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“If everyone were equal, it would end in their demise.” So claims Nasir al-Din Tusi, the famed Iranian philosopher from the thirteenth century. Tusi found this maximum to be particularly insightful and wove it into his influential manual of ethics. This idea, that social stratification is a necessary condition for human flourishing, stretches back to the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. The belief in hierarchy as a bedrock for political order is an abiding feature of classical moral philosophy. A perfect state of society can only be obtained through a progressive series of hierarchal orders, the philosophers explain. Not only is the superiority of a male elite unquestioned it is celebrated and feted. As a man rules his home, so does a ruler govern society. Thus proceeds the syllogistic logic of the body politic in classical virtue ethics.

Needless to say, much of this thinking would appear to be anathema to liberal sensibilities, steeped in values of egalitarianism and equality—for all their contradictions and unrealized aspirations. Yet ideals of hierarchy and mastery have also proved to be rather useful in the uneven legacies of liberalism, of freeing others through conquest. The specter of liberty brought by the empires and markets of colonialism has made the prospect of fathoming the difference of the past a rather vexing endeavor.

Historically, Muslims, like both Jews and Christians, drew copiously from the well of Greek learning as a font of science and wisdom. One of the many bequests of classical moral philosophy is the assertion that social hierarchy is the natural state of God’s creation. In the development of Islamic thought, philosophers and intellectuals frequently turned to the unequal conditions and capacities among humans as confirmation of a grand chain of being that connected the quotidian minutia on earth to the sublime heavenly orbs above. In this, Muslim authorities shared in a universal field of science and philosophy that sought to account in taxonomical form for the entire order of existence, emanating from God through the tiniest particles of being.

Over time, such cosmic orders proved quite useful when justifying the status of those in power. For classical virtue ethics, the metaphysics of hierarchy served to advance male dominance and patriarchal rule as a natural basis for domestic order and political life. Zahra Ayubi traces the genealogies of these ideological formulations in a lucid and thought-provoking study focused on canonical Persian works from the tradition of classical Islamic moral philosophy. Along the way, Ayubi develops a feminist reading and critique of the gendered dynamics that govern the conditions for human happiness and the language of reform.

Ayubi leads us through an influential corpus of ethical writings on akhlaq, the natural traits or characteristics of individuals, by the likes of Ghazali, Tusi, and Davani. These widely read works on moral philosophy offered practical advice for improving the self and society through the corporal and intellectual disciplines of moral refinement. As an indication of the deep connections with classical philosophy, the category of akhlaq is itself a calque of the Greek plural ethe and with it the field of ethika, which historically was also implicated in the project of promoting and affirming male privilege. In her own readings of these ethical manuals, Ayubi consciously follows the footsteps of earlier feminist philosophers, such as Luce Irigaray and Martha Nussbaum, who have asked what, if anything, can be recovered from the ancient writings of a male elite who sought to anchor their own authority in the transcendent power of cosmic order.

Taming the Body

For the diverse moral economies of liberalism, a good deal in this ethical universe may stand out as elitist, racist, and sexist. This extends beyond merely the unquestioned centrality of the male subject to the entire body politics of perfection towards which these works progress in teleological fashion. Perfection is the name of the game. In the framework of Aristotelian ethics, the idea of telos, as both end and completion, carries a special importance. It is directly related to the central concept of entelecheia, the work of bringing into full actuality the ideal self through a process of self-fulfillment. It is a concept generally rendered in Arabic and Persian as takmil, perfection, completion, and actualization.

As a discourse of perfection, these writings privilege above all a male subject whose body is marked for purification. The marginalization of women from this discipline of self-actualization is not an accident, but rather a structural feature designed to promote men as vessels of power and as models of divine rule. Despite all this, classical Islamic moral philosophy also cultivated and valued social justice. Yet as a system of thought that approached equality not as a desirable virtue but as a dangerous imbalance, the ideal of what constituted justice in these works does not easily accord with today’s language of universal human rights and civil liberties.

As with Plato’s yoking together of soma and polis, the metaphor of the body politic is a central feature of these writings on hierarchical order. It is a conceit with incredible traction. “The excellent city is like a perfect, healthy body whose limbs all work in concert,” explains the early Muslim philosopher Farabi. Like Plato, Farabi viewed the perfect state as governed by an enlightened ruler who could lead and guide all classes of society, from the ignorant masses to the educated elite. In the ideals of classical Islamic moral philosophy the apex of social order is identified with men—generally in the form of an imam, caliph, or a group of wise authorities—who, through the discipline of the soul and the power of the intellect, have obtained extraordinary states of knowledge and wisdom that far surpass what ordinary people can achieve. Justice, in such a framework, is maintained not through insuring equality of rights or the protection of liberties, but by balancing the diverse and unequal factions of society in complete harmony, where individuals know their place and act according to and within their own capacities.

