Bosnia and the Middle East: Current Political,Economic and Cultural Ties

This article will review and analyze Bosnia’s political, economic and cultural ties with the Middle East, most especially Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as the evolution of Muslim identity in that republic, especially since the late 1960s when there was an internal liberalization process in part influenced by Yugoslavia’s policy on non-alignment. Today, Bosnians of all ethnic and religious backgrounds must contend with internal divisions and tensions exacerbated by the 1992–1995 war while utilizing a very cumbersome political system that may have brought peace at the expense of unity. Bosnia’s geographical location draws that country toward the rest of Europe while history and the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, also draws Muslims toward the Middle East.     

Shas and the resignification of the intersection between ethnicity and religion

Current analyses of ethnicity and religion emphasise the subordination of the one to the other in the construction of collective identities. One line of research perceives religion as a resource of political mobilisation, while another conceptualises religion as the essence of ethnicity. As opposed to these analyses, this article explores how these two markers intersect and constitute each other in the process of identity formation. I centre on the ways Shas, an ethno-religious movement in Israel, mobilises hegemonic ethnic and religious markers of Middle East and North African (MENA) Jews in order to construct its collective identity. The analysis of Shas’s newspapers shows how, by suffusing religious traditions with ethnic meaning and marking an ethno-class collective as religious, Shas interweaves ethnicity and religion and resignifies their relation. This identity project is intended to redefine the symbolic boundaries of the Jewish nation and to redeem MENA Jews from their marginality. Intersectional analysis as applied in this article explains why different ethno-class and religious collectives imagine themselves as sharing a common identity, illumines why particular identity markers are chosen out of the numerous existing categories, and provides an explanation for the flexibility of social movements.     

涉藏州县宗教神圣场域的共同体意识的表达

以川、青区域涉藏州县的藏传佛教场所为重点关注对象,探讨涉藏州县宗教神圣场域中共同体意识的建构渊源、演进历程、现时表达及未来期望。在具有藏传佛教传统的涉藏州县区域,以寺院为核心的神圣场域建构,是藏传佛教历史传承和发展的主要路径。在川青涉藏州县的多民族复合文化语境下,藏传佛教的神圣场域建构不断发展完善。在这一漫长历程中,藏传佛教一方面不断调适以适应本土化的历史现实语境,另一方面则通过教派之间竞争博弈与交往交流,形成与社会主义社会相适应的藏传佛教文化形态。在这个历史过程中,中华民族共同体意识有其在场的内在基础,并与藏传佛教话语体系形成相互促进、相互成就的正反馈路径,不仅形成了具有中华民族认同心理的地缘文化与宗教神圣场域叙事,而且还以人物交流、宗教传播及文化扩散的方式对周边乃至更远区域的中华民族文化构建产生了积极的辐射影响。同时,文化的交往、交流和交融构成了中华民族共同体意识在川青涉藏州县多元文化语境的终极表达。     

We have not arrived from the sea: a Mizrahi literary geography

This article examines how writers of Middle Eastern background, such as Iraqi‐born Yitzhak Bar‐Moshe, who writes in Arabic and has been translated into Hebrew, Iraqi‐born Sammy Michael, Egyptian‐born Yitzhak Gormezano and Iraqi‐born Shimon Balas, challenge the processes of adverse essentialisation and racialisation of Mizrahi Jews by the European Jewish hegemony in Israel. These writers identify themselves as portrayers of a Mizrahi self‐representation and their works were published during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The paper examines how writers who represent themselves as Mizrahi — a self‐representation which has been engendered in the course of their interpositions in the domain of Israeli literature — point to possible courses of intervention in the field of Israeli literature dominated by the Ashkenazi or Eurocentric hegemony. These courses of literary intervention become possible not just because Mizrahi Jews are depicted as a third‐world group; but also because they occupy another position — a ‘third space’ or ‘in‐between’ position. While they belong to the ‘Jewish nation’, Mizrahi Jews were part of the Arab/Third world. Thus, it is their ‘in‐between’ position that locates them at a privileged site to challenge European Jewish hegemony in Israel by attempting to entrench within it an antagonistic and defiant Mizrahi presence.     

