I.B.Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies

Socrates famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living. In keeping with this dictum, taking ethics seriously means engaging with the real world where the human sense of right and wrong is daily tested. At their best, all faith traditions are challenged by such testing; and if faith-inspired ethics are thought to goven the whole of life, their guiding values need constantly to be interpreted by the believer to achieve a practical result. In the Muslim tradition, this is what the Qur'an really amounts to: a call to strive for belief with a social conscience. For fourteen centuries Muslim scholars have grappled with the implications of that call in matters of law, social practice and theology. And in our own time, the quests for civil society and the rule of law have much to do with the response given to these ethical questions.

'A Companion to Muslim Ethics' explores Islam's core conception of the good, shared with other great traditions. Leading experts examine issues such as gender equality, nonviolence, dispute resolution, the environment, health and finance.

The volume will appeal to all those interested in how reason, faith and circumstance shape difficult moral choices in an increasingly globalised world.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Institute of Ismaili Studies LTD.

Amyn B. Sajoo is a resident scholar at Simon Fraser University's Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures in Canada. He has held visiting appointments at Cambridge and McGill universities as well as The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. Dr. Sajoo's publications include A Companion to the Muslim World (2009), Muslim Modernities: Expressions of the Civil Imagination (2008), Muslim Ethics: Emerging Vistas (2004), Civil Society in the Muslim World (2002) and Pluralism in Old Societies and New States (1994). He is a frequent contributor to the news media on both sides of the Atlantic.