Tariq Ramadan has emerged as one of the foremost voices of reformist Islam in the West, notable for urging his fellow Muslims to participate fully in the civil life of the Western societies in which they live. In this new book, Ramadan addresses Muslim societies and communities everywhere with a bold call for radical reform. He challenges those who argue defensively that reform is a dangerous and foreign deviation, and a betrayal of the faith. Authentic reform, he says, has always been grounded in Islam's textual sources, ...
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Tariq Ramadan has emerged as one of the foremost voices of reformist Islam in the West, notable for urging his fellow Muslims to participate fully in the civil life of the Western societies in which they live. In this new book, Ramadan addresses Muslim societies and communities everywhere with a bold call for radical reform. He challenges those who argue defensively that reform is a dangerous and foreign deviation, and a betrayal of the faith. Authentic reform, he says, has always been grounded in Islam's textual sources, spiritual objectives, and intellectual traditions. But the reformist movements that are based on renewed reading of textual sources while using traditional methodologies and categories have achieved only adaptive responses to the crisis facing a globalizing world. Such readings, Ramadan argues, have reached the limits of their usefulness. Ramadan calls for a radical reform that goes beyond adaptation to envision bold and creative solutions to transform the present and the future of our societies. This new approach interrogates the historically established sources, categories, higher objectives, tools, and methodologies of Islamic law and jurisprudence, and the authority this traditional geography of knowledge has granted to textual scholars. He proposes a new geography which redefines the sources and the spiritual and ethical objectives of the law creating room for the authority of scholars of the social and hard sciences. This will equip this transformative reform with the spiritual, ethical, social and scientific knowledge necessary to address contemporary challenges. Ramadan argues that radical reform demands not only the equal contributions of scholars of both the text and the context, but the critical engagement and creative imagination of the Muslim masses. This proposal for radical reform dramatically shifts the center of gravity of authority. It is bound to provoke controversy and spark debate among Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
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Add this copy of Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation to cart. $55.84, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2008 by Oxford University Press.
I had read about the author and seen him in two debates and in two panel discussions, so I decided to read some of his books for myself. In this one he makes suggestions for Islamic reform and renewal which have undoubtedly gotten him into trouble with the Islamic clerical establishment. Democratization, involvement of women in deliberating Islamic law, distribution of condoms and clean syringes to prevent AIDS - not the sort of ideas that fundamentalists or traditionalists are likely to embrace. Reading this book may surprise people; it did me, especially after reading In The Footsteps of the Prophet which I felt did not address some of the unpleasant aspects of Mohammed's character and behavior. Ramadan takes on the conventional Islamic wisdom in this book, and if he means what he says here (some accuse him of doublespeak) he is proposing some major changes. For that, I commend him. I did not see much about sexual minorities in this book except in regard to AIDS, but his statements that in Islamic medical treatment there is to be no gender, no status, and no condemnation, just treatment of the patient and that prevention of illness can require the lesser of two evils (listen up, Pope Benedict!) made me cheer. An interesting read, but I wonder if he has employed some of his principles in his own life. I wonder that a man as intelligent as Ramadan can possibly believe in Mohammed's night journey on a horse with wings. Most people who have studied the natural and social sciences have either left religious belief behind or they consider such religious tales to be allegorical rather than historical events. I feel that many Muslims lead more moral lives than did the Prophet himself, so I find it odd that so many of them, including Mr. Ramadan, see the Prophet as a model for behavior. Even in the 7th century, some of the actions taken by Mohammed were morally wrong by almost any culture's standards. I cannot see Mr. Ramadan beheading anyone or having sexual relations with a 9-year-old girl or having people who criticize him murdered, so how can he and other Muslims admire a man who did such things?
