Report on CILE International Seminar: “The Ethics of Wilāya”
Prepared by Sara Abdelghany (CILE)
On February 23-24, 2023, the Research Center for Islamic Ethics and Legislation (CILE) hosted an international research seminar titled “The Ethics of Wilāya,” and convened by Dr. Mohammad Fadel (University of Toronto Faculty of Law).
This seminar was preceded by a public lecture held on February 21, 2023 titled “The ethical duties of wilāya in the Islamic Tradition.”
Dr. Mohammed Ghaly, CILE’s Acting Director opened the seminar by thanking the seminar participants and explaining that CILE holds various events including conferences and seminars on interdisciplinary issues related to Islamic ethics and Islamic thought. He also stated that the Center offers many opportunities to its internal faculty and external researchers to convene seminars and conferences. CILE undoubtedly supports continuous academic partnership and exchange with researchers internally and externally, as many of CILE’s activities are held in association with other institutions, research centers, and universities. Researchers have the opportunity to collaborate with CILE through:
● the Visiting Professor program, hosted for one semester, where professors gain research funding, and may also teach a course in the Masters of Arts in Applied Islamic Ethics, through Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU)
● the Journal of Islamic Ethics, published by Brill and indexed by Scopus,
● the Studies in Islamic Ethics Series, published by Brill,
● an annual international conference, CILE’s most recent international conference was held on March 15-16, 2023 and focused on the The Interplay of Islamic Ethics and Human Rights,
● CILE Winter and Summer Schools
CILE, along with the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), will host the International Association for Bioethics’ 17th World Congress of Bioethics on June 2-6, 2024, to be held for the first time in the Middle East and the Muslim World.
Dr. Fadel then offered introductory remarks on the seminar topic, wilāya. He explained that, through this seminar, he aimed to understand how wilāya impacts ethics in our material and spiritual lives. Dr. Fadel discussed the theological conception of wilāya, and delved into how it frames ethical duties in the relationship between God, man, and believers in God. He also discussed the differences in Sunni and Shia approaches to the concept through the imāmate role, as well as the Sufi understanding of the spiritual and material relationship between God and a murīd on the Sufi path. The concept may be further extended to everyday social, political, and legal relationships such as that of a parent and child and a ruler and their subjects. Indeed, through this seminar he aimed to present interdisciplinary perspectives of the concept of wilāya in the Islamic state, and from various forms of Islam, not only encompassing Sunni Islam, but also Shia, Sufi, and other Islamic viewpoints.
Day 1: Thursday February 23, 2023
The first speaker, Dr. Yasmeen Daifallah (University of California, Santa Cruz), presented her paper titled “The Politics of Wilāya: Taha Abdurrahman and the Concept of the Human.” She focused on contemporary Moroccan Islamic philosopher Taha Abdurrahman’s conceptions of political theory and the human being to show how wilāya can serve as a mechanism to political and public ethics and achieving self-cultivation. Dr. Daifallah began by advocating for a “return to ethics” in contemporary political theory, arguing that wilāya is a conceptual solution to socio-political issues resulting from pluralism. She then discussed Abdurrahman’s understanding of human nature, which sees humans through commonality, not difference, and presents humans as “two-dimensional,” inhabiting two worlds - the material world (‘ālam al-shāhāda), physically inhabited, and the spiritual world (‘ālam al-ghayb) accessed spiritually and intellectually. Dr. Daifallah further explained that these two dimensions are what cause people to be political or religious actors, one is a political agent (fā‘il siyāsī) when material desires are their starting point, and a religious agent (fā‘il dīnī) when one acts from the realm of the spiritual world. Thus, religion and politics are not separate in Abdurrahman’s thought. She also covered Abdurrahman’s conception of collective politics through the “sovereignty of Allah” (taḥkīm Allah), which enables the umma to manage its political affairs through self-cultivation, self discipline, and limiting human tyranny. Finally, she concluded with Abdurrahman’s conception of group-focused governance through the Jurist’s Guardianship (wilāyat al-faqīh), which Abdurrahman sees as privileged to the legal elite, he argues that this role should, instead, be an educational one that adds to the public’s self-cultivation and ethical behavior.
