Public Philosophy by Muhammad Velji
Papers by Muhammad Velji
Res Philosophica, 2015
My intention in this paper is to reframe the practice of veiling as an embodied practice of self-... more My intention in this paper is to reframe the practice of veiling as an embodied practice of self-development and self-transformation. I argue that practices like these cannot be handled by the choice/chance distinction relied on by those who would restrict religious minority accommodations. Embodied self-transformation necessarily means a change in personal identity and this means the religious believer cannot know if they will need religious accommodation when they begin their journey of piety. Even some luck egalitarians would find leaning exclusively on preference and choice to find who should be burdened with paying the full costs of certain choices in one's life too morally harsh to be justifiable. I end by briefly illustrating an alternative way to think about religious accommodation that does not rely on the choice/chance distinction. In Québec, at the end of 2013 and start of 2014, the then elected separatist party proposed a bill initially called the "Québec Charter of Values." 1 It would have effectively banned religious symbols such as all forms of the Islamic veil, the Sikh turban, the Jewish kippah, large crosses, and other "conspicuous" 2 religious symbols from being worn by public servants. A constant question that showed up in the discourse surrounding the charter was why some minorities received exceptions from laws and some did not. One justification for differentiating between who got exemptions and who did not was that certain minorities, such as the disabled, were unfortunate in that they had not chosen their disability and therefore deserved accommodation. On the other hand, religious people chose their religion and the form their religious practice takes and therefore needed no accommodation but should conform like everyone else to general laws. These questions of fortune and misfortune also showed up in discourse around the French ban on 1 Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Alia Al-Saji and Daniel Weinstock for their patience in going through earlier drafts as well as pushing me conceptually. I would also like to thank Douglas Hanes for coming up with the title of the paper.
Inquiry, 2024
The central worry of this article is one not widely discussed in the literature. Seth Robertson i... more The central worry of this article is one not widely discussed in the literature. Seth Robertson identifies it as the “indirect situationist critique”. Rather than make the broad and overly controversial claim that we do not have virtues at all, the situationist challenges whether the programme of moral education, developing and improving moral character that virtue ethics prides itself on is the best strategy at all (Robertson 2018, 3). Instead they claim that situationism, with its greater focus on morally trivial situational influences such as the effect of mood on behaviour and that a more effective strategy would be to instead focus on how to
manipulate situations.
In this article I concentrate specifically on situationist experiments related to mood. While those defending virtue ethics often bring up their own arsenal of social psychological experiments (e.g., Miller 2009, 2013; Snow 2009, de Bruin et al. 2023), in this article, I examine two methodological sources not found in this literature. First, I argue for ethnography as an
empirical method through which to study virtue. I draw on ethnography of the Islamic women’s dawa movement to show how a contemporary virtue movement’s practices can answer the indirect situationist challenge. As an Islamic group, dawa practitioners likewise fill a gap as a less-explored virtue tradition, and they employ a specific moral technology (the veil) that is also somewhat controversial—and perhaps misunderstood in the West. Secondly, because I concentrate on the worry that mood subtly influences our ethical actions, I look at another ignored empirical source, the work in the philosophy of mind on “affective scaffolding.” One new direction Miller argues that empirically informed virtue ethics should head is to broaden
discussion beyond Christian and dominant Aristotelian virtue ethics (2017, 464). My contribution attempts to bridge this gap,
I begin the first part by showing how situationism should make us question traditional understandings of virtues as intrinsic dispositions. I then introduce Islamic virtue ethics and the dawa movement. I also clarify why I chose that specific movement and why I use ethnography. In parts two and three I examine ethnography of the dawa movement to explore how they deal with worries about the influence of mood on their virtue. In part two I show how they train their habits in very traditional virtue ethics ways in order to be more resilient when faced with virtue-diminishing affective situations. In part three I show how the situation, rather than hindering practitioners, is recruited into helping these women achieve piety. I conclude, in part four, by showing the dawa movement’s creative use of the Islamic veil as a way to help these women deal with the objection that one cannot avoid all bad situations.
