Applied Islamic Ethics

Dear Colleagues,

The last three decades have witnessed a steady increase in the publication of research on Islamic law, ethics, and political thought in North American and European academia. The vast majority of these works have been historical, descriptive, analytical, or some combination of the above. Academia has produced little constructive work oriented towards the extension of Islamic legal and ethical ideas to contemporary problems and issues, and whatever constructive work scholars have produced has tended to be highly theoretical, and often oriented towards exposing or synthesizing real or imagined gaps between the received Islamic intellectual tradition and Western thought. While the increase in academic scholarship on Islamic law and ethics in the West is certainly laudable, it has been largely circumscribed by the intellectual and social concerns of a particular subset of the Western population. Just as academic scholarship on Islam has increased, the last fifty years have seen an increase in the population of Muslims in Europe and North America, largely through immigration but also through conversion. Muslims have established an active and vibrant civil society and commercial sector. Mosques, community centers, social welfare and advocacy organizations, and businesses catering to Muslim needs are found in all major cities of Western nations, not to mention suburban, exurban, and rural communities. Individual Muslims have been elected to political offices at all levels of government. The growth of Muslim communities in the West has not been without social problems; some they share with the societies in which they live, and others are unique to their particular circumstances. Given the diversity, richness, and sheer duration of the history of Islamic moral and legal thought, Muslims have an intellectual heritage that informs their ethical approaches to the problems that trouble their respective communities. As is the case for Muslims in Muslim-majority countries and even for many Western Muslims, this heritage is the ethical starting point when dealing with vexing moral and social issues. In fact, at a global level, it is arguable that the Islamic moral and legal tradition is one of the most influential and widespread moral traditions today, especially in the global south. Yet, despite the growth of Muslim communities in the West, and the continuing relevance of the Islamic tradition to ethical formation and resolution of moral and social issues, Western academia has yet to systematically and seriously engage with this living tradition from a constructive perspective, relevant to problems facing Muslim communities. This call for papers aims to begin the intellectual task of filling this lacuna and asks scholars to contribute articles that constructively engage the Islamic tradition on issues of social, moral, and political concern to Muslim communities living in the West. The following are examples of papers that are currently being considered for inclusion in the Special Issue:

1. The rise of recent media reports of and court cases involving religious authorities engaging in conduct potentially in contravention of Islamic ethics has created vigorous discussion and debate in the Muslim community about how to deal with them, given the Islamic value that one should conceal the sins of fellow believers. This essay surveys the Islamic discourse on concealing sin and applies it to hypothetical scenarios involving sins, crimes, and misdeeds of different types and varying levels of severity and publicity. It proposes policy guidelines that can guide Muslim communities on how to balance religious figures’ privacy with allegations of potential misconduct.
2. There has been a rise of incidences of Muslims engaging in marriages that are contracted in secret. This essay argues that marriages done in secret, even if considered valid by some schools of Islamic law, are sinful and inconsistent with Islamic purposes of marriage which treat it as a public and social institution. It advocates that Muslim communities and religious authorities adopt approaches that emphasize transparency and publicity in undertaking marriage.
3. Given the centrality and ubiquity of the practice of zakat in Muslim religious and communal life, this essay finds the current practice of collecting and disseminating zakat in Western Muslim communities deficient when compared with the received doctrine according to the major schools of Islamic law. The author argues constructively for greater intentionality and circumspection in how zakat is disbursed by Muslims and their institutions.
4. Contrary to public perception, this essay argues that the received understanding of rape and sexual assault in Islamic law is compatible with a culture that encourages the reporting of their incidence. It also constructively proposes that, in Islamic legal thought, rape and sexual assault ought to be treated as criminal offense punishable by state authorities on a discretionary basis, as opposed to a potential ḥadd

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors ([email protected]) or to the Assistant Editor of the Special Issue ([email protected]). Due to the importance of the topic under consideration, the Religions journal has kindly dropped the author contribution fee invited by Dr Mairaj Syed and Dr Mariam Sheibani. Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

Tentative completion schedule:

• Abstract submission deadline: 5/31/2022
• Notification of abstract acceptance: 6/15/2022
• Full manuscript deadline: 11/5/2022

Dr. Mairaj Syed
Dr. Mariam Sheibani
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Islam
• Islamic law
• Muslim minorities
• applied ethics
• religion
• Islamic ethics