From Fitnah to Thaura: The Metamorphosis of the Arab-Muslim Protest Movements
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2017, Vol 8, Issue 9
Abstract
Since 2011, the Arab world has entered a period of political turbulence accompanied by widespread growth of protest activity. The events that were metaphorically called the “Arab Spring” referring to the “Spring of Nations” of 1848, affected virtually all countries of the Middle East and North Africa. In Libya, Syria, and Yemen, antigovernment demonstrations led to almost complete destruction of statehood raising the question of the existence of these political entities in their former borders. Egypt and Tunisia ended up with a change in the ruling regimes that repeated many times. The ruling elites of other Arab countries, having experienced the wrath of the Arab streets to varying degrees, managed to stay in power. The “Arab Spring” events should be more adequately viewed in the framework of “fitnah”, a form of protest traditional in the Arab-Muslim political culture. Indeed, since the emergence of Islam, fitnah was one of the most common forms of protest activity in the Middle East. However, in the last two centuries, it was replaced by “thaura” or the “revolution,” much more common in the European mentality. While the term "fitnah" has mainly negative connotations, “thaura” has been praised in every possible way and even became the basis for commemorative practices. This paper makes an attempt to compare these two forms of protest in the Muslim world.
Authors and Affiliations
Alisa Shishkina and Leonid Issaev
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25784
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8090193
- Views 343
- Downloads 10
Frequency of Spiritual/Religious Practices in Polish Patients with Chronic Diseases: Validation of the Polish Version of the SpREUK-P Questionnaire
In order to measure a wide spectrum of organized and private religious, spiritual, existential and philosophical practices, the SpREUK-P (SpREUK is the German language acronym of “Spirituality/Religiosity and Coping wi...
Notions of Female Authority in Modern Shi’i Thought
The dominant Shi‟i gender discourse has undergone major shifts in recent years, resulting in revisions of various jurisprudential rulings on women‟s rights and status. Among such shifts, there have been rulings on fema...
Diversity without Pluralism: Religious Landscape in Mainland China
The paper explores religious diversity and pluralism in the religioscape of mainland China with three examples. While religious diversity is de facto practice, “religious pluralism” is not socially recognised, cultural...
A Feasibility Study of Taste & See: A Church Based Programme to Develop a Healthy Relationship with Food
Holistic approaches which include a religious element are a promising intervention within obesity, but have not been explored in the UK. Objective: To conduct a feasibility study of a three-month, Christian-based intui...
Fast, Feast and Feminism: Teaching Food and Gender in Italian Religious Women’s Writings
In the wake of Caroline Walker Bynum’s essential studies on the crucial role food played in the lives of medieval religious women, significant attention has been given to the connection between premodern women’s spirit...