The Rhetoric Of Context

This paper presents a critical appraisal of the recent turn in comparative religious ethics to virtue theory; it argues that the specific aspirations of virtue ethicists to make ethics more contextual, interdisciplinary, and practice‐centered has in large measure failed to match the rhetoric. I suggest that the focus on the category of the human and practices associated with self‐formation along with a methodology grounded in “analogical imagination” has actually poeticized the subject matter into highly abstract textual studies on normative voices within traditions, largely in isolation from considerations of socio‐historical context, political and institutional pressures, and the lived ethics of non‐elite moral actors. I conclude with some programmatic suggestions for how the field of comparative religious ethics can move forward.     

Comparative Religious Ethics Among the Ruins

This is a response to the recent essay by Elizabeth M. Bucar and Aaron Stalnaker on “Comparative Religious Ethics as a Field of Study.” I clarify my earlier positions on method and virtue in comparative religious ethics and try to respond to some of the issues that Bucar and Stalnaker raise in regard to my arguments specifically and the field more generally. I argue that while we need not measure the practical impact of scholarly work in comparative religious ethics purely in terms of political or social action, I nevertheless worry that defining the goals of comparative inquiry in terms of the production of bewilderment, intellectual vertigo, or skeptical questions can lead to impressionistic or therapeutic methodological norms. In a similar vein, I refine my earlier position on externalism that acknowledges the impossibility of a purely externalist approach but also notes the desirability of coming to understand others “in their own terms” prior to engaging in the process of transmutation. I also question Bucar and Stalnaker's pessimism about the potential of producing “rigorously convincing ethical theory from the lived experience of regular folk,” suggesting that perhaps we are working with different conceptions of the sociology of knowledge. Finally, I consider whether we are currently in the midst of an epistemological crisis and conclude with some reflections on the rationality of the craft of comparative religious ethics.     

Ethical selfhood and the status of the secular: Muslim identity in Mumbai

As part of a larger project, this essay contributes to the current anthropological rethinking of categories such as ‘religion’, ‘secularism’ and ‘politics’ in relation to social processes and subjects: a series of ventures that are related, in the Indian context, to modernity and liberal conceptions of statehood, sovereignty and personhood. In discussing everyday phenomena such as piety and religious authority, gender and childraising, and political and professional pursuits in Mumbai, I demonstrate that the ostensibly ‘religious’ domain of Islam is not necessarily the only, or even primary, basis for achieving a self-consciously ethical selfhood for even those who identify as observant and devout Muslims. I argue that the religious domain of Islam in this context is defined as such and intersected by discourses and practices of the self as a political and economic agent defined largely in terms of political modernity.     

Religion,Cultural Clash,and Muslim American Attitudes About Politically Motivated Violence

Does adherence to Islam predict attitudes about “suicide bombing” among American Muslims? This study examines the effects of religious and political factors on views of politically motivated violence (PMV). We draw from diverse scholarship, emphasizing arguments that are inspired by Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations perspective, as well as recent work in the sociology of Islam. Using a measure that gauges support for “suicide bombing” from the 2007 Pew Survey of American Muslims, results from logistic regression models suggest that political views and religious factors have a minimal effect on Muslim American attitudes toward suicide bombing. Furthermore, we find that Qur’ānic authoritativeness (i.e., the view that the Qur’ān is the word of God and not written by men) is associated with lower odds of supporting this form of PMV. We discuss the implications of our findings for the often anecdotal and alarmist accounts that link Muslim religiosity to support for “radical” extremism. We close with study limitations and avenues of future research.     

