Reports

Rights and Duties Pertaining to Kept Animals

A case study in Islamic Law and Ethics by Musa Furber.

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 will also throw 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.

 

Language Matters: A Dialogue on Language and Logic

The essay that follows seeks to illuminate new perspectives and insights on linguistics and language-related topics as a significant component of the intellectual project of Dr Taha Abderrahman. As one of the most eminent contemporary Muslim thinkers, selected questions raised by some of his foremost students and colleagues allow the author to dwell and expand on issues relating to logic and philosophy, touching briefly on matters of politics, religion, and theology.

A Global Ethic: Its Scope and Limits

Taha Abderrahman, the author, holds that a critical window of opportunity remains open for theistic world views to collectively provide a program of shared ethics. However, it is his assertion that recent attempts to furnish a set of fundamental criteria, in the name of world religions, have failed to deliver on the promise. Drawing on the richness of Islamic theological systems, the author endeavors to provide both a critical analysis and  a corrective prescription.

 

News

Hasan Spiker Presents Original Research in Ottoman Kalam Conference

The Ottoman Kalam Conference in Istanbul, funded jointly by Recep Senturk’s Istanbul Research and Education Foundation (ISAR) and the think tank Kalam Research and Media, took place at the Islamic Research Centre in Istanbul (ISAM, home to one of the world’s premiere research libraries for Islamic studies) on the 24, 25 and 26 of December.

Hasan Spiker represented Tabah Foundation at the event, presenting original research on the little known Ottoman theologian Ibn Bahāʾuddīn, who in his al-Qawl al-Faṣl married mystical elements from the school of Ibn Arabi with the developed Kalam of Jurjānī, Taftāzānī, Hocazade and others. Other attendees included the Kalam author Professor Ilyas Çelebi, philosophy academic Professor Alparslan Açıkgenç, and the Kalam educator Dr. Said Foudah. The symposium brought together more than 40 researchers from across the world, and will be celebrated in a forthcoming publication, which will bring together the various papers presented at the event.

Watch https://youtu.be/tWilHFiAaDg

Taabah Foundation Senior Fellow presents at the Program on Medicine and Religion

On Sunday 3 August and Monday 4 August 2014, Tabah Senior Fellow, Jihad Hashim Brown, participated in the Initiative on Islam and Medicine Working Group at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.
The Working Group convenes its sessions with support of the John Templeton Foundation. The objectives of this round were to “Review the conceptual definitions and major debates regarding what ‘health’ consists of with an eye towards considering the telos of medicine/public health and how it relates to human flourishing;” and, “Introduce the major concepts related to the science of medical prognostication, risk assessment, and population health epidemiology. Specifically we will focus on concepts of and the tools assess risk at the clinical (patient) and community levels.”

Brown in his paper presented on “the theological conceptualisation and ethico-legal definition of maslaha (public benefit and medical risk)”; as well as, “the relationship between maslaha (public benefit), maqasid (aims & purposes), and darurah (dire necessity)”.