Islam & Modernity

Islam & Modernity PDF Author: Fazlur Rahman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022638702X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
"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

Islam & Modernity PDF Author: Fazlur Rahman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022638702X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Get Book Here

Book Description
"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 Between Tradition and Modernity

Islam Between Tradition and Modernity PDF Author: Mehmet Ozalp
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781921577109
Category : Islam
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
"Most of the problems visible in the Muslim world stem from the gap created by a commitment to tradition and a wariness of modernity. Islam has the resources to bridge this gap. As a religion it is generally misunderstood not only by non-Muslims but, perhaps surprisingly, by Muslims as well. This book outlines the defining beliefs of Islam and the devotional practices of Muslims. It explains how and why the Islamic mood and the Muslim mind competes and, at times, conflicts with the promotion of modern popular culture and the propagation of contemporary liberal values. The author, well-known Muslim theologian and writer Mehmet Özalp, is adamant that constructive and respectful dialogue across religious traditions is possible and that a clash of civilisations can be avoided. He writes with sensitivity and insight about Islamic theology, history and social engagement, seeking to identify the major fault lines in relations between the Muslim World and the West while offering creative suggestions to relieve tension and restore goodwill. This book will educate and enlighten a very broad readership and will help to fashion a future that neither rejects tradition nor resists modernity."--Publisher.

Transformations of Tradition

Transformations of Tradition PDF Author: Junaid Quadri
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190077042
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Transformations of Tradition probes how the encounter with colonial modernity conditioned Islamic jurists' conceptualizations of the shari'a. Focusing on the jurisprudential writings of Muhammad Bakhit al-Muti-i (1854-1935), Mufti of Egypt for a time, Junaid Quadri locates a remarkable series of foundational intellectual shifts that throw into doubt the possibility of reading the modern trajectory of Islamic law through the lens of a continuous tradition. Through close readings of complex legal texts and mining archives oft-neglected in the field, this carefully researched study uncovers a shari'a that is neither a medieval holdover nor merely a pragmatic concession to the demands of a new world, but rather is deeply entangled with the epistemological commitments of colonial modernity.

Islam and Modernity

Islam and Modernity PDF Author: Muhammad Khalid Masud
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 074863794X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
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.

Reforming Modernity

Reforming Modernity PDF Author: Wael B. Hallaq
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550553
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Reforming Modernity is a sweeping intellectual history and philosophical reflection built around the work of the Morocco-based philosopher Abdurrahman Taha, one of the most significant philosophers in the Islamic world since the colonial era. Wael B. Hallaq contends that Taha is at the forefront of forging a new, non-Western-centric philosophical tradition. He explores how Taha’s philosophical project sheds light on recent intellectual currents in the Islamic world and puts forth a formidable critique of Western and Islamic modernities. Hallaq argues that Taha’s project departs from—but leaves behind—the epistemological grounds in which most modern Muslim intellectuals have anchored their programs. Taha systematically rejects the modes of thought that have dominated the Muslim intellectual scene since the beginning of the twentieth century—nationalism, Marxism, secularism, political Islamism, and liberalism. Instead, he provides alternative ways of thinking, forcefully and virtuosically developing an ethical system with a view toward reforming existing modernities. Hallaq analyzes the ethical thread that runs throughout Taha’s oeuvre, illuminating how Taha weaves it into a discursive engagement with the central questions that plague modernity in both the West and the Muslim world. The first introduction to Taha’s ethical philosophy for Western audiences, Reforming Modernity presents his complex thought in an accessible way while engaging with it critically. Hallaq’s conversation with Taha’s work both proffers a cogent critique of modernity and points toward answers for its endemic and seemingly insoluble problems.

Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition

Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition PDF Author: Samira Haj
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804769753
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Samira Haj conceptualizes Islam through a close reading of two Muslim reformers—Muhammad ibn 'Abdul Wahhab (1703–1787) and Muhammad 'Abduh (1849–1905)—each representative of a distinct trend, chronological as well as philosophical, in modern Islam. Their works are examined primarily through the prism of two conceptual questions: the idea of the modern and the formation of a Muslim subject. Approaching Islam through the works of these two Muslims, she illuminates aspects of Islamic modernity that have been obscured and problematizes assumptions founded on the oppositional dichotomies of modern/traditional, secular/sacred, and liberal/fundamentalist. The book explores the notions of the community-society and the subject's location within it to demonstrate how Muslims in different historical contexts responded differently to theological and practical questions. This knowledge will help us better understand the conflicts currently unfolding in parts of the Arab world.

