Political Islam – Islamic Research and Information Center (IRIC)

The Making of Shia Ayatollahs

IRIC — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 21:38:44 +0000

The Making of Shia Ayatollahs

By Sayed Hassan Akhlaq

Publisher: Lexington Books

Publication Date: April 14, 2023

Hardcover: 298 Pages

ISBN: 9781793655158

The Making of Shia Ayatollahs offers both insider and outsider views of how a scholar becomes an Ayatollah in Shia Islam, how ayatollahs suggest diverse perspectives on faith, and how the grand ayatollahs are recognized by a balance of many factors including piety, scholarship, popularity and networking.

This book consists of two parts. The first begins with the core value of knowledge in Islam and the Ulama’s interpretation of jurisprudence and the subjects, values, and methodology they have developed and are applying to challenges found in the faithful practices in modern life. The author reveals the mechanisms of madrasa, hawza, their curricula, and the recognition of a scholar as an ayatollah.

The second part elaborates the rich and sometimes bitter pluralism and debate within the community of ayatollahs regarding topics including denominational identity and intra-faith work, Sufism and mysticism, Philosophy (falsafa and wisdom), modernization and the West, political power and government, and women in public life.

After providing a historical background on each subject, the author takes the reader into the heart of current debates among ayatollahs in Qum, Mashhad, Najaf, and Beirut without sacrificing accuracy and originality to educate a wide range of readers.

Source: Amazon

Under Merz’s CDU, life will only get worse for Germany’s Muslims

IRIC — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 07:10:31 +0000

As Merz rolls out the red carpet for Israel and the rise of the far-right now undeniable, Germany’s Muslims face great challenges ahead, says James Jackson.

The last 18 months have been awful for Germany’s five and a half million Muslims and it looks like they are only going to get worse.

Making up around 6.6 percent of the population with three million citizens, negative portrayals of Muslims and Arabs play an outsized role in the media and in politics, particularly since the start of the Israel-Gaza conflict, but with very little representation in either of these spheres.

Things were already bad – an EU study on Islam in Europe last year found that Germany was the second worst country in Europe for anti-Muslim racism – but with the most right-wing Parliament in the Federal Republic’s history, many Muslims, Arabs and other minorities are worried.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) scored the best result for the German far-right since World War Two at 20.8 percent, with fifty mentions of “Islam” or “Muslim” in their manifesto, none of them positive.

And though Alice Weidel has promoted herself as a “libertarian conservative”, and much has been made by Elon Musk and the international press of her lesbian marriage to a woman of color, but she also claimed that “the hijab doesn’t belong to Germany” and that Islam is incompatible with Germany’s constitution in 2017.

Merz has made it clear that he is only going to accelerate Germany’s authoritarian decline, which primarily targets Arabs, Muslims and supporters of Palestine, writes James Jackson.

Though the party are going to be kept out of government by Germany’s famed “firewall” against cooperation with the far-right, Chancellor apparent Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democrats has made it clear that he is only going to accelerate Germany’s authoritarian decline, which primarily targets Arabs, Muslims and supporters of Palestine.

It does this in defense of the so-called Staatsräson, the doctrine that Israel’s security is one of Germany’s top priorities. This was initially just a rhetorical flourish by Angela Merkel on the floor of the Israeli Knesset but has since then taken on a life of its own.

After over a million went on the streets to protest his collaboration with the far-right on a vote aimed at restricting asylum Merz asked rhetorically in his final speech on the campaign trail in Munich where the pro-democracy protests were “when Palestinian flags were swung in this country.”

To Mr. Merz, showing the Palestinian flag, which is flown at the UN headquarters, is more scandalous than purposefully voting alongside a far-right party which campaigned on “remigration”.

He also recently promised to expand the law on racial incitement to make it illegal to do “deny Israel’s right to exist” – a highly controversial formulation with little basis in actual international law, and which doubtlessly will include Palestinians showing images of historic Palestine.

Germany’s case of déjà vu

One of Merz’s first moves after winning the election was to phone Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and invite him to Germany, despite the outstanding warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.

Though Germany’s outgoing “traffic light” coalition made clear that they weren’t likely to arrest Netanyahu, they were not going to roll out the red carpet either.

Merz on the other hand considered the invitation “an open challenge against the scandalous decision of the International Criminal Court to describe the Prime Minister as a war criminal” according to Netanyahu’s office.

No wonder that only 12 percent of Germany’s Muslims voted for the victorious conservative party according to pollsters Forschungsgruppe Wahlen.

To Mr. Merz, showing the Palestinian flag, which is flown at the UN headquarters, is more scandalous than purposefully voting alongside a far-right party which campaigned on “remigration”.

