Renovatio 9: Those With Authority Among You

Vol. 6, No. 1

Believers, obey God, and obey the messenger, and those with authority among you. And if you dispute over anything, refer it to God and the messenger, if you believe in God and the last day. That is best and most excellent as a determination. 
Qur’an 4:59

Contents

Cultural Devolution: How the new victimhood culture rejects human dignity and divinity. ~ Hamza Yusuf

Rethinking The World Brain: The internet places knowledge at our fingertips, but to assert that we can know things wholly independently is, in one interpretation of the Qur’anic verse, to “transgress our limits.” ~ Esmé L. K. Partridge

Humans Are Designed for the Rule of Law: The consequence of human dignity is not unfettered freedom but the right to be subject to rules that respect humans as rational agents. ~ Robert P. George

Facts for Fictions: Does a fiction need to originate in, and rely on, a fact of reality? The answer seems to be: Yes. ~ Eva Brann

Islamic Law and the Children of Adam: Many contemporary human rights can be grounded in laws originating from Islam’s insistence on universal brotherhood. ~ Recep Şentürk

The Logic of the Birds: Poetry is perhaps unique among the arts for its capacity to combine seeming opposites into a totality that mirrors that of our own being. ~ Oludamini Ogunnaike

A Multi-Miraculous Verse of the Qur’an: The Rule of Law of Love, affirmed by the Qur’an, can resolve many of the questions that have bedeviled people and thinkers in the West and in Christianity to this day. ~ Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal

Can We Think Deeply About Important Ideas Without Writing About Them? Writing that cultivates the ideals of intellectual and moral growth that motivate us must eschew the illusions of originality and detachment. ~ Sophia Vasalou

How the Cult of the Self Undermines the Rule of Law: The cult of the self, celebrated at the expense of justice, undercuts the foundations that make the rule of law and democracy possible. ~ Chris Hedges

What a Pandemic Reveals About the Rule of Law: Emergencies often require bypassing the rule of law, but the common good, in the long run, ultimately depends on legal predictability. ~ Melissa Moschella

A Muslim Declaration of Human Rights? Muslims have long endeavoured to produce a modern human rights declaration holistically rooted in their tradition. How might they finally succeed? ~ Zaid Shakir