A spiritual Ishmaelite

Dear Engineer,

Extending the previous neurophilosophical architecture through the lens of Tariq Ramadan’s work—particularly his reflections on Western Muslim citizenship and the fiqh al-aqalliyyāt (jurisprudence of minorities)—adds a decisive layer: the problem of moral agency under non-sovereignty. Here, the question is no longer abstract obedience or rebellion, but how a believing subject remains ethically whole while embedded in a normative order they did not author and do not fully control.

Ramadan’s central intervention is often misunderstood as political accommodation. In fact, it is better read as a theory of ethical interiority paired with civic exteriority. Neurophilosophically, this reframes servanthood as inward alignment and citizenship as outward participation. The danger he seeks to avoid is twofold: inward servitude collapsing into quietism, and outward resistance collapsing into performative anarchy.

Within fiqh of minorities, the believer is not positioned as a guest awaiting departure, nor as a rebel rehearsing grievance, but as a moral actor entrusted with witnessing. This witnessing (shahāda) is not loud protest; it is patterned reliability. The brain here must perform a delicate task: maintain a stable moral self-model while navigating plural, sometimes contradictory, legal and cultural signals. That requires unusually high cognitive integration. One might say the minority subject becomes a living stress-test for ethical coherence.

Neurophilosophically, this produces what can be called dual-layer normativity. At the deep layer, the individual’s servanthood is oriented toward divine command and moral absolutes. At the surface layer, citizenship requires pragmatic reasoning, compromise, and legal compliance. Pathology emerges when these layers are confused. If the surface layer is absolutized, moral dilution follows. If the deep layer is projected wholesale onto the civic domain, conflict and alienation follow. Ramadan’s insistence on distinguishing the principles from their historical forms is, at bottom, a cognitive hygiene practice.

This is where the middle way gains sharpness. Honourable servanthood supplies the deep moral anchor, while citizenship supplies the contextual grammar for action. The brain is spared the exhausting task of constant identity defense. Instead, ethical energy is invested in contribution: education, social justice, professional excellence, neighborly trust. The subject does not ask, “Do I belong here?” but “How do I act responsibly here?” That shift alone reduces chronic stress and oppositional fixation.

Anarchy, in minority contexts, often disguises itself as purity. The refusal to engage, vote, collaborate, or compromise is framed as resistance. Neurophilosophically, however, this posture locks the subject into a threat-detection loop. Identity becomes reactive; cognition narrows. Servitude, in its negative form, appears at the opposite extreme: silent assimilation driven by fear of exclusion. Here, the moral self is slowly anesthetized to avoid friction. Ramadan rejects both by insisting on active presence: a posture of principled engagement without self-erasure.

His emphasis on ijtihād—context-sensitive reasoning—can be read as a demand for adult cognition. There is no outsourcing of moral responsibility to inherited rulings frozen in time, nor to the host society’s norms taken as neutral. The believer must think, weigh, and sometimes tolerate ambiguity. From a neurophilosophical perspective, this trains executive function, moral imagination, and long-term ethical forecasting. It is cognitively expensive, but it preserves dignity.

Humorously, one might note that fiqh al-aqalliyyāt assumes Muslims can handle complexity. This is a radical assumption in a world that prefers slogans. Yet brains, like civilizations, either metabolize complexity or are metabolized by it. Ramadan’s framework treats minority status not as a deficiency but as an advanced ethical condition—one that forces clarity about what is essential and what is cultural sediment.

The notion of honour reappears here as trustworthiness. The minority citizen gains moral leverage not through numbers or noise, but through reliability. Keeping contracts, serving institutions, protecting the vulnerable—these are not concessions but expressions of servanthood translated into civic language. The nervous system interprets such coherence as integrity; the community interprets it as credibility.

A critical counterpoint is necessary. Ramadan’s framework presumes relatively functional legal orders and space for conscience. In conditions of structural injustice, his middle way risks being weaponized against dissent. Neurophilosophically, prolonged injustice without avenues for redress does push systems toward either learned helplessness or explosive revolt. Honourable servanthood is not a sedative. It must retain a threshold beyond which principled resistance becomes obligatory. The middle way is not static; it is dynamically calibrated.

In closing, reading Tariq Ramadan through neurophilosophy clarifies his deeper wager: that the human brain, when anchored in transcendent servanthood and trained in contextual reasoning, can inhabit non-ideal political spaces without moral fracture. Fiqh of minorities is thus not a jurisprudence of weakness but of disciplined complexity. It forms citizens who are neither domesticated subjects nor anarchic outsiders, but ethical participants whose loyalty is vertical and whose responsibility is horizontal.

This posture is demanding, occasionally lonely, and rarely glamorous. It is, however, the posture in which honour survives modernity—and in which servanthood becomes the quiet engine of civic dignity rather than its negation.