, as an addition to the previous National Museum building – the Iran Bastan, or Ancient Iran Museum – in 1996. By examining the components of state Islamism, the space of the museum and key exhibits, this paper reveals the analogous relationship between the museum and state ideology. That relationship suggests that the museum embodies fundamental ambiguities and inconsistencies inherent in Iranian state Islamism. Those ambiguities and inconsistencies are only concealed, in the museum as in the ideology, by employing traditionalist rhetoric with regard to religion and identity.

Rooted in the ideals of the global Islamist movements of the twentieth century, the Muslim Brotherhood is not a supporter of liberal democracy or western values. Its ultimate goal is the acquisition of power to build an Islamic State based on sharia. European policy makers need to become much better informed as to some of those they are engaging with.

Pendant la guerre froide, l'Arabie Saoudite a utilisé ses pétrodollars pour propager le wahhabisme. Après le 11 septembre 2001, la diplomatie religieuse saoudienne a néanmoins connu une inflexion, dénonçant les excès des djihadistes et prônant l'« islam du juste milieu ». Cette nouvelle posture est renforcée depuis l'arrivée de Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Karim Al-Isa à la tête de la Ligue islamique mondiale. On peut toutefois s'inter-roger sur la sincérité et l'effectivité de ce revirement.

The North West Frontier Province NWFP, being a strategic region of the Indo-Pak Subcontinent, played a very important role in the political upheavals in British India. Religion played a pivotal role in shaping events which took place in the region. The Pan-Islamic slogans raised in India, not only attracted the Muslims of the NWFP but it augmented their armed struggle against the British in a more forceful vigour. Consequently, they faced a more severe treatment from the British including several military expeditions against them. The role of Pan Islamic feelings in the resistance movements, launched in the province, has not been dealt properly by the researchers. In the following pages, an effort has been made to assess the role of these feelings in the on going armed struggle of the Pukhtuns; particularly in tribal areas (North West of India) against the British and also to bring out details of some of the personalities of the province who went to Turkey and contributed physically to the cause of Pan-Islamism.

During 1917-18, Sir Mark Sykes represented the cabinet's Middle Eastern policy, working with members of General Allenby's staff in Cairo, including his staff intelligence and the Arab Bureau, which handled political intelligence in the region. These intelligence officers were also responsible for handling negotiations with the Hashemite chief Sherif Husayn of Mecca in 1915. Sykes and these officers had to simultaneously plan victory and Britain's postwar interests. Few British officials recognised the inherent contradiction in their promises to Zionists and Arabs between 1917 and 1919. This chapter argues that Britain's lack of appreciation for the conflict inherent in its various commitments derived more from weak assessments of Arab politics than from malevolence toward its new junior partners. By comparing what British intelligence officers believed about the relationship between Arab nationalist societies and the hashemites against the reality of that relationship, it is possible to understand Britain's contradictory policy commitments, which were made as British war aims evolved along with the conditions produced by the conflict.

يتناول هذا البحث في الأساس مسألة الحركة الجامعة الإسلامية ودورها في نشأة حركة الخلافة الإسلامية في الهند والحركات الدينية والسياسية الأخرى في البلدان العربية والإسلامية مع التركيز على العوامل التي أسهمت في الدرجة الأولى في تأسيس كل من حركة الجامعة الإسلامية في تركيا عام 1876م، وحركة الخلافة الإسلامية في شبه القارة الهندية في عام 1918م. وحاول البحث توضيح دور السلطان عبد الحميد الثاني في دعم حركة الجامعة الإسلامية واستغلال مكاسبها الدينية والسياسية لصالحه السياسي للحفاظ على الكيان السياسي العثماني. وقام البحث بطرح الأسئلة العديدة الخاصة عن حركة الخلافة في الهند، وكيف أنها أصبحت فيما بعد حملة سياسية شملت جميع أنحاء الهند البريطانية للتأثير في الحكومة البريطانية ومن أجل حماية الدولة العثمانية بعد الحرب العالمية الأولى. وكذلك تعرض البحث لدور كل من العناصر الهندية في داخل الهند وخارجها والتي أسهمت في تأسيس حركة الخلافة في الهند وتقويتها وترويج أفكارها في أوساط المجتمع الهندي، مع تبيان الأسباب التي دفعت أعضاء حركة الخلافة إلى تحويل مسار الحركة من مجرد ظاهرة دينية إسلامية إلى حركة الاستقلال الأكثر اتساعًا في الهند بعد فشلها في قضية الحفاظ على الخلافة الإسلامية في تركيا.

