Khaled Abou El Fadl (1963-)

1. Khaled Abou El Fadl (1963-) Presented by SuhailahaniHamid YasminHazirahZailan NurulKamilahMohdNoor Tuan NurFadhilah Tuan Hassan Edited by Dr. Md. MahmudulHasan International Islamic University Malaysia 2011

3. Biography • Born in Kuwait in 1963. • Professor of law at the UCLA School of Law (since 1998) • Teaches Islamic law, immigration, human rights, international and national security law. • Obtained educational degrees from Yale University (BA, 1986), University of Pennsylvania Law School (JD, 1989), and Princeton University(MA & PhD, 1999). • Received formal training in Islamic jurisprudence in Egypt and Kuwait. • Previously taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Yale Law School and Princeton University.

4. He was appointed by George W. Bush as a commissioner on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. • Advocates a strong support for human rights and sat on the Board of Directors for Human Rights Watch. • Currently serves on the Advisory Board of Middle East Watch. • Is involved in the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights (Human Rights First) as an expert in a wide variety of cases involving human rights, terrorism, political asylum, and international and commercial law.

5. He was awarded the University of Oslo Human Rights Award, the Leo and “Lisl Eitinger” Prizes in 2007, and named a Carnegie Scholar in Islamic Law in 2005. • In 2005, was listed as one of Law Dragon's Top 500 Lawyers in the Nation. • Is a prolific author and prominent public intellectual on Islam, especially on Islamic law. • Most noted for his scholarly approach to Islam from a moral point of view. • Writes extensively on • Universal themes of humanity • Morality • Human rights • Justice and mercy

6. He is well-known for writings on beauty as a core moral value of Islam. Appears on national and international television and radio. Is published widely in periodicals such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Review, and many others. His most recent works focus on authority, human rights, democracy and beauty in Islam and Islamic law.

7. Articles • Islam and Challenge of Democracy • Islam and the challenge of democratic commitment • Dogs in Islamic tradition and nature • Legal debates on Muslim minorities: Between rejection and accommodation • The place of tolerance in Islam • Recognize difference between 2 Islams • In recognition of Women • The theology of power • Shariah and Constitution (in Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity) • Islamic Authority (in New Directions in Islamic Thought: Exploring Reform and Muslim Tradition) • Islamic Law and Human Rights and Neo-Colonialism (in Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2006: The `War on Terror’) • Obama in Cairo: Commentary, Religion and Ethics • Fascism Triumphant? • Forward (in In Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam)

8. Books • The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books (2006) • The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (2005) • Islam and the Challenge of Democracy (2004) • Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law (2001) • Law of Duress in Islamic Law and common law: A comparative study • The search for beauty in Islam • And God knows the soldiers: The Authoritative and Authoritarian in Islamic Discourse

9. Islam and the Challenge of democracyApril/May 2003, Boston Review

10. Major themes • natural system • primitive state of nature • an uncivilized anarchic world where the most powerful dominate the rest. • instead of law there would be customs. • tribal elders would be obeyed only as long as they remained the strongest. • ruled by a prince or king • Word is the law - law is fixed by the arbitrary will of the ruler and the people obey out of necessity or compulsion.

11. The caliphate • Based on the Qur’an and the conduct and statements of the Prophet. • Fulfils the criteria of justice and legitimacy and binds the governed and governor alike. • The caliphate system was considered superior to any other. • Aims to correct the deficiency of jihad and democracy. • Engages the reader in a rich discourse on the challenges of democracy.

12. Argues that democracy, especially a constitutional democracy that protects basic individual rights, is the form of government best suited to promoting a set of social and political values fundamental to Islam. Islam is about submission to God and about each individual’s responsibility to serve as His agent on Earth. There is no place for subjugation to human authority demanded by authoritarian regimes.

