Journal of religious culture = Journal für Religionskultur
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109
Religious conversion has become a dangerous social and individual problem. In Latin America, a traditional Catholic area, Protestant sects are successfully con-verting more and more Catholics into their own communities. Therefore the Pope demands a strict control of these activities. In India e.g., the Catholic hierarchy is critizising the Indian governments which have forbidden conversion on non-spiritual reasons. Hindu organizations have started even very successfully to re-convert Indian Christians particularly of Dalit and tribal background. Buddhists are very successful in indirect and even direct conversion of many Westerners. Wah-habit missionaries spread their Neo-Islam in the Muslim societies and get more and more even non-Muslim converts. We should add the forcible and sometimes ex-tremely cruel conversions the atheistic states had executed since the last century. ...
95
Methodology and Objects: Methodologically, from a diachronic linguistics perspective regarding the concept of the shin, spirits in folk belief in China and neighbouring cultures, we compare texts that comprise meanings a) historically in the local language and b) compared to the meanings of equivalent terms in languages of other cultures. Comparing sources of this belief, we examine if and how the shin belief can serve as an example of communication across cultural borders including practical forms of worshipping. Argumentation: We argue that the concept of the shin is across cultural and national borders a result from folk culture transcending political or cultural borders transmitted via migration of ethnic groups. Although similar, mind concepts of different cultures and groups never melted; evidence for this independence gives the Islamic distinctive separation between shin and jinn in this area in the Chinese Quran and other spiritual Chinese writings. On the other hand, the practice of worshipping is similar. Conclusions: A spiritual concept like shin varies in practice in different areas. Central Asia as the melting pot of Chinese and Middle East culture shows the cultural practice of Shamanism with shin belief, complex mind concepts like in Daoism, and religions incorporating shin belief (Islam). Observed changes in the particular local languages show the continuity of the local set of meanings. Multilingual and multicultural areas such as Central Asia rather integrate new words to increase their thesaurus with new meanings than to change the set of previous existing meanings in the languages. Arabic as a language of conquerors in Central Asia is a typical example for such a language that serves as a tool to set up new meanings.
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There is no question about charity in Islam: Allah himself has ordered almsgiv-ing: "Narrated Anas bin Malik: … The man further said, 'I ask you by Allah. Has Allah ordered you to take zakat from our rich people and distribute it amongst our poor people?' The Prophet replied, 'By Allah, yes'." The fundamental relevance of Islamic charity, zakat and sadaqa3, roots in the Muslim understanding of God. According to the proper message of Mohammed the first and primary name and quality of God is rahman and rahim4. Allah is - so to speak – rahman, the life giving uterus, rahim. Like the uterus he gives life to the men without any pre-condition. Life is a gift free of charge not a reward for something. ...
91
Our earth, which is a tiny in the infinity of the universe, is getting to be a difficult place to live in. Environmental problems such as pollution and global warming on one side and various disagreements and wars in every corner of the world on the other side, make most of the people unhappy and cause suffering. Everybody living in this world regardless of his or her ethnicity or religion has got share of responsibility to make this earth a place to live in peace and tranquillity. Within this framework, the most important thing in the world is that people with different languages and religious denominations should understand each other better to achieve the goal of creating more secure and peaceful environment for humanity. To make a contribution to this endeavour the Qur’anic guidelines which appear to open a sound way and strengthen the ground of a dialogue between celestial religions should be elucidated.
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This article examines the narratives with regard to lifting the boycott decisions imposed upon the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. There are basically two narratives about this event. While the first one relies on more accurate knowledge, the other contains a speculative scenario. However, since these two narratives were mixed with each other in time, some contradictory information was narrated, especially information based on a speculative scenario became most popular among the people. At the end, it is understood that the document that included the decisions of boycott was not destroyed in a mysterious way, but torn by a group of people.
89
Almost two thousand years ago the question was asked, "And who is my neighbor?", and Jesus answered it with the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10. 29-37), and so the idea of charity was inseparably linked with Christianity. However, it is almost a common opinion that Western Christianity and Russian Orthodoxy have quite different approaches to this item. According to that opinion, the Catholic Church had more concern about one's bodily needs and explicit welfare, while the Russian Orthodoxy paid less attention to the ''explicit man" and took more care of "the inner man". The Russian Orthodox tradition - though it has its own method in ascetism, apotheosis, general and private prayer - pays too little attention to the needy and deprived members of society. To raise the question about mollification of the deprived people's torments and to see it as a way towards the Kingdom of God seems alien to the very essence of Russian Orthodoxy. Did the Russian Orthodox Church ever refuse to help beggars and cripples? Or do the facts still show another picture? Since when did Russian Orthodox Church start to neglect that task? Which reasons have proved that charity has been unable to flourish in the Orthodox Church and especially Russian Orthodox Church as flourished her spirituality and arts: icon painting, choral singing, and church architecture? Let us have a brief outlook on the history of the Russian Orthodox Church and find out if there are any reasons to explain the reason.
