Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates
The idea of the present book emerged in 2002 when the editors began developing a postgraduate course on Islam and modernity at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, The Netherlands. Our aim was to engage with Western social thought as well as with the ideas and visions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers in the Muslim world concerning the political, socio-economic and cultural transformation of their societies. We found that there was no single book we could use to introduce the range of subjects that we thought essential for such a course. The scholarly literature on various aspects of Islam and modernity is rich and complex and rapidly expanding, but there is a dearth of general works that offer an interdisciplinary perspective and overview of the major questions and debates in this literature. We convened a workshop at ISIM on ‘Islam and Modernity, Key Issues and Debates’ in October 2004. The present book is an outcome of continued deliberations and revisions of the papers presented at the workshop.
The book aims to provide refl ections on major debates that have taken place within and between the various scholarly disciplines that have addressed questions of modernity in connection with Islam and Muslim societies. The book is organised in three parts. The fi rst part, ‘Conceptualising Modernity’, consists of two chapters that introduce theoretical and general issues in modernity studies. The four chapters in the second part, ‘Negotiating Modernity’, offer an analysis of the processes of modernisation of Muslim societies, focusing on certain specific aspects of their social and political dynamics. The four chapters in the third part, ‘Debating Modernity’, survey how Muslim scholars and intellectuals have perceived and responded to issues of modernity. The contributors to the book are drawn from among the best-known scholars in the fi eld, whose earlier work we found most seminal and stimulating in our teaching.
Contents
Preface / vi
Part 1. Conceptualising Modernity
1. Tradition and Modernity within Islamic Civilisation and the West / 3
Armando Salvatore
2. Western Scholars of Islam on the Issue of Modernity / 36
Muhammad Khalid Masud and Armando Salvatore
Part 2. Negotiating Modernity
3. Political Modernity / 57
Sami Zubaida
4. Islam, Modernity and the Politics of Gender / 91
Deniz Kandiyoti
5. Sufism, ‘Popular’ Islam and the Encounter with Modernity / 125
Martin van Bruinessen
6. Colonialism and Islamic Law / 158
Ebrahim Moosa
Part 3. Debating Modernity
7. The Reform Project in the Emerging Public Spheres / 185
Armando Salvatore
8. The Ulama and Contestations on Religious Authority / 206
Muhammad Qasim Zaman
9. Islamic Modernism / 237
Muhammad Khalid Masud
10. The Shifting Politics of Identity / 261
Abdulkader Tayob
List of Contributors / 285
Index / 288
Preface
The idea of the present book emerged in 2002 when the editors began developing a postgraduate course on Islam and modernity at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, The Netherlands. Our aim was to engage with Western social thought as well as with the ideas and visions of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers in the Muslim world concerning the political, socio-economic and cultural transformation of their societies. We found that there was no single book we could use to introduce the range of subjects that we thought essential for such a course. The scholarly literature on various aspects of Islam and modernity is rich and complex and rapidly expanding, but there is a dearth of general works that offer an interdisciplinary perspective and overview of the major questions and debates in this literature. We convened a workshop at ISIM on ‘Islam and Modernity, Key Issues and Debates’ in October 2004. The present book is an outcome of continued deliberations and revisions of the papers presented at the workshop.
The book aims to provide refl ections on major debates that have taken place within and between the various scholarly disciplines that have addressed questions of modernity in connection with Islam and Muslim societies. The book is organised in three parts. The fi rst part, ‘Conceptualising Modernity’, consists of two chapters that introduce theoretical and general issues in modernity studies. The four chapters in the second part, ‘Negotiating Modernity’, offer an analysis of the processes of modernisation of Muslim societies, focusing on certain specific aspects of their social and political dynamics. The four chapters in the third part, ‘Debating Modernity’, survey how Muslim scholars and intellectuals have perceived and responded to issues of modernity. The contributors to the book are drawn from among the best-known scholars in the fi eld, whose earlier work we found most seminal and stimulating in our teaching.
