Ebrahim Moosa

The Dilemma of Islamic Rights Schemes

The gulf in perception between Islamic and secular perspectives over the meaning of human rights is growing. Media reports and western governments repeatedly charge Muslim governments from Sudan to Iran of human rights violations. In some parts of the Muslim world, a string of events indeed suggest that the violation of human rights continue with little sign of immediate abatement. Tragedy is the overriding topos of the media attention that such events receive. The list can become endless, but I will only mention a few incidents in order to highlight the salient contexts and issues for the purposes of a discussion on human rights. The Turkish Muslim feminist Konca Kuris was kidnapped by a Turkish group known as the Hizbullah in 1998 and her dead body was found in 1999. In 1997 Egypts highest court ruled that the writings of a Cairo University professor, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd were tantamount to apostasy. In 1992, Muslim militants assassinated the Egyptian human rights activist and essayist Farag Fouda. The 1980s witnessed the international imbroglio amounting to a debacle when Irans clergy offered a ransom to anyone who would assassinate the Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie for writing novels that offended Muslim sensibilities. On a daily basis, spine chilling reports of death and civilian casualties perpetrated by Muslim militants and the military in Algeria bewilder observers after the armys subversion of the democratic process in that country. In many Muslim countries like Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Tunisia, intellectuals are subjected to harassment by traditionalist and fundamentalist quarters alike as well as by governments for their critical study of religion and for opinions that do not meet with approval from the religious establishment. When human rights concerns are raised, officials from Muslim countries accuse the West of using a double standard in its application of human rights, of mounting the human right claim as an instrument of political power against nations who do not further its political and economic agendas.

Translating Neuroethics: Reflections from Muslim Ethics

Muslim ethics is cautiously engaging developments in neuroscience. In their encounters with developments in neuroscience such as brain death and functional magnetic resonance imaging procedures, Muslim ethicists might be on the cusp of spirited debates. Science and religion perform different kinds of work and ought not to be conflated. Cultural translation is central to negotiating the complex life worlds of religious communities, Muslims included. Cultural translation involves lived encounters with modernity and its byproduct, modern science. Serious ethical debate requires more than just a mere instrumental encounter with science. A robust Muslim approach to neuroethics might require an emulsion of religion and neuroscience, thought and body, and body and soul. Yet one must anticipate that Muslim debates in neuroethics will be inflected with Muslim values, symbols and the discrete faith perspectives of this tradition with meanings that are specific to people who share this worldview and their concerns.

Shaykh Ahmad Shakir and the Adoption of a Scientifically-Based Lunar Calendar

The computation of the Muslim lunar calendar has been a subject of controversy for centuries. In the twentieth century, the debate surfaced again in different parts of the Muslim world. In Egypt, the distinguished jurist Ahmad Shakir added his voice to the debate by writing a short treatise or riscila in which he argued that a calendar based on crescent sighting should be abandoned in favour of one based on scientific and astronomical computation. After providing some background information on Shakir and the lunar debate in Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world, I present an annotated translation of Shakirs treatise.

Spiritual and Religious Concepts of Nature

The Introduction to this volume addressed the difficulties involved in speaking of “religion” in connection with biotechnology. That discussion concluded by noting both the substantive and methodological limitations of this volume with its focus on theological, ethical, and legal discourses largely within the traditions or metatraditions commonly characterized as “world religions.” These limitations should be kept in mind in what follows, which is a selective overview of the religious traditions most discussed throughout the volume along with a treatment of indigenous religions, which are often invoked in debates over biotechnology. This overview has two aims in mind. First, it is meant to provide, in introductory fashion, certain conceptual, historical, and methodological “touchstones” by which to identify and situate these particular religious traditions. This summary is directed toward readers who may desire basic information about religious traditions with which they may be unfamiliar. It also provides a more general background for many of the more nuanced analyses found in particular chapters. Second, while our summary depicts those characteristics that are distinctive within traditions, in the interest of our larger conceptual and policy research agenda, it introduces themes that may suggest areas of common understanding, if not convergence among traditions. The hope is that attention to these themes will stimulate conversations across traditions. While the modes of presentation differ somewhat among the various sections below, each discussion provides some overview of basic features of the tradition itself (including its ethical aspects), treats the meaning of “nature” or “natural” in that tradition, and offers some indications of how the alteration of nature is or might be regarded.