Shari'a Law and Modern Muslim Ethics

Shari'a Law and Modern Muslim Ethics PDF Author: Robert W. Hefner
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253022606
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book

Book Description
Many Muslim societies are in the throes of tumultuous political transitions, and common to all has been heightened debate over the place of shari`a law in modern politics and ethical life. Bringing together leading scholars of Islamic politics, ethics, and law, this book examines the varied meanings and uses of Islamic law, so as to assess the prospects for democratic, plural, and gender-equitable Islamic ethics today. These essays show that, contrary to the claims of some radicals, Muslim understandings of Islamic law and ethics have always been varied and emerge, not from unchanging texts but from real and active engagement with Islamic traditions and everyday life. The ethical debates that rage in contemporary Muslim societies reveal much about the prospects for democratic societies and a pluralist Islamic ethics in the future. They also suggest that despite the tragic violence wrought in recent years by Boko Haram and the Islamic State in Iraq, we may yet see an age of ethical renewal across the Muslim world.

Shari'a Law and Modern Muslim Ethics

Shari'a Law and Modern Muslim Ethics PDF Author: Robert W. Hefner
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253022606
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book

Book Description
Many Muslim societies are in the throes of tumultuous political transitions, and common to all has been heightened debate over the place of shari`a law in modern politics and ethical life. Bringing together leading scholars of Islamic politics, ethics, and law, this book examines the varied meanings and uses of Islamic law, so as to assess the prospects for democratic, plural, and gender-equitable Islamic ethics today. These essays show that, contrary to the claims of some radicals, Muslim understandings of Islamic law and ethics have always been varied and emerge, not from unchanging texts but from real and active engagement with Islamic traditions and everyday life. The ethical debates that rage in contemporary Muslim societies reveal much about the prospects for democratic societies and a pluralist Islamic ethics in the future. They also suggest that despite the tragic violence wrought in recent years by Boko Haram and the Islamic State in Iraq, we may yet see an age of ethical renewal across the Muslim world.

Shari'a Politics

Shari'a Politics PDF Author: Robert W. Hefner
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253223105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Get Book

Book Description
One of the most important developments in Muslim politics in recent years has been the spread of movements calling for the implementation of Shari'a or Islamic law. Shari'a Politics maps the ideals and organization of these movements and examines their implications for the future of democracy, citizen rights, and gender relations in the Muslim world. These studies of eight Muslim-majority societies, and state-of-the-field reflections by leading experts, provide the first comparative investigation of movements for and against implementation of Shari'a. These essays reveal that the Muslim public's interest in Shari'a does not spring from an unchanging devotion to received religious tradition, but from an effort to respond to the central political and ethical questions of the day. -- Publisher description.

Islamic Law and Ethics

Islamic Law and Ethics PDF Author: David R. Vishanoff
Publisher: International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)
ISBN: 1642053465
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book

Book Description
Does Islamic law define Islamic ethics? Or is the law a branch of a broader ethical system? Or is it but one of several independent moral discourses, Islamic and otherwise, competing for Muslims’ allegiance? The essays in this book present a range of answers: some take fiqh as the defining framework for ethics, others insert the law into a broader ethical system, and others present it as just one among several parallel Islamic ethical discourses, or show how Islamic ethics might coexist with non-Muslim normative systems. Their answers have far reaching implications for epistemology, for the authority of jurists and lay Muslims, for the practical moral challenges of daily life, and for relationships with non-Muslims. The book presents Muslim ethicists with a strategic contemporary choice: should they pursue a single overarching methodology for judging all ethical questions, or should they relish the rhetorical and political competition of alternative but not necessarily incompatible moral discourses?

