%0 Journal Article
%T Change And Changeability: Ethics Of Disagreement And Public Space In Islamic Thought
%A B¨¹lent £¿enay
%J Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies
%D 2010
%I Seminar for the Interdisciplinary Research of Religions and Ideologies
%X The paper advocates that a middle ground between the many theories attempting to explain Islam and its view on the relationship between politics and religion is provided by the textual and discursive approaches. Islamist and/or Islamic revivalist movements are essentially concerned with the relationship between religion and social reality in the context of ¡®change¡¯. Worldly politics and the hermeneutics of disagreement also essentially deal with ¡®change¡¯ and ¡®public space¡¯. What is ¡®changeable¡¯ and what is ¡®unchangeable¡¯ is a question of hermeneutics. Understanding a text is a human enterprise, and as such it is likely to create ¡®difference¡¯ of opinion. But while disagreement triggers conflict, proper understanding and application of a systematic hermeneutics leads to an ethics of disagreement which eventually allows for a modus vivendi in the public space. It is thus important for any tradition to have a hermeneutical framework towards an ethics of disagreement. In the particular case of Islam it is not difficult to find such a hermeneutical methodology that allows for differences and otherness to live side by side, towards unity in diversity. It only needs to be reappraised.
%K Ethics
%K hermeneutics
%K disagreement
%K Islam
%K reflexivity
%K phronesis
%K con- textualization
%K historicism
%K fiqh
%K ma¡¯roof
%K maqasid
%K adab al-ikhtilaaf
%K public reason
%K common good
%U http://jsri.ro/ojs/index.php/jsri/article/view/30