مطالب

There is an urgent need for methods by which people and communities of faith peacebuilding and human rights development. This paper argues for a holistic understanding of peacebuilding that includes security of life, a guarantee of subsistence, and the pursuit of other fundamental human rights. This need is especially acute in countries of rising instability or post-conflict rebuilding. More and more countries face a downward spiral of instability even though many leaders and bodies seek to reverse this trend. Sadly, even among those countries that emerge from conflict, one-half revert to conflict within five years. Hence the question this paper addresses is, “How shall people and communities of religious conviction be effectively engaged in a peacebuilding and human rights process?” <br />This people factor is too little understood, even though the role of citizens in transitional states has long been acknowledged as essential for just and sustainable change. For peace accords and international conventions, in and of themselves, do not make peace or deliver human rights. Neither does the arrival of international peacekeepers nor the speeches of clerics and political leaders. While these developments are helpful stimuli, real human peace and security derives from community-based initiatives that create a “positive deviance” for peaceable, rights-oriented living vis-à-vis governments and other forces.  <br />Thus this paper will hypothesize a methodology whereby citizens engage religious institutions, governments (local and national), and international change agents to transform conflict into promising peace and rights. It will identify common peacebuilding principles operating across sectors of human development, security, and rights-oriented work. These sectors may include at least the following: health, conservation, education, security, labor, spirituality, and corporate social responsibility. <br />This paper also seeks to hone a typology of human rights and peacebuilding challenges facing countries of instability and post-conflict rebuilding. Categories may include at least the following: stages and types of conflict, fragile and failed states, overlooked populations, ethnic and racial discrimination, transnational politics and justice, natural resource and wealth distribution, and social capital.

Universal human rights suffer from a lack of consensus on the question: what kind of internal state organisation can actually take these fundamental rights adequately into account? The main intent of this article is to present a critical assessment of various modes of state–religion affiliation and their effects on the state’s scope for human rights compliance. A special focus will be on the right to freedom of religion or belief since this fundamental right is within this context most profoundly at stake. It will be contended that states which are organised in accordance with the principle of state neutrality can in principle fully comply with human rights norms; while states which identify themselves either positively with a single religious denomination or excessively negatively with religion have to be considered poorly equipped for both democratisation as well as optimal human rights compliance. The crucial issue of ‘multivocality’ of religions will be addressed as a contribution to the reform debate. Ultimately a case will be made for ‘the right to neutral governance’.

Compared to traditional media, an important characteristic of modern media is that it taps on electric and electronic means and it has extensive coverage. The most important characteristic of traditional media is that it creates a face-to-face communication between addresser and addressees. Modern media has its roots in modernism and is a direct consequence of modern societies. Modern media especially visual media represent the dominant values in the society and has altered the function of family toward more individualism, and individual behavioral patterns. Under the influence of modern media, families are losing their traditional function and are experiencing new functions. A function geared toward more individualism and catering for the individual needs of family members, a function that challenged the traditional dominant values of the family. Among all the contributing factors, modern media in their various forms and comprehensive advertisements, have played a pivotal role in internalizing characteristics of modern world and specially individualism among family members. The current study aims to investigate the new functions of family in accordance with the role played by visual media in the modern society.

Even before modern technological era, there was a close relationship between religious education and technology. Religion has helped many people to understand new technologies and technologies have led to new understandings of religion, and even new forms of religion. Religious education can focus on a variety of sacred concerns including myth, ritual, symbol, scripture, doctrine and experience, and furthermore as Jeff Astley (Astley, 1994) says in a context can and does ecompass indoctrination, personal formation, reasons and emotions. However these concerns tend to fall into two general categories the ethical one (or relational) and transcendental one. Nowadays a variety of video games explicitly aim toward religion. Video games researchers note that within video games, religion tends to suffer from a narrative and procedural incongruity. For example Michael Walthemathe suggests that video games provide a narrative and procedural platform for playful identity formation and ethical reflection, Ian Bogost (Bogost, 2007, p. 288) observes that religious video games are undermining their religious aims by adopting the conventions of mainstream video games genres without regard for their implicit procedural rhetoric. Also Harry J. Brown (Brown, 2008, pp. 104 – 107) notes that along with the promotion of an ethical concern for the weak, video games promote a reactive ethic of vigilantism and violence against all members of a given social class or oppositional alignement. So if video games once struggled for legitimacy as a cultural product, today the business of video games is booming, and increasingly the art of video games is turning to religious themes as not just inspiration but as central plot elements. We find moral decisions, invented religions, the power to create and experience virtual religious spaces and much more outcomes like these. Through a consideration of a list of popular video games this article proposes to show how video games teach their players the new gospel of cyberspace, where they can be what they want without effort and major consequences for the real life.

Günümüzde artık insanların alışveriş, dinlenme, müzik, eğlence vb. günlük birçok aktivitelerini yapabildikleri, bilimsel, sanatsal ve felsefi tüm öğrenme ve öğretim eylemlerini gerçekleştirebildikleri, kendisi aracılığıyla tüm dünya ile iletişim sağlayabildikleri internet; dini, fikri ve ideolojik manada da önemli bir konuma sahiptir. Zira bugün, geçmişte klasik medya araçları ile yapılamayan birçok dini, fikri ve ideolojik toplu ve bireysel ritüel, çalışma ve eylem internet aracılığıyla yapılabilmektedir. Bu makalede internetin henüz bulunmadığı dönemlerde Şii ve Sünni dünyadan bazılarının gerçekleştirdiği veya gerçekleştirmeye çalıştıkları mezhepler arası diyalog ve yakınlaşma çalışmalarına kıyasla internet üzerinden yapılan bu türden çalışmalar incelendi. Konunun seçimi dolayımındaki amaç, sözü edilen kıyas neticesi ile internet üzerinden yapılan Şii ve Sünni diyalog ve yakınlaşma çalışmalarının gerçekte yakınlaşma ve diyaloga ne denli hizmet ettiğini ortaya çıkarmaktır. Makale bir giriş, internet öncesi ve internet üzerinden yapılan Şii-Sünni diyalog ve yakınlaşma çalışmaları ve kıyasın neticelerinin yer aldığı bir sonuç bölümünden meydana gelmektedir.