Events

The Public Understanding of Islamic Scholarship in Society

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Digital mass and social media are popular venues for Islamic discourse and shaping the public understanding of Islam, Muslims, and Islamic scholarship. Many of the discourse items that spread in these media purport to convey Islamic legal scholarship.But the items that spread the most tend to be material that Islamic scholars and the Muslim masses do not recognize as legitimate. Meanwhile, items which are recognized by specialists and the Muslim masses as legitimate Islamic scholarship do not spread at all. This disproportionate spread leads to a public misunderstanding of Islam, Muslims, and Islamic scholarship.

Author, Musa Furber, will present an analytic brief on this problem, along with a hypothesis to explain why this happens, and activities to address the problem. Afterwards there will be an open discussion about the topic.

About the Author
MUSA FURBER is a Senior Research Fellow at the Tabah Foundation. He studied the various Islamic Disciplines in Damascus, where he received a license to teach the Shāfi‘ī school of law. He then studied at Dar al-Ifta in Cairo, where he received a license to deliver legal edicts (fatwas) from Sheikh Ali Gomaa. He also has a BA in Applied Linguistics from Portland State University (Oregon, USA), and a Masters in Public Administration from Dubai School of Government. Some of his recent publications while at Tabah Foundation include: Ethical Dimensions of Nanotechnology, Ethics & Virtual Worlds, Reducing the Role of Decision-Making Biases in Muslim Responsa, Elements of a Fatwa & Their Contribution to Confidence in Its Validity, Ranking Confidence in the Validity of Contemporary Fatwas & Their Dissemination Channels, and Obligations to Future Generations.
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Rights and Duties Pertaining to Kept Animals

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Animals are at the heart of many of today’s heated ethical and legal debates. This paper presents a survey of Qur’anic verses and prophetic narrations related to kept animals, and a study of one school’s application of this evidence to the topic of kept animals. This ethical and legal study throws into relief some of the mechanism of madhhab based jurisprudence and fiqh reasoning. This study serves as a basis for understanding and applying Islamic moral theology to the numerous contemporary issues related to kept animals.
Author, Musa Furber, will be presenting the ideas of this paper recently published by Tabah Foundation, with an open discussion about the topic at the end of the presentation.

About the Author

MUSA FURBER is a Senior Research Fellow at the Tabah Foundation. He studied the various Islamic Disciplines in Damascus, where he received a license to teach the Shāfi‘ī school of law. He then studied at Dar al-Ifta in Cairo, where he received a license to deliver legal edicts (fatwas) from Sheikh Ali Gomaa. He also has a BA in Applied Linguistics from Portland State University (Oregon, USA), and a Masters in Public Administration from Dubai School of Government.

In the News

“Caring for animals should be done by everyone“, The National

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News

Two articles by Musa Furber, published in several Arabic and International newspapers

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Two articles by Sheikh Musa Furber (a resident research fellow at the Foundation) entitled “What is a Fatwa? Who can give them?” and “Libyan Graves” appeared in Washington Post and Egypt Independent respectively with subsequent reprints of the first on Ahram Online, the website of Sheikh Ali Gomaa and Midan Masr (the latter includes the original English and their own Arabic translation) and a reprint of the second on Al Arabiya. “What is a Fatwa?” was in response to all those who put themselves forward to issue fatwas (religious edicts) while not being qualified to do so, and then pass legal judgments in a rash and reckless fashion even if they claim to be from among its qualified practitioners, and “Libyan Graves” in response to the latest spate of attacks on the graves of renowned Muslim scholars and sages by Salafi hardliners.