It is commonly agreed that Al-Afghani was born into a family of sayyids of Asadabad, Hamadan. Al-Afghani himself, however, claimed that he was born in the village of As'adabad, near Kabul, Afghanistan. Neither claim can be verified; the account of Afghani's childhood pieced together from the information provided by his biographer, Mirza Lutfullah Asadabadi, is sketchy at best. Later events in his life, however, indicate that he was educated at home until the age of ten. Thereafter he attended school in Qazvin and Tehran. During his teens, he studied theology and

This article aims to explore emerging trends for the Sunni religious elite and the Islamic legal tradition in the new context of the Arab Uprisings by focusing on Yusuf al-Qaradawi, arguably the most prominent of these ʿulamāʾ alive today. The article will follow al-Qaradawi’s articulation, transmission and reconstruction of the Islamic legal tradition in his own discourse as he has attempted to negotiate the politically fraught contexts of the Arab Uprisings while also maintaining his horizontal commitments to a diverse base of supporters be they the wider Arab Muslim public, the Muslim Brotherhood or indeed the Qatari royal family. The article will focus on al-Qaradawi’s highly publicised interventions and fatwas in relation to Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria from the perspective of Islamic studies, and also draw on personal interviews with al-Qaradawi, his personal staff, as well as supplementary media. In so doing, the article will elucidate al-Qaradawi and his colleagues’ attempts, ranging from the highly creative to the markedly conservative, to respond to unfolding events through the legal tradition and play an increasingly active role in the public sphere while their own status simultaneously becomes ever more vulnerable and unstable.

Islamic thought, still leads to Turkish political life today,  as a heritage of  the Second Constitutional Period (1908-1918). To examine the  history of  this political thouht system will maintain the interpretation of current events. In this case, Islamic thought has been considered the sprout as a structure of thought  in the process that starts from the role of Islam in social life and structure of state at first periods of Ottoman Empire to the Second Constitutional Period. This case analyzes the ‘Islamic Movement’ in the Second Constitutional Period. Exhaustive history of the  the Second Constitutional Period (with the perspective of social and political events) has been examined seperately to understand better the period.

Key words: Islamism, Constitıtional Period II, Union of Islam, Abdulhamid II

ABSTRACT


This dissertation undertakes a critical scrutiny of Orhan Pamuk’s Snow (2004) and Other Colours (2007), texts that majorly grapple with contemporary Turkey’s socio-political issues. I have tried to demonstrate the modes in which Pamuk frames the competing political claims of secularism and Islam—key concepts in Turkey as well as our contemporary world—with a view to deciphering its implications for our times.

Literature, as is well-known by now, can no longer be regarded as an apolitical business without any stakes in the world. It is partisan—ideological and committed to power structures, with its particular agendas—and an active participant in hegemonic constructions. Literary and cultural representations are struggles for power and meaning, and texts are sites where these struggles are carried out. Pamuk’s writings are located on a site where Islam and secularism confront each other in particular ways. Moreover, Orhan Pamuk is a writer who addresses a global audience, a fact he himself is quite aware of. The award of the Nobel Prize for literature (2006) is not an insignificant factor in Pamuk’s receptivity throughout the global reading world as a voice of authority interpreting issues involving categories such as Islam, secularism, etc. Given these factors, it important to read his texts for their ideological underpinnings and to comprehend the importance of such understandings for contemporary resonances. I have read Snow and Other Colours in order to lay out the liberal-secular ideology the texts are premised on, especially with regard to Islam, even as they make claims to be dialogic and polyphonic. I largely drew upon some recent scholarship on secularism in order to problematize Pamuk’s valorization of liberal secularism and his take on Islam.

