Agency, Rationality, and Morality

Download or read book Agency, Rationality, and Morality written by Mona Abul-Fadl and published by International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). This book was released on 2024-05-06 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modernity or modernism as a system of thought purporting to be enlightened and universal, has brought with it a crisis of values and a secular perspective that has undermined its own foundations and is provoking a universalized state of existential angst or anomie and moral anarchy. This treatise provides a reading of the Qur’anic view of man as insan against a background of the preoccupations of modernity. The author critiques the rapid devolution of society divorced from spiritual tradition in the modern context. The emphasis is on rationality, freedom, and morality and the goal is the reintegration of man and the recovery of community through a reconciliation of self and the rediscovery of the essential meaning of divine guidance in so far as it relates to human life in this world. Taking the Qur’an as a divine discourse of many tiers and depths, the work singles out aspects of the discourse on creation and takes it as a pivot for developing a view of moral man and moral community, with the focus remaining on the former. The main message is one of relevance, urgency, and opportunity. The urgency and the opportunity lie with man, and the relevance shines through the light of the eternal message and comes from God.