Legitimate and Illegitimate Violence in Islamic Thought

What comes first: a caliph or the jihad?

In its statement, Al-Qaeda called the death of Bin Laden an historic event. The statement was full of praise for what they called his bravery, but also full of cheer, for Bin Laden’s “martyrdom in the cause of God”, a martyrdom he had been seeking for about 30 years. This comes as no surprise: for proponents of Jihadi-Salafism, being killed by “the enemies of God” is the greatest personal achievement.  They refer to the Quranic verse “Sa...

Buried under the reports of Osama Bin Laden’s death (a subject for another occasion), the arrests in Iran of some prominent political figures associated with the President may seem rather minor news.  Those named have been accused of sorcery and unleashing metaphysical forces.  It may, or may not, be a real story; it probably tells us more about internal Iranian power politics than any surge in superstitious practices.  What it does reveal, however, is the potency of the accusation within...

Not much attention was paid in the international media to the demands of the Iraqi protesters circulated on many Iraqi websites and Facebook pages inviting people to join demonstrations on February 25^th in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. The lack of any media interest can be partly attributed to the fact that what they oppose is a scheme forced upon them in the name of democracy.

Arab regimes for centuries have denied freedom and economically abused their “subjects” and the available natur...

Freedom is responsibility. In reality even Western citizens are happy to give up most of their political responsibility if in turn they live in comfort. Personal liberty is essential for Westerners but political liberty is important for us mostly as a guarantee that we can rid ourselves of those who we think harmful to our personal liberty or responsible for our countries’ economic problems. The role of the state is to ensure the collaboration or at least the coexistence of its citizens. Th...

Suicide bombers blowing up themselves and others as well as suicide protesters burning themselves demonstrate extreme despair. In the case of the latter any religious motivation should be excluded and religion merely serves to sanctify the existing rage.

These extreme actions are symptoms of a global crisis that is intellectual, spiritual and ideological, but also social, economic, demographic and ecologic. This complex question will be resumed in a later note, but some aspects have to be...

The Eastern European experience also illustrates how the question of “where to go?” is transformed into the question of “how to join them?”. A process in which many essential problems are swept away unresolved in the urgency of action. Namely, societies once belonged to the “Eastern Bloc” very soon had to face the problems of Western democracy.

Western democracy is one of the best social systems ever to exist regarding the welfare of its own community. But it is remarkably dif...

One of the main goals of the LIVIT project is to examine the much "mediatised" topic of violence in Islamic thought on a scholarly level and to share the outcome of our research. This does not apply to the following note that presents some personal opinions rather than the results of a scholarly study. The provocative style of some of the statements is deliberate. A neutral note is sometimes difficult to recall. Due to the ongoing events, I gave up looking for Internet links in order to put t...

It is not very elegant to state that a conference we organised was successful. But it was. It is not because of us, but rather down to the excellent papers given and the animated discussions that followed them. Once again, we wholeheartedly thank all the participants, coming from leading institutions in Denmark, Hungary, Iran, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, for their contribution.

While organising this conference, we decided t...