Since the beginning of the 21st century, the news of many media outlets have been full with the stories about Islamic fundamentalism. However, at the same time, there has been a counterargument against this way of media coverage of Islam, which argues that “Islam per se should not be confused with the extremism”. Then, what is exactly the main stream within Islam, or in other words, who are the moderate faction in Islam, which are different from the extremists. Moreover, what kind of thoughts do moderate Muslims have and how do they put their ideas into practice? As a matter of fact, the reality of the unextreme “majority” has not been studied well. Taking into consideration the fact that one fourth of the world population is Muslims, it can be said that researching on the main stream is an urgent task.
Islamic Moderate Trend Research Group — setting the feature of the moderate faction as "central, main" — will examine those movements from the perspective of modernization of intellectual resourcing, and describe diversity of thoughts and practices of them.
The research group, as a part of its activities — along with its research and analyses efforts — tries to build a new information system that would not help only the experts of the Middle East and Islam, but also would be useful for the researchers of other genres and areas.
Aiming to establish an intellectual infrastructure, which has been one the goals that this research group has been promoting for many years, given the current issues of the Islamic World, becomes even more important task.
【Main Research Themes】
Islamic Moderate Trend Research Group — setting the feature of the moderate faction as "central, main" — will examine those movements from the perspective of modernization of intellectual resourcing, and describe diversity of thoughts and practices of them.
The research group, as a part of its activities — along with its research and analyses efforts — tries to build a new information system that would not help only the experts of the Middle East and Islam, but also would be useful for the researchers of other genres and areas.
Aiming to establish an intellectual infrastructure, which has been one the goals that this research group has been promoting for many years, given the current issues of the Islamic World, becomes even more important task.
【Main Research Themes】
- Contemporary Scatter plot of the Islamic revival movements
- Thoughts of the moderate main stream, and their strategies
- Organizations, movements and international network of the moderate main stream
- Dynamic transformation of the relationship between the state and the intellectuals of the moderate main stream
- Modernization of intellectual resource of the moderate main stream
- Media, information environment, communication of the moderate main stream in Islam
- Consensus and issues in dispute of the modern Islamic Jurisprudence
- Confrontation axis between the moderate main stream and the extremists
- The theory of the moderate main stream ummah and diplomatic strategies of the Islamic countries
- Cooperation between the moderate main stream intellectuals of Islamic countries and non-Islamic countries
- Conceptualizing the theory of civilized Islam and its prospectus
- Islamic Moderate Trends Research Group: Leader
- KURODA Ayaka (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University)
- Islamic Moderate Trends Research Group: Project Members
- IKEHATA Fukiko (Associate Professor, Kinugasa Research Organization, Ritsumeikan University)
- KOSUGI Yasushi (Professor and Director, Asia-Japan Research Institute, Ritsumeikan University / Professor Emeritus at Kyoto University)
- SATO Marie (Assistant Professor, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba)
- SUECHIKA Kota (Professor, Department of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University)
- SUNAGA Emiko (Project Assistant Professor, Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, The University of Tokyo)
- CHIBA Yushi (Associate Professor, Faculty of International Relations, Kyoto Sangyo University)
- HORINUKI Koji (Senior Researcher, JIME Center, The Institute of Energy Economics, Japan)
- MOCHIZUKI Aoi (Lecturer, Faculty of Intercultural Communication, Komatsu University)
- YAMAO Dai (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University)
- YAMANE So (Professor, Graduate School of Language and Culture, Osaka University; Part-time Lecturer, ASAFAS, Kyoto University)
- YAMAMOTO Kensuke (Leturer, School of International Relations, University of Shizuoka)
- YOKOTA Takayuki (Professor, School of Information and Communication, Meiji University)
- WATANABE Shun (Senior Researcher, JIME Center, The Institute of Energy Economics, Japan)
