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Since the late 1990s, Islamic activists have been active in promoting a series of initiatives and institutions known as the ?dialogue of civilizations.? This agenda was initiated by the former Iranian President Muhammad Khatami and subsequently promoted by faith-based movements like Gülen Movement, and organizations like the Organization of Islamic Conference. This (agenda of) dialogue provides an excellent opportunity to study ?Islamic norm entrepreneurs? and their strategies. This chapter argues that the discourse of the dialogue of civilizations is a response to the discourses of the end of history, the clash of civilizations, and the rejection of the West by the Muslim fundamentalist. Islamist activists adopt dichotomous frames for promoting their agenda: when interacting with non-Muslims, they appeal to the ?dialogue of civilizations? and ?interfaith dialogue? for mutual understanding, coexistence, and peaceful solutions to conflicts to argue for dialogue in international society. Among Muslims, however, they appeal to (the) dawa, the propagation of Islam, to justify their dialogue-related activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prompted by cases such as the Muhammad Cartoons, published by Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, and the film Fitna, made by Dutch political leader Geert Wilders, there has been an increasing debate about hate speech targeting Islam and international human rights. So far this debate has polarized the international community, setting Muslim majority states against Western liberal democracies. These cases also have underlined the substantive ambiguities about how to distinguish free speech from incitement to hatred in relation to religious issues, especially regarding Muslim minorities in Western states. Should there be an international norm against hate speech targeting religion or religious groups? In particular, is the United Nations Resolution "Combating the Defamation of Religions" a step forward in developing such a norm? I argue that an international norm protecting minority religions from defamation has significant potential to contribute not only to the freedom of expression and religion but also to the political participation of religious minorities. I reconfigure the debate by putting the rights of the religious minorities at the center and offer a framework that can satisfy both the demands of Muslim identity activists who are concerned about the effects of Islamophobia and liberals who are worried about the potential implications of hate speech regulation on freedom of speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1990s, Islamic activists have been active in promoting a series of initiatives and institutions known as the 'dialogue of civilizations'. This agenda was initiated by the former Iranian President Muhammad Khatami and subsequently promoted by faith-based movements such as the Gülen movement, and organizations such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference/Cooperation. The agenda of the dialogue of civilizations has been a response to the discourses of the end of history, the clash of civilizations, and the rejection of the West by Muslim fundamentalists. This article focuses on the emergence and spread of this agenda among Islamic elites, groups, and institutions. It argues that this agenda has become a significant part of contemporary Muslim thought and practice of world politics. Essentially, the dialogue agenda has facilitated institutional change within Islamic international organizations, spurred various Islamic attempts to accommodate other religions theologically, and instigated grassroots Islamic mobilization for interfaith dialogue. All these developments have fixed the dialogue agenda firmly in some Muslim circles and shaped their engagement with world politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an increasing debate about the place of incitement of religious hatred in international human rights, highlighted by cases like Danish Cartoons, Dutch political leader Geert Wilders’ film, Fitna. So far this debate has polarized the interna ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Muslim identity activists have increasingly become a significant force in shaping some key debates in international society, international relations scholarship rarely studies these groups. Like their secular counterparts, Muslim transnational ad ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past ten or fifteen years, an increasing number of revisitionist scholars rejected the most significant elements of the Westphalian narrativeâ€"the centrality of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) for the evolution and structure of international society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dispersion of religious people and ideas bring diverse beliefs and believers into close contact with each other. How do religious leaders generate religious solutions to regularize multireligious interactions? How do multireligious interactions affect forms of religiosity? Multireligious interactions generate one of three outcomes: compartmentalization, toleration, and interfaith dialogue. This paper explores rarely examined form of multireligious interactions: interfaith dialogue. According to the conventional wisdom, multireligious interactions are particularly challenging to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam due to their monotheistic exclusion. Interfaith dialogue activities indicate that there is more to the monotheistic interactions than violence and conflict. I argue that increasing number of religious scholars and believers of the monotheistic traditions reject exclusivist approach to religion. An interfaith agenda operates among religious leaders and believers to interpret their traditions more inclusive and pluralist to create a theological space accommodating and validating each other’s existence. The interfaith dialogue is more than a theological process. It incorporates ethical and political themes. It conflates theological accommodation with demands for a more humane globalization. Religious scholars engage theological and ethical dialogues to create a transreligious coalition in pursuit of common moral goals. Religious leaders assume their moral authority to combat materialism, consumerism, and environmental degradation. The shared moral concerns supersede divisive discussions about conceptualization of Godhead. At the communal level, interfaith activists infuse quest for shared spirituality with social activism. Interfaith meetings and activism aims to create a global interfaith ethics by raising concerns about war, poverty, and environment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although IR scholars have offered various explanations for the origins of sovereignty, the literature is yet to offer a convincing one. Rejecting the hypothesis to locate sovereignty with Westphalia, this paper traces the emergence of sovereignty to two nineteenth century developments: the dominance of the positivist legal theory and the ascendancy of European states over non-European states. Theoretically, this paper integrates critical legal theory and postcolonial theory into international relations theory. The critical legal theory clarifies how three doctrines that constructed sovereignty (state?s ultimate authority, territoriality, recognition) were directly related to the positivist (as opposed to earlier natural) legal theory. The postcolonial theory illuminates how the positivist legal theory?s construction of sovereignty was related to the legitimization of European and delegitimization of non-European political entities. Sovereignty both justified and enabled Europe? domination over non-European political entities. The empirical part of the paper examines the imposition of extraterritoriality (European states? exclusive jurisdiction over their citizens in non-European states) in Japan, China, Turkey, Iran, and Thailand to provide evidence that positivist legal theory?s attempt to conceptualize the interaction of European states? interaction with the non-European political entities crystallized the doctrine of sovereignty. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although scholars have paid increasing attention to the emergence of territorial sovereignty in Europe, IR theory has not explained its diffusion to non-Western areas. This study focuses on this puzzle by explaining the elimination of extraterritoriality from the international system. This study also explores why the abolition process varied in non-Western countries. During the 19th century and in the first part of the 20th century, China, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan had extraterritoriality agreements with Europe and the United States. As opposed to territoriality where a state claims exclusive jurisdiction over all people within its territorial boundaries regardless of their nationalities, extraterritoriality refers to a legal regime where a state claims exclusive jurisdiction over its citizens residing in another state. During the nineteenth century European states institutionalized extraterritoriality in non-Western countries through unequal treaties. A series of these unequal treaties gave Western states legal jurisdiction in non-Western states. For example, the Nanking Treaty between China and the United Kingdom in 1842 established British extraterritoriality in China. Similar arrangements were made between the Ottoman Empire and Britain in 1825, and Japan and Britain in 1856. Although the Ottoman Empire, Japan, and China repeatedly called for the abolition of extraterritoriality on the grounds of territorial sovereignty and equality, it was not until the late nineteenth century that Western states began to change these policies. It is this specific change (resulting in the general rise of territorial sovereignty in the international system) that this paper explores. Through case studies of the Ottoman State, China, and Japan, I will test Krasner’s argument about norms of sovereignty as organized hypocrisy and the English School’s explanation of the expansion of international society through ‘standards of civilization.’ I argue that the state building practices of rulers of non-Western countries, namely codification of legal rules and consolidation of state based legal systems abolished extraterritoriality. Low level of geopolitical competition among Western states determined the timing of the abolition. By clarifying the mechanism by which state building processes and system level practices interact, this project contributes to the literature on state building in non-Western countries, discussions in IR on the development of sovereignty, and the extraterritorial jurisdiction literature in international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]