[Peace] [CIMIC-Announce] The Significance of Islamic Intellectual History for Contemporary Muslims

[Naeem Sheikh]

Dear Subscribers to the CIMIC Special Events Announcement List,

Greetings. We wanted you to be aware of the following event next week:

"The Significance of Islamic Intellectual History for Contemporary 
Muslims"

Professor Mohammad Fadel (Assistant Professor of Law and renowned scholar 
of Islamic law, The University of Toronto)

Thursday, April 2, 2009, 7:30pm
Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum (600 S. Gregory St., Urbana)

Education in the Muslim world has radically changed as a result of 
modernization programs adopted by Muslim political and cultural elites 
beginning in the 19th century.  One of the consequences of these reform 
programs has been a pronounced decline -- if not outright collapse -- of 
interest in the theoretical Islamic sciences such as theology (kalam) and 
ethics (usul al-fiqh).  As a result, educated Muslims, unless they 
attended seminaries (and attained advanced training there), can only 
engage religious texts in a naive, quasi-literalist fashion.  Muslim 
reformers, therefore, generally engage in a strategy of 're-reading' 
revelation in order to advance their goals rather than, for example, 
arguing that the reforms are good and desirable in themselves.  It would 
seem that this strategy at best leads to inconclusive results and at worst 
undermines the Islamic credibility of reform projects.  It would seem that 
an alternative reform strategy is possible if modern Muslims take the 
problems posed in traditional Islamic theological and ethical discussions 
and apply them to contemporary problems.  This presentation will explore 
how this alternative strategy might work, thus introducing the campus 
community to ideas that are relevant for some of our most pressing global 
challenges.

Sponsored by

UIUC Department of Religion

Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CSAMES)

Illinois Network on Islam and Muslim Societies (I-NIMS)

Center for Global Studies

School of Literatures, Culture, and Linguistics

Central Illinois Mosque and Islamic Center (CIMIC)

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