The “Introduction” of this dissertation entitled“Contexualizing Orhan Pamuk: Secularism, Islam, Global Geopolitics” begins by making a case for my contextualized, political reading of the texts in question. It sets the work of Pamuk against the larger secularism-Islam interface so as to pull into perspective the problem in question.

Chapter One, “Turkey: The Making Of A Socio-Political Arena” laid out the socio-political history of Turkey in the twentieth century so as to provide a window to the primary world Pamuk is engaging with. I elaborate on the contours of secularization that has been implemented in Turkey. The chapter dealt with the emergence of “political Islam”/ “Islamism” as an oppositional discourse to the hegemonic secularist discursive practices on Islam. It traced certain significant historical developments in terms of the Islamist-secularist confrontation in Turkey.

Chapter Two, “Secularism(S): Critiques, Disjunctions, And Utopias in Orhan Pamuk,” unpacks Pamuk’s take on secularisms. Drawing on some recent scholarship on secularism, the chapter critiques liberal secularism as a political principle as well as  hegemonic discourse / ideology / worldview which permeates multiple discourses and circumscribes understandings of the very category of “the human.” It makes the case that advocacy of pluralism through a championing of liberal secularism defeats its very objective.

Chapter Three, “Muslim Women’s Headscarf, Islamism and the Islamic Other” explores the issues attending liberal-secular readings of politics under the banner of Islam and the polemical question of the Muslim women’s headscarf / hijab in the light of Pamuk’s self-avowed wish to know and engage the Islamic Other.

The “Conclusion” pulls together the various threads explored in the chapters. It examines the implications of the critical analyses done in the chapters for our times, where liberal secularism is a hegemonic ideology / discourse/world view. My close reading of Orhan Pamuk’s select texts underscores the need for a critical distance from and a vigilance against the effects of the naturalization of the liberal-secular in all aspects of being in the world, something which our embattled times cry out for.

Relations between the Turks and India have deep roots in history, dating back to the days of the incursions of Mahmud Ghaznavi into India in the early eleventh century. From that time up to the middle of the nineteenth century, large parts of the Subcontinent were ruled by different central Asian Turkish dynasties, with the exception of the Sayyids (1414-1451) and the Lodis (1451-1526). Therefore it can be concluded that the histories of both people are closely interrelated and have many common suspects.

Religious radicalization has its growing influence in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The majority of Muslim youth in the Kashmir Valley is increasingly inclining towards extremist political, social, and religious ideas repudiating and challenging the status quo. There has been a sudden heave in Pan-Islamism in Kashmir’s Muslim society, gradually marginalizing an initial pro-nationalist agenda of insurgency. Religion remains a key instrument in furthering the political agenda and seeking greater political rights. It needs to be acknowledged and accepted that no movement has succeeded in achieving its objectives unless it is inclusive in its political character and social base, representing political interests of all ethnic groups.

This article is a historical overview of two issues: first, that of the dynamics of Islamic religious transformations from pre-Portuguese era up until the 2000s among Muslims of the contemporary Cabo Delgado, Nampula, and to a certain extent, Niassa provinces. The article argues that historical and geographical proximity of these regions to East African coast, the Comoros and northern Madagascar meant that all these regions shared a common Islamic religious tradition. Accordingly, shifts with regard to religious discourses and practices went in parallel. This situation began changing in the last decade of the colonial era and has continued well into the 2000s, when the so-called Wahhabis, Sunni Muslims educated in the Islamic universities of the Arab world brought religious outlook that differed significantly from the historical local and regional conceptions of Islam. The second question addressed in this article is about relationships between northern Mozambican Muslims and the state. The article argues that after initial confrontations with Muslims in the sixteenth century and up until the last decade of the colonial era, the Portuguese rule pursued no concerted effort in interfering in the internal Muslim religious affairs. Besides, although they occupied and destroyed some of the Swahili settlements, in particular in southern and central Mozambique, other Swahili continued to thrive in northern Mozambique and maintained certain independence from the Portuguese up until the twentieth century. Islam there remained under the control of the ruling Shirazi clans with close political, economic, kinship and religious ties to the Swahili world. By establishing kinship and politico-economic ties with the ruling elites of the mainland in the nineteenth century, these families were also instrumental in expanding Islam into the hinterland. Only at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Portuguese rule took full control of the region as a result of military conquests of the ‘effective occupation’, and imposed new legal and administrative colonial system, called Indigenato, impacting Muslims of northern Mozambique to a great extent. After the independence in 1975, and especially since 1977, the post-independence Frelimo government adopted militant atheism and socialist Marxism, which was short-lived and was abolished in 1983 owing to popular resistance and especially, because of government’s perception that its religious policies were fuelling the opposition groups to take arms and join the civil war. The 1980s and 1990s were marked by an acute rivalry and conflicts between the two emerging national umbrella Islamic organizations, the Islamic Council and the Islamic Congress, each representing largely pro-Sufi and anti-Sufi positions. In the 2000s, these organizations became overshadowed by new and more dynamic organizations, such as Ahl Al-Sunna.