Hypatia, 2024
Saba Mahmood's anthropological work studies the gain in skills, agency and capacity building by t... more Saba Mahmood's anthropological work studies the gain in skills, agency and capacity building by the women's dawa movement in Egypt. These women increase their virtue toward the goal of piety by following dominant, often patriarchal norms. Mahmood argues that "teleological feminism" ignores this gain in agency because this kind of feminism only focuses on opposition or resistance to these norms. In this paper I defend Mahmood's "anti-teleological" feminist work from criticisms that her project valorizes oppression and has no vision for a nonoppressive feminist future. I argue the future envisioned by teleological feminists gets caught in "the Hegelian" trap of replicating past oppression in their feminist future. I find in Mahmood's work the tools to escape this trap. I argue, rather than a movement of overcoming oppression, Mahmood's work suggests an immanent and creative movement that emphasizes difference for a truly new future. I turn to a Bergsonian metaphor and argue that this movement can be seen as akin to the movement of biological evolution. I conclude using the work of Eve Sedgwick that the Egyptian women that Mahmood studies are being read in a "paranoid" fashion and demonstrate using Leila Ahmed a better "reparative" reading of these women.
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Public Philosophy by Muhammad Velji
Papers by Muhammad Velji
manipulate situations.
In this article I concentrate specifically on situationist experiments related to mood. While those defending virtue ethics often bring up their own arsenal of social psychological experiments (e.g., Miller 2009, 2013; Snow 2009, de Bruin et al. 2023), in this article, I examine two methodological sources not found in this literature. First, I argue for ethnography as an
empirical method through which to study virtue. I draw on ethnography of the Islamic women’s dawa movement to show how a contemporary virtue movement’s practices can answer the indirect situationist challenge. As an Islamic group, dawa practitioners likewise fill a gap as a less-explored virtue tradition, and they employ a specific moral technology (the veil) that is also somewhat controversial—and perhaps misunderstood in the West. Secondly, because I concentrate on the worry that mood subtly influences our ethical actions, I look at another ignored empirical source, the work in the philosophy of mind on “affective scaffolding.” One new direction Miller argues that empirically informed virtue ethics should head is to broaden
discussion beyond Christian and dominant Aristotelian virtue ethics (2017, 464). My contribution attempts to bridge this gap,
I begin the first part by showing how situationism should make us question traditional understandings of virtues as intrinsic dispositions. I then introduce Islamic virtue ethics and the dawa movement. I also clarify why I chose that specific movement and why I use ethnography. In parts two and three I examine ethnography of the dawa movement to explore how they deal with worries about the influence of mood on their virtue. In part two I show how they train their habits in very traditional virtue ethics ways in order to be more resilient when faced with virtue-diminishing affective situations. In part three I show how the situation, rather than hindering practitioners, is recruited into helping these women achieve piety. I conclude, in part four, by showing the dawa movement’s creative use of the Islamic veil as a way to help these women deal with the objection that one cannot avoid all bad situations.
manipulate situations.
In this article I concentrate specifically on situationist experiments related to mood. While those defending virtue ethics often bring up their own arsenal of social psychological experiments (e.g., Miller 2009, 2013; Snow 2009, de Bruin et al. 2023), in this article, I examine two methodological sources not found in this literature. First, I argue for ethnography as an
empirical method through which to study virtue. I draw on ethnography of the Islamic women’s dawa movement to show how a contemporary virtue movement’s practices can answer the indirect situationist challenge. As an Islamic group, dawa practitioners likewise fill a gap as a less-explored virtue tradition, and they employ a specific moral technology (the veil) that is also somewhat controversial—and perhaps misunderstood in the West. Secondly, because I concentrate on the worry that mood subtly influences our ethical actions, I look at another ignored empirical source, the work in the philosophy of mind on “affective scaffolding.” One new direction Miller argues that empirically informed virtue ethics should head is to broaden
discussion beyond Christian and dominant Aristotelian virtue ethics (2017, 464). My contribution attempts to bridge this gap,
I begin the first part by showing how situationism should make us question traditional understandings of virtues as intrinsic dispositions. I then introduce Islamic virtue ethics and the dawa movement. I also clarify why I chose that specific movement and why I use ethnography. In parts two and three I examine ethnography of the dawa movement to explore how they deal with worries about the influence of mood on their virtue. In part two I show how they train their habits in very traditional virtue ethics ways in order to be more resilient when faced with virtue-diminishing affective situations. In part three I show how the situation, rather than hindering practitioners, is recruited into helping these women achieve piety. I conclude, in part four, by showing the dawa movement’s creative use of the Islamic veil as a way to help these women deal with the objection that one cannot avoid all bad situations.