An Alternative Perspective: An Ethical Reading of Human Rights in Islam

About

A Public Presentation by
Dr. Ali A. Allawi

Dr. Ali A. Allawi will discuss the evolution of a doctrine of human
rights and duties in Islam based on an ethical and spiritual understanding.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009
4:00- 6:00 PM
Neustadt Classroom
Rubenstein Building, Ground Floor

The purpose of these lectures is to outline a new pathway for the evolution of a doctrine of human rights and duties in Islam that would be based on an ethical and spiritual understanding of these notions. This would produce an alternative understanding of these concepts rather than the normative and jurisprudential- or Sharia-based- path it has taken so far.

Ali A. Allawi served as the Interim Minister of Trade in the new Government of Iraq from 2003-2004 until he was appointed the first Interim Minister of Defense of Iraq. In April 2005 Mr. Allawi was appointed Minister of Finance in the Transitional Iraqi Government. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Mr. Allawi graduated from MIT with a BSC in Civil Engineering and continued his postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics. In 1971 he received his MBA from Harvard University. He has just published The Crisis in Islamic Civilization (Yale University Press), silver medal winner of the Washington Institute Book Prize, and is working on another book that will be a comprehensive political biography of Faisal I of Iraq, set against the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the formation of the modern state system in the Middle East and Iraq.  
Ali A. Allawi is a recipient of the Gebran G. Tueni Human Rights Fellowship Program Award.