Political scientist Amyn Sajoo discusses Islamic intellectual and moral traditions during the Dec. 3 panel. Duke's Elizabeth Kiss and David Wong look on. Photo: Jim Wallace

Symposium Explores Muslim and Secular Ethics
The event is part of a broader effort of Duke’s Center for the Study of Muslim Networks to strengthen the Muslim intellectual community

By James Todd

Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2004 -- At a Dec. 3 symposium on Muslim and secular ethics, scholars from various disciplines presented moral reflections that bounced from Mahatma Gandhi’s rejection of colonial philosophies to Immanuel Kant’s "Categorical Imperative" to the studies of a medieval Muslim physician.

Elizabeth Kiss, a symposium participant and director of Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, said the event was "such a welcome antidote to the [Samuel] Huntington "clash of civilization" thesis," which pits a Judeo-Christian West against a Muslim East. 

The symposium is part of a broader effort by Duke’s Center for the Study of Muslim Networks, and director Ebrahim Moosa, to strengthen the Muslim intellectual community by bringing together Islamic scholars and engaging non-Muslims in public discourse.

"The search for a new paradigm in Muslim ethics that fosters new and emergent knowledge through the recovery, recuperation and critical engagement of Muslim ethical traditions is not only long overdue but is also intellectually desirable and practically urgent," Moosa said in his opening remarks to about 60 people at the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies.

Amyn Sajoo, a political science professor from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, explained that laws -- religious and secular -- rest on ethics shared by a community. To reform a body of law, he said, leaders must appeal to its underlying ethical traditions.

Sajoo pointed to ways that some Muslim thinkers have looked to Islamic moral traditions, instead of a strict interpretation of Islamic law, to address ethical questions.

He gave the historical example of Ibn al-Nafis, a 13th-century Muslim doctor from Damascus who, Sajoo said, is increasingly recognized as the first person to describe the pulmonary circulation of blood.

"In the introduction to his grand textbook on the anatomy, Ibn al-Nafis respectfully recites that ‘Under the Shariah I’m not allowed to do autopsies,’" Sajoo said. "And for the rest of the book Ibn al-Nafis very insightfully talks about the innards of the anatomy."

Ibn al-Nafis probably did perform autopsies, Sajoo said, but did not face sanctions from his peers because he could appeal to the Muslim ethical concept of "maslahah," which permits actions taken for the good of the community.

"Maslahah redeemed the formal application of the law," Sajoo said.

The same sort of arguments are being made today by Muslim scholars, Sajoo said, citing the example of a Saudi doctor who publicly condoned stem cell research under certain restrictions.

The symposium was funded in part by a Ford Foundation planning grant and was co-sponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute.

Institute director Srinivas Aravamudan said that just like Islam, secularism deserves academic scrutiny.

"Islam is often put on the defensive in terms of … how it’s going to make its peace with a certain kind of secularism," he said. But secularism, he added, has a complex history with multiple manifestations and doctrines that can be questioned.

Other speakers were University of Chicago historian Dipesh Chakrabarty; Akeel Bilgrami, a philosophy professor from Columbia University; Qudsia Mirza, a law professor from Albany Law School; and Ayesha Jalal, a historian from Tufts University. Responses to the speakers’ talks came from two panels of Duke professors, which included Kiss, David Wong, Kalman Bland and Ranjana Khanna.