On Comparative Religious Ethics as a Field of Study

This essay is a critical engagement with recent assessments of comparative religious ethics by John Kelsay and Jung Lee. Contra Kelsay's proposal to return to a neo‐Weberian sociology of religious norm elaboration and justification, the authors argue that comparative religious ethics is and should be practiced as a field of study in active conversation with other fields that consider human flourishing, employing a variety of methods that have their roots in multiple disciplines. Cross‐pollination from a variety of disciplines is a strength of comparative ethics, which has enlivened recent and ongoing research on ethics, not a problem to be resolved by convergence on a single, distinctively comparative project. The authors also argue in response to Lee and Kelsay that while individual comparative studies of virtue and personal formation can be flawed in various ways, this line of research has been productive and at times very compelling. Moreover, attention to comparative virtue ethics shows how scholarship on some ethical topics necessitates drawing on a variety of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds, a conclusion relevant to all work in religious ethics today.     

Ethnography and Subjectivity in Comparative Religious Ethics

The ethnographic turn in religious studies has responded to important developments, such as the rejection of value neutrality and the need to better address the lived experience of individuals and communities. In this essay, I affirm the value of ethnography as a method in comparative religious ethics, but distinguish between two ways of framing ethnography in relation to ethics. The first way insists on the hard limits of translating values across cultures, and tends to marginalize or dismiss normative inquiry. The second way allows for the interpretation of practices of ethical justification in diverse cultural contexts. I argue that this second category of ethnography is more congenial to the work of comparative religious ethicists, since an integral part of ethical inquiry involves reflecting on, and making arguments about, social norms and practices.     

Islamic business and Muslim Entrepreneurs networks in Europe: performing transnational modernity and overcoming marginalization

This paper intends to describe new forms of national and transnational solidarity based on individual commitments to Islamic ethics and morality. This process is studied through the practices of young Muslim entrepreneurships that have emerged in the mid-2000s in Europe, promoting and distributing “islamized” conventional products in the fields of leisure, fashions, communication, in line with the cultural globalization as well as creating professional networks. This new market reflects on European Muslim’s desire for social mobility, using Islamized economic opportunities as a response to their marginalization, but also to create new forms of political pressure and religious codes through consumption that are adequate to their western environment.     

ON MAKING A CULTURAL TURN IN RELIGIOUS ETHICS

This essay critically explores resources and reasons for the study of culture in religious ethics, paying special attention to rhetorics and genres that provide an ethics of ordinary life. I begin by exploring a work in cultural anthropology that poses important questions for comparative and cultural inquiry in an age alert to “otherness,” asymmetries of power, the end of value‐neutrality in the humanities, and the formation of identity. I deepen my argument by making a foundational case for the importance of culture as a topic of normative analysis through a discussion of the emotions as cultural artifacts. To illustrate how cultural analysis can inform religious ethics, I turn to works by Wayne Meeks, Margaret Trawick, and Charles Taylor. I conclude by sketching some implications of a “cultural turn” for future work in religious ethics.     

English,Christian or Muslim Law: Deconstructing Some Myths

Archbishop Rowan Williams's 2008 lecture, “Civil and Religious Law in England: A Religious Perspective,” has become an historic reference point for discussions about relationships between Islam, religious law and English law. One of the Archbishop's heart-felt pleas was for “deconstruction” of myths about both Islam and the Enlightenment. Continued stereotypes perpetuated by the “Trojan Horse” debate over Birmingham schools and the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo event suggest the plea went unheard. This article aims to address factors that prevent objective assessment of the relationship between English law, religious laws, Islam and other faiths. It is hoped that this will help the deconstruction of myths by examining what the law says, the claims religious communities make and whether further change is needed. The relationship of religious laws, norms and courts to secular legal systems is a pertinent topic for Christian–Muslim dialogue to which it is hoped that this article might contribute. Amongst issues considered are the scope for more formal recognition or monitoring of religious laws that have an impact on the lives of some UK citizens, and arguments for recognition on the basis that a democracy should reflect all parties to its citizenship and protection of the most vulnerable. As calls for further recognition of religious laws arise, the deconstruction of myths can only smooth the way for their objective assessment.     

