Journeys on and in the Ethical - Religion, #Ethics and Violence

Castle in Cape Town

The International Peace College South Africa in Cape Town, in cooperation with AMEC (Afro-Middle East Centre) based in Johannesburg, hosted its 7th Annual Wasatiyyah Symposium in the Castle of Good Hope on Saturday 20 May 2017. The meeting turned around the challenge of ISIS to South Africa in general, and the South African Muslim community in particular.

Presenters wrestled with why about 100 recruits in South Africa turned their backs to the Muslim community. Moreover, they wrestled with why these recruits chose violence rather than the middle path (#wasatiyyah)- a path of commitment and moderation, a path exemplified by the history of Muslims in South Africa.

A few days earlier, I had the privilege of attending the 5th Annual Conference on Law and Religion (ACLARS) in Rabat, Morocco. The theme of the conference was Law, Religion and Security. Over two and a half days, academics presented papers on how law and religion mediated values, violence and power. As in the Wasatiyyah Symposium in Cape Town, delegates wrestled with how the best side of religion in African countries may contribute to security and peace. ISIS was the elephant in the room.

A few days before that, I attended a symposium entitled “Islam as an Ethical and Material Practice” that preceded my son’s (Shaheed Tayob) graduation at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. It focussed on the implications and questions that emerged from this thesis (Islam as a Lived Tradition: Ethical Constellations of Muslim Food Practice in Mumbai). This was a very different meeting, mixing personal pride and reflection. But the conference, now located in Europe, reflected on the representation of Islam in the public sphere, and the practices that shaped and directed Muslims in Mumbai. There seemed to be a big gap between the ethical and the representational.

A week before that, Prof. Elena Stepanova from Ekaterinburg (Ural Federal University) invited me to an International Interdisciplinary Conference (Religion in the Public Sphere: Paradoxical Presence). I used the opportunity to reflect on the paradoxes in the National Policy on Religion and Education promulgated in 2003. The policy was designed to change the nature of religious education in South African schools. Here too, I was drawn to the ethical between deliberation and representational. The former was devoted to examine and explore the history of religions, while the latter was devoted to putting up religion for display (a display often marked by power and privilege).

These are privileges that I have often taken for granted. The meetings of sharing and learning find their way into writing, teaching and public life. This time, I was painfully aware of my carbon footprint as my Abdul-Aleem Somers has often reminded me. But as I looked back at these experiences, I also became aware of the interconnectedness of these meetings. In the next few weeks, I would like to revisit these meetings through the sights, sounds and emotions that they evoked for me.

I will be reflecting on them through the weekly meetings that we have organized at the University of Cape Town on religion and ethics. Our research group, Religion Education and Islam, African Publics and Religious Values, comes together for an hour to discuss articles and books that we read together. For 2017, we first read James Laidlaw’s The Subject of Virtue: An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), and we are now following up with Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Religion and Politics (Pantheon Books, 2012). From different vantage points, they are challenging us to think about ethics in religions, and in the study of religions. But as you will see, we challenge their conception of ethics through the religious that we know.