Importantly, the metaphysical structure undergirding this system of thought is designed to describe in scientific and rational terms the physical powers of prophecy as located in the nafs, or soul, the psyche of Greek philosophy, which in turn serves as the cognitive basis for human reason. The epistemic foundations of classical Islamic moral philosophy rest on the cosmic force of the divine soul as it emanates throughout all existence. These teachings form the keystone in the metaphysics of Ibn Sina, whose work indelibly shapes the tradition of virtue ethics that Ayubi explores. Here the hierarchical gradation of intellectual capacity, as determined by the mental faculties of the soul, is used to explain the natural foundations of prophecy, miracles, and magic. In such a schema, the Prophet, as the total, complete, and perfect human, represents the pinnacle of human potential, the ideal lawgiver, and the consummate model for dignity and happiness.

This corpus of writing promises individual and social improvement and refinement. As Tusi notes in the opening to his widely read manual of ethics, while theoretical philosophy culminates in the abstract analysis of the soul as a force in nature, practical philosophy teaches how to harness and actualize the psychic power of the intellect. Starting with tahzib al-akhlaq, the individual refinement of character or virtues, the path of perfection then turns to the organization of domestic economy and finally ends in the study of good governance. This ultimate field focuses on siyasa, not in the sense of politics, which is what the word generally conveys in modern Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu, but with the meaning of discipline and punishment, as in the classical Persian expression siyasat kardan, to discipline or punish and thereby to rule. The coercive power governing the home and the state is meant to keep subordinates in place.

As Ayubi demonstrates time and again, the gendered values that animate this system of applied philosophy advance the authority of an ideal male subject as the head of the family and as the leader of society. These works speak in a language of mastery. It is a mastery born of discipline and control through the refinement of comportment, thought, and language. Ethics and etiquette intermingle in the staging of adab, a general term for educated decorum and refined speech. Mastery of language as a normative condition for maturity and manliness is a frequent trope in these appeals to moral refinement.

In Polite Society

The universal claims animating this philosophy of the good life lent themselves to countless audiences. As a testament to their popularity, many of the works that Ayubi considers were deployed in Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal administrative education. In South Asia, this meant importantly readerships of Muslims and Hindus alike—Kayasthas and Khatris in particular. These diverse readers highlight, above all, the appeal of akhlaq literature to a natural order that transcended sectarian divides, pointing to a kind of a universal, if not secular, sphere of learning and knowledge before the advent of colonialism.

In the course of early Islamic reform movements, practical moral philosophy played a rather outsized role. As a means of reviving the body politic in the face of European colonialism, the classicism of tahzib al-akhlaq, the refinement of morals, could appeal to an internal discourse on education and self-improvement. As Ayubi notes, the phrase famously served as the title for the reformist Urdu gazette founded in 1870 by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. The English header for Sir Sayyid’s journal, The Mohammedan Social Reformer, announces exactly what tahzib is meant to convey: a process of refinement, purification, and polishing, through a discipline of correcting and improving the morals of society. The term carries a sense of honor and good manners. So too did tahzib come to serve in Urdu as a direct translation of the rather novel English word “civilization,” in the moral sense of cultured, and in direct opposition to the barbaric and semi-barbaric (wahshi-o-nisf wahshi). In this regard, Muslim reformists closely followed colonial discourses on the improvement of society by drawing on an autochthonous language of rectification and refinement, with the control of women’s bodies occupying a central concern.

With appeals to universal order and refined etiquette, it should come as no surprise that Orientalists also turned to collections on akhlaq, often for the purposes of Persian language instruction. The continued centrality of virtue ethics for edification can be traced back to early colonial contacts. For example, Sir William Jones lavishes praise on Kamal al-Din Kashifi’s Persian collection of morality tales in his Grammar of the Persian Language (1771), a work prepared for the instruction of officers and other servants in the employ of the East India Company. In 1821, a bilingual English and Persian selection from Kashifi’s popular compendium was published so as to be “attentively studied during the passage to India.” British orientalists translating akhlaq materials as employees of the Company—often with the aid of their moonshee or “intelligent native”—were quick to recognize a common basis of ethical knowledge rooted in Greek philosophy, which in turn offered commonalities not only in moral and epistemic terms, but also in the rareified field of science itself. Given their administrative use, this body of ethical literature also came to serve a curricular basis for civil and military service in the East India Company and then, after the Government of India Act of 1858, as part of the Indian Civil Service of British India. The pedagogical use of these materials for language instruction is rather suggestive, as the focus on self-discipline also coincides with the Orientalist enterprise of mastering and standardizing the language of others.

