Rocznik Orientalistyczny (Yearbook of Oriental Studies) is a semi-annual journal devoted to linguistics, literature, history, culture, religion as well as societies of Asia and Africa. Many publications are editions of texts written in Oriental fonts. Articles are published in English, German or French with summaries in English. There is no word limit for the article but it should be concise. Rocznik Orientalistyczny (Yearbook of Oriental Studies) is a highly esteemed journal in the field, one of the oldest in the world, and the oldest in Poland (it was founded in 1914).
The journal is indexed in Scopus.
Scoring assigned by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education: 70 points
Is the fact that the majority of the population in the Middle East belongs to Islam actually the reason why human rights in Muslim-majority countries appear to be so difficult to work out and enforce? Are Islam and human rights not basically compatible? Historically it cannot be disputed that the thought of human rights first took shape in the European and Western context. Over the course of several centuries, it became widely accepted, and finally the thought of human rights also became a political reality as they were implemented in democratic states and constitutions. However, it would be a wrong conslusion, as for instance has been emphasized by Heiner Bielefeldt, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, to say that the ability to implement human rights, in particular thoughts about freedom and the equality of all people, is a one-sided affair and can only occur in the Western-Christian context. As far as Heiner Bielefeldt is concerned, this historic development, however, justifies neither the assertion that it had to happen as it did, nor does it justify Western representatives’ taking sole occupation of considerations relating to human rights thinking. Viewed from this perspective, human rights cannot boast a “Western” origin or a “Christian” character in a way that they would be incompatible with notions justified by Islam. Having that said, one is still to a large degree able to recognize a desolate situation in matters relating to human rights in Muslim-majority countries. But conflicts between Islam and human rights do not arise automatically out of the religious affiliation of a majority of the people. They certainly do stand out in those places where for political decision-making authorities Sharia law ranks higher than human rights and the granting of human rights is made dependent upon a traditional interpretation of the Sharia. Apart from the societal advocacy of human rights, there is the question as to the framework within which theological assessments of human rights questions occur. The following article aims at pointing to three discernable positions about human rights in the context of Islamic theologians, the a) the inclusive position, b) the pragmatic position, and c) the progressive position.
It is difficult to give an unambiguous answer for the question presented in the title. J.B. Glubb considered himself to be a friend of Arabs and the Arab issue. At the same time he was a loyal officer of the British Army. He did not see any contradiction in this. J.B. Glubb began his work in the Transjordan Emirate in 1931. In the beginning he commanded the border guard made of Bedouins and since 1939 the whole army of Transjordan, namely the Arab Legion. During World War II he considerably developed these armed forces. In 1946 Transjordan gained independence. Despite this J.B. Glubb maintained his command over the Arab Army until 1956. In 1948 he commanded the army during the conflict with Israel that was coming into being. During his military service he attempted to care about the interests of the House of Hashimites. Basically, he associated the Arab issue with the interests of this house. He believed that it was possible to permanently combine Arab interests viewed in that perspective with the influence of the British in the Middle East. Such reasoning turned out to be an absolute misconception. The officer was becoming more and more hated by a large part of Arabs. For many he was a symbol of being enslaved by the British. His reasoning of the Arab issue was becoming an anachronism. Eventually, he became a nuisance also for the Hashimites. Therefore, in march 1956 young king Husayn took the command from him and removed him from Jordan. Despite such ending of his military and political career one must admit that he was one of more interesting figures of the late British Empire.
At the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first century, the field of Arabic and Islamic studies became enriched by a number of multi-facetted scholarly theories challenging the traditional account on the early centuries of Islam. An author of one of them was the Israeli scholar Yehuda D. Nevo (1932–1992), working in archaeology, epigraphy and historiography. He devoted much of his career to the studying of Arabic rock inscriptions in the Negev desert, as well as to investigating literary and numismatic evidence of nascent Islam. In his theory, the gradual development of the Islamic faith, inspired by Abrahamism with an admixture of Judeo-Christianity, went through a stage of “indeterminate monotheism”. Not earlier than since the end of the second century A.H. one can speak of the formation of the dogmatic pillars of Islam, similar to those we know today. This paper is an attempt to sum up Nevo’s insightful input into the field of modern Islamic & Quranic studies today. Although controversial and unorthodox, many later researchers repeatedly refered to Nevo’s plenty of inspiring theses in their quest for facts on Islamic genesis lost in the maze of time and shifting memory of generations.
The aim of the article is to present the issue of loneliness of Iraqi women on the basis of selected novels written by Iraqi female writers in the 21st century. The first part of the article, which is preceded by an introduction to the topic, includes general information about the development of novels by Iraqi women writers since the second half of the 1990s and some remarks about their methods of portraying female characters. The second part of the article provides examples of lonely women in their narratives whereas the third part depicts a story of Riyām, the heroine in the novel Riyām wa-Kafā (Riyam and Kafa, 2014) by Hadiya Husayn, in a more detailed way.
The 13th-century Persian poet Saʿdi from Shiraz is considered to be one of the most prominent representatives of medieval Persian ethical literature. His works full of moralizing anecdotes were well known and widely read not only in Persia, but in the other parts of the Islamic world as well. Due to his highly humanistic approach, the relations between people were one of the most important issues discussed by the poet. This article is an attempt to define the status of ‘speech’ in Saʿdi’s moral imagination and to show how it becomes a key instrument in shaping relations with others. In the poet’s opinion, the right words reasonably spoken, just like an appropriate silence, shape the relationship between people and help them avoid conflict and open dispute. Quarrels and confrontations, according to the poet, not only damage a person literally by exposing his flaws and imperfections of character, thereby compromising his reputation (aberu), but may also undermine the basis of social life, generating hostility between people. That is why Saʿdi urges his readers to use soft and gentle speech in dealing with people and always behave in a conciliatory manner in response to aggression and rudeness. Highlighting the moral aspect of speech, Saʿdi shows how kind words form an invisible veil between people, which should be preserved if man desires to maintain his image, good name and dignity.
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