Islamic Ethics of Life

Islamic Ethics of Life PDF Author: Jonathan E. Brockopp
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570034718
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book

Book Description
A pioneering work on controversial issues within the Muslim world Islamic Ethics of Life considers three of the most contentious ethical issues of our time--abortion, war, and euthanasia--from the Muslim perspective. Distinguished scholars of Islamic studies have collaborated to produce a volume that both integrates Muslim thinking into the field of applied ethics and introduces readers to an aspect of the religion long overlooked in the West. This collective effort sets forth the relationship between Islamic ethics and law, clearly revealing the complexity and richness of the Islamic tradition as well as its responsiveness to these controversial modern issues. The contributors analyze classical sources and survey the modern ethical landscape to identify guiding principles within Islamic ethical thought. Clarifying the importance of pragmatism in Islamic decision making, the contributors also offer case studies related to specialized topics, including "wrongful birth" claims, terrorist attacks, and brain death. The case studies elicit possible variations on common Muslim perspectives. The contributors situate Muslim ethics relative to Christian and secular accounts of the value of human life, exposing surprising similarities and differences. In an introductory overview of the volume, Jonathan E. Brockopp underscores the steady focus on God as the one who determines the value of human life, and hence as the final arbiter of Islamic ethics. A foreword by Gene Outka places the volume in the context of general ethical studies, and an afterword by A. Kevin Reinhart suggests some significant ramifications for comparative religious ethics.

The Shari'a

The Shari'a PDF Author: Amyn Sajoo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786724049
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book

Book Description
2019 Choice Outstanding Academic title I.B.Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies Why is the term shari?a-the mention of which conjures up images of a politicised religion in many parts of the world-understood in the ways that it is today? For Muslims and non-Muslims alike, much is read into this term, often with scant regard for its historical, cultural or theological underpinnings. The politics of identity has a profound effect on contemporary life, both secular and religious, and this includes our understandings of the shari?a. Yet at the core of this concept, for Muslims, is the quest for a moral compass by which to navigate a path through life (Qur'an, 45:18), informed deeply by revelation and its interpretation by the Prophet Muhammad as well as his closest Companions. Built on this foundation is an ongoing human endeavour to grasp and lend expression to that teaching-elaborately in law, but no less so in devotional, ethical and customary practices in diverse Shi?i and Sunni Muslim communities, including in the West. Popular myths about the shari?a - that it is divine law, that it is contained in a single code recognised by all Muslims, that it is about controlling behavior, that it `defines' Islam - are challenged in this volume by leading scholars, with a view to illuminating how we arrived here and where we might be headed. The claims of the modern state as the custodian of the shari?a are put into perspective, alongside the vital role of a pluralist civil society. From bioethics, human development, family law and finance to constitutional and human rights issues, this fifth volume in the Muslim Heritage Series offers an accessible account of the ideals and realities of the shari?a. As such, it will appeal not only to specialists in the humanities and social sciences, but also to the general reader with an interest in global affairs and informed citizenship.

Wives and Work

Wives and Work PDF Author: Marion Holmes Katz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231556705
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book

Book Description
It is widely held today that classical Islamic law frees wives from any obligation to do housework. Wives’ purported exemption from domestic labor became a talking point among Muslims responding to Orientalist stereotypes of the “oppressed Muslim woman” by the late nineteenth century, and it has been a prominent motif in writings by Muslim feminists in the United States since the 1980s. In Wives and Work, Marion Holmes Katz offers a new account of debates on wives’ domestic labor that recasts the historical relationship between Islamic law and ethics. She reconstructs a complex discussion among Sunni legal scholars of the ninth to fourteenth centuries CE and examines its wide-ranging implications. As early as the ninth century, the prevalent doctrine that wives had no legal duty to do housework stood in conflict with what most scholars understood to be morally and religiously right. Scholars’ efforts to resolve this tension ranged widely, from drawing a clear distinction between legal claims and ethical ideals to seeking a synthesis of the two. Katz positions legal discussion within a larger landscape of Islamic normative discourse, emphasizing how legal models diverge from, but can sometimes be informed by, philosophical ethics. Through the lens of wives’ domestic labor, this book sheds new light on notions of family, labor, and gendered personhood as well as the interplay between legal and ethical doctrines in Islamic thought.

Radical Reform

Radical Reform PDF Author: Tariq Ramadan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195331710
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book

Book Description
In this new book, Tariq Ramadan argues that it is crucial to find theoretical and practical solutions that will enable Western Muslims to remain faithful to Islamic ethics while fully living within their societies and their time. He notes that Muslim scholars often refer to the notion of ijtihad (critical and renewed reading of the foundational texts) as the only way for Muslims to take up these modern challenges. But, Ramadan argues, in practice such readings have effectively reached the limits of their ability to serve the faithful in the West as well as the East. In this book he sets forward a radical new concept of ijtihad, which puts context -- including the knowledge derived from the hard and human sciences, cultures and their geographic and historical contingencies -- on an equal footing with the scriptures as a source of Islamic law.