In addition to aspirations of mastery, European writings from the period on moral philosophy and political economy, by the likes of John Stuart Mill, also found common cause in the metaphor of a “political” or “social body.” While a body can decay, so too can it be purified, disciplined, and improved. As a concept, the body politic, however, has notable limitations. Foremost, it has often served to naturalize group identities, while obfuscating the circulation of power, such that social hierarchies are readily justified and imbued with cosmic and ethical significance of a transcendental magnitude. This kind of reasoning generally papers over the very ideological work at the heart of group formation. All imagined communities necessitate an ideological, if contradictory, heterogeneous, and conceptually impossible, means of identification, of who we are, where we have been, and where we are going, in the associative bonds that draw us together and pull us apart. The facticity of group identities, in this regard, is a product of ideation, not of crude determinism.

Politics of Imperfection

While colonial agents were often mouthpieces for various forms of liberalism, they were also keenly invested in cultivating hierarchies of race, class, and gender, which they used to divide up the world between the civilized and the savage. The logic of the civilizing mission justifying global European hegemony generally predicated the inherently unequal status of humans. In such equations, Islam long stood as a foil to the forward march of history, a withered and decayed hand of oppression shackled by superstition and ignorance. For the rights based ideology of secular liberalism, as Joseph Massad contends, Islam has frequently betokened the irrational, illiberal, tyrannical other, inimical to the forces of freedom and self-fulfillment.

In the waves of reform and post-colonial resistance, with the rise of liberation theology and the development of Islamic feminism, there have followed countless efforts at locating and recuperating egalitarian values in the foundational sources of Islamic authority. Yet Ayubi observes, referencing the work of Ayesha Chaudhry on domestic violence and the Qur’an, the interpretive procedures for identifying messages of gender equality in these materials are anything but straightforward. Indeed, like all forms of reading the past, such hermeneutical maneuvers are by necessity anachronistic, that is, they are shaped by the vocabularies, desires, and values of the present, as well as by the potential of what can actually be thought or said. While today one may point to numerous sources for egalitarian thought in the wide course of Islamic history, such gestures are inevitably made and conditioned in the shadow of liberalism. As an ideological formulation, liberalism’s promise of freedom presents itself as the perfect and only conceivable basis for human flourishing.

Yet, perfection is no easy state. Everything is in flux, constantly changing and reforming. The discipline of the self is never complete, just as group formation is a continual work in progress. Perfection is an ideological position, not a state of being. A politics of imperfection, as Leela Gandhi calls for in her transnational history of democracy, proceeds from the messiness of material conditions and the heterogeneous identities and values that guide us all, following the empathic possibilities of thinking otherwise. In contrast, the disciplines of perfection have always spoken in the name of mastery, be it over language, with the fine line of a diacritical mark, or over bodies, in the master who stands in for and silences another.

Zahra Ayubi’s Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society reads three important Persian texts in the Islamic ethical tradition—Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali’s Kimiya-i Sa‘adat (Alchemy of Happiness), Nasir-ad Din Tusi’s Akhlaq-i Nasiri (Nasirean Ethics), and Jalal al-Din Davani’s Lawami‘ al-Ishraq fi Makarim al-Akhlaq (Lusters of Illumination on the Noble Ethics), also known as Akhlaq-i Jalali (Jalalean Ethics)—with an eye towards the “gender constructions and dynamics” that shape these authors’ claims about what it means to lead an ethical life (13). What she finds is that there is a tension present in all three of these works, between a hierarchical vision of the world—one which treats women and nonelite men as means, rather than ends, for the achievement of the good life of elite men—and a universal account of the nafs (soul), which treats all physical matter and beings as having equal value as God’s creations. She shows that this tension has, unfortunately, too often been glossed over by scholars, leaving the “philosophical underpinnings” of patriarchy in the tradition unaddressed (5). Through an immanent critique of the classical texts, she shows the limitations of approaches that seek to rescue akhlaq writings—or works concerning ethics—from their patriarchal assumptions, and demonstrates what is required for the creation of a feminist Islamic ethics out of an engagement with them.

