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On Sunday 30 January Rashid Al-Ghannouchi, the 69 year old leader of the Tunisian Islamic movement, returned home after a long exile in London. The international media has interpreted Al-Ghannouchi’s return as the most potent symbol yet of the dramatic changes that have taken place in Tunisia in recent weeks.
Mahan Abedin is an academic and journalist specialising in Islamic affairs.
There are at least 175 million Muslims in India. Twenty to twenty five percent of these are believed to be Shiites, with the Twelver Shiites comprising the majority. In the following interview, Mahan Abedin makes enquiries to a leading Shiite figure in India, Seyed Mohammad Asgari, about a wide range of issues affecting Indian Shiites, in particular their relationship with the majority Sunni population. The picture that emerges offers a striking contrast to the situation in neighbouring Pakistan.
Mahan Abedin is an academic and journalist specialising in Islamic affairs.
“The Jammat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) is an Islamic organization that is trying to promote, propagate and strengthen Islam. Our primary role in India is to protect and strengthen the Muslim community in addition to reaching out to non-Muslims.” – A member of the leadership of the JIH answers the questions of Mahan Abedin.
Mahan Abedin is a research fellow at the New Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis. Previously he has worked with numerous think tanks, including the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation and the London-based Centre for the Study of Terrorism. He has also been active in journalism, having worked for the Beirut-based Daily Star and most recently the Irbil-based AK News Agency where he was chief editor of the Persian and English sections. Born in Iran, but raised and educated in the United Kingdom, Abedin is a frequent traveller to the Islamic Republic where he is a consultant to independent media.
There are believed to be around 100,000 Muslims in Japan. Most of these are immigrants, the biggest group being comprised of Indonesians who number around 30,000. Ethnic Japanese converts are very few. In this interview with Mahan Abedin, Hassan Ko Nakata provides an overview on Islam in Japan and also comments on the concept of Khilafa (Caliphate).
© 2010 Mahan Abedin / Religioscope
Hizbut Tahrir (HT) was founded in 1953 in Palestine. Since then the party has spread all over the Muslim world and amongst Muslim communities in the West. A trans-national and pan-Islamic party, HT is committed to re-establishing the Islamic Caliphate. In recent years, HT has assumed an increasingly active role in Lebanon. A researcher specializing in contemporary Islamic movements, Mahan Abedin has conducted for Religioscope an exclusive interview with Dr. Mohammed Jaber, head of the executive committee of Hizbut Tahrir in Lebanon. This wide-ranging interview covers many issues, including HT’s attitude toward Shi’a Muslims.
© 2010 Mahan Abedin
Video games are at the core of a renewed focus of interest and have given birth to what are now known as game studies. Games eventually crystallise new forms of collective mobilisation and action and have to be considered as cultural artefacts. Vit Sisler, a researcher in game studies, tells us more about the religious and other challenges that games are posing in the Middle East and Muslim world.
During a meeting with Michael Hastings Black, Religioscope discussed the impact of new media on depicting a more balanced image of the Muslim minority in the US. Black shows the democratic effect of new media and their subversive potential effect on mainstream classical media. According to him, it is through the new media and such ads, and for economic reasons that American Muslims are going to be integrated into the American national narrative.
“Rethinking Religion in India”: such was the topic of a conference that took place in New Delhi. In order to understand what is at stake, Religioscope conducted an interview with one of the participants at the conference, Dr. Martin Fárek.
The interview took place in New Delhi and was conducted by Jean-François Mayer.
We hear more and more about ‘Islamic science’ and ‘Islamic economics’, and over recent decades, calls for an ‘Islamization of knowledge’ and for attempts to develop Islamic models for approaching modern science have increasingly been heard. What does this mean and what does it involve for current developments across the Muslim world? Religioscope put these questions to Prof. Farid Alatas.
The interview took place at the National University of Singapore and was conducted by Jean-François Mayer.
British journalist Yvonne Ridley, who converted to Islam after being captured by the Taliban, tells Asma Hanif that oppression of Muslim women has to do with traditions rather than with Islam and explains why she became a Muslim.
© 2007 Asma Hanif.
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