No abstract

The authors argue that there is an epistemological crisis of conservative Islamic scholarship and Muslim mind, rooted in the centuries-old confinement of a role for reason within strict limits, and in the disappearance of rationalistic discursive theology (kalam) as a dynamic science. Moreover, epistemological crisis is exemplified by seriously insufficient level of protection of human rights under Sharia when judged by contemporary principles of human rights. This crisis demands a necessity of undertaking epistemological reform, which denotes the incorporation of international standards of human rights and justice into the epistemology and methodology of producing Islamic norms (usul al-fiqh). It is argued that the key epistemological premises of rationalistic Islam, such as acceptance that human reason can find goodness and badness independently from revelation and non-acceptance of ethical voluntarism, may offer a good ground to make epistemological reform, which would induce the Muslims to critically approach and reinterpret the pre-modern religious interpretations and to construct an Islamic legal and ethical system that is appropriate for the context of the 21th century. In the end, reason, being the human capacity for shaping reality in a humane way, is indispensable to read religious sources from a historical-metaphorical point of view.

The authors argue that there is an epistemological crisis of conservative Islamic scholarship and Muslim mind, rooted in the centuries-old confinement of a role for reason within strict limits, and in the disappearance of rationalistic discursive theology (kalam) as a dynamic science. Moreover, epistemological crisis is exemplified by seriously insufficient level of protection of human rights under Sharia when judged by contemporary principles of human rights. This crisis demands a necessity of undertaking epistemological reform, which denotes the incorporation of international standards of human rights and justice into the epistemology and methodology of producing Islamic norms (usul al-fiqh). It is argued that the key epistemological premises of rationalistic Islam, such as acceptance that human reason can find goodness and badness independently from revelation and non-acceptance of ethical voluntarism, may offer a good ground to make epistemological reform, which would induce the Muslims to critically approach and reinterpret the pre-modern religious interpretations and to construct an Islamic legal and ethical system that is appropriate for the context of the 21th century. In the end, reason, being the human capacity for shaping reality in a humane way, is indispensable to read religious sources from a historical-metaphorical point of view.

No abstract

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child contains specific provisions on parent–child relations and parenting, but these provisions can be described as elusive. Furthermore, the Convention does not explicitly specify a children’s-rights-friendly parenting style. On the other hand, there is a disconnect between research on children’s rights and parenting styles. Based on the insights of the meta-theoretical critical realist approach, this paper argues that universal human flourishing is inconceivable without the development of a children’s-rights-friendly parenting style. It is argued that the Convention’s provisions on parent–child relations can be adapted to the perceptions of average parents, especially living in paternalistic societies, by adapting the conceptualizations of parenting styles developed by Baumrind and Lakoff. Overall, research on children’s rights, supported by literature on children’s-rights-friendly parenting, can show that children’s rights do not alienate parental rights and responsibilities. Instead, children’s rights give appropriate direction to parental authority and responsibility to realize the child’s well-being.