The premier Postcolonial Higher Education Conference (PHEC) of Habib University took place from November 24, 2023, to November 25, 2023. During this time, eminent scholars and post-colonial reparative thinkers illuminated crucial theoretical and practical connections between the spiritual and ethical aspects of Islamic traditions in their historical, contemporary, and prospective expressions.

In keeping with the university's goal of creating reparative futures to enhance academic discussions about decolonization, Habib University has been using PHEC for the past ten years. "Ontology is the question of reality," said Dr. Najeeb Jan, an associate professor of comparative humanities at Habib University, as he welcomed distinguished guests to its sixth iteration on Friday. Light must withhold itself and withdraw in order to see.

The conference theme for this year is "The Ethical and the Spiritual in Islam: Pasts, Presents, and Futures," and Dr. Nauman Naqvi, the conference chair and associate professor of comparative humanities at Habib University, introduced it in his opening remarks. He explained that the conference is a historical, philosophical, and socio-political examination of the division between the conceptual and the practical in religion, ethics, and spirituality. He went on to discuss the importance of the discussions this conference seeks to foster, saying that "creating" is inherently an ethical act. The spiritual and ethical stature of a person are equal.

"Instead of divisions, we should focus on connectedness, alliance, and plurality in Islam," proposed renowned scholar of gender, Islam, and youth studies Dr. Shenila Khoja-Moolji during the conference's opening keynote session on "Bridging faith and world (din and dunya): Examining the Reparative Possibilities of Ordinary Ethics."

A panel discussion titled "Spiritual Ethics Inside and Outside" centered the second half of the conference and gave each panelist a chance to discuss their individual research papers. In his discourse on "The Sage of Medina: The Ethics of Jafar al-Sadiq," Dr. Ahab Bdaiwi, a lecturer at Leiden University, contended that the significance of preserving oral and written spiritual history, as well as knowledge transmission, is illustrated by Imam Jafar Al Sadiq's worldview and his astuteness in recording Tafsir, Hadith, legal writings, and Percepts.

What Price Ethics? was the title of the paper that Dr. Alexander Key, an associate professor of Arabic and comparative literature at Stanford University, presented. In his essay "Generosity, Politics, and Deliverance in Tenth-Century Iraq," Al-Tanukhi asked, "Is generosity an act that connects us with God, or is it merely a means of gaining credit or respect?" Dr. Alexander led the audience through a number of anecdotes to delve further into the internal and external aspects of spiritual ethics.

In the meantime, "One of the best ways of finding roots of ethics in Islamic history is commentary," stressed Dr. Sajjad Rizvi, Professor of Islamic Intellectual History at the University of Exeter, in his paper "The Ethics of Divine Friendship from the Wisdom of Mulla Sadra to the Praxis of Allameh Tabatabai." Professor Rizvi's work sheds light on the idea of divine friendship by quoting the insights of wise historical figures like Allameh Tabatabai and Mulla Sadra.

The 6th Post-colonial Higher Education Conference at Habib University kicked off its second day with a keynote speech by Dr. Oludamini Ogunnaike, an associate professor of African religious thought and democracy at the University of Virginia.

Master of Ceremonies and associate professor of comparative humanities at Habib University, Dr. Najeeb Jan, took the platform to greet and acquaint the audience with Dr. Ogunnaike and his work. Ogunnaike, the distinguished writer and academic, examined "The Perils and Imperatives of Decoloniality in Islamic Temporalities."

He pondered "how we can begin to heal the ruptures of coloniality" during his keynote address. and declared with immense assurance that "it will be a tremendous gift for the people of Pakistan and beyond if Habib [University] and the project you [Habib University] have here are able to do this."

Drs. Aaron Eldridge and Arsalan Khan participated in a panel discussion titled "The Politics of Spiritual Ethicality," which took place after the keynote.

"The reason behind our history's oscillation between building and demolishing is ambivalence," Dr. Eldridge clarified while delivering his paper, "Toward an Asecular Theory of Dār al-Islām."

In his lecture on "Islamic Piety as Sovereign Transcendence in the Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan," Arsalan Khan covered the topic of how "moral chaos is manifested in all manner of problems but mostly as conflict among Muslims, whether within families, between ethnic communities, or between Muslim nations."

The second panel of the day covered the topic of "Ethico-Spiritual Reorientations in an Age of Extreme Nihilism," with Dr. Muhammad Faruque, assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati's Inayat and Ishrat Malik Assistant Professor and Taft Center Fellow, and Dr. Nauman Naqvi, associate professor at Habib University's Comparative Humanities, speaking.

Muhammad U. Faruque, during his presentation on "The Burnout Society: Healing Fragmentation through Islamic Spirituality," explored the general disenchantment with modern life within the "burnout society" and asserted that "there is a profound connection between mental illness and the modern self."

The final talk of the day, "Hikma: Reorienting Islamic Studies Towards Love, Beauty, Light and Limit," was delivered by Dr. Nauman Naqvi. In it, he elaborated on how "our experience of our time is very plastic... [and] time is malleable." After the panels, faculty members from Habib University, including Xiaoxi Zhang, a global fellow in comparative humanities, and Shah Jamal Alam, an associate professor of computer science, participated in a discussion and answered questions from the audience.

In addition to imagining future reparative opportunities for theory and practice, the sixth Postcolonial Higher Education Conference at Habib University explored, examined, and interpreted the fundamental connections between the spiritual and ethical aspects of Islamic traditions, ranging from modern reconfigurations to late antique and medieval articulations.