Palestine: A Liberation Theology Response

Colonialism is not a thinking machine, is not a body endowed with reason. It is violence in the state of nature and can only bow to greater violence. – Frantz Fanon[1] Before the dust had…

[IMTF] An Automated Language of Virtue Ethics in Islamic Finance

Is money dirty? Is it wrong to be rich? How can a Muslim build their wealth in a “halal” or “religiously permissible” way? These are some of the questions that Islamic finance companies, especially those that focus on wealth accumulation, seek to explain to their prospective and existing clients. One of the ways they do this is through public outreach events, where representatives explain how their work fits into Islamic understandings of money and wealth. In these spaces, money is not dirty to discuss, and Muslims are encouraged to learn how to manage their wealth. Events like this have a…

Are the Writings of Yasir Qadhi on the LGBTQ Movement Incompatible with Liberal Democracy?

Over the last few months, it seems not a day passes without another conservative criticism of gender fluidity and the complete delinking of gender roles from sex, with arguments that some LGBTQ rights conflict with other groups’ (including feminist) rights. Similarly, Muslim communities in the West have been raising their voice against state-backed school curricula imposing this new organizing principle of society. Prominent among these voices is that of Yasir Qadhi, an Islamic scholar with a Ph.D. from Yale University, and influential member of the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA), who wrote and/or co-wrote three documents of relevance: a…

Understanding Political Islam Beyond Existing Paradigms A Review Essay on The Many Faces of Political Islam and Rethinking Political Islam

Over the last fifty years, Islam’s geopolitical presence has significantly expanded, allowing for expanded dialogue on the role of religion and the effects of Islam on the political stage. This has given rise to new academic fields, instituting a series of publications focusing on topics from the personal manifestation of the religion to how Islamic belief influences voting, political parties, and political leaders. Inadvertently, the vastness of Islam’s sociopolitical reach has created misinformation at each level, especially in the relationship between Islam, individuals, and institutions, a topic we explore further in this critique of The Many Faces of Political Islam…

How to Renew Islam in Seven Days? Three Recent Contributions to Ulema Studies

A recent poetry collection intriguingly titled ʿInd al-thamānīn badaʾt shiʿrī (“At eighty, I Began My Poetry”) by litterateur, senior Azhari Shaykh, theologian, and member of the Supreme Council of Scholars, Ḥasan al-Shāfiʿī (b. 1930), contains the following couplets on the renewer (sing. mujaddid) scholars of Islam. The collection, which is dedicated to the Arab Spring, includes a poem titled Nafḥat al-siḥr fī mujaddidī al-qurūn al-arbaʿat ʿashr (“The Magical Breath on the Renewers of the Fourteen Centuries”). The Nafḥat presents his relationship to this scholarly genealogy. One would be hard-pressed to challenge any of the twelve names in the first part…

[IMTF] The Beneficiary as Benefactor: Ghazālī (d. 1111) on the Etiquettes of Charity

In his Oft-Repenting Ones, Ibn Qudāma (d. 1223) recounts the story of Awlāsī, a pious ascetic from the early centuries of Islam. It so happened that in his youth he stumbled across a sick, homeless man who was lying on the road. “I lowered myself before him,” Awlāsī said, “and asked, ‘would you like anything?’” The destitute man requested a pomegranate, which he promptly fetched. On placing the fruit in his hands, the man lifted his head towards his benefactor and prayed, “May God have mercy on you.” “Nightfall did not approach,” Awlāsī recalls, “until my heart was freed of…