Ethics and Knowledge in a Time of Uncertainty (continued)

Last week I raised a question about how conspiracies are not only linked to fake and untested knowledge. They may also be seen as desperate attempts to fill the gaps in a world that promises to be predictable. I closed with a quick nod to a religious worldview in which ethics is not always linked to full knowledge and predictability. I want to follow this up more closely. 

A world determined by God is both certain and unpredictable. In contrast with God, humans might never know in great detail what is to happen in the future. But they trust in God to know, and then accept whatever happens. For humans, the future remains fundamentally unpredictable. 

But let us consider how this ethic is offered in the Qur’an. Rather than a philosophical or theological postulate, it is presented in a concrete form. Consider the following Qur’anic verse (ayah, literally sign): 

Indeed, God has knowledge of the Hour and sends down the rain and knows what is in the wombs. And no soul perceives what it will earn tomorrow, and no soul perceives in what land it will die. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Aware (Qurán 31:34)

The verse captures the sense that God knows the hidden and the future while humans do not. The verse specifically spells out aspects of the future.

I have often wondered how to translate this verse in a world in which modern sciences seek to know the world and its future. Clearly, there are aspects that are still beyond knowledge. We might count here the 'knowledge of the Hour', what one will 'earn tomorrow', where one might die. But some aspects mentioned in the verse are not as opaque. With a greater understanding of the world, for example, we have a better understanding of rain and what is in the wombs. 

I would go one step further and argue that, in general, we live in world in which what we earn tomorrow and where we might die is also probed. Economists and statisticians work tirelessly on models that predict how we might earn, and where we would die. Such models are built on extensive data fed into machines for processing. Big data in recent times is built on this conception of models and their predictability.  

Of course, we do not know what a particular person may earn or where she may die. But the models have been fairly accurate in predicting what people may do, or shaping may do. The former is embraced by scientists who think that human behavior is predictable, while the latter argue that these models fed into human relations and communication are self-fulfilling prophecies. 

My point in this is to show how one verse in the Qurán on knowledge of the future stands against a model of the world founded on knowledge and predictability. In the verse (sign) of the Qurán, humans are reminded how little they know, and thus act accordingly. In contrast, sciences founded on incremental knowledge geared towards the predictability of the future, creates an ethics based on knowing. 

Until the 1960s, social scientists predicted that this model of science would eventually replace religious worldviews determined by divine knowledge and fiat. Based on their understanding of the world, Weber, Marx and lesser mortals predicted and assumed the future course of the world. 

We now emphasize how wrong they were, sometimes with some glee. Others counter that this prediction is not dead, but needs adjustment. Again, prediction can never be accurate, but faith in it is not given up. 

For me, the question that remains is how people balance these contrasting maps of the world? What do they do when they think that everything is knowable, and what do they do when they face the uncertainty of the future?

In my previous post, I was suggesting that COVID-19 throws up this conundrum for our consideration. The development of the vaccine is predicated on eventually knowing its nature, and understanding what the future will hold. The actual production of the vaccine, its distribution and sale present a world full of unpredictables and uncertainties. 

The time of COVID-19 might be the place for thinking of the right thing to do in the face of uncertainties. It might offer ways of how religious values and ethics may work in the gaps of knowledge.

Ethics of a COVID Vaccine

In the last few days, South African television has raised questions about the availability of COVID vaccines. The television debate fanned a now familiar and plausible narrative that the government of the country has botched up again. This easily believable story has been pushed by opposition spokesperson offered extensive airtime. As usual, there is more to the story than is evident in contemporary democratic politics.

Behind the narrative, it was clear that questions remained on the process that led to the vaccine. This included the great science and scientists behind the vaccines, but also government subsidies given to large companies, the testing of the vaccines across the world, and various attempts made to distribute the vaccine in an equitable manner. 

Now, it seems that wealthy countries are getting ahead of the queues. Pushing up the prices, they are threatening the availability of sufficient vaccines for all. In the rush to stem the second wave, the ethics of fair distribution of vaccines are forgotten. The first sign of light at the end of the tunnel has brought back the familiar world and its morality.

The COVID19 pandemic has been difficult to say the least. But it seemed to have elevated a realization of the precarity that faces the world as a collective. And it showed that working together was the only option available for the world. One person who chose to ignore the dangers of the virus exposed potentially many more. And one person who cared could make a huge difference to many. Ironically, the virus brought forth the potential for another world. 

But now that there is some glimmer of hope, the sense of belonging to one world is being jettisoned. Countries that can afford the vaccine are jumping ahead and buying up stocks. Public funds used to subsidize the vaccines are forgotten. Countless people who volunteered to be tested are ignored.

It seems that greed and competition are the only ethical values that determine who gets to live and who gets to die. There are some platitudes passed around about availability of the vaccines in the future.  But the ethics of working together is jettisoned. 

South Africa presents a familiar scenario. The opposition is there to point to the folly of the government. but it too has no real alternative to the ethics of funding that drives the vaccine and its distribution. Given half a chance, it will perpetuate the bifurcated world we have come to accept. A few will be offered the vaccines at inflated prices, while the rest will be herded in crowded and dangerous places. As usual, it will seem that modern science has one again failed delivered a bettter world for all. 

