Radical Reform Islamic Ethics and Liberation

by Ramadan, Tariq

• ISBN13: 9780195331714
• ISBN10: 0195331710
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Tariq Ramadan has emerged as one of the foremost voices of reformist Islam in the West, notable for urging his fellow Muslims to participate fully in the civil life of the Western societies in which they live. In this new book, Ramadan addresses Muslim societies and communities everywhere with a bold call for radical reform. He challenges those who argue defensively that reform is a dangerous and foreign deviation, and a betrayal of the faith. Authentic reform, he says, has always been grounded in Islam's textual sources, spiritual objectives, and intellectual traditions. But the reformist movements that are based on renewed reading of textual sources while using traditional methodologies and categories have achieved only adaptive responses to the crisis facing a globalizing world. Such readings, Ramadan argues, have reached the limits of their usefulness. Ramadan calls for a radical reform that goes beyond adaptation to envision bold and creative solutions to transform the present and the future of our societies. This new approach interrogates the historically established sources, categories, higher objectives, tools, and methodologies of Islamic law and jurisprudence, and the authority this traditional geography of knowledge has granted to textual scholars. He proposes a new geography which redefines the sources and the spiritual and ethical objectives of the law creating room for the authority of scholars of the social and hard sciences. This will equip this transformative reform with the spiritual, ethical, social and scientific knowledge necessary to address contemporary challenges. Ramadan argues that radical reform demands not only the equal contributions of scholars of both the text and the context, but the critical engagement and creative imagination of the Muslim masses. This proposal for radical reform dramatically shifts the center of gravity of authority. It is bound to provoke controversy and spark debate among Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Author Biography

Tariq Ramadan is a Research Fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford University and the Lokahi Foundation (London). He is the author of Western Muslims and the Future of Islam; Islam, the West, and the Challenges of Modernity; and To Be a European Muslim.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
About Reform
The Concept of "Reform"	p. 11
What Reform Do We Mean?	p. 26
Classical Approaches of the Fundamentals of Law and Jurisprudence (Usul Al-Fiqh)
Imam ash-Shafi'i: The Deductive Approach	p. 41
The Hanafi School: The Inductive Approach	p. 49
The School of Maqasid: The Higher Objectives of Law	p. 59
A Synthesis	p. 77
For a New Geography of the Sources of Law and Jurisprudence (Usul Al-Fiqh)
Determining the Sources of Islamic Law and Jurisprudence	p. 85
The Context (al-Waqi') as a Source of Law	p. 101
The Growing Complexity of the Real	p. 113
Elaborating an Applied Mamie Ethics	p. 126
Case Studies
Islamic Ethics and Medical Sciences	p. 159
Culture and the Arts	p. 183
Women: Traditions and Liberation	p. 207
Ecology and Economy	p. 233
Society, Education, and Power	p. 259
Ethics and Universals	p. 293
Conclusion	p. 315
Acknowledgments	p. 321
Notes	p. 323
Glossary	p. 359
Index	p. 365
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