Institute for Ethics & Society

Social movement theorists have often posited that religion and political activism are inherently opposed – that religion cannot liberate people from situations of social or political discontent in the same manner as activism. Through a study of Muslim environmental activists in the United Kingdom and United States of America, this article directly challenges this belief – not only by charting the theoretical problems of this belief within the social movement theory corpus, but also by demonstrating that Muslim environmentalists in the US and UK are both religious and politically active simultaneously. Environmental activism is drawn into Islamic practice in such a way that activism becomes religious practice in the lives of these Muslim activists.

A central argument in Elizabeth Shakman Hurd’s Beyond Religious Freedom is that the religious freedom policy framework pursued by the United States not only entrenches lines of division between religious faiths, but also is constructive of those very divisions. Where foreign and domestic policies purport to promote tolerance and respectful pluralism in the name of religious freedom, Hurd contends they instead create ‘new forms of social friction defined by religious difference.’ Utilizing Hurd’s categories of Official, Governed, and Lived religion I examine Islamophobia and the racialization of Muslims in the United States and demonstrate how over- identification with religious groups can exacerbate social tensions; how the ‘agenda of surveillance’ disproportionately targets Muslims in the United States; and argue that recourse to law and policy alone in response to anti-Muslim discrimination is unlikely to transform social attitudes towards Muslims. Finally, I utilize a contemporary reworking of Adam Smith’s sympathetic imagination and radical democratic theory to propose an alternative pathway towards dissolving the pejorative ascription of difference to religiously othered individuals.

Islam and environmentalism may, on face value, seem an odd pairing. Yet Muslim activists dedicate a significant amount of their spare time to running Islamic environmental groups, educating fellow Muslims on the ways Islam promotes environmentalism, direct environmental action, and promoting environmental responsibility. This chapter explores Islamic environmentalism in the United States and Great Britain, and in particular focuses on how Muslim environmentalists understand environmentalism and their activism to be a religious duty. Inspired by unique, environmental readings of Islamic scripture and theological concepts such as Khilāfa, and Tawhīd, and with a wide range of experiences in grassroots politics, Muslim environmental activists synthesise their religious and political practice. Based on qualitative interviews with Muslim environmental activists in the U.S. and U.K., this chapter demonstrates that although they themselves believe their environmental work to be a religious duty, convincing their wider Muslim communities of the same is a challenging task. I argue that reinterpretation of scripture alone is not sufficient to motivate action, and that most of those who are active in Islamic environmentalism come to the movement with a pre-existing commitment to grassroots political action.

This paper examines the production of knowledge by Muslim environmental activists in the United States and Great Britain, applying Eyerman and Jamison’s theory of cognitive praxis to demonstrate how religious and political knowledge and practices are synthesised by the activists. The paper emerges from research conducted with Islamic environmental organizations in the United States and Great Britain in 2012–2013 and utilises data gathered from interviews conducted with Muslim environmental activists working in those organizations and from the publicly available newsletters, websites, and articles produced by the activists and organizations. I argue that through the integration of environmental and religious knowledge, Muslim environmentalists construct a ‘critical community’ within Islam that seeks to transform orthodox Islamic knowledge and practice. In the process, Muslim environmentalists demonstrate that religiously-grounded social movements may simultaneously pursue religious and political change.

This article examines how the engagement of diverse religious organisations and individuals in grassroots politics impacts the nature of politics and coalition building through a case study of an urban grassroots political coalition in Australia: the Sydney Alliance. Based on eight-months of exploratory ethnographic fieldwork in one campaign team, this article argues that whilst religious organisations bring significant symbolic and institutional resources to political coalitions, and can be flexible coalition partners, they tend to moderate both conservative and progressive political tendencies within a coalition and demand focused attention from organisers and leaders to manage the coalition dynamics. This article examines the way many religious activists understand their political action to be an inherent and necessary part of their religious practice: problematizing the characterisation common in much social science literature that religious engagement in more progressive politics primarily serves political, and not religious, ends. In doing so, it shows how political action can be directed both outward towards the work, and inward towards the ‘church’.

This article examines how the engagement of diverse religious organisations and individuals in grassroots politics impacts the nature of politics and coalition building through a case study of an urban grassroots political coalition in Australia: the Sydney Alliance. Based on eight-months of exploratory ethnographic fieldwork in one campaign team, this article argues that whilst religious organisations bring significant symbolic and institutional resources to political coalitions, and can be flexible coalition partners, they tend to moderate both conservative and progressive political tendencies within a coalition and demand focused attention from organisers and leaders to manage the coalition dynamics. This article examines the way many religious activists understand their political action to be an inherent and necessary part of their religious practice: problematizing the characterisation common in much social science literature that religious engagement in more progressive politi...

