Classical Ijtihad Theory and the Vocabulary of Inter-Islamic Tolerance
Thursday, Nov. 3 at 6 p.m. McBride Gathering Space, Numen Lumen Pavillion.
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<span style=”font-size: 14px;”> Rodrigo Adem has a PhD from the University of Chicago in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill.</span>Shedding light on an oft-repeated but little-understood term, this talk reorients our concept of ijtihad within its original context of early Islamic jurisprudential theory (Usul al-fiqh) to elucidate the greater social ramifications for this otherwise obscure aspect of Islamic legal discourse.
The classical Islamic negotiation of individual agency, religious difference and epistemic diversity all can be shown to emerge from Muslim scholarly discourses surrounding ijtihad. This will be demonstrated with specific examples and with an eye to historical development, with the aim of providing basic literacy in the vocabulary used for the classical negotiation of inter-Islamic tolerance.
