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Call for Papers "Islam and Political Modernity" Theoria Special Issue __________________________________________________ Contributions are invited for a special issue of Theoria aimed at examining the relationship between Islam and political modernity. Contributors are encouraged to reflect directly on philosophical and political challenges such as the influence of the return of the sacred on secular modernity (and vice-versa), with particular regard to Islam; the seeming intellectual intractability of the 'religious question', or the relationship between church and state; the potential of an Islamic humanism to serve as a bridge between civilizations; and the manner in which 'individualism', 'freedom' and 'democracy' might come to be articulated within world-views which are not self-declaredly 'Judeo-Christian' or 'secular-atheistic'. Contributions on the history of the relationship between Islam and modernity, and of its impact on political and social thought, are also apposite. As Bassam Tibi and Francis Fukuyama have recently suggested, misunderstanding the nature of 'political Islam', or conflating Islam with fundamentalism or jihadism, can have profound implications for foreign policy practice and, more broadly, for the study and practice of international relations. If there is no necessary contradiction between Islam and democracy, it becomes more difficult to sustain any quasi-Huntingtonian account of the contemporary global context as a 'clash of civilizations', and makes it both possible and urgent to engage with Islam as a rich, vast and enormously diverse seam of ideational impulses. Another important view worth considering is that offered by Olivier Roy, who locates the origins of fundamentalism in the effective 'deterritorialization' of Islam under the impact of globalization and migration. Considerations of these and other perspectives, as well as comparative perspectives, both discipline-specific and interdisciplinary, will be welcomed. The deadline for submission of papers is 30 December 2008. An electronic version of the paper (between 6000 and 8000 words in length, with Harvard-style referencing and preferably in MSWord), including an abstract, six keywords and a short biography, should be sent to: Roger Deacon, Managing Editor: THEORIA, [email protected]. General information regarding Theoria may be obtained from its website: http://www.theoria.ukzn.ac.za/ __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org