The recent column by journalist Tarek Fatah titled 'The Need for more Muslims to Stand up to Islamic Radicals' is the subject of my essay. As a Muslim-Canadian who immigrated to Canada more than ten years ago, the opinions expressed by the columnist deserves a response, one that finally brings Muslim Canadians into the frame. For far too long Muslims have been defined into the camp of 'moderate and extremist'-as if there is one way of expressing Islam or being a Muslim. People like Tarek are happy with categorizing Muslims into simplistic binary ways that only serve the interests of bigots and the "Islamic radicals".

For the past year and a half, al-Shabaab has continued to take advantage of the ongoing political and security turmoil between Somalia’s federal government, regional state administrations, and other powerful social groups, including the country’s clans and sub-clans and minority groups. Militarily, the jihadi-insurgent group retains significant capabilities to launch a range of attacks targeting both military and “soft” targets, including major suicide-vehicle bombings inside the most secure areas of the country such as central Mogadishu. In 2017, the group also overran a number of African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali government military bases and forcefully reasserted itself in the northern Puntland region. Meanwhile, the Islamic State in Somalia, al-Shabaab’s main jihadi competitor, continues to lag behind it in terms of numbers, military capabilities, and media reach, though there are recent signs that the Islamic State-Somalia has been able to penetrate more deeply into the Afgooye area to the west of the capital and outside of its Puntland base.

For decades Arab Muslims have engaged in pan-Islamic solidarity aid work in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In delivering aid from the Middle East to a European country, they disrupt the racial and civilizational hierarchies that structure most international relief work. Their experiences demonstrate the utility of a more capacious anthropological understanding of universalism. Rather than dismiss universalism as mere ideology or as a set of homogenizing processes, I highlight how universalist projects put into practice complex idioms that are notionally directed at all of humanity. Ethnographic attention to these relief workers’ material conditions reveals that they lack many of the privileges of the white, Western, and highly mobile protagonists of most ethnographies of aid. Moreover, it illuminates how spiritual practices coalesce with considerations of transnational mobility, class, and political action—considerations that are often neglected in anthropological work on Islamic piety. [universalism, solidarity, humanitarianism, charity, aid, Islam, pan-Islamism, Bosnia-Herzegovina]

كانت البوسنة والهرسك مستقرا لأعمال التضامن الإسلامية طوال عقود، وباعتبارها دولة أوروبية فقد أربك ذلك التراتبية العرقية والحضارية التي تأسست عليها أغلب أعمال الإغاثة الدولية. وقد أبانت تجربة كهذه عن جدوى المقاربة الأنثروبولوجية الأرحب لفكرة الكونية. لذا سأظهر كيف تُطبّق المشاريع العالمية المفاهيم النظرية المتوجهة للبشرية جمعاء على أرض الواقع بدلا من نبذ الكونية على اعتبار أنها مجرد أيديولوجية أو مجموعة من عمليات خلق التجانس. كما أن الملاحظة الإثنوغرافية للظروف المادية لعمال الإغاثة المسلمين تُظهر افتقادهم للكثير من امتيازات الناشطين البيض الغربيين المبرزين في معظم إثنوغرافيات الإغاثة. كما تتجلى الصلة الوثيقة بين الممارسات الروحية وبين اعتبارات الحراك العابر للحدود والطبقات والعمل السياسي، وهو ما تغفله عادة الكتابات الأنثروبولوجية حول التقوى الإسلامية. [الكونية، التضامن، الإنسانوية، العمل الخيري، الإغاثة، الإسلام، التضامن الإسلامي، البوسنة والهرسك]

