Obligations to Future Generations: A Shari‘ah Perspective

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Actions of an earlier generation affect whether later generations will exist at all as well as the quality and type of life they will have. Discussions concerning the obligations earlier generations owe later generations have proven to be useful when thinking about the environment, economics, sustainability, and other issues.

Western thinking about obligations to future generations has become very sophisticated since the 1970s. Western ethicists consider it a litmus test for evaluating ethical theories, and expect it to be a main recurring theme in the new century.

The Shari’ah already provides the fundamentals for thinking about obligations to future generations. These basic fundamentals are not developed enough to shed light on these issues within the Muslim Community, let alone compete in the open market of ideas. Shari‘ah experts will need to develop these fundamentals before a Shari‘ah-informed conception of obligations to future generations can be offered.

Reducing The Role of Decision-Making Biases in Muslim Responsa

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The role of decision-making biases in the fatwa process.

Muslims often consult a legal expert (a mufti) concerning legal issues and to mediate intra-personal situations. A consultation with a mufti follows a process which includes conception, adaption, evaluation, and, finally, the response. While reviewing fatwas for errors, the author observed that many of the errors encountered could be explained as errors resulting from rules of thumb employed to facilitate information processing and decision making – that is: decision biases resulting from employing heuristics.

This brief introduces the fatwa process, as well as decision-making heuristics and biases. It then presents an analysis of how biases come into play during the fatwa-delivery process. It concludes that there is a need to better understand decision-making heuristics and biases, and the negative impact of relying upon heuristics in Islamic disciplines. It also recommends that muftis be informed of decision-making biases, and that mufti training programs include decision-making biases in their curriculum so as to improve the quality of the services they provide. It is hoped that examining these errors in this way might help reduce future errors and improve the impact that fatwas have on petitioners’ lives.

Living Islam with Purpose

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This paper offers an operational framework for establishing an authentic expression of indigenous Muslim culture. This framework consists of five operational principles, which are discussed at length and illustrated with examples: trusting reason, respecting dissent, stressing societal obligations, setting priorities, and embracing maxims.

These five principles are central to the Islamic tradition and embody the practical wisdom and consummate sensibility of the Prophetic teaching. The paper emphasizes the need for Muslim communities as a whole to become directly involved in their self-definition and the construction of their future as individuals and communities. This task cannot be left to others or to chance; the five operational principles provide an invaluable resource for determining the way forward. While the paper focuses on the American Muslim community, the framework is relevant to Muslims everywhere, especially those in the West.

Muhammad Shahrur’s “Cargo Cult”: A meditation on his underlying conceptual framework

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The purpose of this paper is to present an integral critique that explores the underlying conceptual structure of the work of Muhammad Shahrur. It is the author’s contention that every thinker and writer is an inheritor of a chain of ideas or an intellectual system that he necessarily manifests in his writings, consciously or unconsciously. There is no such thing, in other words, as an orphan idea or an idea without a conceptual genealogy. This means that the integrity or soundness of any idea is narrowly dependent on the pedigree of its genealogy or silsila. The value of Shahrur’s thought is therefore inevitably linked to the value of the origin of his ideas, which we have briefly attempted to trace and evaluate in this paper. It is hoped that this model of critique may become an effective tool in understanding the mechanics of the varying and hybridised conceptual systems that ‘reformers’, or one should say ‘intellectual adventurers’, have recently introduced into the Islamic world.

Alternative Dispute Resolution: Arbitration & Mediation in non-Muslim Regions

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Shari‘ah-based personal dispute resolution for Muslims living in non-Muslim regions.

Dispute resolution remains a difficult issue for Muslims living in non-Muslim regions. While Muslims within Muslim regions do usually have access to Shari‘ah-based personal dispute resolution through settlement in court by an appointed judge (qāḍī) whose judgments are binding and enforceable, the absence of such judges in non-Muslim regions leaves Muslims residing in such lands without this option. The problem is augmented by the widespread belief that an Islamic state’s courts are the only acceptable means by which to obtain binding dispute resolution for Muslim litigants. The current state of affairs is particularly harmful to Muslim wives in abusive marriages, since it leaves them no means within the Shari‘ah to rectify their situation.