The move was condemned by Amnesty International as an “open call to break the law” and “not a good start as future chancellor” while the Left Party, who received the most votes from Muslims in this election at 29 percent criticized it sharply.

But Merz is just a particularly extreme member of the Staatsräsonquerfront, a German word I have coined to describe the alliance between far-right through to the right, center and even elements of the so-called “antideutsch” left to defend Israel at any costs, including trashing freedom of opinion and assembly, restricting citizenship rights and continuing to deliver weapons to a man wanted as a war criminal by the world’s highest court.

Under the guise of the noble goal of fighting antisemitism in the land of the Holocaust, Islam and Arabs have been turned into a problem, with German politicians failing to see the historical irony in stirring hatred against one religious and ethnic minority to supposedly protect another one, and with the far-right as steadfast allies this time around, with key pieces of legislation against “antisemitism” initially coming from or being voted for by the AfD.

After October 7, Muslims were told by liberal darling and vice chancellor Robert Habeck — now thankfully retiring from frontline politics — that their protection from right-wing extremists was conditional on distancing themselves from Hamas, considered a terror group in Germany.

Majority of Muslims in Germany share democratic values but population fears purported ‘Islamization’, study indicates.

Sixty eight percent of Muslims in Germany have experienced discrimination in the last five years, with a sharp rise across Europe since 2022, so this danger is hardly theoretical. Mosques have already seen numerous bomb threats and property damage to mosques, as well as hate messages, the Muslim Coordination Council (Krm) in Cologne said in late January.

“In mosque communities, people are scared that fascists will come and take us away” newly-elected Left party politician Ferat Koçak told The New Arab on election night from the Arabic district of Neukölln. Koçak became the first Left MP to ever win outside of former East Germany.

“It is very important that we give people, our friends and neighbors, the feeling of security” he said, representing a growing anti-racist wing within his party, whose revival was one of the big surprises of the election.

Protecting citizens and inhabitants is one of the key jobs of a state – an actual Staatsräson– and should never be conditional on what people believe. We’ve seen Germany go down that route before, and it did not end well.

Source: The New Arab

Why the prayer ban verdict signals a grim future for UK Muslims

IRIC — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 16:42:39 +0000

The Michaela school prayer ban shows how, under Prevent, activism to practise faith in everyday life will be interpreted as Islamist extremism

Last month, when a Muslim pupil who wanted to pray at a school in northwest London during her lunch break was prohibited from doing so, she and her family legally challenged the school’s prayer policy – and lost.

After a two-day hearing, a high court judge upheld the school’s prayer ban. The judge ruled that the ban did not interfere with a pupil’s right to practice religious freedom freely and that the ban was justified because prayer conflicted with the school’s ethos.

The Michaela school verdict has generated a barrage of reactions. Opponents have pointed out that the prayer ban fails to uphold fundamental human rights enshrined in domestic and international law and that it sets a “dangerous precedent” for both religious freedom and inclusivity in UK schools and beyond.

Opponents have pointed out that the prayer ban fails to uphold fundamental human rights enshrined in domestic and international law and that it sets a “dangerous precedent” for both religious freedom and inclusivity in UK schools and beyond.

What has not yet been explicitly pointed out is the proverbial elephant in the room: the Michaela school verdict predicts a grim future of repression of “Muslimness” in UK schools under the new Prevent programme.

For Prevent, Islamism is an ideology of extremism. Islamism yields terrorism. Islamists are extremists. Islamists are potential terrorists.

However, for many human rights and anti-racist advocates, the new focus of Prevent raised questions about what counts as Islamist extremism. The Michaela school verdict answers that question.

‘Islamist extremism’

“Islamist extremism” has become the new target of Prevent. Following the recommendations of the Shawcross review, a new version of Prevent, which is part of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy, has been in effect since 2023.

Seeking the same objectives of targeting the “ideological causes of terrorism” as its previous policy iterations, the 2023 version of the Prevent policy takes “Islamist terrorism” as the “primary domestic terrorist threat” to the UK and its interests.

Prevent 2023 has effectively embedded and institutionalised an alarmist conspiracy theory into counter-extremism policy and practice in the UK.

Micheal Gove, a senior cabinet member, has depicted Islamism as a political project that seeks to supplant British values with so-called Islamic values. The far-right commentator Douglas Murray described Islamism as the force that has put Europe on a trajectory towards becoming Eurabia, or a colonised outpost and subjugated vassal state of the Islamic world.

Being Muslim

The Michaela school prayer contest has been described as a struggle between Islamist extremism and UK values. In other words, it is an ideological battle against Islamism.

