TBA
The so-called Constitution of Medina has often been used to buttress the idea that the centralized state is the principal medium through which an Islamic politics should be realized. Ali Bulaç, however, argues that the Document of Medina is a model for a radically decentralized and communitarian political system in which there is a considerable diffusion of legal authority. Such multi-faceted pluralism, which goes far beyond freedom of religion for Jews and Christians to encompass a variety of religious and ideological differences, puts considerable limits on the reach of the state. This paper argues that Bulaç goes much further than adopting a critical attitude against the state’s domination of religion or against the establishment of an Islamic state. It contends that Bulaç’s thought implies that a neutral state is not possible and, for this reason, seeks to limit the reach of any kind of state, thereby transcending “modernity itself.”
The SCOTUS conservative supermajority is dominated by Catholics, and the recent Dobbs decision discusses questions of human rights and ordered liberty which have their genesis in the tradition of Christian natural law theology. This paper urges against the temptation to conflate Dobbs and state abortion bans with conservative Islam (as critics do in referring to the “Texas Taliban” or “Christian Sharia”). Such slurs grossly misrepresent the diversity of Islamic jurisprudential views on abortion and of American Muslim opinion; they also prematurely foreclose Islamic and Christian feminist reappraisals of abortion. This paper undertakes an interfaith comparison of works by Zahra Ayubi and Cristina Traina, both of whom understand themselves to be recovering feminist natural law traditions as they reconsider women’s reproductive and other rights issues. Feminist commitments require focusing, not silencing the voices of those directly impacted.
Where are we to position the category of devotional labor within the panoply of capitalist economies of exchange? The Aga Khan Development Network is a multi-billion-dollar philanthropic network that provides aid to Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide. A large portion of the services provided by the Network is made possible through the devotional labor of the Ismailis—a minority Shi’a group who recognizes the Aga Khan IV (b. 1936) as their hereditary religious authority. What return comes from the gift of reverential service? This paper examines how the Aga Khan frames philanthropic work as an Islamic ethical virtue in balancing din, the mandates of religious life, with donya, the necessities of worldly life. This paper synthesizes Walter Mignolo’s notion of “salvation by development” and Max Weber’s “worldly politics” to argue that the Aga Khan Network rewrites devotional labor into a political theology that is aligned with the neoliberal “entrepreneurial philanthropy.”