Ayubi’s book is an example of rich feminist-critical and philosophical ethics. It attends to the social contexts in which these thinkers write, but also seeks to move beyond those contexts in order to show, more broadly, how the shared assumptions of these authors have shaped Islamic ethics. Ayubi begins by unpacking the broad epistemological assumptions that characterize these works and their reception within the tradition before turning her focus to the themes of metaphysics, marriage, the domestic sphere, and homosocial masculinity and social life. Each chapter of the book weaves together the works of the three philosophers and theologians under one of these common themes. The book ends with some reflections on what a feminist philosophy of Islam might look like. She suggests that because the discriminatory nature of akhlaq literature was founded on inegalitarian metaphysics, any overcoming of such discrimination will require the construction of an egalitarian metaphysics (267), one that is attentive to the need for intersectional analysis, and does not succumb to the illusion that the patriarchal assumptions that have shaped akhlaq literature can simply be ignored.

In response to Ayubi’s book, the essays in this symposium read Ayubi with attention to the interventions she makes into Islamic ethics and beyond. Kecia Ali reflects on the approach Ayubi takes to reading the texts, comparing Ayubi’s approach to these ethical treatises with the interpretation some people make of the US Constitution. Such an approach seeks to recover from a text like the Constitution or an influential ethical treatise a universal ideal of equality that has nonetheless not yet been realized. On Ali’s reading, Ayubi successfully demonstrates the possibility of building from the akhlaq texts an egalitarian ethics. Kathryn Kueny reflects on whether that hope—to recover an egalitarian ethical impulse from an inegalitarian metaphysical system—is one that is actually realizable, and suggests looking to sources outside the akhlaq canon might prove more valuable. Saadia Yacoob compares Ayubi’s account of ethical refinement to her own work on Islamic law, and wonders if the interdependence of family members upon one another that Ayubi describes in her account of the domestic sphere could be reconfigured toward more egalitarian ends. Robert Tappan moves in a slightly different direction, discussing how Ayubi’s work might be expanded into the realm of animal ethics, so as to help us imagine a world beyond speciesism. Finally, Travis Zadeh reflects on how the thinkers whom Ayubi analyzes, along with others, adhered to a politics of perfection, much to the detriment of anyone who was not an elite male. Ayubi’s work, he contends, points us to the need for a politics of imperfection. In her response, Ayubi addresses the aforementioned essays by expanding upon the argument made in the conclusion of the book.

In thinking through how the politics of perfection laid the groundwork for the patriarchal element in some forms of Islamic ethics, Ayubi calls attention to the dynamic relationship between past and present in ethical and philosophical discourse. Because Contending Modernities is focused on how religious and secular forces interact in the modern world, it is pleased to host this symposium which thinks through what it means to imagine anew the possibilities and limits of canonical texts in the tradition of Islamic ethics.

Zahra Ayubi’s Gendered Morality examines how medieval Islamic philosophical ethics, as articulated in the akhlaq (ethics) writings of Ghazali, Tusi, and Davani, are inherently gendered. Ayubi’s work shows how this gendered ethics privileges a particular form of masculinity that is reinforced and sustained by a hierarchical metaphysics and a virtue ethics that both generates, but is also reinforced by, a skewed patronage. This skewed patronage capitalizes on the biological, social, and economic differences and inequalities that exist between men and women as well as between elites and subordinates. Ayubi argues how an unjust system of metaphysics and virtue ethics ultimately undermines the very goals these scholars ostensibly promote in their akhlaq writings: A God-given human happiness and agency for all, and not just some (240). The author concludes the work on an intriguing and open-ended constructivist note, outlining in broad strokes what a “feminist philosophy” of Islam might look like, and asking if the true goals of akhlaq could somehow be recast so as to avoid social/gendered imbalances, patriarchal privilege, and the disparaging of others.

In the field of Islamic Studies, very little has been written on gender as it shapes and constructs philosophical discourse. In fact, many studies on gender and Islam, including my own, leave traditional, medieval works of philosophy out of the equation altogether. One of the reasons for this neglect, I think, has to do with the entrenched patriarchy inherent within these writings, which makes them troubling to feminist thought, and resistant to feminist interpretation. Elite men, after all, composed their arguments to make a case for what the good life is so that other elite men would know how to embody it. When scholars like Ghazali, Tusi, or Davani talk about women at all, they do not present them as agents in their own right, but rather present them as the insufficient instruments men must use, or, the rhetorical or embodied foils men must define themselves against, in their pursuit of the good life. It is hard to get around the fact that these men’s definitions of human flourishing, happiness, and the ability to do what is good are dependent upon the subordination of others. This point, perhaps, is reinforced in contemporary scholarship on Islamic philosophy, where a quick World Cat search reveals that most secondary works on Ghazali and his peers are taken up by male scholars. This fact suggests that even the discourse about the discourse in these examples promotes and secures a more limited purview of expertise and authority that is difficult for women to enter. I admire the fact that the author was willing to tackle this impermeable, unyielding philosophical material head-on—material that has been shunned, dismissed, or ignored by Muslim feminists and female scholars of Islam who focus on women—to deal with questions that are not so easily or comfortably resolved.

