Video
Middle East
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21 October 2016Making revolutions and facing modernity was easier for Shia Muslims then for Sunnis, says Prof. Arjomand from N.Y. State University. The Shia attendance for the Madhi helped in mobilizing people and create the Iranian constitution. Instead Sunni Islam is more conservative and hostile against change, with religious reactions against state building, constitutionalism and modernity. And what about comparing the religious differences to those of the religious wars in medieval Europe? - 22 June 2016In Indonesia we have limited separation of state and religion, strong Ulema councils and also pluralism, democracy and fair elections, says Syafiq Hyasim, founder of Rahima Foundation. He researches theological answers ‘within’ Islam. Specifically, two issues: women’s rights and polygamy and the necessity to train female ulemas.
- 19 May 2016Four years after the “Jasmin Revolution” in Tunisia and in the wake of the Nobel Peace Prize 2015 awarded to the Tunisian civil society, there is still the need to understand the deep causes and challenges of this exceptional success story in the Arab world. Tunisian scholars and activists interviewed by Reset-Doc analyze the key events and features of their country democratic transition, trying to provide answers to the many questions and problems still open today with regards to economy, youth, social justice and inequalities.
- 15 December 2015Can lessons be drawn from 16th century France and its religious wars to today’s conflicts in the Middle East? The historian Keith Luria from North Carolina State University tells us how the concept of compromise and negotiation helped open up the non negotional character of religious hostility. But it needed an agency of enforcement. Reset-DoC interviewed Professor Luria during our conference “Religious Wars in Early Modern Europe and the Contemporary Islamic Civil War: Reflections, Patterns and Comparisons” held in New York in Fall 2014.
- 15 February 2013In order to create a new democratic political order the initial transformation process needs even more participation and a democratic constituent power, argues political scientist Andrew Arato at Reset-Dialogues’ Istanbul Seminars. Democracy making is a consensual process with an active input from civil society groups, and not just from elites. In Egypt this constituent democratic form never really emerged yet, also because the Brotherhood allowed the military to impose its own rules, asking for quick elections in return. Andrew Arato is the Dorothy Hart Hirshon Professor of Political and Social Theory in the department of sociology at The New School University, New York City.
