Islam and secular modernity under western eyes: a genealogy of a constitutive relationship (original) (raw)
Related papers
Islamicate Secularities in Past and Present
Historical Social Research, 2019
Quote as: Dressler, Markus, Armando Salvatore and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (eds). 2029. Islamicate Secularities: Past and Present, in Historical Social Research 44(3). All papers are accessible through https://www.gesis.org/en/hsr/full-text-archive/2019/443-islamicate-secularities-in-past-and-present Partly as a product of encounters with Europe, accelerated in the last 150 years, Islamicate societies developed new epistemic distinctions and structural differentiations between religious and non-religious spheres and practices. This special issue conceptualizes these distinctions and differentiations as “Islamicate secularities”, thereby connecting Marshall Hodgson’s notion of the “Islamicate” with the concept of “Multiple Secularities”. The individual contributions address the question of secularity in relation to Islam with a variety of spatial and temporal foci that range from Turkey to China and Indonesia, from the present to the colonial era and even precolonial contexts. The issue thus provides an array of perspectives on how Muslims have engaged with religion in relation to social and political conflicts and how this has led to contested reifications of ‘Islam’ and its boundaries, especially in relation to politics. As preliminary result, a tendency towards ‘soft distinctions’, kept under the umbrella of ‘Islam,’ emerges. Quote the Introduction as: Dressler, Markus, Armando Salvatore, A., and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr. 2019. Islamicate Secularities: New Perspectives on a Contested Concept. Historical Social Research, 44(3), 7-34. In the colonial era, new distinctions and differentiations between religious and non-religious spheres took shape within inner-Islamic discourses, partly as a product of encounters with Western knowledge. This introduction conceptualizes these distinctions and differentiations in relation to Islam, drawing on Marshall Hodgson’s concept of the Islamicate, which we employ for our heuristic notion of Islamicate secularities. It charts the paradigmatic conflicts that shape the contested fields of Islamic and secularity/secularism studies. The introduction discusses the epistemological and political context of these debates, and argues that theoretical and normative conflicts should not hinder further empirical inquiries into forms of secularity in Islamicate contexts. It also explores promising theoretical and methodological approaches for further explorations. Particular emphasis is laid on the historical trajectories and conditions, close in time or distant, that have played a role in the formation of contemporary Islamicate secularities. Keywords: Secularity, multiple secularities, Islamicate secularities, Islam and politics, Marshall Hodgson.
Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates
Quote as: Masud, Khalid, Armando Salvatore, and Martin van Bruinessen (eds). 2009. Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 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.
Islamicate Secularities: New Perspectives on a Contested Concept
Historical Social Research, 2019
Cite as: Dressler, Markus, Armando Salvatore, and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr. 2019. “Islamicate Secularities: New Perspectives on a Contested Concept,” Historical Social Research, 44 (3): 7-34. Abstract: In the colonial era, new distinctions and differentiations between religious and non-religious spheres took shape within inner-Islamic discourses, partly as a product of encounters with Western knowledge. This introduction conceptualizes these distinctions and differentiations in relation to Islam, drawing on Marshall Hodgson's concept of the Islamicate, which we employ for our heuristic notion of Islamicate secularities. It charts the paradigmatic conflicts that shape the contested fields of Islamic and secularity/secularism studies. The introduction discusses the epistemological and political context of these debates, and argues that theoretical and normative conflicts should not hinder further empirical inquiries into forms of secularity in Islamicate contexts. It also explores promising theoretical and methodological approaches for further explorations. Particular emphasis is laid on the historical trajectories and conditions, close in time or distant, that have played a role in the formation of contemporary Islamicate secularities.
Islam Under the Conditions of Modernity
2015
The article proposes a possible methodological perspective for conceptualizing Islam and modernity in the context of the dichotomy "traditional vs. modern". The author outlines the different images of Islam in their specific sociological profiles as related to (and stemming from) the canon of norms that constitute the Islamic community and construct community ties, the basic resource of which are religious values. A scrutiny of the modes of difference and otherness through the lense of neighbourhood reveals otherness to be a latent conflict factor susceptible to political mobilization and populist manipulation. The author identifies the problem fields that generate the clash between secularism and Islam.
This paper argues that the position of contemporary Muslim populist movements, with regard to the concept and scope of the state, stands in direct contradiction not only to Islamic values and beliefs, but is also contrary to political practices developed in historical Muslim societies. It further explores the extent to which religious beliefs and values were related to the political structure and public policy of the historical Muslim society. The paper contends that the political order that emerged under Islam was never perceived as an exclusively Muslim, but was constructed on the basis of universal principles that transcend sectarian divisions. The paper, therefore, concludes by underscoring the need to have a fresh Islamically-based conceptualization of political action and organization in ways that would help reclaim the moral core of social life, eroded with the advance of western secularism, without sacrificing the important principles of freedom and equality.