Trustees of the Pluriverse: Abderrahmane Taha's Islamic Covenantal Ethics and Epistemic Decoloniality

Abstract

This article explores Abderrahmane Taha's Islamic ethical philosophy in dialogue with decolonial thought, focusing on its contribution to pluriversality—a decolonial challenge to Western epistemic universalism. Pluriversality affirms diverse ways of knowing/being but also wrestles with tensions around epistemic incommensurability, normative ambiguity, and the risk of relativism. Drawing on Taha's Trusteeship Paradigm (al-Iʾtimāniyya), this intervention argues that his ethical metaphysics, particularly his formulation of supported reason (al-ʿaql al-muʾayyad), grounds pluriversality in a relational, dialogical, and morally anchored framework. It does so more robustly than comparable Islamic epistemic projects, including those of Syed Muhammad Naqib al-Attas and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Taha critiques secular tolerance as hierarchical and advances covenantal engagement and reciprocatory ethics as principles for navigating difference. His emphasis on ethical obligation, ontological responsibility, and plural rationalities reframes civilizational diversity as a covenant of mutual moral regard. This essay proposes a decolonial Islamic option: a covenantal pluriverse sustained through reciprocal moral responsibility across epistemic and ontological difference.