A Brief Report on What Happened in ICJECA

The International Conference on Justice and Ethics (ICJECA 2017) was held at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad on April 15-16. The conference aimed to bring together scholars, lecturers and research students from different parts of the world to discuss issues on justice and ethics from different perspectives. Among all perspectives, a prominent emphasis was placed upon the Shi‘i perspective with regard to the teachings and the conducts of the Shi’ite Imams.

The international panels of the conference consisted of seven sessions of lectures and discussions:

In the first panel on April 15, Prof. Abdulaziz Sachedina from George Mason University, shared ideas on justice from Imam Reza’s perspective, which was followed by a lecture by Prof. Andrew Newman from University of Edinburgh regarding a comparative study on the concept of faith in Islam and Christianity. At the end of this session, a fruitful discussion on the relation between the two concepts of faith and justice took place.

In the second panel, the concept of justice was investigated by three Shi‘i scholars, Prof. Liyakat Takim, from McMaster University, Dr. Qodratullah Qorbani, from Kharazmi University, and Dr. Jafar Morvarid, from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. These three scholars, coming from different backgrounds and disciplines, brought together their perspectives on the concept of Justice in the Qur’an and Shari‘a.

In the third panel, three papers were presented by Dr. Mahdi Teimouri, from Khayyam University, Ms. Tuba Erkoç Baydar, from Marmara University, and Ms. Boshra Sadat Emami, from Mofid University. In their presentations, these three scholars, illistrated how the two concepts of justice and ethics are intertwined in the contemporary world.

In the first panel of the second day, three scholars, Prof. Jochen Schmidt from Paderborn University, Dr. Mohammad Ali Shomali from the Islamic Centre of England, and Prof. Muhammad Legenhausen from the University of Qom further investigated the concept of justice. Prof. Schmidt discussed the possibility of the realization of Justice through the ethical tools introduced in Christian tradition. Dr. Shomali gave a speech on the importance of the concept of justice in Shi‘a tradition, and Prof Legenhausen, focusing on human right skepticism in the West, showed the compatibility of the Islamic teachings, in general, and the teachings of Ahl al-Bayt, in specific, with the human right skepticism as it exists in Western discourse.

The second panel of the second day consisted of three presentations in person, by Zainab Karbalaei from Fatimat al-Zahra Institute of Higher Education, Rasoul Naghavi from Georgetown University, and Rasool Akbari from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. This session also included video presentations by distant participants.

In the third panel of the second day, a discussion was held among the international and Iranian participants, who shared their views on justice and exchanged their ideas regarding ethics. This discussion lasted to the last panel of the conference, in which four papers were presented in Persian with simultaneous interpretation in English, followed by fruitful discussions afterwards.