Telegraph columnist Nick Timothy described Muslim efforts to challenge the school prayer ban as the kind of Islamist extremism that has turned schools and other public institutions into a “battleground” where the “Islamisation” of public spaces is fought.

For Timothy, Muslim pupils who want to pray at school embody political Islam.

What the Michaela prayer controversy crucially tells us is how Islamist extremism will be interpreted under the new Prevent: as Muslim activism that seeks the right to practice faith in everyday life.

The neo-conservative think tank Policy Exchange has long cried foul of Muslim political mobilisation, decrying Muslim efforts to be able to publicly practice Islam as attempts to create a society that is in strict conformity with religious doctrine – the so-called objectives of political Islam.

Indeed, when Muslim governors and teachers in Birmingham schools pushed for and accommodated Muslim practices such as prayer, Friday congregation, gender-segregated physical education, and so forth, they were accused of being part of a Trojan Horse operation, a stealth operation to supplant British values with so-called extremist values – again, the so-called objectives of political Islam.

Repressing ‘Muslimness’

Legally enshrining the view that Muslim requests for faith-based accommodation are not legitimate political activism but the political expression of a will to overthrow British values, the Michaela prayer verdict portends a grim future for practising British Muslims under Prevent 2023.
More importantly, it spells a dark future in which Muslim mobilisation to practice faith in schools is seen as an expression of political Islam.

Activists and politicians gather in front of the Home Office in London to participate in the Annual National March Against Racism on 16 March 2024.

While being Muslim in school will continue to be equated with extremism, after Michaela, any mobilisation by pupils to be publicly Muslim will be interpreted as an Islamist activity.

In this Prevent context, the Michaela prayer verdict suggests a new trajectory in the securitisation of Islam and “Muslimness” in schools in the coming years.

Source: Middle East Eye

The Crisis of Muslim Religious Discourse: The Necessary Shift from Plato to Kant

Islamic Monitor — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 13:27:57 +0000

The Crisis of Muslim Religious Discourse:
The Necessary Shift from Plato to Kant

By Lahouari Addi

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date: September 25, 2023

Showing that Muslim societies are facing a crisis that is more cultural than religious, this book focuses on cultural representations through which social life is experienced in the Muslim world. It brings a new theoretical framework to address the secularization process that is underway and the contradictions it entails.

This volume will arouse a new debate on secularization and the relations between religion, culture and philosophy. The crisis Muslim societies are undergoing pertains to the culture and not to the Qur’an to the extent that people do not have access to the sacred in itself but only for oneself, meaning a cultural interpretation of the sacred. The Qur’an in itself is not an obstacle to secularization and modernization since any sacred text is experienced through culture. If we consider the European experience where secularization has first emerged, we see that culture has been transformed from medieval metaphysics to modern philosophy upholding a civic culture.

Discussing secularization through cultural representation, this book launches new ideas that fill an important gap in the literature on secularization. It is a key resource for any readers interested in religious studies, philosophy and the anthropology of religion.

Table of Contents

Plato and Plotinus in Medieval Abrahamic Theology
Islam and the Platonic Dualism
From Sufism to Islamism
Muhammad Abduh or the Failure of the Epistemic Transition
A Positivism Without Human Agency
Transcendence, History and Ethics: Contemporary Stakes
Shari’a, Fiqh and Muslim Law
Europe, Islam and Secularization

About the Author

Lahouari Addi is Professor Emeritus at Sciences Po, University of Lyon, and a member of the research center Triangle CNRS. Former member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2002-2003). Professor Addi’s current research focuses on Muslim Law in the light of Moral Philosophy. Author of Radical Arab Nationalism and Political Islam (2017).

More information on: Routledge

Report: What is a ‘Political Islam’?

Islamic Monitor — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 08:53:38 +0000

On August 12, as part of the forum MuslimDebate by the Alhambra Gesellschaft Mathias Rohe, Law Professor an Islamic Scientist at the FAU as well as founding rector of the EZIRE, participated in a discussion under the guiding question What is a “political Islam”? Together with Prof. Dr. Armina Omerika and Rusen Timur Aksak from Vienna, expressed their ideas about the controversial term “political Islam”, concrete problematic factors and related challenges for Muslims in Germany.

Political Islam has been preoccupying German and Austrian politics for weeks and months. In this discussion the beginnings of political Islam and their historical context were shown and an attempt was made to give a definition of political Islam. As clear as this term may seem at first glance, the more complex it becomes when you look at it more closely. One of the tasks of the Documentation Center for Political Islam in Austria, which is to be set up, is to try to define this term. The full discussion can be watched on Youtube.

Source: Muslim Debate