In 1908, public figures of the Egyptian civil society created the Egyptia University on the pattern of European universities. Foreign scholars belonged to its faculty including orientalists. The only Spaniard appointed as professor was Vicente Galarza y Pérez Castañeda, who taught philosophy in the years between 1915 and 1919. The article analyses the texts of his courses, taught in Arabic, and considers Galarza to be the first to apply the critical method in his university teaching.

_This mirror for princes sheds light on the relationship between spiritual and political authority in early modern Egypt_ This guide to political behavior and expediency offers advice to Sufi shaykhs, or spiritual guides, on how to interact and negotiate with powerful secular officials, judges, and treasurers, or emirs. Translated into English for the first time, it is a unique account of the relationship between spiritual and political authority in late medieval / early modern Islamic society.

Averroës,1126-1198; criticism and interpretation; Ibn Taymīyah, Aḥmad ibn ʻAbd al-Ḥalīm,1263-1328.

Sport is viewed as a multidimensional phenomenon. Most countries,including Muslim nations, invest heavily in sports to ensure the participationof their citizens both for recreational and competitive purposes. Indeed, theinvolvement of Muslim countries in significant multi-sport events such as theCommonwealth, the Asian, and the Olympic Games are inevitable. Therefore,a proper projection should be given to Muslim athletes as their participationreflects the identity and culture of Muslim civilizations. To date, the issue ofMuslim athlete’s involvement in sports from the notion of Islamization hasyet (...) to be elucidated by any scholar. This paper aims to scrutinize the sportssociology as an academic discipline in the Muslim majority society context.It also views the philosophy of sports participation and the dilemma facedby Muslims in sports under the light of al- Qur’ān, and Hadith. In obtainingrelevant information for this paper, we employed qualitative content analysisfrom various literature. In conclusion, this discourse of sport, Islam, and society has potentially triggered the new social movement that accommodated the needs of the Muslim community towards sports participation and physical activity. (shrink)

En este artículo se lleva a cabo una descripción detallada del ms. 80 de la Zāwiya Ḥamzawīya. Es un maŷmū‛ recopilado, en su mayor parte, por un mismo copista del que desconocemos su nombre completo, aunque no el de su padre: ‛Umar b. Aḥmad b. Abī-l-Qāsim al-Šarīf. El maŷmu‛ contiene 427 folios con textos de variado contenido, predominando los de carácter astronómico. Entre otras obras, incluye una copia del Kitāb fī-l-‛amal bi-l-asturlāb de Abū-l-Ṣalt de Denia; el Kitāb min ‛ilm al-awqāt (...) bi-l-ḥisāb de Ibn al-Bannā de Marrākuš; el Tanbīh al-anām ‛alà mā yaḥduṯu fī ayyām al-‛ām de al-Ŷādīrī, así como su Urŷuza Rawḍat al-Azhār; y la única copia del Kitāb al-nuŷūm de ‛Abd. al-Mālik b. Ḥabīb. (shrink)

The laws are not silent in war, but what should they say? What is the moral function of the law of armed conflict? Should the law protect civilians who do not fight but help those who do? Should the law protect soldiers who perform non-combat functions or who may be safely captured? How certain should a soldier be that an individual is a combatant rather than a civilian before using lethal force? What risks should soldiers take on themselves to avoid (...) harming civilians? When do inaccurate weapons become unlawfully indiscriminate? When does 'collateral damage' to civilians become unlawfully disproportionate? Should civilians lose their legal rights by serving, voluntarily or involuntarily, as human shields? Finally, when should killing civilians constitute a war crime? These are the questions that Law and Morality at War answers, contributing to a cutting-edge international debate. Drawing on the concepts and methods of contemporary moral and legal philosophy, the book develops a normative framework within which the laws of war and international criminal law can be evaluated, criticized, and reformed. While several philosophical works critically examine the moral status of civilians and combatants, this book fills a gap, offering both an account of the laws of war and war crimes, and proposing how the law could be improved from a moral point of view. (shrink)

Through a critical engagement with Jeremy Waldron’s work, as well as the work of other writers, I offer an account of the relative scope of the morality of war, the laws of war, and war crimes. I propose an instrumentalist account of the laws of war, according to which the laws of war should help soldiers conform to the morality of war. The instrumentalist account supports Waldron’s conclusion that the laws of war justifiably prohibit attacks on civilians even if it (...) turns out that some civilians lack a moral right not to be killed. Importantly, the instrumentalist account also offers what Waldron thinks impossible: a non-consequentialist defense of the failure of the laws of war to prohibit the killing of nonthreatening combatants. Finally, I argue that new war crimes can be broader than the morality of war as well as established laws of war and that many of the arguments for defining war crimes more narrowly than either the morality of war or the laws of war are unconvincing. In all of these ways, I hope to carry forward Waldron’s project of exploring the relationship between law and morality in war. (shrink)

This article responds to four others that critically and productively engage with my book, Law and Morality at War. Four themes emerge: the law of armed conflict’s claim to legitimate authority, the relationship between the law of armed conflict and the deep morality of war, the moral norms governing killing in the fog of war, and the moral permissibility of targeting civilians.

