The phenomenon of “Muslim Democracy” has been analyzed by scholars for a number of years, at least since the mid-1990s. The standard view about Muslim Democracy is that (perhaps like its European counterpart Christian Democracy) it represents a nonideological, or postideological, pragmatic approach to electoral politics. The purpose of this article is to advance two primary arguments. The first is that the turn to Muslim Democracy as an ideology and practice should first be understood as a way of thinking about (...) politics that breaks with the sovereigntist imaginary that dominated modern Islamic political thought. Second, Muslim Democrats do not forswear the use of democratic means to advance goals derived from religious commitment as part of their recognition of pluralism and constitutional democracy. Their attitude toward politics should thus be seen as a form of agonistic pluralism. This article thus proposes an interpretation of Muslim Democracy as post-sovereigntist agonistic political Islam. (shrink)

Some scholars have argued that religiously injurious speech poses a serious problem for secular liberal thought. It has been suggested that secular liberal thought and political practice often misrecognize the nature of the injury involved in speech that violates the sacred and that much secular thought about religious injury (and free exercise more generally) is premised on unacknowledged Protestant conceptions of what real religion is. In this essay, I argue against the ideas that secular liberalism tends to treat religion only (...) as a matter of freely chosen belief and that the unchosen, habituated nature of much religious experience raises a problem for the defense of speech that violates the sacred. I argue that secular thought and practice should remain very concerned about the social and political harms of speech directed unambiguously at social groups but need not eliminate the gap between religious attachments and religious persons. (shrink)

In this article I take up John Rawls's invitation to investigate the capacity of a given comprehensive ethical doctrine to endorse on principled grounds the liberal terms of social cooperation. In the case of Islamic political ethics, however, far more is at stake in affirming citizenship in a (non-Muslim) liberal democracy than state neutrality and individual autonomy. Islamic legal and political traditions have traditionally held that submission to non-Muslim political authority and bonds of loyalty and solidarity with non-Muslim societies are (...) to be avoided. In this article, I examine the Islamic foundations for affirming on principled grounds residence, political obligation and loyalty to a non-Muslim state. My research shows not only that such grounds exist even in classical Islamic legal discourses, but also that the concerns of Islamic scholars vindicate political liberalism's claim to successfully accommodate the adherents of certain non-liberal doctrines by refraining from proclaiming controversial metaphysical truth-claims. (shrink)

"Much of the disagreement and controversy over Ramadan's significance arguably stems not from a disagreement over what he is on record as having asserted or done but from unexamined or unarticulated assumptions about liberal principles and what they demand of Muslims.".

abstract In this article I consider whether the legalization of sex‐same marriage implies a right to incestuous marriage. I begin by suggesting that the liberal state get out of the ‘marriage’ business by leveling down to a universal civil union status. The question is then whether incestuous unions should be both legal and eligible for this status. I argue that the arguments compatible with public reason for prohibiting them outright, or even for excluding them from the permissible types of legally (...) registered partnerships, are quite weak. The objections to allowing such relations are those from (1) child abuse; (2) unfair burdening of society; and (3) the creation of bad lives. I argue that while rape and other forms of child abuse would be no more legal or tolerated than they are now, the concern about any form of weakening a society's legal and political resources to combat such abuses does indeed register on the justificatory scale, but does not prove that such first‐degree incestuous sexual relations are inherently bad enough to warrant intervention in their own right. I then argue that the concern about unfairly burdening society with unhealthy persons is not as dangerously totalitarian as we might initially fear, but nor is it strong enough to justify an outright prohibition. Finally, I argue that a concern to dissuade persons from creating certain kinds of lives (children with extreme birth defects) is also not as dangerously totalitarian as we might initially fear, and in fact goes further towards explaining why we might have a legitimate interest in intervening. Nonetheless, I argue that the criminalization of such acts only make sense when they are indicators of other offenses, namely negligence or abuse, and it thus seems that the act of consanguineous reproduction is itself insufficient. (shrink)