This Analytic Brief will show that the classical schools of Islamic Law provide other options relevant to the current situation. The first part of this Brief will introduce the various models for personal dispute resolution which are covered in classical Islamic law. The second part of this Brief will then discuss the applicability of each model and present a possible strategy for their application in a manner that respects and is harmonious with both the Shari‘ah and the legal environment of Muslims living in non-Muslim regions. The Brief will close by demonstrating how these models might be applied to the problem of Muslim wives caught in abusive marriages.

Beyond Flak Attack: A New Engagement with the Newsroom

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This essay is written for Muslim activists and scholars who are alarmed at today’s headlines and would like to engage the mass media in the hope of balancing its predominantly negative reporting with positive stories pertaining to Islam and Muslims.

Language Matters: A Dialogue on Language and Logic

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The essay that follows seeks to illuminate new perspectives and insights on linguistics and language-related topics as a significant component of the intellectual project of Dr Taha Abderrahman. As one of the most eminent contemporary Muslim thinkers, selected questions raised by some of his foremost students and colleagues allow the author to dwell and expand on issues relating to logic and philosophy, touching briefly on matters of politics, religion, and theology.

Islam-West Dialogue: A Critical Analysis of the Davos Report

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A summary and critical analysis of the document Islam and the West: Annual Report on the State of Dialogue, January 2008, its core issues and recommendations for Muslim leaders and scholars of Islamic Sacred Law (Shari‘ah).

The 2008 Islam and the West report, commissioned by the World Economic Forum and Georgetown University, is a global reference on the state of the Muslim-West dialogue for leaders across multiple sectors, including government, media, education, civil society, and faith communities. Overall, it highlights the activities of approximately 90 organizations and describes more than 80 events around five issue areas: International Politics; Citizenship and Integration; Religion, Ethics, and Ideology; Education and Intercultural Understanding; and Economic and Social Development. It also draws on the Gallup Muslim-West Dialogue Index and media content analysis carried out by Media Tenor International to discuss public perceptions of the dialogue and the tone of media coverage both in Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Very few perspectives from within the community of scholars of Shari‘ah are offered in the report.

This brief introduces the report, discusses its main findings, and offers suggestions on how Muslim scholars and opinion leaders can contribute to the dialogue in a meaningful way. This report is an opportunity for Muslim scholars to build on the discussion already in progress, share best practices on how to further promote dialogue, and become better equipped to answer the needs of diverse Muslim communities.

 

Islamic Discourse: Between the Conclusive and the Variable [Sh. Abdullah Bin Bayyah]

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Perhaps the most looming challenge before Islam today is to be understood. Mis-representation on the part of international media punditry does contribute much to this dilemma, as well as general myopia within the consciousness of Western publics regarding their own “others”; a category within which Islam, more often than not, features as the primary candidate.

Ethics & Virtual Worlds: Second Life as a Case Study

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An introduction to Linden Lab’s Second Life and virtual worlds, the ethics of virtual worlds, and an outline of related issues in need of informed Shari‘ah reflection.

Linden Lab’s Second Life is one of the many interactive virtual worlds where people spend a great deal of time and money. Virtual worlds include online metaverses, online computer games, and video games (e.g. Second Life, Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, and Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto). Participants in these increasingly-realistic life-like virtual universes engage in activities ranging from simple conversations and financial transactions, to simulated sex, violence, and rape, or even marriage and divorce. There is a real need to examine the legal status and ethical standing of interactions within these virtual worlds.

The first section of this Analytic Brief introduces Second Life and its applications, followed by a summary of criticisms and concerns that have already been raised.

The second section gives a summary of how ethicists have analyzed virtual behavior in the context of computer games and virtual worlds.

The third section of this Brief presents issues related to virtual worlds which are in need of informed Shari‘ah reflection from scholars and opinion leaders, and shows how classic Islamic legal reasoning already provides answers to many of the relevant issues.