This panel provides insight into different modes of Islamic ethics and political theology in contexts of social change and instability. The papers explore diverse forms of such responses to uncertainty and precarity: from ritual action and preaching, to legal theory, scriptural hermeneutics, and political mobilization and activism.
Within the last 25 years a new genre of devotion has developed in Twelver Shi'ism: the online English-language majālis. Subsequently new digital savvy Shī‘a authority create and curate English online content. Some communicate almost on the daily with their audience not only about theology and ritual commemorations but about current issues and politics that have direct impact on the Shi'a world. This paper will offer a new perspective on Shī‘a authority in this current moment of intense uncertainty where theological visions are overlapping with current military aggression from both the US and Israel. This is the very region ḥadīth describe as related to the messianic figure, the Mahdī. In addition, this paper will explore three modes of messaging from these new authorities to imagine a future beyond despair, rooted in messianic expectation to create a just religious and political community envisioned in Shī‘a eschatology: preparation, keeping faith, and political action.
This paper examines the Mālikī doctrine of sedd al-zarāʾiʿ as a model of future-sensitive normativity in Islamic law. Under this principle, an action that is permissible in itself may be prohibited if it foreseeably leads to morally impermissible outcomes. While acknowledged across Sunni schools, Mālikī jurists systematically develop it as a coherent, ethically grounded method that integrates probabilistic reasoning, proportionality, and social welfare considerations. By foregrounding potential consequences, sedd al-zarāʾiʿ demonstrates a historically informed anticipatory approach to moral and legal regulation, offering an alternative to abstract equality or procedural rule-following. The paper situates this principle within contemporary debates on anticipatory ethics, risk governance, and the moral imagination of the future, highlighting its relevance to questions of bioethics, digital governance, and emerging technologies. Ultimately, the study shows that classical fiqh contains conceptual resources for ethically navigating uncertainty and preemptively mitigating harm, providing insights for both historical understanding and modern moral reasoning.
This paper examines al-Jamʿiyya of Nablus as an early form of provincial Islamism in late Ottoman Palestine during the Hamidian era (1878–1908). While scholarship often locates the origins of Islamism in the interwar period, the paper argues that a proto-form of organized Islamic political activism emerged earlier within Ottoman frameworks. Drawing on local chronicles, missionary archives, and Ottoman administrative records, it shows how al-Jamʿiyya, a local association of religious scholars and urban notables, mobilized religious authority, anti-missionary activism, and loyalty to Sultan Abdulhamid II. The association petitioned against a British missionary hospital and mobilized resources to establish a rival “Islamic Hospital,” framing its actions in explicitly Islamic terms. During the 1908–1909 constitutional crisis, its members publicly defended the sultan through a discourse of sharia, obedience, and caliphal sovereignty. The case demonstrates how provincial actors translated Hamidian pan-Islamism into local institutional activism, revealing Islamism as a defense of Ottoman Islamic order.
In 1928, Rashid Rida published The Ease of Islam: A Commentary on God’s Statement, “Do not ask about things which, if made known to you, might make things difficult for you” (Qur’an 5:101). Rida had long critiqued his peers for blindly deferring to tradition or blindly imitating non-Muslims. Here, he applies that to the law, his thesis hinging on Qur’an 5:101. He finds that the “things” God refers to concern ritual and doctrine. Here, asking unnecessary questions can lead to avoidable burdens, constricting and distorting an easy religion. But when it comes to human interactions with other humans, he finds, God grants Muslims “the widest scope,” sanctioning ijtihad in the interests of securing public welfare. This paper addresses the implications: does Rida’s thesis point to an effective partitioning of religious and secular? Or does such a reading imply a more clear-cut division of religion and non-religion that his discourse allows.