Helen Frowe’s Defensive Killing is in many respects an excellent book, full of arguments that are original, interesting, important, and often persuasive. In other respects, the book is deeply unsettling, as it forcefully challenges the belief that killing ordinary civilians in armed conflict is a paradigmatic moral wrong. In particular, Frowe argues that civilians who make political, material, strategic, or financial contributions to an unjust war may lose their moral protection from intentional and collateral harm. On this point, Frowe’s arguments (...) are original, interesting, and important but, thankfully, not persuasive. (shrink)

Egyptians had many reasons to overthrow the government of Hosni Mubarak, and to challenge the legitimacy of the interim military government. Strikingly, among the leading reasons for the uprising and for continued protest are reasons grounded in criminal justice. Reflection on this dimension of the Egyptian uprising invites a broader examination of the relationship between criminal justice and political legitimacy. While criminal justice is neither necessary nor sufficient for political legitimacy, criminal injustice substantially undermines political legitimacy and can provide independent (...) reasons for revolution. A state may compromise its legitimacy by committing criminal acts, by perverting or subverting the criminal process, and by failing to discharge its duty to punish serious wrongdoing—a duty that then falls to individuals to discharge either directly (through vigilantism) or indirectly (through revolution). Contrary to the views of many leading criminal law theorists, the duty to punish serious wrongdoing applies to individuals and not only to states. The relevance of political legitimacy to criminal justice is more complicated. Individuals are morally obligated to follow the morally justified laws of an illegitimate state, but are not morally obligated to follow the morally unjustified laws of a legitimate state. Nor may any state punish in the absence of moral wrongdoing and moral fault. However, illegitimate states may be incapable of justly holding individuals accountable to the state, to the community, or to victims through criminal trials. This incapacity provides an additional reason to overthrow illegitimate states and replace them with legitimate states capable of justly administering a just criminal law. (shrink)

Victor Tadros claims that punishment must be justified either instrumentally or on the grounds that deserved punishment is intrinisically good. However, if we have deontic reasons to punish wrongdoers then these reasons could justify punishment non-instrumentally. Morever, even if the punishment of wrongdoers is intrinsically good this fact cannot contribute to the justication of punishment because goodness is not a reason-giving property. It follows that retributivism is both true and important only if we have deontic reasons to punish. Tadros also (...) claims that the constitutive aim of punishment is to inflict harm or suffering on offenders. On the contrary, the constitutive aim of retributive punishment is to inflict wrongs on offenders that are proportionate to the wrongs they commit. Indeed, punishment should involve the least harmful wrong that is proportionate to the wrongfulness of the offense, adequate to facilitate recognition, and conducive to deterrence. (shrink)

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-97) was a pan-Islamic thinker, political activist, and journalist, who sought to revive Islamic thought and liberate the Muslim world from Western influence. Many aspects of his life and his background remain unknown or controversial, including his birthplace, his religious affiliation, and the cause of his death. He was likely born in Asadabad, near present-day Hamadan, Iran. His better known history begins when he was 18, with a one-year stay in India that coincided with the Sepoy Mutiny (...) of 1857-59. In what would become a life of constant travel, he soon went to Mecca to perform Hajj, before returning to Afghanistan to join the service of the country's ruler, Dost Mohammad Khan (1793-1863). He later sided with Dost's son Mohammad Aʻzam, who ultimately lost in a power struggle with his British-supported brother Sher Ali. Al-Afghani's political activism eventually took him to Paris, London, Tehran, Saint Petersburg, and Constantinople. It was during his second stay in Egypt (1871-79) that he cemented his role as a reformer. He found in Cairo a class of young intellectuals who gathered around him, established newspapers, and used these papers to disseminate his ideas. Chief among al-Afghani's Egyptian disciples were scholar Muhammad ʻAbduh, journalist ʻAbd Allah al-Nadim, and nationalist politicians Mustafa Kamil and Saʻd Zaghlul. Al-Afghani's influence on both modernist and traditionalist Islamic thought continues to the present. An activist who sought to effect change through political journalism and public speaking, he did not write many books. This treatise, entitled al-Radd ʻalā al-dahrīyīn (Refutation of the materialists), was a rebuttal of the views of the pro-British Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, who had argued that science is more important than religion in the rise of civilizations. First written in Persian following al-Afghani's exile from Egypt to India, it was translated into Arabic by his student Muhammad ʻAbduh, with the help of al-Afghani's assistant Arif Efendi. (shrink)

On religious life in Islam; conduct of life for Muslims and on Islamic ethics.