If a state with liberal political and justificatory commitments extends benefits of various kinds to persons forming families, what qualifications may such a state place on the right to access to those benefits? I will make two assumptions for the purposes of this paper. The first is the political and justificatory terrain of some form of political or otherwise non-perfectionist liberalism. The assumption is that we are considering the resources and limitations of a community of persons who accept moral pluralism (...) (if not a specific doctrine like the "burdens of judgment"), some priority for individual freedom, and the obligation to justify public coercion and exclusion in terms accessible and fair to all members of morally and culturally diverse society. The second is that it is justified for a liberal state to recognize some forms of domestic partnerships or families in the first place and extend further benefits to them such as tax credits or laws extending (or facilitating the extension of) medical or social insurance. It is, of course, possible to imagine the argument that the liberal state gets out of the marriage business by getting out of it entirely - by extending no recognition or positive rights to families whatsoever beyond negative non-interference rights. I am interested in the dilemma of a society broadly like existing liberal ones which is committed both to subsidizing families and also to justificatory neutrality (expressed in American constitutional legal terms as the requirement of providing a "rational basis" for unequal treatment). Given these assumptions, I believe that the most justifiable policy on liberal grounds is not the institution of "marriage" increasingly open to new constituent relationships but rather a status of "registered domestic partnership" which fulfills the social and moral aims behind subsidizing the family but is entirely neutral not only to the gender or even to the numbers of the partners, but also to the affective and emotional content of domestic life and the purposes behind contracting domestic partnerships. So is there a right to polygamy and incestuous marriage? There is not a specific right to either and thus there is no a priori reason why some restrictions or even prohibitions on them might not be justified, but the same is true for every specific act where a general right to the freedom exists. I argue in this paper, however, that the arguments compatible with public reason for prohibiting them outright, or even for excluding them from the permissible types of legally registered partnerships, are quite weak. I argue that objections to polygamy from (1) female autonomy, (2) damage to children, (3) fairness in the marital market, and (4) the unfair burdening of society are serious and worth refuting, but do not establish a victorious case against multi-member relationships. As to incest, there are two separate questions. The first is whether the new institution of "registered domestic partnerships" should be open to them. The answer to that, given the state's lack of interest in citizens' reasons for forming partnerships and in what they do whilst being registered in one, is clearly "yes." The second is whether, entirely separate from the issue of legal recognition of domestic partnership, the state has a legitimate rational interest in deterring, preventing or punishing consanguineous sexual relations between close blood relations (first-degree incest). Here, the objections to allowing such relations are those from (1) child abuse; (2) unfair burdening of society; and (3) the creation of bad lives. I argue that while rape and other forms of child abuse would be no more legal or tolerated than they are now, the concern about any form of weakening a society's legal and political resources to combat such abuses does indeed register on the justificatory scale, but does not prove that such first-degree incestuous sexual relations are inherently bad enough to warrant intervention. I then argue that the concern about unfairly burdening society with unhealthy persons is not as dangerously totalitarian as we might initially fear, but nor is it strong enough to justify an outright prohibition. Finally, I argue that a concern to dissuade persons from creating certain kinds of lives (children with extreme birth defects) is also not as dangerously totalitarian as we might initially fear, and in fact goes further towards explaining why we might have a legitimate interest in intervening. Nonetheless, I argue that the criminalization of such acts only make sense when they are indicators of other offenses, namely negligence or abuse, and it thus seems that the act of consanguineous reproduction is itself insufficient. (shrink)

This paper introduces views both hostile to and supportive of the ideas of secularism and religious neutrality in the jurisprudence of Muslim minorities (fiqh al-aqalliyyat).

In a recent article, Saba Mahmood has presented an intriguing account of what was at stake morally and emotionally for a large number of Muslims in the Danish cartoon controversy. In doing so, she offers a framework for thinking about such instances that takes the place of accounts that portray the conflict as one between a liberal, secular commitment to free speech and a religious commitment to combating blasphemy.

