Articles

Based on a series of indices and models calculated by the author, the article shows that the contemporary second major wave of globalization, substantially more extensive than the first (from the last third of the nineteenth to the early twentieth century), has had a major but contradictory impact on the economic development of advanced countries and, even more so, of developing countries. It has enabled some of the latter, including China and India, to carry out rational institutional and economic reforms and gain ground in the world economy at the expense of Western countries and Japan. However, globalization has also energized market forces and significantly aggravated economic, financial and socio-political instability around the world.

The article analyzes the ideological and political grounds for the genesis and activity of the Islamic State. The author examines the theoretical content of Islamic fundamentalism and analyzes the picture of the world that it offers its followers. The author asks what goals its supporters pursue and whether ISIS is a fundamentally new type of fundamentalist organization. The article examines the factors that allowed supporters of this organization to fight for a prolonged period against the national governments of Syria and Iraq and the forces of the international coalition of states. It explores key sources of Islamic law and cites comments by prominent theologians and scholars. The author concludes that ISIS uses Islam in a distorted form. Religious literacy is therefore an important element of any national policy to counter extremism.

The article is focused on the theological legacy of Moroccan Sultan Sidi Muhammad ben ‘Abdallah (1757–1790). The significance of his religious works is caused by the fact that since the Almohads (12th century) Sidi Muhammad was the first Moroccan sultan who consistently called for a return to the pure Islam of Prophet Muhammad. Moreover, a study of his theological heritage allows us to rethink the view of the development of Salafism in Arab-Islamic societies. For example, Russian and international researchers used to consider that Moroccan sultans had turned to Salafi ideas only after the development of the Wahhabi doctrine in Arabia. However, an analysis of the religious works of Sidi Muhammad shows that the rise of Salafi ideas in Morocco was not a result of adoption of the Wahhabi ideology which spread on the Arabian Peninsula, but formed at the stage when the Wahhabi movement was just emerging. The fundamentalist views of the Moroccan sultan were the result of internal processes that took place at that time in the Islamic Far West, and not of external influence. This conclusion broadens the limits of our perception of the renewal tendencies that emerged in the Arab-Islamic world in the second half of the 18th century.

In what follows we will try to assess the contribution of Lee Keun – the winner of the 2014 Schumpeter Prize and Professor of Seoul National University – to the theory of breakthrough economic development, based on the case of the Republic of Korea (RK).

The article contains an excerpt from a letter by Vissarion Sartov, the nephew of the prominent pre-revolutionary orientalist Palladius (Kafarov) and the first psalmist of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Japan. The excerpt from a letter to an unknown person, dated July 28, 1873, was found in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts and is published for the first time. It contains information about the early preaching of Orthodoxy in Japan: rivalry with Catholic missionaries in the former province of Sendai; features of Orthodox worship in Japanese; the organization of the church and the life of the Orthodox community in Hakodate; and Vissarion Sartov’s personal assessment of the prospects for Orthodoxy in Japan. It also mentions Nicholas of Japan, who had moved from Hakodate to Tokyo by the time Sartov wrote the letter.

This article is dedicated to the life and works of Uchida Masao (1839–1876), a Japanese writer, translator and teacher of the second half of the nineteenth century. The world geography encyclopedia “Yochi Shiryaku” (“Short Description of the World”, 1871–1880) is considered his main work. During the Meiji period (1868–1912), it was a bestseller. The encyclopedia was so popular that it was called “one of the three [outstanding] books of the Meiji period” (Meiji no sanshyo). Despite Uchida Masao’s rich literary legacy, his name is now practically unknown.

A set of XII century BC oracle bone inscriptions found in the ruins of the ancient Shang state capital narrates the bestowing of a title of hou of the place named Gan (genuine reading unknown) upon the person named Shang. The case of Gan-hou Shang cannot be explained by merely a formal recognition of the subjection of a previously independent peripheral chieftain; it must have been either a feudal-like enfeoffment or an assignment of an office. Some evidence suggests Gan was originally a part of the royal domain, granted later to hou Shang as a fief. Thus, the inscriptions shed light on the Shang period enfeoffment system, saying little of its actual scale and characteristics.

The monograph titled “From Lenin to Putin. Russia in the Middle and Near East” is presented to the judgment of professionals and a wide range of readers by the Academician A.M. Vasilyev, who is the patriarch of Russian Oriental and African studies. It covers an immense period (what is reflected in the title of the work) that witnessed political and economic relations of both the USSR and Russia with countries extended over the Middle and Near East surviving a lot of controversial events. In the course of that period not only the regimes changed and various military and political conflicts of diverse intensity have taken place, but the breakdown and unification of some of them has been seen, followed by transformation of ideologies, political systems etc. Obviously, the author aimed his efforts at analysing the great majority of these events stressing the role of both the USSR and Russia in them. The fundamental monograph by A.M. Vasilyev is of great interest for professionals and a wide range of readers from the educational and informational points of view.

A qualitative leap in knowledge about the Ottoman Empire and Islam achieved under Peter I was due not only to a subjective factor — the decision of such statesmen and scholars as P. A. Tolstoy, D. Kantemir, P. I. Yaguzhinsky and S. L. Vladislavich-Raguzinsky to join the tsar. In many ways, it was dictated by an objective factor, namely the practical need for knowledge of the Turks and Islam in the context of a military confrontation between two powers and two worlds: Russian Orthodox civilization and Muslim civilization in its Ottoman form.

