RSIS-MUIS Academy Seminar by Dr Ebrahim Moosa, Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Notre Dame
Morality and the Public Sphere: Harnessing Islamic Ethics for the Common Good
About the Lecture
Why discuss past wisdom in the modern, secular common space? Even though rational modernity relegated religion as a personal and private affair, the norms that regulate the public sphere have both implicit and explicit religious roots. Since all religions promote the cultivation of virtue for harmonious societies, they have been the source of defining public morality in the aim to provide solutions to current societal challenges. Muslims have been drawing inspiration from the heritage of Islamic traditions and are engaging with new methodologies to interpret them in their increasingly plural societies.
In this seminar, Professor Dr Ebrahim Moosa focuses on Prophet Muhammad’s enduring Islamic ethics and legacy, proposing a revival of Islamic thought. He will emphasise the importance of critical and creative engagement with Islamic traditions, necessary in offering visionary solutions to lead and shape communities towards a more progressive understanding of religious life in the modern world. Lastly, he will highlight the ways in which these practical ethics can contribute to the common space of the pluralistic global society.
About the Speaker
Dr. Ebrahim Moosa is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Ebrahim Moosa’s interpretative and historical research on questions related to Islamic tradition, ethics and law includes two monographs as well as several edited and co-edited books. His prize-winning book Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination (University of North Carolina Press, 2005) was awarded the Best First Book in the History of Religions by the American Academy of Religion. And, is the author What is a Madrasa? (University of North Carolina Press, 2015. His publications include several co-edited books, among them The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring (Georgetown University Press 2015); Islam in the Modern World (Routledge 2014) and, Muslim Family Law in Sub-Saharan Africa: Colonial Legacies and Post-Colonial Challenges, (Amsterdam University Press, Spring, 2010). He is also the editor of the last manuscript of the late Professor Fazlur Rahman, Revival and Reform in Islam: A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000). Moosa has published influential essays on Islamic law, theology as well as contemporary Muslim ethics, bioethics, biotechnology and political thought. Moosa is also regarded as a prominent public intellectual. In 2007 he was invited to deliver the 2007 King Hasan Lecture (Durus Hasaniyya) to his Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco in Arabic.