I examine the way in which President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan has attempted to legitimate authoritarian rule since the transition from communism. A comparison is made between late-Soviet modes of authoritarian legitimation and those of the Karimov regime, and the success of the project at the conceptual level is examined. The article closes with a consideration of the implications of this study for evaluating Juan J. Linz's classical thesis on the relationship between authoritarianism and ideology and some general propositions on (...) the structure of authoritarian legitimation. (shrink)

This paper examines what is involved in using comparative methods within political theory and whether there should be such a sub-field as "comparative political theory." It argues that "political theory" consists of multiple kinds of activities which are either primarily "scholarly" or "engaged." It is easy to imagine how scholarly forms of political theory can, and have been, comparative. The paper critiques, however, existing calls for the creation of "comparative political theory" (CPT) sub-field focused on the study of "non-Western" texts. (...) CPT needs to explain why it is not merely "expanding the canon" to include non-Western texts and why a certain non-Western text is "alien," thus justifying the moniker "comparative." I argue, systematically though 10 discrete theses, that the strongest warrant for an "engaged" comparative political theory is the first-order evaluation of the implication of the contestations of norms, values and principles between distinct and coherent doctrines of thought. (shrink)

Tariq Ramadan’s recent book, Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation, boldly proclaims the need for Muslims to completely rethink the very meaning of Islamic law, traditionally the preeminent Islamic normative discourse and a primary distinguishing feature of Islam from other religions, replacing it with a more ecumenical applied ethics. He begins the book by rejecting the moderate reformist methods adopted in his previous books as insufficient for the ‘radical reform’ of their epistemologies and mentalities which he believes contemporary Muslims must (...) undertake. It is tempting, therefore, to see this work as a radical break with Law. In this article, I offer a different interpretation. On my reading, throughout his previous works Ramadan systematically advanced and elevated a certain interpretation of Law, based on an appropriation of certain concepts taken from mainstream Islamic legal theory and crucial to the efforts of all reformist thinkers. It is these concepts, which he retains but completely recasts, which mediate his move to a post-legal Islamic ethics. I argue that Ramadan’s long-term project neither merely abandons Islamic law, nor merely reforms it, but dissolves the framework of Law through its own devices. (shrink)

This essay argues that the four most plausible arguments compatible with public reason for an outright legal ban on all forms of polygamy are unvictorious. My purpose is not to survey exhaustively the empirical literature on contemporary forms of polygamy, but to tease out the types of arguments political liberals would have to insist on, and precisely how strongly, in order for a general prohibition against polygamy to be justified. The most common objection to polygamy is on grounds of gender (...) equality, more specifically, female equality. But advancing this argument forcefully often involves neglecting the tendency of political liberalism (whatever name it goes by in contemporary, complex, multicultural societies) to tolerate a certain amount of inegalitarianism in private, within the bounds of robust and meaningful freedoms of choice and exit. Properly understood, polygamy involves no inherent statement about the essential inferiority of women, and certainly not more than many other existing practices and institutions (including many expressions of the main monotheistic religions) which political liberals regard as tolerable. (shrink)

Mirror for the Muslim Prince: Islam and the Theory of Statecraft. Edited by Mehrzad Boroujerdi. Modern Intellectual and Political Theory of the Middle East. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 465. $49.95.

In this article I consider whether there a right to incestuous marriage. I begin by suggesting that the liberal state get out of the "marriage" business by leveling down to a universal civil union or "registered domestic partnership" status. Removing the symbolism of the term "marriage" from political conflict, privatizing it in the same way as religion, would have the advantage of both consistency and political reconciliation. The question is then whether incestuous unions should be both legal and eligible for (...) this status. I argue that the arguments compatible with public reason for prohibiting them outright, or even for excluding them from the permissible types of legally registered partnerships, are quite weak. The objections to allowing such relations are those from (1) child abuse; (2) unfair burdening of society; and (3) the creation of bad lives. I argue that while rape and other forms of child abuse would be no more legal or tolerated than they are now, the concern about any form of weakening a society's legal and political resources to combat such abuses does indeed register on the justificatory scale, but does not prove that such first-degree incestuous sexual relations are inherently bad enough to warrant intervention in their own right. I then argue that the concern about unfairly burdening society with unhealthy persons is not as dangerously totalitarian as we might initially fear, but nor is it strong enough to justify an outright prohibition. Finally, I argue that a concern to dissuade persons from creating certain kinds of lives (children with extreme birth defects) is also not as dangerously totalitarian as we might initially fear, and in fact goes further towards explaining why we might have a legitimate interest in intervening. Nonetheless, I argue that the criminalization of such acts only make sense when they are indicators of other offenses, namely negligence or abuse, and it thus seems that the act of consanguineous reproduction is itself insufficient. One potentially surprising conclusion of this inquiry is that far from creating strong reasons for tolerating these practices, religious or cultural reasons for valuing incest (as well as polygamy) actually seem to count against tolerating them. The reason is that from a liberal perspective, tolerating polygamy and incest involves the assumption that it is possible to disassociate polygamy and incest simpliciter from abusive practices associated with them, including environments where children are raised to devalue their own sexual (and other) autonomy. However, the presence of comprehensive doctrines which include polygyny or incest as part of a good life actually makes it harder to justify disassociating polygamy and incest themselves from the likely abuse and coercion practiced by those who would value polygyny or incest. (shrink)

