Islam and Modernity

Islam and Modernity
Author: Muhammad Khalid Masud
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2009-08-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 074863794X

Recent events have focused attention on the perceived differences and tensions between the Muslim world and the modern West. As a major strand of Western public discourse has it, Islam appears resistant to internal development and remains inherently pre-modern. However Muslim societies have experienced most of the same structural changes that have impacted upon all societies: massive urbanisation, mass education, dramatically increased communication, the emergence of new types of institutions and associations, some measure of political mobilisation, and major transformations of the economy. These developments are accompanied by a wide range of social movements and by complex and varied religious and ideological debates. This textbook is a pioneering study providing an introduction to and overview of the debates and questions that have emerged regarding Islam and modernity. Key issues are selected to give readers an understanding of the complexity of the phenomenon from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The various manifestations of modernity in Muslim life discussed include social change and the transformation of political and religious institutions, gender politics, changing legal regimes, devotional practices and forms of religious association, shifts in religious authority, and modern developments in Muslim religious thought.

Islam & Modernity

Islam & Modernity
Author: Fazlur Rahman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2017-07-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 022638702X

"As Professor Fazlur Rahman shows in the latest of a series of important contributions to Islamic intellectual history, the characteristic problems of the Muslim modernists—the adaptation to the needs of the contemporary situation of a holy book which draws its specific examples from the conditions of the seventh century and earlier—are by no means new. . . . In Professor Rahman's view the intellectual and therefore the social development of Islam has been impeded and distorted by two interrelated errors. The first was committed by those who, in reading the Koran, failed to recognize the differences between general principles and specific responses to 'concrete and particular historical situations.' . . . This very rigidity gave rise to the second major error, that of the secularists. By teaching and interpreting the Koran in such a way as to admit of no change or development, the dogmatists had created a situation in which Muslim societies, faced with the imperative need to educate their people for life in the modern world, were forced to make a painful and self-defeating choice—either to abandon Koranic Islam, or to turn their backs on the modern world."—Bernard Lewis, New York Review of Books "In this work, Professor Fazlur Rahman presents a positively ambitious blueprint for the transformation of the intellectual tradition of Islam: theology, ethics, philosophy and jurisprudence. Over the voices advocating a return to Islam or the reestablishment of the Sharia, the guide for action, he astutely and soberly asks: What and which Islam? More importantly, how does one get to 'normative' Islam? The author counsels, and passionately demonstrates, that for Islam to be actually what Muslims claim it to be—comprehensive in scope and efficacious for every age and place—Muslim scholars and educationists must reevaluate their methodology and hermeneutics. In spelling out the necessary and sound methodology, he is at once courageous, serious and profound."—Wadi Z. Haddad, American-Arab Affairs

Islam, Modernity, Violence, and Everyday Life

Islam, Modernity, Violence, and Everyday Life
Author: A. Ahmad
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2009-03-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0230619568

This book offers a better insight into the comparison of Western and Islamic cultures, with studies that address the issues of Islam and modernity, violence in Islamic law and history, and respect for individuals' privacy in Islamic cultures.

Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity

Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity
Author: Tariq Ramadan
Publisher: Kube Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2009-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0860374394

Tariq Ramadan attempts to demonstrate, using sources which draw upon Islamic thought and civilization, that Muslims can respond to contemporary challenges of modernity without betraying their identity. The book argues that Muslims, nurished by their own points of reference, can approach the modern epoch by adopting a specific social, political, and economic model that is linked to ethical values, a sense of finalities and spirituality. Rather than a modernism that tends to impose Westernization, it is a modernity that admits to the pluralism of civilizations, religions, and cultures. Table of Contents: Foreword Introduction History of a Concept The Lessons of History Part 1: At the shores of Transcendence: between God and Man Part 2: The Horizons of Islam: Between Man and the Community Part 3: Values and Finalities: The Cultural Dimension of the Civilizational Face to Face Conclusion Appendix Index Tariq Ramadan is a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford and a visiting professor in Identity and Citizenship at Erasmus University. He was named by TIME Magazine as one of the one hundred innovators of the twenty-first century

Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterranean

Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterranean
Author: Margaret S. Graves
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2022-04-19
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0253060354

The Islamic world's artistic traditions experienced profound transformation in the 19th century as rapidly developing technologies and globalizing markets ushered in drastic changes in technique, style, and content. Despite the importance and ingenuity of these developments, the 19th century remains a gap in the history of Islamic art. To fill this opening in art historical scholarship, Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterranean charts transformations in image-making, architecture, and craft production in the Islamic world from Fez to Istanbul. Contributors focus on the shifting methods of production, reproduction, circulation, and exchange artists faced as they worked in fields such as photography, weaving, design, metalwork, ceramics, and even transportation. Covering a range of media and a wide geographical spread, Making Modernity in the Islamic Mediterranean reveals how 19th-century artists in the Middle East and North Africa reckoned with new tools, materials, and tastes from local perspectives.

