The Western focus on 'Islamic feminism' takes two extreme forms: it is often dismissed as an oxymoron for attaching a religious (patriarchal) adjective to an emancipatory feminist project, or it is hailed as a road to a liberal, reformed Islam. Many Muslim feminists refuse to use this term; some reject feminism outright. There is consequently a tension within the term that many Muslim women activists acknowledge. In order to gain a better understanding of how religious and secular discourses combine in 'feminism in Islam', this text aims to examine the place of religion in women's emancipatory strategies.When we look at the history, strategies, discourses, and especially at the concept of 'religion' Muslim women activists and thinkers deal with, a complex landscape emerges. 'Islam' ceases to be a reference to a given religious paradigm but becomes itself a contested terrain, one with religious, but also political, legal, and institutional actors. Theological, hermeneutical, post-foundationalist, reformist, legal, and social activism all envisage 'Islam' from different perspectives and locate the discriminatory aspects they resist in different fi elds of the Islamic paradigm or practice. The aim is to explore the meaning and practice of 'feminism in Islam' while taking a critical approach to an essentialist understanding of both Islam and Islamic feminism.
Since the ‘migration crisis’ in 2015 at the latest, the politics of a broadly conceived Central Europe has been marked by conflicts over symbols, values and norms. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Austria, and the Czech Republic have witnessed divisive debates and campaigns over refugee quotas, women’s and gay rights, abortion laws and public monuments. As the term ‘culture wars’ was becoming ubiquitous, it remained ambivalent in its meaning and usage. The aim of this article is to identify a political logic of recent Central European cultural conflicts without leaning solely on the ideological explanation, e.g. the anti-liberal backlash thesis of Rupnik, and Krastev and Holms. By borrowing R. Brubaker’s conceptualizations of identity and populism, the article contends that it is possible to analyze culture wars as a repertoire of a populist political style. To do so, the article develops a critical perspective on culture wars, defined as polarizing conflicts in the arenas of the politics of memory, politics of identity and politics of morality. Culture wars are analyzed as a strategy of re-politicization of memory (especially of World War II), (civilizational) identity and public morality and a code used in struggles for political and cultural hegemony.
Under the AKP government, Turkey’s foreign policy towards the Western Balkans, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in particular, has led many analysts to suspect it of possessing neo-imperial, or so-called neo-Ottoman, objectives. These suspicions have been compounded by the repeated declarations of former Prime Minister Davutoğlu and current President Erdoğan that the history and religious identity shared by Turks and Western Balkan Muslims forms the basis of both Turkish-Balkan relations and a common future. Critical examination of official Ankara’s attitudes toward the Western Balkans in general, and especially Bosnia and Herzegovina, identifies four distinct phases in which cultural, historical, and religious appeals morphed into the set of distinctive foreign policies. These policies have also been shaped by pragmatic pursuits of regional influence, the effects of internal (Turkish) transformations, and more recently, the ad hoc policies of President Erdoğan. This article will reconstruct the development of Turkish foreign policy since 1990, from multilateral and soft power efforts to religious and economic objectives, and will analyse the limits of this policy.
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have recently witnessed a surge in protest, mobilization, and debates about marriage, abortion, gender, and feminism. This politics of morality has been notably more successful in the east than in the west of Europe: Most CEE countries have legally or even constitutionally precluded any chance of adopting same-sex marriage, some have rejected the Istanbul Convention, and many parliaments have debated 'gender' in a hostile manner. The rising conservative voice in politics appears to signal a sort of illiberal, conservative turn in post-Communist EU Member States. Most research on morality politics thus focuses on the conservative backlash in CEE or global conservative religious networks, while leaving particular Central European political dynamics aside. This article intends to shift the focus from the ideological or religious aspects of conservative mobilizations to the role morality politics has played in the context of increased political competition on the right and the rise of populism. Looking at actors, strategies, discourses, and the timing and context of individual types of mobilizations in CEE permits the analysis of the political logic of morality politics and especially an exploration of the instrumental nature of conservative mobilizations in detail.
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