Hefner Edits New Book Shari’a Law and Modern Muslim Ethics
Robert Hefner, Professor of Anthropology and International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and Director of the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, is the editor of Shari’a Law and Modern Muslim Ethics, which was recently published by Indiana University Press.
The book brings together leading scholars of Islamic politics, ethics and law to examine the varied meanings and uses of Islamic law, so as to assess the prospects for democratic, plural, and gender-equitable Islamic ethics today.
The essays included in Shari’a Law and Modern Muslim Ethics show that, contrary to the claims of some radicals, Muslim understandings of Islamic law and ethics have always been varied and emerge, not from unchanging texts, but from real and active engagement with Islamic traditions and everyday life.
Hefner said the essays also suggest that that despite the violence wrought in recent years by Boko Haram and the Islamic State, we may yet see an age of ethical renewal across the Muslim world.
“Contrary to the claims and antics of ISIS and Boko Haram, some of the most powerful ethical and legal currents today involve the efforts of Muslim men and women to formulate new understandings and practices of Islamic law, ones consistent with universal equality, women’s rights, and, yes, democracy,” Hefner said. “Although history isn’t linear and, as in the modern West, there are always setbacks, in years to come this civil and democratic understanding of Islamic ethics will be one of the most powerful forces for social change across the Muslim world.”
According to Hefner, the essays in Shari’a Law and Modern Muslim Ethics also highlight the wide spectrum of understandings and enactment of Islamic law.
“Boko Haram and ISIS have unleashed horrific violence in the name of what they claim is Islamic law or shariah,” Hefner said. “What many observers unfamiliar with Muslim societies don’t always recognize is that there has always been great variation in Muslim understandings and enactment of Islamic law. More important — this is the critical issue — the brutality of groups like Boko Haram and ISIS makes it difficult to see the scale of ethical changes taking place across the breadth of the modern Muslim world.”
You can purchase a copy of Shari’a Law and Modern Muslim Ethics here.
Robert Hefner has directed 19 research projects and organized 18 international conferences, and authored or edited nineteen books. He is former president of the Association for Asian Studies. At CURA, he has directed the program on Islam and civil society since 1991; coordinated interdisciplinary research and public policy programs on religion, pluralism, and world affairs; and is currently involved in two research projects: “The New Western Plurality and Civic Coexistence: Muslims, Catholics, and Secularists in North America and Western Europe”; and “Sharia Transitions: Islamic Law and Ethical Plurality in the Contemporary World.” You can read more about him here.