Uriya Shavit

Uriya Shavit ( Hebrew אוריה שביט; * June 22, 1975 in Tel-Aviv ) is an Israeli Islamic scholar , author and journalist. He specializes as a researcher in the fields of Sharia law , theology and politics in modern Islam and on Islamic minorities in the western world. Since 2014 he has been Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Tel Aviv University . Since the summer of 2016, he has headed the religious studies program at the same university .

biography

Uriya Shavit, son of the cultural scientist Sohar Shavit (* 1951) and the historian Yaacov Shavit (* 1944), grew up in Tel-Aviv. His younger brother Avner (* 1983) is a writer. He completed his studies in the history of the Middle East and Islam at Tel Aviv University in 2005 with a doctoral thesis on Arab systems of government between the end of history and the clash of civilizations under the supervision of Joseph Kostiner and Eyal Zisser. He completed his postdoctoral research work at the University of Frankfurt from 2006–2007 under the direction of Ursula Apitzsch .

Research work

His academic research focuses on democracy in Arab societies and Muslim minorities in the West . Regarding the importance of democracy in the Arab world, he examines the historical view of Islamic theologians since the end of the 19th century, according to which the roots of Western democracy are already given in the Koran and that there is no contradiction between its “positive” components and Islam. At the turn of the 20th century, forerunners of the later Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt began to spread three theses:

1. The emergence of the European renaissance is based on an encounter between the West and Islam;
2. Since the 19th century the West has been running a “cultural offensive” against the Arab world with the aim of destroying their relationship to Islam and dominating it without military intervention;
3. there was a predominant decadent tendency in the west and Islam would take a leading role in the near future.

Shavit's studies on Muslim minorities are a combination of fieldwork and text-critical studies. They are mainly concerned with the development of theological and legal guidelines in Islam to legitimize the presence of Muslims in the West, and with the discussion of these guidelines within different communities of Muslim emigrants in the West.

Shavit did pioneering research into the concept of Fiqh al-aqallīyāt ('minority jurisprudence'). In two studies he emphasizes the diametrical opposition between this concept, which is advocated by the European Council for Fatwa and Research under the leadership of Yūsuf al-Qaradāwī , and the Salafist concept al-Walā 'wa-l-barā' , which Muslims use keeps staying away from non-Muslims. After examining thousands of fatwas from Germany, England, Iceland and the USA, he points to two doctrines that have been defining Sunni minorities since the 1990s : the Wasati doctrine, led by al-Azhar University graduates , and the Salafist doctrine led by the Wahhabi establishment in Saudi Arabia . Both concepts are based on the hope of a triumphant revival of the Islamic presence in the West. The Wasati model, however, seeks to facilitate the way of life for Muslim minorities through the liberal application of Maslaha (common good) and at the same time wants to promote the Islamization of the West, while Salafists oppose any innovation and cooperation with "infidels". Wasatiyya supporters rely on the participation of lawyers in political decision-making in calling for the return of a glorious past, while Salafists demand obedience to the political leadership as a religious duty and oppose the political activities of lawyers.

As an author and journalist

In 2013 Shavit published a philosophical novel under the title Ha-Isch ha-met ("The Dead Man"). The hero of the novel, an unsuccessful lawyer and businessman, experiences the shipwreck of his marriage, reads his obituary notice in the newspaper after returning from a business trip to Tel Aviv in England and has to live with the knowledge that he is indeed dead.

Shavit is also the author of a Guide for University Students , which became a bestseller in Israel. From 1997 to 2008 he carried out various journalistic activities, including as a commentator on foreign news at Haaretz .

Publications

• The New Imagined Community: Global Media and the Construction of National and Muslim Identities of Migrants . Brighton, Portland and Vancouver: Sussex Academic Press.
• Islamism and the West: From “Cultural Attack” to “Missionary Migrant” . London and New York, Routledge.
• The Wasati and Salafi Approaches to the Religious Law of Muslim Minorities . In Islamic Law and Society 19 (2012) 416-457. Digitized
• Shariʿa and Muslim Minorities: The Wasaṭī and Salafī Approaches to Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat al-Muslima. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-19-875723-8 .
• Scientific and Political Freedom in Islam: A Critical Reading of the Modernist-Apologetic School. Taylor & Francis 2017, ISBN 978-1-138-28604-7
• Zionism in Arab Discourses . Manchester University Press.
• The Polemic on al-wala wa'l-bara '(Loyalty and Disavowal): Crystallization and Refutation of an Islamic Concept In: Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 36 (2013) pp. 24-49.
• With Iyad Zahalka: A Religious Law for Muslims in the West: The European Council for Fatwa and Research and the Evolution of Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat al-Muslima in Roberto Tottoli (ed.): Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West . Routledge, London, 2014. pp. 365-377.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tel Aviv University profile page
2. ↑ in The Wasati and Salafi Approaches to the Religious Law of Muslim Minorities and Shariʿa and Muslim Minorities: The Wasaṭī and Salafī Approaches to Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat al-Muslima.
3. ↑ Synopsis (English)

Web links

• Short biography ITHL: The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
• Can Western Muslims Be De-radicalized? Uriya Shavit and Sören Andersen, autumn 2016