This article dwells upon the language situation in Hyderabad, which is very diverse from the ethnolinguistic point of view. The author gives a historical description of the Urdu and Telugu languages and their relationship. The author also analyzes the evolution of the status of these languages and considers how their position has changed since the princely state of Hyderabad was integrated into the Indian Union in September 1948. The article examines the spheres in which Urdu and Telugu, though official languages, can be used, and the measures taken to promote and develop them. Special attention is paid to the correlation of ethnolinguistic and confessional aspects in the life of the Hindu and Muslim communities of Hyderabad, whose members are often bilingual. The author also raises the question of the relationship between Indian languages and English in various spheres of society and studies the resulting problems and possible solutions.

The article discusses the problem of enclave territories on the border between India and Bangladesh (East Pakistan in 1947–1971), known as chitmahals or chhits. The emergence of chitmahals can be traced through the history of the Cooch Behar princely state in the north-east of India. The XVII–XVIII centuries saw the decline of the princely state, which led to the ceding of a number of land parcels within its territory to the Mughal Empire. At the same time, the maharajas of Cooch Behar had land possessions outside their state. Later the actions of the East India Company, the new suzerain of the princely state, resulted in the emergence of new enclave territories. The problem of chitmahals was not resolved during the Partition of India in 1947, and Cooch Behar’s merger with India in 1949 turned it into a matter of international relations. The Agreements of 1958 and 1974 sanctioned the exchange of enclaves in order to preserve the integrity of the international border, but their timely implementation was delayed by politicization of the problem and India’s cumbersome bureaucracy. Corruption and the lax attitude of border guards helped enclave dwellers survive without access to their state’s infrastructure, economic system and social services up to 2015. The local population was hostile to people from chhits, which further exacerbated their hardships and impeded the implementation of the 1974 Agreement. Though the Agreement was ratified in full in 2015, there still are a few obstacles to clear on the way to resolving the enclaves issue.

This publication includes the introduction and the first part of a translation into Russian of the commentary to the sūra “The Opening One” (al-Fātiḥa) and the first five ayats of the sūra “the Cow” (al-Baqara) by the Russian Muslim theologian Musa Jarullah Bigiyev (1874–1949), written in Arabic and published in 1915 in Petrograd under the name “Fiqh al-Qurʼān” (The Understanding of the Qurʼān). The introduction to the translation briefly discusses the contribution of the theologian to Qurʼān studies, his scientific ties with renowned European and Russian Orientalists, as well as his methodology of interpretation. The first part of the translation covers the commentary to the first four (according to another numbering three) ayats of the sūra “The Opening One” (al-Fātiḥa), which reflects the position of M. Bigiev concerning the history of the Qurʼān, its grammar and vocabulary, the differences between the readings (qirāʼat), and his hermeneutic reasoning, which is a synthesis of reformist and mystical approaches.

This article explores how women in contemporary China answer to unemployment challenges which have affected China after its shift towards the market oriented economy. The paper discusses the changing approach to body politics in China as an answer towards rising rate of unemployment among Chinese women. It traces the history of how market reforms and changes in educational policies have put Chinese women in a position where they have to seek help of plastic surgeons to increase their value on the job market. The author argues that due to a rapid economic development of China and rise of the middle class with a larger disposable income, competition for employment in China has increased dramatically, which made women highly vulnerable, pushing them to use body alterations to secure jobs.

The paper analyses Turkey’s foreign policy towards the Middle East in the 2000s and early 2010s in two interrelated aspects: as a complicated search for a mutually acceptable model of cooperation between Turkey and the West on international security, and as a problem of differences in their perspectives on international security and approaches to its implementation in Turkey, the EU and the US. The relatively successful period of cooperation in the global war on terrorism in the 2000s did not help Turkey and the West overcome these conceptual differences. First, this prevented the full integration of Turkey into the Western system of international security in the Middle East. Second, it deepened differences in perspectives on international security and the struggle against those accused of terrorism and radicalism by the West. The Arab Spring and the escalation of instability in the region since the early 2010s, related to new civil wars and the rise of the Islamic State, highlighted this divergence and accelerated Ankara’s ambitions to act as an independent regional power in the Middle East, with its own agenda and strategy for relations with both state and non-state actors.

The article analyzes the phenomenon of transnational Islamic movements’ expansion to Thailand, taking the case of such a transregional missionary movement as Jama’ah Tabligh. Wide-scale activities of various international Islamic movements in Thailand and their rising influence on political and social life there since the 1970s resulted in the growing complexity of the religious situation in Thailand in general and in its southern provinces in particular. The Muslim Brotherhood was the most influential among Islamic movements in Thailand in that period. Its ideological framework became the basis of the Young Muslims Association of Thailand’s activities. However, the impact of the transnational movement Jama’ah Tabligh originating from India and Salafi movements urging the clearing of Islam from local traditions on Thailand’s Muslims was also essential. Each of these movements has its own strategy of ideological expansion and its own model of social activity. Thus, new ideological constructions and cultural identities emerging from the expanding Islamic network structures originating from the Islamic reformist movements supplemented the patchwork constellation of Islamic movements historically established in Thailand in the Modern Times. These processes became most visible in Thailand’s Muslim south.