Jonathan Brown - What the West could Learn from the Life of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ
About this lecture
In this lecture, Professor Jonathan Brown explores what the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ can teach the modern world about social justice, drawing on the Quran, Hadith, and the Constitution of Medina. He examines key themes including racial equality, gender equity, economic justice, religious pluralism, humanitarian law, and the obligation to stand against injustice — demonstrating how the prophetic model offers a rich and practical framework that in many respects surpasses modern Western conceptions of liberty and fairness. The lecture is followed by an extended Q&A covering topics ranging from the spread of Islam, COVID-19 and Islamic public health tradition, the concept of adab, and the place of women in early Muslim public life.
Jonathan AC Brown is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies in the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He received his BA in History from Georgetown University in 2000 and his doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 2006. Dr. Brown has studied and conducted research in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Indonesia and Iran, and he is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His book publications include The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith Canon (Brill, 2007), Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (Oneworld, 2009) and Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011). He has published articles in the fields of Hadith, Islamic law, Sufism, Arabic lexical theory and Pre-Islamic poetry and is the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islamic Law. Dr. Brown’s current research interests include the history of forgery and historical criticism in Islamic civilization, comparison with the Western tradition; and modern conflicts between Late Sunni Traditionalism and Salafism in Islamic thought.
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