Islam in the Modern World

Islam in the Modern World PDF Author: Jeffrey T. Kenney
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135007950
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
This comprehensive introduction explores the landscape of contemporary Islam. Written by a distinguished team of scholars, it: provides broad overviews of the developments, events, people and movements that have defined Islam in the three majority-Muslim regions traces the connections between traditional Islamic institutions and concerns, and their modern manifestations and transformations. How are medieval ideas, policies and practices refashioned to address modern circumstances investigates new themes and trends that are shaping the modern Muslim experience such as gender, fundamentalism, the media and secularisation offers case studies of Muslims and Islam in dynamic interaction with different societies. Islam in the Modern World includes illustrations, summaries, discussion points and suggestions for further reading that will aid understanding and revision. Additional resources are provided via a companion website.

Defending Muḥammad in Modernity

Defending Muḥammad in Modernity PDF Author: SherAli Tareen
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 026810672X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 663

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking study, SherAli Tareen presents the most comprehensive and theoretically engaged work to date on what is arguably the most long-running, complex, and contentious dispute in modern Islam: the Barelvī-Deobandī polemic. The Barelvī and Deobandī groups are two normative orientations/reform movements with beginnings in colonial South Asia. Almost two hundred years separate the beginnings of this polemic from the present. Its specter, however, continues to haunt the religious sensibilities of postcolonial South Asian Muslims in profound ways, both in the region and in diaspora communities around the world. Defending Muḥammad in Modernity challenges the commonplace tendency to view such moments of intra-Muslim contest through the prism of problematic yet powerful liberal secular binaries like legal/mystical, moderate/extremist, and reformist/traditionalist. Tareen argues that the Barelvī-Deobandī polemic was instead animated by what he calls “competing political theologies” that articulated—during a moment in Indian Muslim history marked by the loss and crisis of political sovereignty—contrasting visions of the normative relationship between divine sovereignty, prophetic charisma, and the practice of everyday life. Based on the close reading of previously unexplored print and manuscript sources in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu spanning the late eighteenth and the entirety of the nineteenth century, this book intervenes in and integrates the often-disparate fields of religious studies, Islamic studies, South Asian studies, critical secularism studies, and political theology.

Islam Between Culture and Politics

Islam Between Culture and Politics PDF Author: B. Tibi
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230514146
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Bassam Tibi offers a radical solution to the problems faced by Islam in a rapidly changing and globalizing world. He proposes a depoliticization of the faith and the introduction of reforms to embrace secular democracy, pluralism, civil society and individual human rights. The alternative to this is the impasse of fundamentalism. The pivotal argument is that Islam is being torn between the pressure for cultural innovation and a defensive move towards the politicization of its symbols for non-religious ends.

A Culture of Ambiguity

A Culture of Ambiguity PDF Author: Thomas Bauer
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231553323
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In the Western imagination, Islamic cultures are dominated by dogmatic religious norms that permit no nuance. Those fighting such stereotypes have countered with a portrait of Islam’s medieval “Golden Age,” marked by rationality, tolerance, and even proto-secularism. How can we understand Islamic history, culture, and thought beyond this dichotomy? In this magisterial cultural and intellectual history, Thomas Bauer reconsiders classical and modern Islam by tracing differing attitudes toward ambiguity. Over a span of many centuries, he explores the tension between one strand that aspires to annihilate all uncertainties and establish absolute, uncontestable truths and another, competing tendency that looks for ways to live with ambiguity and accept complexity. Bauer ranges across cultural and linguistic ambiguities, considering premodern Islamic textual and cultural forms from law to Quranic exegesis to literary genres alongside attitudes toward religious minorities and foreigners. He emphasizes the relative absence of conflict between religious and secular discourses in classical Islamic culture, which stands in striking contrast to both present-day fundamentalism and much of European history. Bauer shows how Islam’s encounter with the modern West and its demand for certainty helped bring about both Islamicist and secular liberal ideologies that in their own ways rejected ambiguity—and therefore also their own cultural traditions. Awarded the prestigious Leibniz Prize, A Culture of Ambiguity not only reframes a vast range of Islamic history but also offers an interdisciplinary model for investigating the tolerance of ambiguity across cultures and eras.