‘Both an Arab and a woman’: gendered,racialised experiences of female Palestinian citizens of Israel

Following feminist and postcolonial discourses, this paper uses the concept of ‘everyday experience’ as a tool to trace the social world of educated Palestinian women in Israel. The term refers to the complex array of these women's experiences in racialised and gendered social sites, as well as within the class, religious, and ethnic contexts in the subordinated group and its relations with the dominant Jewish group. Based on 108 in‐depth interviews with Palestinian women citizens of Israel, the paper claims that educated Palestinian women are located in a ‘third place’ between cultural, gender, class, national and racial structures that generates a continual ambivalence. Within this marginal, ‘unhomely’ space women negotiate their own identities and challenge dominant social definitions. Women create various modes of interim spaces and multi‐dimensional, shifting identities for themselves. The ambivalent attitudes generated by the women's experiences expose the possibility of shedding categorising markers. The omnipresent existence of the gendered, racialised regime of knowledge makes every place a potential site of subversion and resistance.     

中东政局动荡及对中国的影响因素

中东乱局,使得类似中国这样的发展中国家所谓的“世界加工厂”未来地位的受损不可低估。但无论今后中东出现什么样的政府,预计都不会改变目前奉行的对华友好政策。中国与中东国家、阿拉伯国家、伊斯兰国家无战争交恶历史及殖民主义统治历史,中国是其值得信赖的、负责任的国家。中国在中东投资的决心不会变,中国“走出去”已经势不可当。中国正...     

希伯伦H2区巴勒斯坦人状况之考察

巴勒斯坦西部城市希伯伦是犹太教和伊斯兰教共奉的圣地,也是近百年来犹太人和巴勒斯坦人冲突和争抢的重地。1991年中东和平进程开启后,历经数轮谈判,以色列和巴勒斯坦民族权力机构最终在1997年签署了《希伯伦协议》,据此希伯伦城被割裂为巴方控制的H1区和以方控制的H2区。作为唯一城区内存在犹太定居点的希伯伦H2区则成了巴以冲突的缩影。H2区的巴勒斯坦人不得不忍受来自犹太定居者、以色列警察和军队的多重压力,特别是在第二次巴勒斯坦大起义期间,H2区的巴勒斯坦人受到了更为猛烈的攻击。在巴以全面和解还遥遥无期的情况下,以色列如何以积极的姿态去改善希伯伦H2区巴勒斯坦人的生存状况,以改善其国家形象,引人深思。     

宗教的结构化分析

从结构化理论的视角可以将宗教理解为信仰性资源与合法化规则的神圣同盟。教理教义是宗教的合法化规则,教规、戒律、禁忌是宗教的支配性规则,宗教仪式是宗教的表意性规则。积极引导宗教与社会主义社会相适应就是要减弱宗教合法化规则中的神秘主义和蒙昧主义,加强宗教表意性规则中的文化功能,发挥宗教支配性规则中的伦理规范功能和心灵净化功能。     

Jewish Geopolitics: Nationalism and the Ties between the State and the Land

Professor Yosseph Shilhav's article in this issue of National Identities entitled ‘Jewish Territoriality between Land and State’ is an important addition to the literature on territoriality and national sovereignty. His carefully researched and insightful study of the religious affinity between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel is especially timely because of the urgency that the present intifada has given to the debate within Israel over the political future of the West Bank and Gaza. What is most provocative, as well as innovative, is Dr Shilhav's thesis that the clash of opinion within Israel over the solution to the Occupied Territories is not, as commonly understood, a political debate between ‘hawks’ and ‘doves’, but is rooted in differences of religious interpretation concerning the ‘sanctity of the Land’. It is with this thesis that I take issue.     

Muslim Faith and Work Ethic in the United States Virgin Islands

The objective of the following article is to examine why a small number of Muslims from the Middle East chose to settle in the United States Virgin Islands (USVI). Further, the article is interested in how this Muslim community has retained its work ethic and religious identity in a predominantly Christianized USVI. The article also explores the relationship between this Muslim community and the USVI particularly since the events of 11 September 2001 (9/11). The findings are startling. Unlike some Muslim minority communities that have been unable to make significant strides forward, Muslims in the USVI have achieved impressive levels of economic achievement. Muslims have effectively dominated the retail business in the USVI while largely retaining the religious ways of their homeland, despite some assimilation. Local structural issues such as the inefficient entrepreneurial skills and unstable family ties among Virgin Islanders, as well as an upsurge in investment in tourism and industry, have paved the way for Muslims’ success in the USVI. Other Muslim minority societies trying to achieve growth and development in a foreign land might look at the manner in which Muslims in the USVI have achieved success and financial security.     