This article analyses the rhetorical legitimation strategy of post-Soviet Uzbekistan under Islam Karimov as an authoritarian state. I show that the most important mode of legitimation in this case is neither the consequentialist appeal to stability, order or welfare, nor a direct appeal to guardianship, i.e., special knowledge. Rather, Karimov and his court intellectuals seek to advance a conception of 'ideology' as the comprehensive pre-political consensus of the political community. Their concept of 'ideology' is used to advance a political logic (...) whereby the nature of the political community, the purpose of the state, the unifying political telos and the present regime are fused into a single entity. This ontological fusion is presented as a hegemonic reality and occurs at the pre-political level, resulting in the vanishingly small space left over for politics that characterizes authoritarian systems. I then suggest that such analysis of the hegemonic strategy of authoritarian regimes, and above all the teleological conception of politics it advances, is a superior approach to authoritarian legitimation than the search for explicit 'consequentualist' versus 'principled' arguments. (shrink)

This article surveys four approaches to moral obligation to non-Muslims found in Islamic legal thought. The first three approaches I refer to in this article as the "revelatory-deontological," the "contractualist-constructivist" and the "consequentialist-utilitarian." The main argument of this article is that present in many of the contemporary works on the "jurisprudence of Muslim minorities" (fiqh al-aqalliyyat) is an attempt to provide an Islamic foundation for a relatively thick and rich relationship of moral obligation and solidarity with non-Muslims. This attempt takes (...) the form of a fourth "comprehensive-qualitative" approach to political ethics in that it appeals not to juridical reasoning of the type "is x permissible and in which conditions?" but rather to Islamic ideals of what it means to live a good life, of what believing, normatively-committed Muslims want to pursue in this world, not only what they may pursue without fear of punishment. This meta-ethical approach builds on and goes beyond the first three. The force of this argument is that this fourth "comprehensive-qualitative" approach to moral obligation to non-Muslims is novel, emergent and not found not in the writings of outright reformers but in those of conservative, "neo-classical," shari'a-minded - even Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated - Islamic scholars. What also adds to the force of this argument is that the other meta-ethical discourses, particularly of contract and utility (maslaha), already get these scholars quite far towards a doctrine of "loyal resident alienage" in non-Muslim societies. That even orthodox Islamic scholars go further shows that they have some interest in giving a theological or principled foundation to a much thicker and richer form of moral obligation to non-Muslims, a relationship which involves recognizing non-Muslims qua non-Muslims and contributing to their well-being. (shrink)

In this article I consider whether the legalization of sex-same marriage implies a right to incestuous marriage. I begin by suggesting that the liberal state get out of the 'marriage' business by leveling down to a universal civil union status. The question is then whether incestuous unions should be both legal and eligible for this status. I argue that the arguments compatible with public reason for prohibiting them outright, or even for excluding them from the permissible types of legally registered (...) partnerships, are quite weak. The objections to allowing such relations are those from (1) child abuse; (2) unfair burdening of society; and (3) the creation of bad lives. I argue that while rape and other forms of child abuse would be no more legal or tolerated than they are now, the concern about any form of weakening a society's legal and political resources to combat such abuses does indeed register on the justificatory scale, but does not prove that such first-degree incestuous sexual relations are inherently bad enough to warrant intervention in their own right. I then argue that the concern about unfairly burdening society with unhealthy persons is not as dangerously totalitarian as we might initially fear, but nor is it strong enough to justify an outright prohibition. Finally, I argue that a concern to dissuade persons from creating certain kinds of lives (children with extreme birth defects) is also not as dangerously totalitarian as we might initially fear, and in fact goes further towards explaining why we might have a legitimate interest in intervening. Nonetheless, I argue that the criminalization of such acts only make sense when they are indicators of other offenses, namely negligence or abuse, and it thus seems that the act of consanguineous reproduction is itself insufficient. (shrink)

