Tariq Ramadan has emerged as one of the foremost
voices of reformist Islam in the West. In one of his
previous books, 'Western Muslims and the Future of
Islam'he urged his fellow Muslims to participate fully
in the civil life of the Western societies in which they
live, and addressed many of the issues that stand in the
way of such participation. In this new book he tackles
head-on the thorniest of these issues -- namely, the
rulings of Islamic jurists that make Islam seem
incompatible with modern, scientifically and
technologically advanced, democratic societies. He
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. This global and
comprehensive approach, he says, seems to be the only
way to go beyond the current limits and face up to the
crisis in contemporary Islamic thought: Muslims need a
contemporary global and applied ethics. After setting
out this proposal, Ramadan applies his new methodology
to several practical case studies involving
controversial issues in five areas: medical ethics,
education, economics, marriage and divorce, culture and
creativity. His radical proposal and the conclusions to
which it leads him are bound to provoke discussion and
controversy. Muslims and non-Muslims alike will have to
contend with Ramadan's new idea of the very basis of
Islam in the modern world. |
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