Islam and Modernity

Islam and Modernity
Author: Abdessalem, Rafik
Publisher: Afro-Middle East Centre
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2019-07-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 099470481X

In this compelling book, Rafik Abdessalem unpacks two major lines of thought. Firstly, he examines why many Westerners dismiss Islam’s vast intellectual, social, theological and cultural heritage as flawed, violent, rigid and fanatical, despite knowing virtually nothing about it. He usefully traces the genesis of this attitude, focusing on how scholars such as Weber, Habermas and others have helped to consolidate the West’s view of itself as civilised, superior, developed and progressive, and how the demonisation of Islam acts as a necessary foil for these notions. Secondly, he explains that Islam is subject to a variety of interpretive choices and schools of thought ranging from legalistic fundamentalism, through rigid rationalism, to spiritual Sufism. By treating Islam, secularity and modernity as distinct and separate, rather than as interconnected and overlapping, Abdessalem makes no attempt to reconcile Islam with modernity or secularity, nor does he place one in opposition to the other. Instead, he looks at the interconnections between these broad and complex subjects. Abdessalem’s analysis is useful in encouraging us to rethink both modernity and Islam, and their relationship with each other. In this rethinking lies the potential for a better understanding of the geopolitics of what is often called ‘the Muslim world’, including the MENA region.

Modernity in Islamic Tradition

Modernity in Islamic Tradition
Author: Florian Zemmin
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 534
Release: 2018-07-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110545845

What does it mean to be modern? This study regards the concept of ‘society’ as foundational to modern self-understanding. Identifying Arabic conceptualizations of society in the journal al-Manar, the mouthpiece of Islamic reformism, the author shows how modernity was articulated from within an Islamic discursive tradition. The fact that the classical term umma was a principal term used to conceptualize modern society suggests the convergence of discursive traditions in modernity, rather than a mere diffusion of European concepts.

Formations of the Secular

Formations of the Secular
Author: Talal Asad
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2003-02-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0804783098

“A dark but brilliantly original work . . . one of the most important books on religion and the modern in recent years.” —H-Net Reviews Opening with the provocative query “what might an anthropology of the secular look like?” this book explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of secularism, with emphasis on the major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes in the modern West and the Middle East. Talal Asad proceeds to dismantle commonly held assumptions about the secular and the terrain it allegedly covers. He argues that while anthropologists have oriented themselves to the study of the “strangeness of the non-European world” and to what are seen as non-rational dimensions of social life (things like myth, taboo, and religion),the modern and the secular have not been adequately examined. The conclusion is that the secular cannot be viewed as a successor to religion, or be seen as on the side of the rational. It is a category with a multi-layered history, related to major premises of modernity, democracy, and the concept of human rights. This book will appeal to anthropologists, historians, religious studies scholars, as well as scholars working on modernity. “A difficult if stunningly eloquent book, a response both elusive and forthright to the many shelves of ‘books on terrorism’ which this country’s trade publishers are rushing into print.” —Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature “This wonderfully illuminating book should be read alongside the author’s Genealogies of Religion.” —Religion “One of the most interesting scholars of religious writing today.” —Christian Scholar’s Review “Asad’s brilliant study remains a defining piece of intellectual and scholarly contribution for all of those interested in exploring the religious and the secular in the modern era.” —The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

Islam, Modernity and a New Millennium

Islam, Modernity and a New Millennium
Author: Ali Paya
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2018-02-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1351615599

As the world becomes increasingly globalised Islam faces some important choices. Does it seek to "modernise" in line with the cultures in which it is practised, or does it retain its traditions even if they are at odds with the surrounding society? This book utilizes a critical rationalist viewpoint to illuminate many of the hotly contended issues in modern Islam, and to offer a fresh analysis. A variety of issues within Islam are discussed in this book including, Muslims and modernity; Islam, Christianity and Judaism; approaches to the understanding of the Quran; Muslim identity and civil society; doctrinal certainty and violent radicalism. In each case, the author makes use of Karl Popper’s theory of critical rationalism to uncover new aspects of these issues and to challenge post-modern, relativist, literalist and justificationist readings of Islam. This is a unique perspective on contemporary Islam and as such will be of significant interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Islamic Studies and the Philosophy of Religion.