Islamic Political Ethics

Islamic Political Ethics PDF Author: Sohail H. Hashmi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400825377
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book

Book Description
One of the most dynamic aspects of the Islamic revival during the past two centuries has been the rethinking of Islamic political thought. A broad range of actors, ideas, and ideologies characterize the debate on how Islamic ethics and law should be manifested in modern institutions. Yet this aspect of the "return to Islam" has been neglected by policymakers, the media, and even many scholars, who equate "political Islam" with merely one strand, labeled "Islamic fundamentalism." Bringing together ten essays from six volumes of the Ethikon Series in Comparative Ethics, this book gives a rounded treatment to the subject of Islamic political ethics. The authors explore the Islamic ethics of civil society, boundaries, pluralism, and war and peace. They consider questions of diversity, discussing, among other subjects, Islamic regimes' policies regarding women and religious minorities. The chapters on war and peace take up such crucial and timely issues as the Islamic ethics of jihad, examining both the legitimate conditions for the declaration of war and the proper conduct of war. In their discussions, the contributors analyze the works of classical writers as well as the full range of modern reinterpretations. But beyond these analyses of previous and contemporary thinkers, the essays also reach back to the two fundamental sources of Islamic ethics--the Qur'an and traditions of the Prophet--to develop fresh insights into how Islam and Muslims can contribute to human society in the twenty-first century. The authors are Dale F. Eickelman, Hasan Hanafi, Sohail H. Hashmi, Farhad Kazemi, John Kelsay, Muhammad Khalid Masud, Sulayman Nyang, Bassam Tibi, and M. Raquibuz Zaman. From the foreword by Jack Miles: "Western foreign ministers and secretaries of state may have to learn a little theology if the looming clash between embattled elements both in the West and in the Muslim umma is to yield to disengagement and peaceful coexistence, to say nothing of fruitful collaboration. . . . It is, then, no idle academic exercise that the thinkers whose work is collected here have in hand. The long-term practical importance of their work can scarcely be overstated."

The Anthropology of Islamic Law

The Anthropology of Islamic Law PDF Author: Aria Nakissa
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190932899
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
The Anthropology of Islamic Law shows how hermeneutic theory and practice theory can be brought together to analyze cultural, legal, and religious traditions. These ideas are developed through an analysis of the Islamic legal tradition, which examines both Islamic legal doctrine and religious education. The book combines anthropology and Islamist history, using ethnography and in-depth analysis of Arabic religious texts. The book focuses on higher religious learning in contemporary Egypt, examining its intellectual, ethical, and pedagogical dimensions. Data is drawn from fieldwork inside al-Azhar University, Cairo University's Dar al-Ulum, and the network of traditional study circles associated with the al-Azhar mosque. Together these sites constitute the most important venue for the transmission of religious learning in the contemporary Muslim world. The book gives special attention to contemporary Egypt, and also provides a broader analysis relevant to Islamic legal doctrine and religious education throughout history.

Migration and Islamic Ethics

Migration and Islamic Ethics PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004417346
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Get Book

Book Description
Migration and Islamic Ethics, Issues of Residence, Naturalization and Citizenship addresses how Islamic ethical and legal traditions can contribute to current global debates on migration and displacement; how Islamic ethics of muʾakha, ḍiyāfa, ijāra, amān, jiwār, sutra, kafāla, among others, may provide common ethical grounds for a new paradigm of social and political virtues applicable to all humanity, not only Muslims. The present volume more broadly defines the Islamic tradition to cover not only theology but also to encompass ethics, customs and social norms, as well as modern political, humanitarian and rights discourses. The first section addresses theorizations and conceptualizations using contemporary Islamic examples, mainly in the treatment of asylum-seekers and refugees; the second, contains empirical analyses of contemporary case studies; the third provides historical accounts of Muslim migratory experiences. Contributors are: Abbas Barzegar, Abdul Jaleel, Dina Taha, Khalid Abou El Fadl, Mettursun Beydulla, Radhika Kanchana, Ray Jureidini, Rebecca Gould, Said Fares Hassan, Sari Hanafi, Tahir Zaman.