Ebrahim Moosa, Author at Contending Modernities

The Idea of Progress and Its Discontents in Islamic Thought

Ebrahim Moosa
January 10, 2023February 1, 2024

We do know one thing taught by experience: the dominant paradigms need to be continuously contested with alternative ways of knowing, different types of knowledge, and novel models for society-building.

Theology and the Ironies of History

Series: Book Symposium on Defending Muḥammad in Modernity

Ebrahim Moosa
February 16, 2021March 2, 2021

Most theological disputes have an afterlife, and some of these intricate and subtle debates about the authority of Islam’s messenger and prophet still percolate in the hearts and minds of the faithful to this very day.

Secularism’s Prisoners

Series: Secularism in France

Ebrahim Moosa
December 10, 2020January 24, 2024

The theater of Macron’s crusade is his own backyard, the banlieues—from where the uncivilized darkness will lift when floodlit by the vaunted French version of secularism, laïcité.

The Role of Heritage and Tradition (Turāth) in the Search for Muslim Identity

Series: Beyond Coexistence

Ebrahim Moosa
November 2, 2017November 3, 2017

Without careful nurturing and dedicated attention to the past as well as the present, tradition becomes an instrument of power, and a source of learned ignorance.

CM Reacts: Brussels & Beyond

Vincent Rougeau, Angus Ritchie, Robert Hefner and Ebrahim Moosa
March 30, 2016August 13, 2019

In the wake of last week’s bombings in Belgium, Turkey, Pakistan, and elsewhere, Contending Modernities asked the chairs of the…

The Challenge of Updating Archaic Doctrine

Ebrahim Moosa
September 29, 2015August 12, 2019

Contending Modernities co-director Ebrahim Moosa’s recently published op-ed in the Washington Post, My madrassa classmate hated politics. Then he joined the Islamic State, provides a timely case study of a successful South African imam’s unlikely immigration to Syria to join the Islamic State. Read the full article »

Historicity and Discursivity, Religious and Secular: Responding to the Rome Conference 2015

Series: Rome 2015

Ebrahim Moosa
August 17, 2015January 24, 2024

Rather than fixating on the authority of past authorities and their social imaginaries, the discursive approach negotiates conceptions of the human person by way of historicizing and complexly rereading the tradition.

Muslim Attitudes Towards Evolutionary Science

Ebrahim Moosa
February 7, 2014August 12, 2019

Despite the combative relationship that some Muslims had with modern science during the colonial period, science still embodies the hope for the “future recovery” of Muslim societies, argues the historian of science Ahmad Dallal.

Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Parenthood in Islam: A Response to Thomas Eich

Ebrahim Moosa
December 2, 2013August 12, 2019

In his recent blog post, Thomas Eich asks if particular issues of medical ethics are “really only about the issue at hand, as is usually claimed in the course of such debates?” “How strong is the presence of other factors in these debates,” he continues, “which are not directly linked to the medical technology under discussion?” Read the full article »

Brain, Mind and Culture: Promptings from Muslim Theology

Ebrahim Moosa
April 11, 2013August 7, 2019

Pick up a work by Shah Waliyullah of Delhi (d. 1762), the great Indian polymath and sage-like figure, and he might commend your attention to sensory substitution, or synesthesia.

Articles written by Ebrahim Moosa