Sacred Texts and Ethics: New Ventures

The concept of ḥikmah (wisdom) appears twenty times in nineteen different verses across twelve chapters in the Qur’an, yet its interpretation has undergone significant evolution over the centuries. Classical exegetes such as al-Ṭabarī (d. 923) and Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373) viewed wisdom primarily through a prophetic and theological lens, linking it to divine revelation and religious instruction. Their interpretations emphasize ḥikmah as a form of guidance granted to prophets, with a strong focus on legalistic and doctrinal teachings. In contrast, the rationalist theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1209) expanded the meaning of wisdom beyond prophecy to include intellectual discernment, ethical reasoning, and philosophical inquiry. This rationalist shift is further developed in modern exegesis, particularly in the works of Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1935) and al-Ṭāhir Ibn ʿĀshūr (d. 1973), who reframe ḥikmah as an essential ethical and social principle applicable to all believers. By tracing these exegetical shifts, this paper explores the broader transformation of Islamic thought, from a strictly theological understanding of wisdom to a more human-centered, rational, and ethical perspective.

In this paper, I use Paul Ricœur's philosophical framework to explore how the Śyāma Jātaka and its cultural adaptations establish filial piety as the basis for moral development. Comparing narratives from India to China, I show how Ricœur's concepts of moral indebtedness, narrative identity, and the pursuit of the good for and with others help explain the ethical message of these Buddhist tales. This paper explores how the evolution from the nameless ascetic in the Rāmāyaṇa to the eponymous Śyāma or Sanzi in Buddhist texts embodies the transition from subject to moral actor, with what Ricœur calls “ipseity” – selfhood formed through narrative. I claim that Ricœur's concept of the truth invocation scenes where filial piety triumphs over death represents “pietas” that “joins the living and the dead,” and how narrative concordant discordance fosters moral change across cultural divides.

The ethical frameworks derived from classical Islamic sources such as the ḥadīth may not always exhibit a consistent resource for ethical guidance. One example of such inconsistency can be observed by the examination of early texts like the Kitāb al-Jihād (Chapter on Jihād) extracted from an eighth century ḥadīth collection called Musannaf of ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Sanʿānī (d.827). Notably, the pragmatism demonstrated by ḥadīth transmitters concerned with the spoils of war complicates the ethical assumptions associated with the ḥadīth corpus. This essay proceeds in three parts: First, I focus on five sections of the chapter titled Kitāb al-Jihād. Second, I reconstruct the way early Muslims perceived war. Third, I underscore the textual problems faced by scholars in recovering ethical arguments of war from classical Islamic sources like the ḥadīths of Kitab al-Jihād.