In order to expose the social or cultural assumptions at play behind a metaphysics that is inherently patriarchal, Ayubi carefully peels back the discursive layers that characterize the medieval Islamic akhlaq genre. Yet, she warns, it is not enough just to lay bare the biases against women, or to find ways for the akhlaq authors to move into more “women-friendly” territories. If the ideal, elite, ethical man is defined in terms of his ability to suppress others, a move which devalues all who are appropriated for these ends, then the redistribution of power, no matter who will now benefit from it, cannot be the solution.  Certainly, attempts to ignore those parts of the akhlaq writings that seem demeaning to women in order to replace them with arguments that may be more palatable to women, or, to weave into the texts a more feminist-friendly system of values, at least offer a much-needed focus on the injustices at-hand. However, these feminist strategies do not go far enough to challenge the underlying metaphysics that by their very structure depend on, and in turn perpetuate, the exploitation of others in service of a few. As Ayubi suggests, determining what is good or just cannot be separated from questions of what constitutes knowledge, who has access to it, and how we define and construct human nature (244). Gendered Morality starts an important conversation about the philosophical underpinnings of a more balanced, fair, and just form of ethics that I know others will be eager to join.

Ayubi’s own unique contribution to this discussion is her deconstruction of the logical premises that support the argument that a good or just society is one that only some people can contribute to, or benefit from. This point also implies that a good society is one that necessarily promotes human degradation and suffering. While she poses no solid conclusions as to how to resolve the problem of the inherent inequality within akhlaq materials, she suggests that insights from contemporary feminist philosophy can add much-needed perspectives to the debate. I’m wondering though, about the extent to which hierarchical and embedded ethical systems can ever be dismantled fully. Is it really possible to resist the temptation to substitute the oppressed for the oppressor? Can we ever come to appreciate the full humanity of women without addressing the underlying social, economic, and cultural systems in place that privilege men? Regardless of these questions, I find Ayubi’s argument that there might be multiple ways in which the dynamic might be assuaged, at least, compelling. For example, the Islamic tradition itself provides resources by which certain philosophical terms might be recast, such as the definition of soul (nafs) or the divinely-created khalifa (authority) humans are called upon to enact in the world. Prophetic language might replace more inherited and embedded forms of classical logic. Islamic notions of care might also be brought to bear on philosophical arguments about human responsibility. Intersectionality is also key in breaking down essentialist portrayals of women and enslaved peoples, as well as of portrayals of elite men like Ghazali whose own integrity is surely compromised by his call for the demeaning treatment of others.

Despite the author’s laudable efforts in unpacking many of these dense, gendered arguments in support of a morality that appears fixed, sanctioned, and universal, the question remains as to whether or not it is feasible, or even desirable, to penetrate a philosophical ethics that leaves no room, or provides any interpretive opening, for recovering the rights of women, lower class men, or slaves. And, it is important to ask whether engagement with these ethical arguments only promotes competition among the marginalized for what bits and scraps of the good life or happiness might be cast aside by those with all the power. Is it possible to salvage any part of a virtue ethics that is built on the premise that although women or enslaved peoples have souls, they lack in their ability to reason, and therefore are lesser humans who must be managed? Why should women, or others, who are demeaned by the discourse, even bother to try and participate in, or deconstruct, a centuries-old system of metaphysics that takes for granted the assumption that human nature itself is varied, unequal, and ripe for exploitation, given that their status is already suspect? And, given that medieval Muslim philosophical definitions of virtue, justice, and living the good life are built upon, and rationalized through such biased, gendered logic, do we believe that they can project the kind of moral authority needed to guide the faithful through the complexities of the world today? But, if we abandon these ethical foundations altogether, and the accumulated and sanctioned wisdom upon which they are based, what can we imagine or construct in their place? Rather than engage in the inequality assumed by a preset debate, many feminists and scholars of Islam who focus on women have given up on these texts altogether, and have looked to a plethora of sources and experiences, and more fragmented forms of logic, through which a more just set of ethics might contribute to the happiness and well-being of not just some, but all. These sources, experiences, and fragments of logic, which draw upon the opinions of female judges and scholars, mystical thought, the lives of everyday Muslim women, as well as feminist scholarship, work to counter male-centered systems of virtue ethics based on deductive logic, essentialism, or objectivity, and look to privilege more emotive forms of aesthetics, or an ethics of care that are more sensitive to political inequalities and humanitarian concerns.