The immediate background to the importance of producing such a textbook is under everybody’s eyes. Dramatic events have focused public attention on the potential tensions between the Muslim world and the modern West. Are such tensions rooted in real differences or in distorted perceptions? Compared to the other world religions, Islam appears either more resistant to internal development, with less prospect of change or, in spite of all efforts at reform, inherently pre-modern. Islam, it is frequently claimed, has experienced neither a major reformation, as has Christianity, nor been touched by Enlightenment. Or, paradoxically, as some observers would have it, Islam would no longer be Islam if truly reformed.
The new Islamist movements that emerged in the 1970s out of earlier reform trends and forms of socio-political mobilization (most notably the organization of the Muslim Brothers that saw the light in the late 1920s) appear to be primarily directed against the modernising secular elites that have dominated most Muslim societies during the fi rst decades of post-colonial independence. Some observers (for example, Bruce Lawrence) have described these movements as a ‘revolt against modernity’. Other scholars, on the other hand (notably the British philosopher John Gray, but also many others), have commented on the essential modernity of these same movements.
Muslim societies have been subjected to most of the structural changes that have also impacted upon other societies in the world – such as massive urbanisation, mass education, dramatically increased communication, the emergence of new types of institutions and associations, erratic yet at times powerful waves of political mobilisation and major transformations of the economy. These developments have been accompanied by the emergence of a wide range of new social movements, often matched by heated religious and ideological debates that were more complex and varied than is commonly assumed in Western public discourse. The academic literature on such topics is extensive and rapidly growing. One of the most contentious issues being debated concerns the idea of the uniqueness and singularity of Western modernity versus the notion of inherently multiple modernities unfolding through a variety of trajectories. Yet both the literature and the debate are still fragmented and inaccessible to a wider public. No consensus has emerged even about the terms in which the debate should be carried on; the concept of modernity remains ambiguous and risks becoming hostage to opposing paradigms.
Each of the chapters in this volume deals with some specifi c aspects of the encounter of Muslim societies with modernity. Although each of the contributors is inevitably more familiar with particular societies and regions than others, and individual chapters may have a certain regional emphasis, the volume as a whole does not privilege the Middle East or any other region but covers the entire Muslim world. The chapters are thematically organised, and we have made an effort to ensure that developments in all major regions are represented.
We wish to acknowledge ISIM’s fi nancial support for the initial workshop and part of the editing process and thank especially Sanaa Makhlouf for her editorial help. We take this opportunity to express our gratitude to all our colleagues who supported this project, especially David Waines for his invaluable cooperation at the initial stages of this project. Lastly we wish to thank the students at ISIM, whose participation in the course and discussions helped in the development of this project.
Muhammad Khalid Masud
Armando Salvatore
Martin van Bruinessen
Islam and Modernity
Key Issues and Debates
Edited by Muhammad Khalid Masud,
Armando Salvatore and Martin van Bruinessen
© in this edition Edinburgh University Press, 2009
© in the individual contributions is retained by the authors
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Deniz Kandiyoti is a professor in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. She holds degrees from the University of Paris, Sorbonne (B.Sc.) and the LSE, London (M.Sc. and Ph.D.). Deniz has taught and researched in universities in Turkey, the USA and Britain. Her research interests include comparative perspectives on gender, household formation and development, and Islam and state policies in the Middle East. More recently she has been working in the Central Asian republics of the former USSR on post-Soviet transitions with special reference to land rights and agrarian reform. She has done consultancy work for UNDP, ILO, UNESCO, OSCE, DFID and UNIFEM. She was also a British Council consultant for a World Bank project and edits Central Asian Survey. Dr Kandiyoti can be reached at dk1@soas.ac.uk
Muhammad Khalid Masud is currently Chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology, Islamabad, Pakistan, and was previously professor and academic director of ISIM, Leiden, The Netherlands. He has published extensively on Islamic law and on contemporary issues and trends in Muslim societies. He is the author of Shatibi’s Philosophy of Islamic Law (1995) and Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Ijtihad (2003), and co-editor of Islamic Legal Interpretation: The Muftis and their Fatwas (Harvard, 1996), Travelers in Faith, Studies on Tablighi Jamaat (2000), and Dispensing Justice in Islam, Qadis and their Judgments (2006). Dr Masud can be reached at khalid.masud@gmail.com
Ebrahim Moosa is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religion at Duke University and Associate Director of Research at the Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC) . He has previously taught at Stanford University and the University of Cape Town. Moosa’s interests are focused on Islamic thought with a special interest in Islamic law, ethics, theology and studies in the medieval Muslim thinker, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. His book Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination received the American Academy of Religion prize for the Best First Book in the History of Religion. He also edited the last manuscript of the late Professor Fazlur Rahman, Revival and Reform in Islam: A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism. He has published extensively on modern Islamic thought and ethics. Dr Moosa can be contacted at moosa@duke.edu.