Pan-Islamism was one of the major geopolitical and civilizational concepts of the First World War. The German-Ottoman alliance campaigned for Muslim solidarity against European colonialism both by anti-imperial and imperial means. Pan-Islamism altered the course of history by prolonging the duration and expanding the geographic spread of the First World War. The Entente's struggle against pan-Islamism shaped the modern Middle East.

Since ancient times the strong group feeling works as the prime driving force to rise into power and to rule thereby. The dynasties declined as soon as the group feeling became fragile. Ibn Khaldun depicted this issue through his remarkable theory of Asabiyyah. During the reign of Prophet (PBUH) and Four Rightly Guided Caliphs Islamic brotherhood instead of asabiyyah served as the core impetus. However, subsequent Muslim dynasties clung to the asabiyyah to rise into power. Afterwards the western nationalism developed among the Muslims gradually. This article explores the genre of nationlism evidently present in the contemporary Muslim world and asserts that it springs out of the offshot of asabiyyah. The article has followed exploratory research method and historical method in parallel. Keywords: ibn khaldun, asabiyyah, muslim nationalism, muslim brotherhood, pan-islamism.

Статья раскрывает характер взаимоотношений между Советским государством и исламом в 1920-е – 1930-е гг. Использованные уникальные документы  представляют собой части единого дела о
«крупной панисламистской повстанческой организации на территории среднеазиатских республик», которой советская контрразведка дала название «Цепь Корана». Особое внимание в статье уделяется анализу категорий «панисламизм» и «панисламистская угроза», которыми пользовались работники советских органов государственной безопасности. Рассмотрено также взаимодействие членов Центрального духовного управления мусульман (ЦДУМ) в г. Уфе со среднеазиатскими
единоверцами, включая деятельность заместителя муфтия Кашафутдина Тарджиманова.
The article focuses on the relations between the Soviet state and Islam in the 1920s – 1930s. The author presents unique documents of the former Soviet security services about the so-called “large-scale pan-Islamist rebel organization on the territory of the Middle Asian republics”, which was termed by the Soviet counter-intelligence as “The Chain of the Quran”. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the concepts of “pan-Islamism” and “pan-Islamic threat” employed by Soviet security staff. The article also analyzes the collaboration between the members of the Central Muslim Spiritual Board (TsDUM) in Ufa and their fellow believers in Middle Asia, including the activity of the Deputy Mufti Kashafutdin Tardzhimanov.

هذا الكتاب ليس عن الثورة الإسلاميّة في إيران. إنّهُ عن الثورة الإسلاميّة القادمة، وعن الثورة التي ستليها. لقد اعتزمتُ إخراج هذا الكتاب منذ عدّة سنوات. وكان المقصود إلحاقهُ بالورقة التي كتبتها بين عاميّ 1988 و1989م؛ بعنوان: "تقويم الفكر السياسي الإسلامي". إذ كان الغرض من هذه الورقة هو استكشاف مدى القبول الذي يُمكن أن تُلاقيه مثل هذه المقاربة في تلك المرحلة.

ويهدف هذا الكتاب القصير لتعيين الأفكار الكامِنة والمناهج المستخدمة، ولم شعثها. وهو يُسلّط الضوء على الحاجة لثورة ثقافيّة داخل الإسلام، وذلك قبل أن يتمكَّن المسلمون، كرَّةً أخرى؛ من التحكُّم الكامل في تاريخهم ومصيرهم. وتذهب هذه الدراسةُ إلى أن مثل هذه الثورة تجري وقائعها بالفعل. فقد اتخذت هذه الثورة، في طورها المُبكّر؛ صورة فكرٍ سياسيٍ جديد، وإجماعًا عالميًّا بين المسلمين في كل أرجاء المعمورة.

