Volumen 5 (2016): Heft 2 (June 2016)

This paper assesses the fundamental relation between the Islamic-political movements and establishment of the Islamic law (Shari’a). I argue against the critiques of western foreign policy and show that the Islamic State (Caliphate) is both a result of the historical process of the people of a region and the extreme interpretation of the text and Sunna which emphasizes on the traditional Sharia law and the concept of Jihad by fortifying political Islam qua militant Islam. I argue that the Islamic revival aims to a certain political order which threatens the world security and peace. Moreover, I argue that the structural violation of Human Rights is rooted in the traditional concept of Islamic law or Sharia, which obtains its immunity by an illegitimate power. This traditional Islamic law is the inalienable character of authoritarian/totalitarian regimes. This paper is based on the assumption that the extreme ideological/theoretical interpretation implies the empirical objectives of Militant Islamic community with or without any external influential elements. In this sense, we can address the question: how different interpretations and traditions in executing the Islamic Sharia give the social and political grounds a seed for the emergence of violence and terrorism. At the end, this paper ends with a propose which emphasizes on the role of international cooperation to find a resolution and also on the education as a long-term plan to defeat extremism and terrorism.

The concept of “nature and nurture” is used to distinguish between genetic and environmental influences on the formation of individual, mainly behavioral, traits. Different approaches that interpret nature and nurture as completely opposite or complementary aspects of human development have been discussed for decades. The paper addresses the most important points of nature vs nurture debate from the perspective of biological research, especially in the light of the recent findings in the field of epigenetics. The most important biological concepts, such as the trait, phenotype and genotype, as well as the evolution of other crucial notions are presented. Various attempts to find the main source of human variation are discussed - mainly the search for structural variants and the genome-wide association studies (GWAS). A new approach resulting from the discovery of “missing heritability”, as well as the current knowledge about the possible influence of epigenetic mechanisms on human traits are analyzed. Finally, the impact of epigenetic revolution on the society (public attitude, health policy, human rights etc.) is discussed.

Many scholars that study of religion and religious beliefs find that they affect behavioral patterns. Some of them suggest that this impact is morally wrong because religion and religious beliefs can cause aggression, conflicts, and wars. However, it seems that this topic is more complicated and complex. Here I show that religion and religious beliefs can affect mentioned above morally wrong patterns only in some particular cases. Usually they do not do it. Here I show an outline of philosophical historical approach that was critically oriented against religion and that accused it about conflicts and wars. Then I briefly discuss two current scientific research approaches to the study of religion, cognitive and evolutionary. They falsify these critically oriented philosophers because they treat connection between religious beliefs and conflicts as random and necessary. The core idea of this paper assumes that religious beliefs do not affect aggression and wars directly. They can sometimes strengthen or weaken some biological mechanisms that then can be used to compete by conflicts or by not-violent inter-group competition.