A Rhetoric of Ruins combines conceptual and theoretical frameworks to explore ghost towns, disaster sites, and environmental badlands as remnants of modernity. Methods of analysis include Jeremiadic, hauntological, psychogeographic, and heterotopian ways of reading U.S. and international sites.

That alcohol provides a benefit to creative processes has long been assumed by popular culture, but to date has not been tested. The current experiment tested the effects of moderate alcohol intoxication on a common creative problem solving task, the Remote Associates Test . Individuals were brought to a blood alcohol content of approximately .075, and, after reaching peak intoxication, completed a battery of RAT items. Intoxicated individuals solved more RAT items, in less time, and were more likely to perceive (...) their solutions as the result of a sudden insight. Results are interpreted from an attentional control perspective. (shrink)

Research on corporate political activity has considered a number of antecedents to a firm’s engagement in politics. The majority of this research has focused on either industry or firm-level motivations that lead to corporate political activity, leaving the role of the firm’s leader noticeably absent in such scholarship. This article combines ideas from Upper Echelons Theory with research in corporate political activity to bridge this important gap. More specifically, this research utilizes CEO demographic characteristics to determine whether a firm will (...) invest in political activity and how these characteristics influence the particular approach to political activity the firm undertakes. Considering 27 years of data from large U.S. firms, we find that a CEO’s age, tenure, functional, and educational backgrounds influence whether and how the firm invests in political activity. (shrink)

On one reading of Kant’s account of our original representations of space and time, they are, in part, products of the understanding or imagination. On another, they are brute, sensible givens, entirely independent of the understanding. In this article, while I agree with the latter interpretation, I argue for a version of it that does more justice to the insights of the former than others currently available. I claim that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction turns on the representations of space and time (...) as determinate, enduring particulars, whose unity is both given and a product of synthesis. (shrink)

Lucy Allais argues that we can better understand Kant's transcendental idealism by taking seriously the analogy of appearances to secondary qualities that Kant offers in theProlegomena. A proper appreciation of this analogy, Allais claims, yields a reading of transcendental idealism according to which all properties that can appear to us in experience are mind-dependent relational properties that inhere in mind-independent objects. In section 1 of my paper, I articulate Allais's position and its benefits, not least of which is its elegant (...) explanation of how the features of objects that appear to us are transcendentally ideal while still being ‘empirically’ real. In section 2, I contend that there are elements of Allais's account that are problematic, yet also inessential, to what I view to be the core contribution of her analysis. These elements are the views that the properties that appear to human beings are not really distinct from properties that things have ‘in themselves’ and that Kant embraced a relational account of perception. In section 3, I return to the core of Allais's reading and argue that, despite its multiple virtues, it cannot make sense of key features of Kant's idealism. (shrink)

In this essay, I offer a twofold defense of homelessness. First, I argue that specifiable socio-economic forms of organization that are common among the homeless and that operate at least partially independently of state and philanthropic institutions embody valuable and worthwhile ways to live and to make a living. Second, the norms underlying the current institutional response to homelessness facilitate psychological distress and social fragmentation not just among the homeless but among the housed as well. As a result, the ways (...) in which the homeless seek to live and to make a living may be conducive to the wellbeing of the housed as well. (shrink)

Medical-legal partnerships connect legal advocates to healthcare providers and settings. Maintaining effectiveness of medical-legal partnerships and consistently identifying opportunities for innovation and adaptation takes intentionality and effort. In this paper, we discuss ways in which our use of data and quality improvement methods have facilitated advocacy at both patient (client) and population levels as we collectively pursue better, more equitable outcomes.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Journal of African Christian Thought vol. 4 no. 2, December 2001 published by the Akrofi-Kristaller Memorial Centre for Mission Research and Applied Theology, PO Box 76 Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana, [email protected]. We are grateful to the editor Dr Gillian Bediako.

