Recovering the Ethical: Practices, Politics, Tradition

Prof. Ebrahim Moosa

Abstract

In this paper I explore the relationship between religion and morality. Mindful that the idea of the shari‘a is essential to Muslim tradition, and that this tradition is a guiding factor in Muslim life, I begin with an overview of how the shari‘a has been thought about in innovative ways. A contemporary case study illustrates how interpreting the shari‘a through a juridical lens can often belie the Qur’anic mandate to respect human dignity. I argue that the shari‘a must be properly understood as an ethical paradigm, as it once was.

Biography

Ebrahim Moosa is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame in the Department of History and the Kroc Institute for International Studies. He was previously Professor of Religion and Islamic Studies at Duke University. He is considered a leading scholar of contemporary Muslim thought. Moosa has been named as one of the top 500 Influential Muslims in the World. Moosa's interests span both classical and modern Islamic thought with a special focus on Islamic law, history, ethics and theology. He is the author of Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination, winner of the American Academy of Religion’s Best First Book in the History of Religions (2006) and editor of the last manuscript of the late Professor Fazlur Rahman, Revival and Reform in Islam: A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism.

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