Islam has prohibited tribalism or asabiyya. Tribalism is the ancestor of nationalism. Tribalism was the key factor why pagan Arabia was violent and brutal. Prophet came with Islam to eradicate this tribalism but even though Islam succeeded against paganism tribalism continued. Muslims have embraced and polluted Islam with flavours of nationalism and nationalism results in oppressive pride envy ego injustice exploitation erratic emotion divisive mindset and destructive behaviour. Islam rejects nationalism. That is why it has proposed the concept of the Ummah. So a Muslim must minimally participate and make use of his racial/ethnic/tribal identity rather maximize the participation and use of his Islamic identity that is based on the laws and values of Quran, Sunnah and the pious ancestors.

In the historiography of Japan’s Interaction with the Turkish and the Muslim World, Ahmed Münir İbrahim (1887-1941) has been overshadowed by his father, Abdürreşid İbrahim (1857-1944). Abdürreşid, a Russian Tatar scholar and journalist, spent five months in Japan in the first half of 1909. After his journey, he published a two-volume travelogue entitled Alem-i İslam ve Japonya’da İntişar-ı İslamiyet in Istanbul in 1910. This travelogue has remained one of the most important sources for the history of early Turkish-Japanese relations and has predominantly been regarded as an expression of pan-Islamist and pan-Asianist thinking. Similar to his father, Münir too traveled to Japan in December 1910 as a member of the first Ottoman student delegation. Münir and his two companions, Hasan Fehmi and Mehmed Tevfik, were sent to Japan at the request of the pan-Asianist society Ajia Gikai to take up their studies in Tokyo. After his arrival in Japan, Münir published a brief, serialized travelogue in the Kazan newspaper Beyanülhak, which relates the students’ journey from Harbin to Tokyo, alongside other articles on Harbin and Japan. While Münir’s articles in the Ottoman journal Sebilürreşad and the Japanese journal Daitō have recently been scrutinized by historians, his travelogue in Beyanülhak has to date remained completely obscure. This article will, first, provide a concise discussion of the Ottoman student delegation to Japan and, second, examine key aspects of Münir’s travelogue, which may provide historians with important insights into the more mundane aspects of Turkish- Japanese exchanges behind the idealizing visions of pan-Islamism and pan-Asianism.

La production académique sur le salafisme est restée relativement limitée et confidentielle jusqu’en janvier 2011. Les rares travaux disponibles ont tendance à rendre cohérente et homogène une dynamique sociale marquée par son caractère disparate et à laquelle est prêtée un même comportement à l’égard du politique, fait de distance voire de condamnation. C’est ainsi que l’entrée en 2011 au parlement égyptien d’une des composantes du courant salafiste, avant son éviction aux élections législatives en 2015, a rendu perplexes les observateurs du champ politique égyptien. Afin de mieux cerner ce qui fait la réalité sociale et politique du salafisme égyptien contemporain, cet article se propose d’en dresser une vue d’ensemble avant la Révolution de 2011, pour comprendre les transformations subies à l’épreuve du politique, jusqu’à aujourd’hui.

This short article, written the week of the Scottish independence referendum, discusses links between Muslims in Scotland / Scottish Muslims and the Ottoman Empire at the start of the 20th century. In particular, it examines the story of Yahya en-Nasr Parkinson, a convert to Islam from Ayrshire who wrote poems and articles about Islam and the Caliphate in particular, including a poem that was presented to Sultan Abdülhamid II. To read more, please click the link to Tozsuz Evrak.

The period between 1845 and 1950 is generally evaluated as a moment of global change. Specifically, the first two decades of Twentieth Century revealed the decay of imperialism and the spreading of a common sense of belonging throughout the colonies.
In this sense, phenomena like the Libyan War, the Balkans War, and the First World War were strictly interrelated, and showed the growth of the Islamic solidarity against Western colonialism. This awareness, exploiting instruments as the press and the telegraph, extended from East to West, getting involved economic, and cultural networks, as well as individuals.
The aim of this article is to analyse the Islamic solidarity, which bloomed during the Libyan War (1911-1912), in order to demonstrate how it has been declined in space, and time. It focuses on the use of material instruments, and on the involvement of political personalities: the figure of ‘Abd al Raḥman ‘Azzām is an example of solidarity’s outliving until the Seventies.