A central argument in Hurd's (2015) Beyond Religious Freedom is that the religious freedom policy framework pursued by the United States not only entrenches lines of division between religious faiths, but also is constructive of those very divisions. Where foreign and domestic policies purport to promote tolerance and respectful pluralism in the name of religious freedom, Hurd (2015, 41) contends they instead create 'new forms of social friction defined by religious difference.' Utilizing Hurd's (2015) categories of Official, Governed, and Lived religion I examine Islamophobia and the racialization of Muslims in the United States and demonstrate how overidentification with religious groups can exacerbate social tensions; how the 'agenda of surveillance' (Hurd 2015) disproportionately targets Muslims in the United States; and argue that recourse to law and policy alone in response to anti-Muslim discrimination is unlikely to transform social attitudes towards Muslims. Finally, I utilize a contemporary reworking of Adam Smith's sympathetic imagination and radical democratic theory to propose an alternative pathway towards dissolving the pejorative ascription of difference to religiously othered individuals.

This article investigates how the adoption and use of digital technologies shape political culture and practice in grassroots political groups, particularly focusing on how VOIP technologies enable and/or constrain groups to work across physical space and form political relationships amongst participants. Whilst this article is grounded in a case study of one broad-based coalition in Sydney, Australia, the findings expand our understanding of how digital technology shapes political culture and practice in grassroots spaces by (a) analysing an organisation both before and after the adoption of VOIP technology and (b) focusing on a case study where the organisation attempted to maintain rather than transform their political culture and practice with the adoption of new digital organising methods. The article argues that the instrumental benefits of digital technologies come at a cost: VOIP technologies may constrain the formation of deep relationships and flatten distinctive political practices within grassroots political organisations.

This chapter examines the use of social media and online communities by religious women. It is grounded in a study of blogging by 13 Muslim and Mormon women in the United States conducted during 2019. The study demonstrates that contextual factors in the offline world of religious communities – such as local histories and structures of religious authority – play a part in shaping the online community. In the context of this study, it is the history of correlation in the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day    Saints (LDS)      and its continued, formalised religious hierarchy, and the contemporary fragmentation of religious authority in Islamic communities, that shape the nature of Mormon and Muslim women’s blogs respectively. This study also speaks to the fierce debates on the possibilities for women’s agency within religious communities – which has particularly focused on Islam. Where much of this debate has focused on the nature of agency itself – whether it must be found within resistance to oppression, or can operate ‘embedded’ (Korteweg 2008, 437) within a conservative religious community – this study shows that, in the case of Islam at least, both forms of agency can exist within the same religious community simultaneously.

This article examines the role religious institutions, communities, and individuals might play in democratising 21 st century cities. Based on participatory action research with the Sydney Alliance, a broad-based community organisation in Sydney, Australia, I examine how a civil society coalition attempts to draw religious communities into the political life of the city, the way religious culture and space shapes the political culture of the coalition, and the challenges faced by the coalition in working across religious and nonreligious difference. I argue that political coalitions like the Sydney Alliance that work across diverse worldviews are pulled in two different directions: the effort to democratise and make space for worldview plurality appears to lead to political moderation, despite apparent commitment to progressive social change. Whilst the effort to diversify democratic participation and syncretise the best aspects of religious and secular political cultures has promise, ultimately the contributions of religious organisations to democratisation in Sydney through the coalition is ambivalent.

This article examines how the engagement of diverse religious organisations and individuals in grassroots politics impacts the nature of politics and coalition building through a case study of an urban grassroots political coalition in Australia: the Sydney Alliance. Based on eight-months of exploratory ethnographic fieldwork in one campaign team, this article argues that whilst religious organisations bring significant symbolic and institutional resources to political coalitions, and can be flexible coalition partners, they tend to moderate both conservative and progressive political tendencies within a coalition and demand focused attention from organisers and leaders to manage the coalition dynamics. This article examines the way many religious activists understand their political action to be an inherent and necessary part of their religious practice: problematizing the characterisation common in much social science literature that religious engagement in more progressive politics primarily serves political, and not religious, ends. In doing so, it shows how political action can be directed both outward towards the work, and inward towards the 'church'.

In Posterior Analytics II.19 Aristotle raises and answers the question, how do first principles become known? The usual view is that the question asks about the process or method by which we learn principles and that his answer is induction. I argue that the question asks about the original prior knowledge from which principles become known and that his answer is perception. Hence the aim of II.19 is not to explain how we get all the way to principles but to defend the claim that our knowledge of them originates in perception. Aristotle explains how we learn principles earlier in book II, in his account of definitional inquiry. In II.19 he explains how we reach by induction the preliminary accounts necessary for such inquiries.

Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics is one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of western philosophy. This book sheds new light on this challenging text by arguing that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest: knowledge and learning. The Posterior Analytics, Bronstein argues, is a sustained examination of scientific knowledge: what it is and how it is acquired. Aristotle first discusses two principal forms of scientific knowledge (epistēmē and nous). He then provides a compelling account, in reverse order, of the types of learning one needs to undertake in order to acquire them. The Posterior Analytics thus emerges as an elegantly organized work in which Aristotle describes the mind’s ascent from perception of sensible particulars to scientific knowledge of first principles. Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning also highlights Plato’s influence on Aristotle’s text. For each type of learning Aristotle discusses, Bronstein uncovers an instance of Meno’s Paradox (a puzzle from Plato’s Meno according to which inquiry and learning are impossible) and a solution to it. In addition, Bronstein argues, against current orthodoxy, that Aristotle is committed to the Socratic Picture of inquiry, according to which one should seek what a thing’s essence is before seeking its demonstrable attributes and their causes.