When distress befalls man, he supplicates Us. Then, when We grant him a blessing from Us, he says, ‘I was given it by virtue of [my] knowledge.’ Rather it is a test, but most of them do not know (Qur’an, Zumar, v. 50).

The Good Life and its Representation: #Religion, #Ethics and what you can see?

I had intended to write a series of blogs on religion and ethics soon after the 7th Wasatiyyah Conference in Cape Town on the 20th of May. But this was not to be as I began teaching a module on Jihad and violence at the University of Cape Town. I will report on this as well. For now, I continue my chosen blog journey on ethics, values and religions.

Shaheed's defense and graduation took place on the 10th of May, 2017. The thesis was based on field work in Mumbai on the good life as articulated around food, sacrifice, consumption and production. The cover on his thesis was a row of animal carcasses in the background, and a man sitting in the front. Shaheed was asked for a photograph by the University, which he supplied.

But Utrecht University chose a different photograph to announce the event (picture on the side). It was a photograph of a woman holding a cat on a lap, wearing a green dress and face cover.

The choice of this photograph rather than the one given by Shaheed revealed and obscured the moral life of Muslims. Firstly, the rejection of Shaheed's photograph says a lot of what is considered ethical with regard to animal rights and non-rights. Supermarkets are filled with meat, but the reality of the slaughter should be kept in the background.

On the other hand, the choice of this photo rather than the original one was perhaps an act kindness by the administration. Muslims already have a bad reputation! And the administration perhaps chose something more familiar and less jarring. This was surely more ethical. Holding a cat with tenderness was better than sitting in front of a row of animal carcasses. But then one has to ask, how moral is it to do something for another person? This choice was good for the image of Muslim society, but not so good in relation to the choice made by Shaheed? We have a contrast between ethics as freedom (Shaheed's choice), and a sense of the good (for the benefit of the Muslim image).

But I reflected on what this picture shows in relation to the history of public ethics and gender in the West since the advent of modernity. I read recently from Graeber that a major transformation took place on how ethics were removed from display under the impact of the Protestant Reformation. Men, in particular, had previously displayed their identity and values on their bodies, by the clothes and accessories that they wore. Then, under the impact of a pietistic tradition, this display was displaced with a dour exterior and an inner sense of rectitude and self-righteousness.

In contrast, women were expected to continue showing off their values, valuables and identities on their bodies.

So what does this picture show about Muslim ethics? On the one hand, it is revealing and concealing at the same time. It shows the values that Muslims hold dear. At the same time, it hides those values. A full cover from head to toe does not show anything, and everything. Unless, of course, the very act of concealing is a value. A women in niqab is a concealment by fact.

When one brings in the fact that this photo was chosen in Utrecht, Netherlands, then it seems that this says nothing about Muslim values. It displays a modern European tradition that frames women who show values or no values.

So, ethics and display are deeply connected. As ethics are personal and individual acts of kindness, generosity, etc, they can be entangled with public display and hypocrisy. This conundrum does not seem to have been addressed in the anthropology of ethics, but there is extensive discussion thereof in religious literature. 

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.

#Ethics from the #Quran: They tell each other secretly… and then they blame each other!

A short narrative in the Chapter of the Pen (al-qalam) recalls an affliction that is visited upon the owners of an orchard. One morning, they prepare themselves to harvest their fruit earlier than usual. They “tell each other secretly” that no poor wretch might come upon them, expecting a share. But when they reach the orchard, they are not early enough. A visitor has already been been there, and laid waste the orchard like a parched and dusty field. At first, they think that they are lost (dallun), but then sit back and consider their experience. “They blame each other”, but some also remind them to reconsider their actions and their moral compass.

This is a familiar narrative that evil intentions will sometimes face a lesser punishment, a timely reminder for those who take heed. The greater punishment will leave no respite. But this narrative sometimes conceals hidden nuggets. Familiarity and repetition may become veils to insight.

A closer look at two verbs (yatakhafatun and yatalawamun) is worth a pause. They turn our attention to deep-seated human responses to prosperity and loss. Hoping to keep the full harvest for themselves, the owners of the orchards wished that there were no poor around. They wished that the plentiful harvests were taken from the trees, and stored and hoarded in safe places. “They tell each other secretly.” In one sense, this is an oxymoron. A secret is kept to oneself, and once told to another can no longer be called a secret. But the effect of the verb speaks of a deep or secret desire by the rich and prosperous to maintain a safe distant from the wretched. They should not be accosting one at road intersections. They should not be sullying the portals and corridors of power. Told and untold, the secret runs deep.

Yatalawamun is an equally dominant reaction, this time when an affliction or even minor mishap comes to pass. “They blame each other” as they confront the devastation, looking for a scape-goat to identify and crucify. It is a knee-jerk response, looking to protect the self. Blaming the other happens on the level of the everyday, often in a family, a company, a nation and on the globe. Rene Girard has reminded us that this is probably the origin of human socialibilty. Someone must be blamed so that others can live.

But this narrative concludes with a more hopeful vision for the future. Perhaps, one of them says, our Provider will exchange this for something better.