The recently-deceased Shaykh Muhammad Hussain Fadlallah was one of the most influential advocates of what anthropologist Lara Deeb has called “authenticated Islam,” an approach to textual interpretation which stresses the individual pursuit of religious knowledge and the conscious assent to religious injunctions. This approach has dovetailed historically with an increased interest in and concern with the intellectual legacies of Islam on the part of ordinary Muslims, most of whom are living through the postcolonial predicament of establishing the foundations of local political order on the basis of structures of governance whose genealogy extends to the European Enlightenment as well as to colonial legal regimes, local practices, and even older imperial histories. Accordingly, the question of what “Islamic civilization” has been or could be has gained political urgency for many Muslim intellectuals since the formal independence of Muslim-majority nation-states. The Center of Civilization for the Development of Islamic Thought is a Beirut-based Shi’a Islamist publishing house which has entered into this debate by putting forth a new view of Islamic Civilization as a global, pan-Islamic endeavor by Muslim intellectuals to facilitate interconfessional intellectual exchange. Led by a reformist Lebanese cleric of Iranian heritage, Shaykh Yahya Mirzaei, the Center’s employees hope their publishing will spur such intellectual cooperation, leading to research-based Islamic political theory that neither rejects nor idealizes Western models.

Mehr als hundert Jahre sind seit dem Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs vergangen und neue akademische Studien zum Ersten Weltkrieg werden weiterhin auf der ganzen Welt veröffentlicht. In diesem Kontext finden die jüngsten Publikationen über die Aktivitäten, die den Bewegungen des Islamismus und Panislamismus zugeordnet werden, in der Fachwelt zunehmend Beachtung. Im Fokus steht hier besonders das deutsch-türkische Bündnis im Ersten Weltkrieg. Die Aktivitäten Deutschlands gegenüber der islamischen Welt, die Teil des im Ersten Weltkrieg von Deutschland durchgeführten allgemeinen Revolutionierungsprogramms in den feindlichen Ländern waren, war erstmals in Fritz Fischers Nachschlagewerk Griff Nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914/1918 (1961) der Gegenstand. Das Revolutionierungsprogramm in der islamischen Welt und der damit verbundene Dschihadismus wurde insbesondere seit den 90er Jahren in akademischen Kreisen eingehender diskutiert.

Pan-Islamism and jihad became very popular topics in Germany before and during the First World War, in particular among journalists, politicians, diplomats and orientalists. After the declaration of Ottoman jihad against the Entente powers in 1914, some German orientalists in particular felt that it was their responsibility to write about jihad and pan-Islamism. This article first examines the approaches of the German academic orientalists to German Orient policy, pan-Islamism and jihad, by analyzing the similarities and contrasts between the texts of the orientalists as part of a network. It then tries to determine the role of the German academic orientalists in shaping German strategy towards Islam in the First World War. Although the focus is on texts written between 1914 and 1916, some works of orientalists written before the First World War are also considered, in order to understand how their thoughts changed over time.

This article examines how so-called “Afghan Arabs” – Islamist activists drawn to war-torn Afghanistan in recent decades – reconciled their pan-Islamist commitments with the experience of doctrinal and cultural difference vis-à-vis Afghans. Previous approaches to transnational Islamist activism have tended to either uncritically assume a monolithic Muslim identity or posit a rigid dichotomy between fanatic “foreign fighters” and the relatively moderate “local Muslims” who they putatively seek to indoctrinate. Eschewing both types of reification, this article argues that pan-Islamist projects should not be understood as attempts to erase intra-Muslim differences, but rather as endeavors to process them. Afghan Arabs struggled to understand, evaluate, and respond to doctrinal and cultural differences in ways that often defied the conventional juxtaposition of radical Salafi Arabs versus moderate Sufi/Hanafi Afghans. Diverse longstanding discursive traditions in Islam – including discussions over miraculous events [karāmāt] and visitation of saints’ tombs [al-ziyāra] – provided common terms of reference that Arab activists and their Afghan counterparts could invoke to ensure that even contentious disputes could contribute to a shared project.