Islam and Prejudice: Special Reference to Gordon W. Allport's Contact Hypothesis (original) (raw)
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Sapience Institute, 2020
This book seeks to understand the Muslim’s role in a world of sometimes discordant relations festered by attitudes of othering and dehumanisation. It shows that such attitudes, fuelled by hate, impinge upon a conviviality, harmony of existence and mutual understanding between peoples – as reflected in the Qur’ānic paradigm. The book breaks down codified concepts in an accessible way to the uninitiated reader, marrying together sociological constructs with real and illuminating examples from the Qur'an and Prophetic tradition. Numerous, varied, historical and contemporary examples are used from many different fields to demonstrate key points throughout the book, giving the reader a glimpse into the depth and breadth of history, literature, spirituality, conflict studies and how these concepts have manifested themselves across all these fields in relation to discourses of othering, dehumanisation and empathy. This book calls on us to attempt to see one another without the stereotypes, the walls, the distance both physical and cultural, that mar our perceptions of each other. Inspired by the Prophetic empathy, the book provides guidelines on bridging between communities and suggests direct lessons for the reader to take.
British Journal of Social Psychology, 2006
Much research in intergroup relations concerns the potential for interventions (e.g. intergroup contact) to reduce majorities' discrimination against minorities. In this paper we focus on how minority group members construe such interventions, especially as they affect their abilities to act in terms of their collective identity to realize social change. In addressing this issue, we focus on a minority's beliefs and theories concerning the intergroup dynamics lying behind their marginalization. Our data are qualitative and concern British Muslims' analyses of the dynamics of Islamophobia. Specifically, we explore two theorizations of Muslims' marginalization. Both share a concern with improving Muslims' collective position in Britain. However, they construe the dynamics to Islamophobia in very different ways, and this shapes their approach to intergroup contact and dialogue. Our analysis is informed by, and seeks to complement, social psychological theorizing on social change and intergroup contact.
Much research in intergroup relations concerns the potential for interventions (e.g., intergroup contact) to reduce majorities’ discrimination against minorities. In this paper we focus on how minority group members construe such interventions, especially as they affect their abilities to act in terms of their collective identity to realise social change. In addressing this issue, we focus on a minority’s beliefs and theories concerning the intergroup dynamics lying behind their marginalisation. Our data are qualitative and concern British Muslims’ analyses of the dynamics of Islamophobia. Specifically, we explore two theorisations of Muslim’s marginalisation. Both share a concern with improving Muslims’ collective position in Britain. However, they construe the dynamics to Islamophobia in very different ways, and this shapes their approach to intergroup contact and dialogue. Our analysis is informed by, and seeks to complement, social psychological theorising on social change and intergroup contact.
(Ed.) We and the Other: Muslim Non-Muslim Relations in Light of Islamic Jurisprudence
We congratulate Dr. Ali Mohiuddin Al-Qaradaghi for bringing this valuable scholarship to the public and we also laud the tireless efforts of the translator Dr. Syed Bashir Ahmad Kashmiri for the excellent rendering into English. No doubt this work will prove a useful guide for Muslims living everywhere and for non-Muslims as well to get an appreciation of the mainstream Muslim position on dialogue. The usual linguistic attempts at differentiating group identities between us and them are here distinguished from the everyday case by referring to sacred sources and read in such a way that the meanings are completely transformed. This approach neither calls for an appreciation of the other as he appears in an encounter. Nor does this approach require a radical decentering of the self in order to understand the perspective of the other. Rather, the main thrust of the book concerns the ethic and aesthetic underlying the encounter with the other as one confident in his own identity. The approach asks for empathy towards the other based on self-understanding. It does not prioritise the face-to-face encounter over the abstract other. It is firmly rooted in the interpretative understanding of the scriptural hermeneutics of Islam that led to the development of legal pluralism in the civilizational history of Islamic law. As the translator eloquently interprets from the original Arabic,“If the self itself is non-existent or irresolute, it cannot resist nor can it stand in the face of the Other; one is reminded here of the Quranic view of a Muslim self rooted in firm understanding of the divine.” This becomes the basis of interfaith dialogue and dialogue in general. Adeel Khan Managing Editor - Journal Religions/Adyan Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue August 9, 2014
The Muslim World , 2020
Recent studies suggest that the mainstream Indonesian Islamic organizations, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), hold a centrist position in their views and attitudes toward other religions and religious minorities with some variation among the scholars and disparity of viewpoints between the elites and the ordinary people.1 This article examines the organizational or official religious opinions or advice (fatwas)2 and ideas (pemikiran) put forward by individual authors affiliated with either organization. In order to understand the shared and different perspectives on “non-Muslims” and interreligious relations the cases are divided into belief-ritual and social relations. It argues that the organizational opinions tend to reinforce religious belief and ritual while promoting social tolerance and kindness in social relations whereas dissenting authors advocate reinterpretations of certain beliefs and promote religious tolerance and inclusivism towards the people of the book, particularly Jews and Christians. It highlights the different approaches they use: the organizational rulings particularize the universal Qur’anic passages and commentaries and prioritize the jurisprudential principle of avoiding harm over bringing benefit in judging the legal status of actions involving other religions, whereas the dissenting authors universalize the Qur’anic passages and commentaries, and contextualize the other Qur’anic passages and certain hadiths with exclusive and negative attitudes towards other religious communities, and prioritize the principle of bringing benefit over avoiding harm.