The second paper “Walāya in Medieval Khurasani Sufism” was presented by Dr. Jason Welle (Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, Rome). He examined the thought of Sufi scholar ‘Abdulraḥmān al-Sulamī to understand the relationship between virtue ethics and Sufi wilāya (spiritual authority and sainthood). Dr. Welle explained that there are three elements - customs (ādāb), acquired virtues (akhlāq), and spiritual states (aḥwāl) - that exist in a hierarchy and work in tandem with moving stations (maqāmāt) of spiritual progress in al-Sulamī’s understanding of wilāya and ethics. Progressing in this hierarchy requires an agency shift from the believer to God. While al-Sulamī does not have a lengthy discussion of wilāya in his work, He explained that he saw the walī and the Sufi as similar, adding that al-Sulamī echoes those of the Malamatiyya group who frown upon public piety and ostentation. A believer who has properly cultivated moral values, and has adab, would not show off their morality. Then, Dr. Welle discussed examples of Sufi wilāya in al-Sulamī’s work. Divine marvels (karamāt), which are gifts granted by God to saints, confirming sainthood and authority, that must remain private and concealed from others. External observers will nevertheless recognize the true saints, affirming that karamāt have been granted. Dr. Welle connected this to virtue ethics because one’s virtues are observable by others, especially when one exercises those virtues. He also considered potential elitism in Sufi wilāya discourses, because few people are considered virtuous by them, only the friends of God (awliyā’ Allah). The Shaykh/Murīd relationship is an example of Sufi wilāya that does not go beyond the spiritual elite, while it provides a spiritual guide for believers, it is at the hand of a Shaykh. Dr. Welle concluded by explaining that this presents a specific understanding of morality, dependent on visible virtues, since an external observer should recognize the wilāya of another, while also recognizing that sainthood should not be revealed to others.
Dr. F. Redhwan Karim (Markfield Institute Higher Education) presented the third paper “Wīlaya and the Quranic Ethics of Gender Reciprocity.” Gender relations are normatively understood by scholars of the Islamic legal tradition as based on hierarchy and superiority through wilāya, but there are modern scholars who critique this view by arguing that exegetical traditions are patriarchal interpretations, and more recent critics who critique the modern view. Wilāya and gender hierarchy in the Islamic tradition most specifically manifests in the marriage contract where, in most cases, a woman requires a male guardian (walī) to validate or annul the marriage on her behalf. The Qur’an is not always the basis for juristic legislation, Dr. Karim pointed out, thus he turned to the Qur’an to understand the Qur’anic basis of ethical gender relations. Instead of focusing on the word “qawwāmūn” in Surah al-Nisā’ (Q. 4:34), often used to limit women, he focused on the Qur’an’s definition of wilāya in Surah al-Tawba (Q. 9:71). While (Q. 4:34) is explicitly tied to marriage, (Q. 9:71) refers to men and women as awliyā’ (guardians) of each other, and Dr. Karim argued that (Q. 4:34) falls under the definition of gender relations in (Q. 9:71). He then discussed genres of wilāya in the Qur’an: divine wilāya, Satan’s wilāya, and people’s wilāya, which covers many different relationships. Dr. Karim then applied the Q. 9:71 wilāya understanding to“enjoining the good and forbidding the bad” (al-amr bi-l ma‘rūf wa-l nahī ‘an al-munkar), explaining that this is a collective duty where women are active agents. He maintained that here women have a responsibility that warrants socio-political participation, in contrast to normative understandings that limit women’s public participation. Finally, he situated his arguments in Islamic tafsīr literature, invoking the arguments of Ibn Kathīr and Rashīd Rīḍa, who uphold the view that women are among those who enjoin in good and forbid the bad. Thus, Dr. Karim explained that ethical Islamic gender relations should not be hierarchical but reciprocal, where women have an active socio-political presence.