Armando Salvatore is Associate Professor of Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Naples – L’Orientale and Senior Research Fellow (Heisenberg Fellow) at the Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University, Berlin, and at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen. His present research explores the symbolic, political and practical nexus between religious traditions and secular formations across Eurasia in the context of the theoretical approach to ‘multiple modernities’. He also works on communication, media and the public sphere. Among his most recent books (authored, edited, and co-edited) are The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism, Islam (2007), Islam in Process: Historical and Civilizational Perspectives (2006), Religion, Social Practice, and Contested Hegemonies (2005) and Public Islam and the Common Good (2004). Dr Salvatore can be reached at salvatore@fosr.net.
Abdulkader Tayob is the Director of the Centre for Contemporary Islam, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and was formerly the ISIM chair at Radboud University in Nijmegen. Professor Tayob has published extensively on the history of religious movements and institutions in South Africa. He now works on Islam and public life in Africa and contemporary intellectual trends in modern Islam. His publications include the widely used Islam: A Short Introduction (Oneworld, 1999), Islam in South Africa: Mosques, Imams and Sermons (Florida University Press, 1999) and numerous articles and edited books. He is editor of the Journal for Islamic Studies (UCT). Dr Tayob can be contacted at Abdulkader. Tayob@uct.ac.za.
Martin van Bruinessen is Professor of the Comparative Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies at Utrecht University and at ISIM. He is an anthropologist with a strong interest in history and politics and with extensive fi eldwork experience in Kurdistan and Indonesia. His current research is on varieties of Islamic activism in post-Suharto Indonesia. His books include Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan (1992), Mullas, Sufi s and Heretics: The Role of Religion in Kurdish Society (2000), and the co-edited volumes Sufi sm and the ‘Modern’ in Islam (2007) and The Madrasa in Asia: Political Activism and Transnational Linkages (2008). Dr van Bruinessen can be contacted at m.vanbruinessen@uu.nl.
Muhammad Qasim Zaman is Robert H. Niehaus ’77 Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Religion at Princeton University. He is the author of The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (2002), Religion and Politics under the Early Abbasids (1997) and Ashraf Ali Thanawi: Islam in Modern South Asia (2008). He is also the co-editor of Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (2007). Among his current projects is a book titled Internal Criticism and Religious Authority in Modern Islam. Dr Zaman can be reached at: mzaman@Princeton.edu
Sami Zubaida is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College, London University, and research associate of the London Middle East Institute at SOAS. He has held visiting posts in Cairo, Istanbul, Berkeley and Paris, and was visiting professor at the New York University Law School in 2006. His work is on religion, culture, politics and law in the Middle East, and on food and culture. His publications include Islam, the People and the State (1993, reissued in 2009), Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East (2001, co-edited with Richard Tapper) and Law and Power in the Islamic World (2003). Dr Zubaida can be contacted at s.zubaida@bbk.ac.uk.