Organizing Race

Faith‐based community organizing is receiving an increasing amount of attention from scholars of religious ethics. This essay is motivated by the worry that accounts of such organizing depend on a problematic embrace of multiculturalism, an embrace characteristic of our neoliberal era. Like the powers that they purport to challenge, organizing efforts often embrace difference (racial, gender, and religious) only when it is carefully managed. This is being challenged by theological accounts of organizing that take the religious dimension of such efforts seriously, as well as by feminist critiques of community organizing. This essay probes how race might be taken just as seriously by religious ethicists who study community organizing. Drawing on the civil rights movement's legacy of faith‐based community mobilization as well as traditions of Black theological reflection, this essay challenges the easy embrace of multi‐racial coalitions in faith‐based organizing.     

(THE IMAGE OF) GOD IN ALL OF US

This essay compares Sikh and Christian thought about and practices of hospitality in light of the global refugee crisis. It aims to show how both practices of hospitality, and religious ethical thought about hospitality, can be enhanced by dialogue between traditions. The refugee crisis arises out of a global failure of hospitality, and the type of hospitality refugees most fundamentally need is that which confers membership in a political community. Comparing Christian and Sikh ethics of hospitality provides guidance toward building rooted religious communities that welcome outsiders, including by incorporating them into political communities. In particular, Christians who hold social power and privilege can better fulfill ethical mandates of hospitality by looking to the example of Sikhs and other marginalized groups. Sikhs have often built communities through acts of hospitality and welcomed outsiders without fear, even in contexts where their own belonging is questioned and their own security is under threat.     

Wittgenstein,Ethics and Basic Moral Certainty

Alice Crary claims that “the standard view of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics” is dominated by “inviolability interpretations”, which often underlie conservative readings of Wittgenstein. Crary says that such interpretations are “especially marked in connection with On Certainty”, where Wittgenstein is represented as holding that “our linguistic practices are immune to rational criticism, or inviolable”. Crary's own conception of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics, which I call the “intrinsically‐ethical reading”, derives from the influential New Wittgenstein school of exegesis, and is also espoused by James Edwards, Cora Diamond, and Stephen Mulhall. To my eyes, intrinsically‐ethical readings present a peculiar picture of ethics, which I endeavour to expose in Part I of the paper. In Part II I present a reading of On Certainty that Crary would call an “inviolability interpretation”, defend it against New Wittgensteinian critiques, and show that this kind of reading has nothing to do with ethical or political conservatism. I go on to show how Wittgenstein's observations on the manner in which we can neither question nor affirm certain states of affairs that are fundamental to our epistemic practices can be fruitfully extended to ethics. Doing so sheds light on the phenomenon that I call “basic moral certainty”, which constitutes the foundation of our ethical practices, and the scaffolding or framework of moral perception, inquiry, and judgement. The nature and significance of basic moral certainty will be illustrated through consideration of the strangeness of philosophers' attempts at explaining the wrongness of killing.     

THE PRAGMATIC TURN IN THE STUDY OF RELIGION

Jeffrey Stout's Democracy and Tradition puts forward a complex argument in favor of American democracy as a healthy and legitimate moral and political tradition in itself. Stout does not dwell on the place of his own work in the “pragmatic” approach to the study of religion in the last thirty years. This paper attempts to situate Stout's work in the approach to religion identified with Mary Douglas and Wayne Proudfoot and to suggest some of the consequences for comparative religious ethics of his making that “pragmatic turn.”     

COMPARISON AND HISTORY IN THE STUDY OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS: An Essay on Michael Cook's Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought1

Qur'an 3:104 speaks of “commanding right and forbidding wrong” as a constitutive feature of the Muslim community. Michael Cook's careful and comprehensive study provides a wealth of information about the ways Muslims in various contexts have understood this notion. Cook also makes a number of comparative observations, and suggests that “commanding” appears to be a uniquely Muslim practice. Scholars of religious ethics should read Cook's study with great appreciation. They will also have a number of questions about his comparative comments. In this article, I suggest that scholars of comparative ethics should think less about the “uniqueness” of the materials examined by Cook, and more about the ways groups of human beings discipline their members, thereby constituting and maintaining themselves as communities of virtue.