文化认同理论下的伊斯兰文化与全球化——阿拉伯学者的学术视野与理论路径

面对全球化的挑战,阿拉伯—伊斯兰文化认同的核心内涵正在经历着一系列重新定义的任务,命题的多重性导致观点的多样化。在西方前所未有的优势和汹涌澎湃的全球化浪潮面前,阿拉伯—伊斯兰世界日益担心自身的文化认同困境以及文化自主特性阿拉伯学者认为全球化确实是一种挑战,这种挑战认知并不是相同的,而是多元主义的。阿拉伯学者从不同角度开出应对良方,包括排斥全球化、应对全球化、捍卫全球化以及敌视全球化,以伸张阿拉伯—伊斯兰文化。阿拉伯学者对全球化的不同视角说明阿拉伯世界的思想、社会与文化的多元化,对全球化的多元认知有其历史与现实的影响元素。而对阿拉伯—伊斯兰文化参与全球化而言,全球化不可能被全部接受也不能全部抛弃,接受其的态度可以称为“积极中立“的方式。     

Drugs and Revolution in Iran: Islamic Devotion,Revolutionary Zeal and Republican Means

On 27 June 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini declared, ‘drugs are prohibited” and their trafficking, consumption and “promotion” were against the rules of Islam and could not take place in the Islamic Republic. This ruling, although informal in nature, sanctioned a swift re-direction of Iran's previous approach to narcotic drugs, both in terms of production and consumption. As had happened in 1955, Iran seemed ready to go back to a policy of total prohibition and eradication of opiates, this time under the banner of Islam rather than that of the international drug control regime. Drugs and the politics surrounding them have been a crucial, yet neglected, aspect of the history of modern Iran that have changed the nature of the state bolstering its capacity of social intervention, while hindering its legitimacy, in the Pahlavi, as in the republican, era. By moving on “from the analysis of the state to a concern with the actualities of social subordination”, this article attempts to interpret how social subordination and state coercion were practiced and defied in the making of punishment and welfare in the social body of Iran.     

城市化、城市边缘群体与伊朗伊斯兰革命

20世纪50年代末60年代初巴列维国王发动白色革命,自上而下地推行一揽子经济改革计划,包括土地改革、工业化、扫盲、扩大世俗教育、限制宗教势力等。此后的伊朗,在石油繁荣的带动下,经济发展进入快车道,城市化进入加速发展期。城市化迅猛推进导致伊朗阶级结构嬗变。一方面,两大传统精英阶层乌里玛和巴扎商人的中心地位丧失而渐趋边缘化;另一方面,两大新生阶层即城市新移民和现代知识分子由于政治排斥而被边缘化。传统精英阶层因为利益受损对现实不满,新生阶层则受制度排斥而反对政府。随着伊朗政治生态的恶化,四大阶层走向联合,最终推翻了巴列维王朝。     

Performing Trans in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Gender Transitions in Islamic Law,Theatre, and Film

In the wake of a string of sensationalist documentaries about transsexuality in Iran, Iranian theatre and film artists began crafting groundbreaking trans performances to educate audiences and depict characters living non-heteronormative lives without the translating influence of queer theory or identity politics. Investigating transsexual bodies as assembled by jurists in Iranian Shi?a jurisprudence and by artists on stage and screen reveals the ways in which the transsexual body is constructed in Islamic legal discourse and represented in narrative and bodily form in the public imaginary in Iran. Representations of transsexuality in theatre and film highlight the role of the arts as a vehicle for social change, communal recognition, and self-cognition. In particular, performances of female-to-male gender transitions in theatre and film have expanded the boundaries of how gender presentation is translated onto Iranian stages, into Tehran coffeehouses, and onto global screens. These trans performances usher Iranian spectators into new forms of viewership and artistic consumption in their attempt to creatively represent transsexual bodies and narratives to increase tolerance towards transsexuals; further, they have ignited a conversation among artists and activists about the assemblage of transsexual bodies in artistic productions and the most effective narrative and emotional forms of catharsis to inspire change.     

Rentiers and Autocrats, Monarchs and Democrats, State and Society: the Middle East Between Globalization, Human 'Agency', and Europe

The key concerns in work on the politics of the Middle East in the past decade have been economic and political liberalization/democratization (or the absence thereof) and security, both domestic and international, along with a continued focus on the Arab‐Israeli conflict. There has been an increasing recognition that these issues are strongly interrelated. Europe cannot avoid concerns over economic and political stability in the region affecting its own interests. Together with economic reasons for engagement with the region, this has brought about a desire to see economic and political reform take place. The Euro‐Mediter‐ranean Partnership Initiative (EMPI) is one result of this. The background against which these policies, concerns and hopes are evolving is ‘globalization’, both of the discourse of ‘democracy’ and in the growing hold of liberal market economics internationally. Recent research on the politics and political economy of the region, and on EMPI, however, shows that a combination of political‐economic and related political‐cultural factors, along with the Arab‐Israeli conflict, continue to hamper political and economic reform in the Middle East, and that European policy as currently conceived is unlikely to affect this greatly. Yet such recent work also shows that aspects of globalization are changing the environment in which Middle Eastern regimes are having to function, while at the same time offering civil society new tools. Middle Eastern societies do, to varying extents, possess the necessary ‘spaces’ and traditions for human ‘agency’ to escape the constraints of domestic and international ‘structures’ and evolve new political cultures‐including democratic ones. Existing judicial or legislative institutions may acquire volition of their own and reinforce this process. There is nothing in ‘Islam’ that necessarily obstructs such possibilities. And supposedly ’obsolete‘ monarchies might yet be among the most successful types of regime in coping with such change.     

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

Iran espouses the most radical anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist position in the Muslim Middle East, calling for the elimination of Israel. Drawing on anti-Jewish traditions in Shi^ci Islam, Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, maintained that Zionism is the culmination of the Jewish-Christian conspiracy against Islam and undermines its historical mission. Fusing together Islamic and European anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist ideologies, Iran became a disseminator of Holocaust denial in the Middle East and a sponsor of Western Holocaust deniers. Iran's Holocaust denial, which aims at demolishing the legitimacy of the Jewish state, denies Jewish history and deprives the Jews of their human dignity by presenting their worst tragedy as a scam.