The Politics of Islamic Ethics

Fundamental to Islamic thought is the idea that there is a way that human beings simply are, by nature or creation. This concept is called fi?ra. Rooting her investigation in the two central passages in the Qur'an and Hadith literature, where it is asserted that God created human beings in a certain way, the author moves beyond discussion of the usual figures who have commented on those texts to look instead at a group of classical Islamic philosophers rarely discussed in conjunction with ethical matters. Tracing the development of fi?ra through this overlooked strand of medieval thinking, von Doetinchem de Rande uses fi?ra as an entree to wider topics in Islamic ethics. She shows that the notion of fi?ra articulated by al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd highlights important issues about organizational hierachies of human nature. This, she argues, has major implications for contemporary political and legal debates.