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After years and years of persecution, we can say that the continuing and all-embracing revival of church life of the Russian Orthodox Church is going on and the general tendency to the development of all aspects of her diocese, parish and social activities is becoming more and more vivid. There have been some most important events – landmarks of starting the new epoch of Russian Orthodox Church: 1988 – Celebration of the Festival of Thousand Years of Baptizing Rus. 2000 – The Archpriests Council: Canonization of the Tsarist Family of Nicolas II; Attitude to the other Christian Confessions; Social Doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church. There are 128 dioceses now (instead of 67 ones in 1989) and 19000 parishes (instead of 689 ones in 1989) in the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church. ...
86
This paper is conceived from a secular perspective, and designed to address three elements identified in the call for papers: “Pluralistic tendencies”, their counterpart of “exclusivist attitudes”, and “creating an ethos of inter-religious harmony”. I choose to tackle these aspects by (a) exploring the meaning of religion, (b) addressing a specific attitude often corresponding to religion, namely religious fervour, and (c) assessing the validity and instrumentality of facilitating a universalist education as a tool to defuse “mistrust and hatred among various faith-communities”. The following paper is intended to serve only as a preliminary discussion guidance paper.
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In this article we dealt with the relations between the state and religion / Islam and its interpreters i.e., the ulama, their needs each other. As a case, with an original source, we focused on the time of the Mahmud II (1808-1839) The Ottoman reforms of the nineteenth century is reconciliation between Islam and Western civili-sation. In this process the ulama played key role by commenting Islam accordance with the need of the age or of the Ottoman Empire. The reformers, chiefly the Sultan and his close friends needed the support of the ulama to legitimate their reform programmes In this crucial stage the head of the ulama the Shaykhulislam, used his own religious knowledge and influence, derived from his office by writing a treatise to persuade the masses to accept the reforms. Applying the traditional virtue literature on the Ottoman dynasty he presented in this pamphlet one of the Western-minded Ottoman sultans as an ideal caliph-sultan. This attitude helped to transform the middle-aged Ottoman political structure and society into modern ages in Western line.
77
Islam, the Muslim traditions and the ulama in Central Asian societies are becoming increasingly important for assessing the situation in and around the region. To understand of the post Soviet Muslim republics it is nec-essary to know the Islamic heritage of the Soviet Union, i.e. the Islamic understanding and interpretation of Soviet official ulama which still influence the mind of the people and the contemporary Central Asian ulama. The official ulama were endeavouring to reconcile Islam with science and progress and to guarantee its survival in a modern environment, they served by an extremely energetic effort to preserve Islam at least in purity and integrity as religion and national sentiment and to prevent it from relapsing into deprivation and ignorance. The most important official Muslim religious figure, the Mufti of Tashkent Z. Babakhan interpreted Islam as a bulwark of progress, disseminator of knowledge, the religion of peace and friendship; portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a “democrat, reformer and revolutionary, even a socialist”; reconciliation with socialism and communism.
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A fresh look at the understanding of charity : with special reference to the present Indian practice
(2005)
The discussion of this paper is divided in two parts: Present understanding of Charity and a fresh look at the understanding of Charity particularly with a reference to the present Indian practice. As the major religious and theological perspectives specially from the Christian and the Islamic point of views are being dealt by other presentations in this seminar, therefore, the discussion here is limited only first, to the dictionary based linguistic meaning of Charity as understood in three main English speaking contexts and then (second), the Charity as practised in the Indian context. The new and revised deluxe edition of the Webster’s Encyclopaedic Unbridged Dictionary of the English Language has given the following meanings of Charity: 1)charitable actions, as almsgiving or performing other benevolent actions of any sort for the needy with no expectation of material reward: to devote ones life to charity, 2)something given to a person or persons in need; aims: she asked for work not charity, 3) a charitable act or work 4) a charitable fund, foundation, or institution: He left his estate to one of his charities, 5) benevolent feeling, esp. towards those in need or in disfavour: she looked so poor that we fed her out of charity, and 6) Christian love; agape 1 Cor. 13. The Chamber English Dictionary, the meanings of Charity gives as: universal love (N.T.): the disposition to think favourably of others, and do them good almsgiving: a usu. non profit-making foundation, institution, or cause, devoted to caring for those in need of help etc. According to Concise Oxford Dictionary Charity means: an organisation set up to provide help and raise money for those in need, the voluntary giving of money those in need, tolerance in judging others and love of humankind, typically in Christian context. These three set of meanings of Charity, represent the three English regions or contexts: American (Webster), Scottish (Chamber) and English (Oxford). The common important element in all for these three is, the Christian understanding of Charity, because all the three directly have referred to the Biblical usages of Charity in some forms. Here for the discussion of this paper, one can also add that even these usages are limited to the contextual understanding of the English world. Because language is also considered as an vehicle of a culture. But it is true that even the English speaking persons from the non-English world particularly of the Southern countries, (where English rulers have ruled in the past), understand the meaning of Charity more or less in the above sense only. ...