Fitnah: The Afterlife of a Religious Term in Recent Political Protest
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2015, Vol 6, Issue 2
Abstract
The phenomenon of fitnah could be traced throughout history in different regions and cultures. The Arab spring events of 2011–2012 are not an exception in this context. The next outburst of protest activity occurred where it was not expected in the near future—in Ukraine. If we compare the events in the Arab countries in 2011 and Ukraine in 2013–2014, it can be concluded that in essence they fit the characteristics of fitnah very well, which are attributed to it by the Arabic political culture. In both cases, the fitnah acquired permanent character turning into anarchy and chaos (“fouda”). The government/the ruling power found itself unprepared for such manifestations of fitnah and miscalculated the threat posed by the protesters. From our perspective, in the modern world this phenomenon can be explained by the rapid development of Internet technologies that gives the opposition an opportunity to prepare a protest virtually, in an area not totally controlled by the government.
Authors and Affiliations
Tatyana P. Lifintseva, Leonid M. Isaev and Alisa R. Shishkina
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25441
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel6020527
- Views 299
- Downloads 8
Producing High Priests and Princesses: The Father-Daughter Relationship in the Christian Sexual Purity Movement
This article describes and analyzes father-daughter purity balls in the context of the contemporary U.S. American conservative Christian sexual purity movement, with an emphasis on taking the self-understanding of thos...
The Idea of a Highest Divine Principle—Founding Reason and Spirituality. A Necessary Concept of a Comparative Philosophy?
By reference to the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neo-Platonic philosophical traditions (and then to German Idealism, including Husserl and Heidegger), I will indicate the way in which the concept of reason—on the one si...
Anger toward God(s) Among Undergraduates in India
Many people report occasional feelings of anger toward God. However, most evidence pertains to western, predominantly Christian populations. In this study, Indian university students (N = 139; 78% Hindu) completed a su...
Transcontextual Narratives of Inclusion: Mediating Feminist and Anti-Feminist Rhetoric
In seeking a path to mediating feminist and anti-feminist narratives, one must begin with a framework of the method of narrative analysis being used. Using the works of such thinkers as Paul Ricoeur and Richard Kearney...
Doors to the Imaginal: Implications of Sunni Islam’s Persecution of the Ahmadi “Heresy”
This article focuses on the implications of Sunni persecution of Ahmadiyyat by analyzing texts by the movement’s founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, to identify the epistemological basis of his claims to prophecy in 19th cent...