13. Islam and Challenge of Democratic Commitment Fordham International Law Journal

14. Themes Investigates whether the Islamic faith is consistent with democracy. Islam and democracy represent a set of comprehensive and normative moral commitments and beliefs. The challenging issue is to understand the ways in which the Islamic and democratic systems of convictions and moral commitments could undermine, negate, or validate and support each other.

15. The Place of Tolerance in Islam December 2001/January 2002 Boston Review

16. While Islam is theologically tolerant of non-Muslims, some individual Muslims may harbour intolerant views. Incorrect views of such Muslims can be the result of wrong interpretation of the Qur'an, which El Fadl condemns as “eisegesis”.

17. Ability to interpret the Qur’an is both a blessing and a burden. • blessing because it provides us with the flexibility to adapt texts to changing circumstances. • burden because the reader must take responsibility for the normative values he or she brings to the text. • Any text provides possibilities for meaning.

18. In Recognition of Women - More than 2,500 women scholars, jurists, and poets alone can be found in early Islamic history, including some who issued religious licenses to men. - Aisha, the Prophet's wife is first Muslim woman of jurisprudence. - Now we encounter hardly a single Islamic woman jurist. - It is very rare to find them on the boards of Islamic centres, or holding leadership positions. • Several reasons for this alarming phenomenon: • Derogatory attitude that seems to have infected many Muslim men 2. Many Muslims men, in North America and elsewhere, seem to have developed woman-phobia.

19. - Islam neither limits women to the private sphere, nor does it give men supremacy over public and private life. - We have taken women back to the pre-Islamic era by excluding them from public life. -A modern scholar, Muhammad al-Ghazali, describes this phenomenon as the "ascendency of Bedouin fiqh (jurisprudence)." -It is well-known that women like Aisha, Umm Salamah, Laila bint Qasim, Asma bint Abu Bakr, Kaula bint Umm Darda, and many others, were trusted with preserving and teaching one-fourth of our religion.

20. Dogs in the Islamic Tradition and Nature(2004) • Dogs are representative of a range of tensions regarding the roles of history, mythology, rationality, and modernity in Islam. • Black dogs is known as the evil, impure and rather a devil in animal form according to the one tradition attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. • The debates about dogs acted as a forum for negotiating not just the nature of dogs but also the nature of human beings. • Dogs are permissible as watchdogs or for other utilitarian purposes but not simply for companionship.

21. The fact is that the Qur’an, the divine book of Islam, does not condemn dogs as impure or evil. • A large number of jurists allowed the ownership of dogs for the purpose of serving human needs, such as herding, farming, hunting, or protection. • Many Muslims say this caution toward dogs is fundamentally a matter of hygiene. • The ownership of dogs continues to be socially frowned upon. • It showed the measure of the ambiguous fortunes of the dynamics between Islamic law and nature in modernity.

22. And God Knows The Soldiers: The Authoritative and Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses • This book is a substantially expanded edition of his "The Authoritative and Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses: A Contemporary Case Study". • Beginning with the case study of a Muslim basketball player who refused to stand up while the American national anthem was playing, the author documents the disintegration of the Islamic juristic tradition, and the prevalence of authoritarianism in contemporary Muslim discourses. • The author analyzes the rise of what he describes as puritan and despotic trends in modern Islam, and asserts that such trends nullify the richness and diversity of the Islamic tradition. • By declaring themselves the true soldiers of God and the defenders of religion, Muslim puritan movements are able to degrade women, eradicate critical thinking, and empty Islam of its moral content.

23. In effect, the author argues, the self-declared protectors of Islam become its despots and oppressors who suppress the dynamism and vigor of the Islamic message. • Anchoring himself in the rich Islamic jurisprudential tradition, the author argues for upholding the authoritativeness of the religious text without succumbing to authoritarian methodologies of interpretation. • Finally, he asserts that in order to respect the integrity of the Divine laws it is necessary to adopt rigorous analytical methodologies of interpretation, and to re-investigate the place of morality in modern Islam.