Critical-Progressive Muslims: On Islamic hermeneutics, Gender and Interreligious Dialogue

      Why We Should Engage in Respectful ‘Religion Talk” in Our Work Environments ( unedited version)   To appear in Thought Leadership- Professional Learning Hub , Griffith University     For a number of reasons in the broader Australian public sphere “Religion Talk” is considered by many as highly sensitive and controversial that should, as much as possible, be avoided in the context of day to day workplace dynamics. Possible reasons for such views could range from the idea  that in secular liberal democracies faith is viewed as a private  issue, a matter  of consciousness  and personal belief that has no place in the public sphere to that  of fear of conflict and the risk of being  seen as either a  religious/atheist zealot or coming across as being politically incorrect. While I do sympathise with some of these concerns  in this short piece I would like to suggest tha...

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icJ-5m3F7Z0

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjPBQ3svYfQ

by Adis Duderija  (Ph.D.) Senior Lecturer in the Study of Islam and Society As a theoretician and proponent of  progressive Islam , I often don’t see eye to eye with mainstream expressions of contemporary Islam on a number of ethical, socio-political and theological issues. This became painfully apparent, once again, on the topic of how to approach Ramadan in the time of a pandemic. While a number of traditional clerics and major institutions have, for the most part, taken COVID-19 seriously and mosques in many Muslim majority countries remain closed, there is a lack of appreciation that the various physical distancing restrictions associated with the virus seriously affect the mental, psychological and physical wellbeing of many people — and hence that this factor should be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not fasting and the spiritual practices associated with it should go ahead as normal. I have not come across a single religious voice from tradi...

https://newageislam.com/islam-and-sectarianism/adis-duderija,-new-age-islam/the-role-of-progressive-islam-in-transcending-the-historical-religio-doctrinal-sunni-shi%E2%80%99i-divide/d/121083

REVIEW OF Zahra Ayubi. Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society .New York, NY: Columbia University Press, August 2019. 336 pages. $35.00. Paperback. ISBN 9780231191333. Unedited version .To appear in Reading Religion  By: Dr. Adis Duderija, Senior Lecturer in the Study of Islam and Society, Griffith University a.duderija@griffith.edu.au Over the last few decades a number of important scholarly discussions on the highly   gendered   ( in a patriarchal sense) nature of Islamic intellectual tradition   have been written but whose focus primarily has been on the Islamic legal tradition (fiqh) ( e.g. K.Ali,   A. Chaudhry, A.Mahellati )   and to a lesser extent Qur’anic commentary (tafsir) ( e.g. K. Bauer , A.Geissenger). Ayubi’s remarkably well written and comprehensively referenced book provides further evidence of the same dynamics at play in the context of exploring three most influential writers of the akh...

How to Defeat the Clash of Extremisms:    Civilisational Hybridity and Trust Building in the Multicultural West  Dr. Adis Duderija In my talk, I would like to highlight how the concept of civilisational hybridity and efforts aiming at building of trust along   religious lines as exemplified   by the event we are commemorating   this evening can help counter the harmful effects of   the two most prevalent and arguably   most pernicious, but unfortunately not only,   forms of extremism today   namely ethno-nationalism   associated with white supremacist groups   and religious associated with violent Islamic radicalism. I will do so from a historically informed perspective of examining the historical nature of the civilisational interactions between the Arabo-Islamic civilisation and that of the Latin Christian West. 1.      The Clash of Extremisms: In the 1990s in the the aftermath of the Cold War...