Inaugural Meeting of the I-SHARPE Club: Understanding Righteous Conduct in Light of the Maqasid, with the Honorable Imam Zaid Shakir
Imam Zaid Shakir addresses the inaugural meeting of the I-SHARPE club on April 18, 2024
Our session began with Faaris introducing the rationale and goals of the Club, as well as future topics that we would like to take on. These include ethical risks of AI, the bioethics of tissue transplantation, CRISPR editing of the human genome, Shariah rulings in an age of space travel, and the permissibility and ethical dimensions of lab grown meats. The inaugural topic of the Maqasid asShariah was chosen specifically to set the context for these future meetings.
After Club introduction, Dr Ahmed, faculty at NUI and Club advisor, introduced our beloved Imam and inaugural speaker of the I-SHARPE Club. Imam Zaid requires no introduction; he has been a foundational catalyst of Muslim American life over the past few decades. He is has deep ties to New Jersey, as the founder of New Brunswick Islamic Center (NBIC), the founder of Masjid al Islam in New Haven CT, and perhaps most importantly, one of the founders of Zaytuna College (along with Sh Hamza Yusuf and others), the first Muslim liberal arts college in the United States.
Club Founder and President, Faaris Khan, with student advisor Dr Ahmed, introducing the Club at its inauguration and introducing the Imam Zaid Shakir.
Imam Zaid began by introducing the concept that the adoption of technology without reflection can lead to unintended consequences, even as they bring forth new utilities for human beings. For example, while the use of automobiles has been transformational, there was little regard to the unintended effects of automobiles such as the environmental consequences ranging from climate change, the destruction of wildlife sanctuaries, oil spills, the rise of petroleum political and economic powers, and then the social consequences resulting from the suburbification of the workforce. As a more direct example, Imam Zaid referred the Club members to the works of Neil Postman: Amusing ourselves to death (impact of TV on society) and Technopoly (of the effects of unmitigated adoption of technology).
After this introduction, our speaker turned the discussion to the Maqasid of Shariah. Maqasid can roughly be translated as “the Foundational Objectives”. Shariah, or sacred law, are the aggregate rules of life that govern personal and transactional human conduct. So the Maqasid Ash-Shariah (literally “the Objectives of the Law”) are the Foundational Objectives or Principles that underlie all righteous conduct from the Islamic perspective. This includes rulings in jurisprudence and personal ethical living.
The 5 objectives of the Maqasid that were discussed:
1) The preservation of deen or religion, in the widest context of deen. Imam Zaid explained that because faith leads to morality and moral conduct, its preservation has societal implications. A life or a society devoid of deen and morality leads to human behaviors that are totally destructive to life. In this connection he cited the Quranic verse of “thumma asfala faseleen”. In contrast, he also cautioned that you have “deen” without an ethical framework, and this is what we see in instances where right wing zealots can hijack the political process while claiming the mantle of morality.
2) Preservation of life: is the highest objective of Muslim life. Beyond the obvious reasons, Imam Zaid also discussed the impending merger of carbon based humans with silicon based computers, leading to the prospect of “transhumans” that are part human and part machine. Imam Zaid sounded a strong note of caution here, explaining that once we accept that human life can be fundamentally altered by science (not totally altered but at least fundamentally altered), then this is a threat to life as we know it.
3) Preservation of the intellect: Technological destruction of our intellect started with the introduction of the television. When it was first introduced, it was already known as the “idiot box”. Every aspect of discourse has since declined and has been reduced to entertainment, including news. This is a prime example of how our intellect has been assailed by technology. Both by TVs and the cell phone.
4) Protecting family/lineage: This priority of the Maqasid can have implications for questions such as “Can CRISPR edit our babies?” This doesn’t comport to our understanding of lineage.
5) Protection of property/wealth: Actions that lead to the destruction of wealth or property are clearly prohibited in Muslim ethics and jurisprudence.
6) Protection of human honor and dignity: Perhaps one of the most intriguing of the Maqasid, but alas this was touched on only briefly as we ran out of time.
