1.4.9 Islamic Vicegerency
What is the role of humanity in the world? This was a marginal question in Medieval Muslim thought, but with the advent of modernity, Muslim communities needed a new paradigm to understand human activity. Rather than a piecemeal approach, like halal and haram, vicegerency provides a more wholistic guiding framework drawing on classical Islamic scholarship.
Developing this contemporary Islamic worldview involved asking, “why are we here on Earth,” and what it meant to be deputized by God.
In this lecture scholar Chauki Lazhar presents on the themes of his recent book Vicegerency in Islamic Thought and Scripture: Towards a Qur’anic Theory of Human Existential Function (Routledge 2023). Along the way he debunks many common myths, including Western ideas that have been projected on the Qur’an.
Questions:
- Who is the human deputized for?
- What is the problem with defining vicegerency through materialism?
- What is Professor Lazhar’s definition of vicegerency?
