A Companion to Muslim Ethics

Taking ethics seriously means coming to terms with the real world where our sense of right and wrong plays out. At their best, faith traditions require daily life to face the tests of philosophy---and confront philosophy with the tests of daily living. If faith-inspired ethics govern all of one's life, guiding values must constantly be interpreted to reach a practical result. Does this make ethics into laws that bind in the name of a community of virtue? Where would that leave one's choice on how to live the good life?

Muslims have grappled with the answers for the better part of fourteen centuries in matters of law, social practice and theology. Indeed, this is what the Quran is really about, in calling on `those possessed of minds' to strive for belief with a social conscience.

A Companion to Muslim Ethics journeys into Islam's conception of the good, shared with other great traditions---and the ways in which its teachings find expression in political, social and religious life. Leading experts look at gender equality, ecology, nonviolence, dispute resolution, health and finance as much as the traditions of art, narrative and intellectual debate. This book will appeal to all those interested in how reason, faith and circumstance shape moral choices in an increasingly globalised world.

Amyn B. Sajoo is a resident scholar at Simon Fraser University's Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures in Canada. He has held visiting appointments at Cambridge and McGill universities as well as The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. Dr. Sajoo's publications include A Companion to the Muslim World (2009), Muslim Modernities: Expressions of the Civil Imagination (2008), Muslim Ethics: Emerging Vistas (2004), Civil Society in the Muslim World (2002) and Pluralism in Old Societies and New States (1994). He is a frequent contributor to the news media on both sides of the Atlantic.