Day 2: Friday February 24, 2023
The fourth paper, titled “The Ethicality of Wālī and Wilāya and the Mechanisms Provided in Jurisprudence to Ensure the Observance of Ethics in Wilāya” was presented by Dr. Javad Fakhkhar Toosi (University of Toronto). His paper centered on the mechanisms of ensuring wilāya and its ethicality from a juristic (fiqhī) perspective. Dr. Toosi began by maintaining the distinction between individual and governmental ethicality, as a ruler only requires governmental ethicality, and explained that wilāya is conceptually related to the idea of sovereignty and governance, where the close reciprocal relationship between the walī and mowla results in “wilāya.” Dr. Toosi explained that jurists define an ethical person as a just person. This individual governs justly, in a manner that leads to a stable state through the observance of pious actions in government. He differentiated between individual and governmental justice, here, to maintain that a person may embody personal justice and ethical qualities, like piety, but when in a political governance role become unjust. To prove his point, he described the ḥadīth on the potential wilāya of Abu Dhar, where the Prophet (PBUH) explains that not all individuals, even good individuals, have the capacity to be a walī. Wilāya, Dr. Toosi maintained, is not dependent on whether someone is pious in their personal life, a walī must be a person who is worthy and capable of governance. He concluded by considering the jurists’ mechanisms of verifying a ruler’s ethicality and capability of wilāya, including criticizing authority figures (al-naṣīḥa lī ’immat al-muslimīn), civil disobedience of immorality, and “enjoining the good and forbidding the bad” (al-amr bi-l ma‘rūf wa-l nahī ‘an al-munkar). The latter should especially be practiced by the governed towards the governor, not only vice versa.
The seminar’s final paper was presented by Dr. Aiyub Palmer (University of Kentucky) on “Power Authority in the Ethical Basis of al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī’s Vision of wilāya.” This paper focused on Sufi ethics and understandings of power and authority as conceptualized by al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, compared with Alexandre Kojève’s theory of authority, to present how Islamic institutions can function within the structure of the modern state. Dr. Palmer began with a discussion of “power” and “authority” as concepts in philosophy and sociology. He explained that, in the Qur’an, God grants the authority figure (walī) the power (sulṭa) to carry out justice, and from this Muslim legal theorists make a distinction between “wilāya” and “sulṭa” to differentiate between the Muslim community and those in governance. This differentiation, Dr. Palmer argued, is essential to maintaining justice in Islamic political theory. Then he moved on to Kojève’s theory, which proposes that all forms of authority are combined versions of the relationships between: parent and child, master and slave, chief and group, and the judge, where the latter’s authority is a combination of the previous three. Kojève’s conception of the chief’s authority mirrors al-Tirmidhī conception of the authority of the “friends of God” (awliyā’ Allah). As ulema, awliyā’ have textual knowledge (‘ilm), external knowledge and knowledge of the soul’s deficiencies (ḥikma), and gnosis (ma‘rifa). Al-Tirmidhī sees them as “the inheritors of prophetic religious authority,” who wield authority (wilāya) and political power (sulṭa) based on their values of virtues (akhlāq) and justice (‘adl). Wilāya is further connected to akhlāq because of the self-cultivation process that the walī undergoes, demonstrating noble characters. Dr. Palmer also compared al-Tirmidhī’s understanding of the walī/mowla to Hegel’s theory of the master-slave dialectic, explaining that wilāya is a reciprocal relationship based on mutual recognition that requires that the mowla recognizes the walī’s authority. This contrasts the master/slave as the master does not need the slave to recognize his authority. Dr. Palmer concluded by explaining that viewing wilāya through this lens demonstrates the connection of knowledge to freedom because knowledge has power (‘ilm, mar‘rifa), balanced with ethical conduct, and presents a critique of the liberal perspective of governance from Islamic thought.
This seminar was also attended by Dr. Andrew March (UMass-Amherst), Dr. Azfar Moin (University of Texas, Austin), Dr. Ovamir Anjum (University of Toledo), who, in addition to Dr. Fadel, served as respondents to the presenters’ papers.