State Repression and Religious Conflict: The Perils of the State Clampdown on the Shi’a Minority in Nigeria

In Nigeria, there is an increasing population of the followers of Shi’a Islam, which is largely promoted by the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) led by Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky. Given its anti-state ideology and anarchical conducts, there have been a series of clashes between the Shi’a group and the Nigerian state. Since December 2015, the government both at the national and state levels began a coercive repression of the IMN following a clash that led to the death of over 500 members of the group. This paper analyses the ongoing state repression of the Shi’a Muslims in Nigeria. It argues that the increasingly violent actions by the state against the group are a recipe for a large-scale conflict, which may assume the following dimensions: a new wave of religious terrorism (after Boko Haram), a Sunni-Shi’a conflict, and international proxy wars in Nigeria. The paper concludes that a practicable way to stem the imminent violence is for the government to establish a dialogue with the group on how to ensure its compliance with the state laws and not totally outlaw it.     

东南亚华人的土地神与圣迹崇拜

源自古代中国文化的土地神观念,虽经历了各种演变,但至今仍是华人社会传统宗教系统的主要成分。马来西亚华人社会的大伯公、拿督公等崇拜,就是土地神观念的文化延续与区域性变革,分析这种延续和变革,可以把握当地华人和非华人本土传统间之宗教观念上的互动关系。而要明白现今东南亚华人的土地与圣迹的神祗之信仰,其分析须置于华人社会土地神观念的发展脉络之中。忽略了这个历史脉络的分析,可能会引致误导性的解释。     

从阿拉伯民族主义到国家民族主义

本文分析了中东民族主义发展演变的轨迹 :从阿拉伯民族主义到国家和地区民族主义的历史过程。重点分析了阿拉伯民族主义由盛转衰、国家和地区民族主义兴起的主要原因 ,揭示了中东阿拉伯世界民族主义的发展趋势     

Sacred remittances: money,migration and the moral economy of development in a transnational African church

While remittances have come to play an important part in debates about migration and development, the link between religion, migration and transnational financial flows has yet to be understood in its full complexity. Drawing upon a multi-sited ethnography of a transnational African church, this article addresses this overlooked dimension of migrant transnationalism by analysing how religious donations converted into ‘sacred remittances’ produce a moral economy of religious life shaped by a politics of belongings at various scales. The article discusses the social meaning that diasporic actors attach to religious donations sent to the homeland (the Congo) and how this compares to the practice of sending remittances to family members. The article also argues that transnational circulation of sacralised money operates within a field of meanings and practices associated with moral expectations, entitlements and differentiated regimes of value. Sacred remittances, as ‘global money’, may generate a diversity of transnational linkages between donors and recipients but they remain embedded in landscapes of status and power.     

‘Arab Jews’ after structuralism: Zionist discourse and the (de)formation of an ethnic identity

We revisit the term ‘Arab Jews’, which has been widely used in the past to depict Jews living in Arab countries, but was extirpated from the political lexicon upon their arrival in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. We follow first the demise of this discourse and then its political reawakening in the 1990s, which was carried out mostly by second-generation Mizrahi intellectuals and activists. We review this surge of the 1990s, distinguishing between structural and post-structural interpretations of the concept, although we also show that they are often interwoven. According to the structural interpretation, the term ‘Arab Jew’ was founded on a binary logic wherein Jews and Arabs are posed as cultural and political antagonisms. The post-structural interpretation rejects the bifurcated form in lieu of a hybrid epistemology, which tolerates and enables a dynamic movement between the two facets of ‘Arabs’ and ‘Jews’. We spell out the differences between these two heuristic modes of interpretation and speculate about their relevance to the political conditions in the Middle East today.     

南奥塞梯冲突及其对中东政局的影响

南奥塞梯冲突具有深刻的历史根源,并且与地缘政治和大国关系产生某种互动。从地缘政治角度看,南奥冲突的冲击波势必影响到中东地区,可能产生一种外溢效应,引发中东地区的国家认同危机;或者导致奥巴马时代欧美中东政策的趋同,并且引发中东地缘政治势力板块松动,增加中东局势的复杂性和不确定性。     

浅析藏密曼荼罗的用料与色彩

据密宗典籍说,曼荼罗是密宗修行者通过这种形式在其精神世界里交通"神灵"的一种神圣场所或道场。作为一种宗教艺术纹样,它流传甚广,影响巨大,其制作用料和色彩搭配都有其深刻的民族心理和宗教象征意义。     

认识自我与认识当下——对壮族布洛陀文化在中国社会中位置的思考

布洛陀文化的重构,为壮民族带来了认同的基础;布洛陀文化是壮族人民生活和生命的指南,宗教的经书和释义为人们的生活秩序提供了神圣的合法性,是一套信仰体系。田阳敢壮山布洛陀信仰及其文化代表了中国当代民间信仰的一幅基本图景。