Many proponents of deliberative democracy expect reasonable citizens to engage in rational argumentation. However, this expectation runs up against findings by behavioral economists and social psychologists revealing the extent to which normal cognitive functions are influenced by bounded rationality. Individuals regularly utilize an array of biases in the process of making decisions, which inhibits our argumentative capacities by adversely affecting our ability and willingness to be self-critical and to give due consideration to others’ interests. Although these biases cannot be overcome, (...) I draw on scientifically corroborated insights offered by Adam Smith to show that they can be kept in check if certain affective and cognitive capacities are cultivated. Smith provides a compelling account of how to foster sympathetic, impartial, and projective role-taking in the process of interacting with others, which can greatly enhance our capacity and willingness to critically assess our own interests and fairly consider those of others. (shrink)

I argue that Grafen’s formal darwinism project could profitably incorporate a gene’s-eye view, as informed by the major transitions framework. In this, instead of the individual being assumed to maximise its inclusive fitness, genes are assumed to maximise their inclusive fitness. Maximisation of fitness at the individual level is not a straightforward concept because the major transitions framework shows that there are several kinds of biological individual. In addition, individuals have a definable fitness, exhibit individual-level adaptations and arise in a (...) major transition, only to the extent that the inclusive-fitness interests of genes within them coincide. Therefore, as others have suggested, the fundamental level at which fitness is maximised is the gene level. Previous reconciliations of the concepts of gene-level fitness and individual-level fitness implicitly recognise this point. Adaptations always maximise the fitness of their causative genes, but may be simple or complex. Simple adaptations may be controlled by single genes and be maladaptive at higher levels, whereas complex adaptations are controlled by multiple genes and rely on those genes having coinciding fitness interests at a higher level, for a given trait. (shrink)

Epistemic Responsibility and Democratic Justification Content Type Journal Article Pages 297-302 DOI 10.1007/s11158-011-9147-1 Authors Andrew F. Smith, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA Journal Res Publica Online ISSN 1572-8692 Print ISSN 1356-4765 Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 3.

There May Be No Succinct Way to articulate Kant’s doctrine of transcendental idealism without begging certain interpretive questions. Roughly, however, it is the tripartite doctrine that The objects of outer sense, along with those of inner sense, are mere appearances, not things in themselves. Space and time are merely forms of these appearances, and thus things in themselves are neither spatial nor temporal. We can have no cognition (Erkenntnis) of things in themselves. One’s understanding of these claims turns mostly on (...) how one understands the distinction between things in themselves and appearances. And this distinction is where much of the interpretive controversy lies. In this paper .. (shrink)

In this review I argue that while Berger makes out a good argument that the language of civic engagement covers too much (and hence too little) and that education plays a vital role in developing civic-minded sensibilities, I am less sanguine that the strategies for the reform of our “attention deficit democracy” will achieve the desired effect in a political society dominated by the corrupting influence of corporations who actively seek to undermine just such sensibilities as anathema to their objectives. (...) As corporate objectives become more and more wedded to the state, so too reform becomes less and less likely to be successful. An excellent example of this is the power wielded by the current incarnation of the fossil fuel empire and it’s influence over law-making concerning hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania. While I applaud Berger’s objectives, I am no longer convinced that pragmatism and not a more revolutionary approach can fulfill Berger’s—and my own—democratic ideals. (shrink)

In this review I argue that while Berger makes out a good argument that the language of civic engagement covers too much (and hence too little) and that education plays a vital role in developing civic-minded sensibilities, I am less sanguine that the strategies for the reform of our “attention deficit democracy” will achieve the desired effect in a political society dominated by the corrupting influence of corporations who actively seek to undermine just such sensibilities as anathema to their objectives. (...) As corporate objectives become more and more wedded to the state, so too reform becomes less and less likely to be successful. An excellent example of this is the power wielded by the current incarnation of the fossil fuel empire and it’s influence over law-making concerning hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania. While I applaud Berger’s objectives, I am no longer convinced that pragmatism and not a more revolutionary approach can fulfill Berger’s—and my own—democratic ideals. (shrink)