Negotiating Paradigms - a Youth Intensive Event, Saturday, June 8, 2024
Negotiating Paradigms
A Youth Intensive Event
Saturday, June 8, 2024
JUNE 8
Sat
Event Timing: June 8th - 9:30 am - 6:00 pm
Event Address: 5500 FM-2920 Spring, TX 77388
HQA Multi Purpose Hall
Contact: (832) 743-8303 or [email protected]
Register: https://rb.gy/6mgf7f
Payment:
Zelle at [email protected]
Memo: Saturday Intensive
$10 Students $20 Non Students
Instructor Biography
Dr. Sharif El-Tobgui (el-TUB-GEE/) is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Brandeis University, where he has taught courses on Islamic law, theology, ethics, Arabic (both classical and modern), and Islam and the West. He also serves as Affiliated Adjunct Associate Professor at the Boston Islamic Seminary, where he teaches courses on Islamic theology and the intellectual foundations of the modern world. Dr. Sharif is particularly interested in questions concerning the relationship between reason and revelation in the Islamic tradition and has published on manifestations of this tension in Islamic legal theory, Quranic exegesis, and theology. He also has a keen interest in questions pertaining to Islam and modernity and the challenges posed by contemporary issues, be they intellectual, spiritual, or social. Recently he has released a 33-hour free course with Sapience Institute called Islam and LGBT: Gender, Sex, and Morality in the Modern Age.
Background:
Many Muslims today live torn between two distinct worldviews, value systems, and ways of life: that of Islam and that of the contemporary, secularized world created by the modern West. Though we believe in Islam, we live in the midst of an alternative and very powerful intellectual, social, and moral paradigm that impinges on us constantly and seeks to mold our views, judgments, and personalities in its own image.
As a result of this crossing of signals, many Muslims particularly in the West have come to think incoherently and to live incongruently. We talk, act, and (often) think as Muslims within Muslim spaces, while adopting different modes of talking, acting, and thinking in the midst of mainstream society. The resultant schizophrenia is not only uncomfortable but also inherently unstable. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the younger generation of Western-born Muslims are, in many respects, already well on their way to losing their bearings, with the normative content of their religion gradually being replaced by the logic and outlook of the dominant paradigm.
Needless to say, this clashing of paradigms in addition to the regular stirrings of the mind and deliberations of the heart engenders numerous questions that, in the aggregate, may riskcalling our very faith into question. If freedom is the ultimate human good, then why has Islam traditionally regulated, but not banned, slavery? If equality is paramount, then why the differential legislation regarding men and women? If science tells us we evolved from lower life forms, then is the Quran proved wrong by affirming the creation of our father Adam (as)? If sexuality is at the core of who we are, then is Islam not oppressive for prohibiting, among other things, homosexual relations?
Program Objective:
The objective of this program is to start building up a solid and comprehensive framework for thinking about and responding tosuch queries. The assumptions that underlie such questions are often very deep-lying, frequently at the very root of our worldview itself. Intellectual and moral crises can arise when Islam and the dominant paradigm conflict and the questioner is unable to uncover the underlying genealogy of each view, in order better to manage the conflict and to find peace and conviction in a continuing commitment to Islam.
Rather than formulating and rehearsing pat answers to the hot topics of the day, our goal is to gain a deeper understanding of how we got to where we are today. In other words, what is this modern world we live in, how did it come about, and what is it really all about on a deep level? The course aims to begin answering the question, What is the modern worldview? and to provide a framework for analyzing this worldview critically from an informed and principled Islamic perspective. From such a vantage point, the answers to many of the hot-button issues of the day will, inshaAllah, eventually begin to emerge on their own. The deeper our grasp of both our religion and the world in which we live, the sharper will be our analysis of our situation and, hence, the more balanced, persuasive, durable, and authentic will be the answers we eventually seek to provide