Development of Spirituality in Religious Praxis: A Journey from “is” to “ought."

Development of Spirituality in Religious Praxis: A Journey from “is” to “ought.” We often question the validity of the inner state of our faith. We think doubt in religious matters is nothing less than disbelief (kufr). The real test of the truthfulness of our claim to possess faith comes when we begin to doubt the validity of our rare experience of al-ghayb (known and yet invisible). This lecture will undertake to evaluate an important tradition that speaks to all of us in modern times whose major struggle is to understand and devote our life to religious truth in the context of rational modernity – our essential and existential reality today.

This will be an in person presentation which will also be broadcast live at: http://live.iman-wa.org. 

About our guest speaker Dr. Abdulaziz Sachedina:

Abdulaziz Sachedina, Ph. D. is Professor and Endowed IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Dr. Sachedina  has studied in India, Iraq, Iran and Canada, obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.  He has been conducting research and writing in the field of Islamic Law, Ethics and Theology (Sunni and Shiite) for more than four decades. In the last fifteen years he has concentrated on social and political ethics, including Interfaith and Intrafaith traditions Relations, Islamic Biomedical Ethics and Islam and Human Rights. 

In addition to numerous articles in academic journals, Dr.Sachedina's publications include: 

Islamic Messianism (State University of New York, 1980)

Human Rights and the Conflicts of Culture, co-authored  (University of South Carolina, 1988)

The Just Ruler in Shi'ite Islam: (Oxford University Press, 1988)

The Prolegomena to the Qur'an (Oxford University Press, 1998)

The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (Oxford University Press, 2002)

Islamic Biomedical Ethics: Theory and Application (Oxford University Press, February 2009)

Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (Oxford University Press, September, 2009)

Islamic Ethics: Fundamental Aspects of Human Conduct (Oxford University Press, 2022)

Dr. Sachedina is an American citizen born in Tanzania.