The question of women at the heart of the spiritual renovation of Islam

Asma Lamrabet

Euro-Arab Foundation of the University of Granada

icon-calendar Sunday February 21ˢᵗ, 2021

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Click here to watch the lecture on Youtube (in French with Arabic subtitles)…

Like many Muslim women working in intellectual and activist networks (Karamah in the United States, or Musawah in Malaysia), Mrs. Asma Lamrabet tries to go beyond the misogynistic, patriarchal and legalist approach that has prevailed in Islam, especially through jurisprudence (fiqh), by highlighting an ethical and spiritual approach. Rather than relying on a few verses (on inheritance, testimony, or polygamy) and drawing from them general legal principles for all that concerns “the Muslim woman”, the ethical-reformist reading aims at a holistic (šumūlī) reading of the Qurʾān, which takes into consideration the objectives of the Law (maqāṣid al-šarīʿa). Those are, among others, the common good (al-maṣlaḥa al-ʿāmma), the removal of constraint (rafʿ al-ḥaraǧ), the establishment of justice (iqāmat al-ʿadl). The status of women must be understood in the light of general Qurʾānic values such as justice (al-ʿadāla), equity (al-qisṭ), compassion (al-raḥma), piety (al-taqwā), love (al-maḥabba), wisdom (al-ḥikma), collaboration in righteousness and piety (al-taʿāwun ʿalā al-birr wa-l-taqwā), protection of the vulnerable (ḥimāyat al-mustaḍʿafīn fī al-arḍ), and not in the light of five or six verses interpreted too quickly and used as intangible legal principles.

The hope for renovation that this ethical reading brings is at the service of the liberation of all —especially the weakest— and not just of women, who have been made completely invisible in the Muslim tradition.

Islam of the Qurʾān vs Islam of the Hadith: Overcoming the divide between the “new thinkers of Islam” and the “Ulamas”

Youssouf Sangaré

University of Clermont-Auvergne (France)

icon-calendar June 21, 2020

Click here to watch the lecture on Youtube (in French with Arabic subtitles)…

The Iraqi Shiite theologian al-Sayyid Kamāl al-Haydarī (born in 1956) is one of the most active theologians on social networks, where he is highly followed. In his writings, he states that after the death of the Prophet Islam became sectarian and that Ḥadīṯ largely reflects these quarrels that have arisen around the question of the succession of the Prophet. However, al-Haydarī is not a “Qurʾanist” in the sense that it does not reject Ḥadīṯ. He simply notes that the Qurʾān is pluralistic in nature and that it founds a culture of pluralism (iḫtilāf). Al-Haydarī derives from this the principle that pluralism is a “divine tradition” (al-iḫtilāf sunna ilāhiyya). This implies for example that divisions between Shiites and Sunnis are legitimate. Within this framework, the personal effort of interpretation (iǧtihād) should make it possible to implement this “culture of pluralism”.

The “Men of Religion” in Contemporary Islam (1970‒2010)

Dominique Avon
Director of Studies at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Assistant Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies and Societies of the Muslim World (IISMM) and member of IDEO

icon-calendar Sunday November 3ʳᵈ, 2019

 

While the internal situation of the Muslim world was favorable in the early 1970s (regained independence from the colonizers, training of religious elites in the West, unity of opinions on a draft of a constitution for an Islamic state…), it was the internal divisions that dominated from the late 1970s and early 1980s (Iranian revolution, Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, capture of the Great Mosque of Mecca, assassination of Sadat…).

While it is clear that external factors partly explain the crisis in the Muslim world (Israeli occupation, successive Gulf wars…), it is also necessary to take into consideration the depth of internal divisions in the Muslim world. Three questions can illustrate these divisions: 1) the question of morals —should all Islamic laws be preserved, and if so, should they really be applied, or should we ignore preserving these laws and officially abandoning certain parts of them?; 2) the question of the ideal Islamic political regime (caliphate, royalty, republic?), and 3) the question of the relationship to the past (return to an ideal past, selection and reinterpretation?)

The current strong opposition between the International Union for Muslim Scholars and the Muslim Council of Elders reflects these divisions, and only the future can tell which path Muslims will choose to take.

Click here to watch the video in French…

Muslim perspectives on interreligious dialogue

Djamel Djazouli, Denis Gril and Omero Marongiu-Perria

A round table leaded by Adrien Candiard, OP (IDEO)

At the French Institute in Egypt

icon-calendar Friday November 30ᵗʰ, 2018 at 6:00 p.m

It is true that interreligious dialogue has long been the initiative of Christians, however, more and more Muslim voices are now being heard, calling for specifically Qurʾānic and Prophetic foundations of the encounter with non-Muslims to be unearthed. Brother Adrien Candiard, a PhD student in Islamic studies and member of IDEO, led a round table discussion between three French-speaking Muslim scholars: Djamel Djazouli, a Qurʾān specialist and director of the An-Nour Institute in Cergy-Pontoise, Denis Gril, a Sufi specialist and professor emeritus at the University of Aix-Marseille, and Omero Marongiu-Perria, a sociologist of religions and researcher at the Institute for Religious Pluralism and atheism (IPRA).

 icon-video-camera Watch the video (mostly in French).

If the Qurʾānic message is centered on the unicity of God, it is to better highlight the diversity that God wanted for humanity, a human diversity of communities and rites that can truly express the richness of the divine unicity. Beyond the dialogue that we can have among ourselves, and in a more fundamental way, God is in dialogue with the universe.

This infinite divine depth cannot be said in simple and unambiguous words, which is why the verses of the Qurʾān often take the form of paradoxes, holding at the same time apparently contradictory expressions: the Qurʾān is the ultimate truth and, at the same time, only God knows who is well guided; or the only religion is Islam and, at the same time, the Prophet Muḥammad will intercede for all communities on the judgment day.

We are therefore called upon to reconsider our conceptions of what truth is, not as a univocal content that we could assert to others, but as a reality that everyone must receive, and in front of which everyone must take positions and make choices, that will necessarily be different for everyone. Islam therefore calls everyone to move forward without fear on this path that ultimately leads to God, and to make their own choices, in dialogue with one another.