Muslim Ethics: Emerging Vistas - review continued (Chapter 4 - final)

Muslim Ethics Emerging Vistas

Author: Amyn B. Sajoo

Published by: I. B. Tauris Publisher’s London: New York in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies

In chapter four the author’s studies are focused on Pluralistic Governance. He analyzes in the detail the democracies of today and how they lack the fundamental ingredient of plurality, both in the western world as well as the Muslim world. To make pluralistic governance functional it requires inclusion of all citizens and their engagement in the society beyond the theory of tolerance only. He explained that pluralism cannot be obtained by force because uncivil means cannot bring civil outcomes. The author refers American academic Nancy Fraser, author of numerous works on social justice, and he quotes: “..underlying problem with prevailing multicultural strategies is that they favor recognition of group identities over citizenship-based equity of participation.”
Our author, Amyn Sajoo, gave many examples from West as well as from Muslim world where the concept of equality of citizens was not taken into consideration. He mentions the incident of Ziyad Yasin, a 22 year old biomedical engineering student at Harvard University who was invited to deliver commencement speech in 2002. He was harassed from death threats to removing him from the list of speakers because the topic of his speech was “Faith and Citizenship” with the sub-title “Jihad”. Leading the protests against Ziyad, Hilary Levy claimed that she could only visualize planes flying into the buildings when she heard the word ‘jihad.” Harvard’s President Larry Summers, who approved the content of the speech was forced to remove the word “Jihad” from the title.
Another incident from Iran was of Iranian academic Hashem Aghajani who encouraged his students and ordinary Iranians to interpret Quran and Shi’a theology for themselves rather than passively follow the interpretations of the clerical establishments’ became subject to death sentence by bringing religion to bad reputation.
In all these incidents freedom of expression, freedom of thoughts and inquiry as well as civic pluralism were undermined in the name of safeguarding the rules that govern the relationship between Religion and State. Thus, he concludes that “rule of law needs the support of public ethics for civil society to deliver pluralism”.
This book is an excellent reading material. In fact, in my opinion, it would work great as a text book in universities for the students who want to understand Islamic ethics and their roots in the society; their practical applications in everyday decision making, and their expressive depictions in Islamic Art, buildings and everything related to their environment. Certainly this book can work as a window to peek inside Islam and see its true essence.