Modern Islam

The word modern comes from the Latin words modo, meaning just now,
and modus, meaning now, but the term modernity has a stronger
meaning, suggesting the possibility of a new beginning based on human
autonomy and the consciousness of the legitimacy of the present time.
Modernity is also said to imply that everything is open to query and to
testing; everything is subject to rational scrutiny and refuted by
argument. While the term modernity was firstly coined in the 19th
century, the first known use of the adjective modern was in the late 16th
century.
However, according to some, the first use of the term modern goes back
to the early Christian Church in the 5th century when it was used to
distinguish the Christian era from the pagan age. However, the term did
not gain widespread currency until the 17th century.
Modernity is the quality of being modern, contemporary or up-to-date,
implying a modern or contemporary way of living or thinking. Modernity
is often depicted as a period marked by a questioning or rejection of
tradition and its normative uniformity as well as structural homogeneity,
in favor of such novel or burgeoning standards and systems as
rationalism, personal freedom, individualism, social, scientific and
technological progress, industrialization, professionalization,
secularization, representative democracy, public education, etc.
At the heart of modernity stand cultural and intellectual self-realization,
self-consciousness and re-birth, that is, deliverance and liberation from
the fetters of Middle Ages stained with ignorance and superstition, and
when the voice of religious authorities was imposed over personal
experience and rational activity.
Hence, the appellations of some of the major cultural, intellectual, social
and philosophical currents of the day, especially those of the early
modern period from the 15th to the 18th centuries, featured such catchy
terms as re-birth, reason, enlightenment, discovery, revolution, etc., so
as to unmistakably draw attention to the omnipresent exuberance.

The initial emergence of the concepts of tradition, modern and modernity

had nothing to do with Islamic scholarship and the world of Islam.
However, since one of the most important features of the early European
modern period was its globalized character, the Islamic world, which
never ceased its close cultural, social and military interactions with the
West, was quickly affected by the large-scale changes that were
sweeping across Europe.
The matter was further exacerbated by the fact that while the Western
world was in its dramatic cultural and intellectual ascendancy, the
Islamic world was in its as dramatic and swift decadence. One of the
most painful corollaries of those developments was the subsequent
colonization of Muslim Land by the leading Western Powers. Thus,
insatiable quest for modernity in Europe turned for Muslims into
colonization, and the latter soon became a lengthy process of
Westernization of Islamic personality and culture
Consequently, there has been a tendency in the Islamic world since the
late 19th century to explore more systematically the prevalent calamity
and try to put forth some comprehensive, authoritative and well-
structured solutions.
As far as Islam, Muslims and the Muslim mind were concerned,
however, the biggest dilemma posed by modernity was that those new
experiences of the world led to the development of a new sense of self,
of subjectivity and individuality, which in turn led to fundamental changes
in the understanding of the relationships between man and the
supernatural, man and the natural world, man and his self, and between
man and other people.
 In other words, the development of modernity was coupled with the
development of new ideas, thoughts, values, standards, beliefs, lifestyles
and tendencies. It stood for the creation of new ideologies and
worldviews that called for a rapture, a revolution in time, and a break
with the past and its principally outmoded ideologies and worldviews.

According to Ron Eyermon,

"modernity referred to a world constructed anew through the active and
conscious intervention of actors and the new sense of self that such
active intervention and responsibility entailed. In modern society the
world is experienced as a human construction, an experience that gives
rise both to an exhilarating sense of freedom and possibility and to a
basic anxiety about the openness of the future."
The Muslim dilemma thus revolved around the idea of universal
modernity and into the fabric of ailing Islamic culture and civilization
without compromising the transcendent values, teachings and principles
of Islam and its worldview in the process.
The prepositions that were made for of such undertakings were torn
between the unavoidability of the spread of the spill of modernity and the
Islamic insistent denunciation of new inventions in religion, stressing that
all inventions (in religion) are (religious) innovations (bid'ah), and each
innovation is a misguidance, and every misguidance is Hell-bound.
However, it swiftly became obvious that striking a delicate balance
between the two poles was the best and in the long-term most realistic
answer. Neither fully embracing and incorporating modernity without
distilling and Islamizing it, and adjusting it to the subtle religious, socio-
political and economic requirements of Islamic societies, nor completely
turning it down on the grounds that it was utterly un-Islamic and bent on
destroying Islamic tradition and heritage, was the right and feasible way.
Dr Mahathir bin Mohamed has made the point that there can be no
separation between secular and religious knowledge because:
all knowledge, all life, is encompassed by Islam. It is interesting that so
prominent and successful a Muslim leader as Dr Mahathir had to tread a
fine line: advocating on the one hand an independent and progressive
Muslim attitude to acquiring the widest possible knowledge, while
placating the traditional sensibilities by insisting on the moral rectitude of
learning as the only way to protect the faith.

The whole panoply of modern knowledge and technology is acceptable,

but its Western manifestations are to be avoided if all they achieve is the
perpetuation of the Muslim world's dependence on Western
developments. A fundamental problem here is that which bedevils
Western societies: can the use of and reliance upon new technologies
alter perceptions, change desires, force social changes? Do the people
who create and maintain the new technologies become the new high-
priests.

All knowledge and technology entail more than the physical and
objective characteristics; they also contain the moral questions about
how the new technologies should be used, what controls should be
placed on them and who should be responsible for the implementation of
the regulations. These are moral questions the simply secular authorities
cannot answer, if only because utilitarian arguments lead us only to
numerical quantities not qualitative priorities.

There is a very real danger involved if Muslims are not critical enough of
Western world perceptions and if they take things for granted. There
needs to be an increase in criticism in the light of Islam criteria. Without
a heightened critical faculty Muslims are in danger of considering
"Islam as a partial view of things to be complemented by some modern
ideology rather than as a complete system and perspective in itself.”
Being modern does not mean being Western but it does mean that some
degree of secular knowledge will have to be given far greater
prominence in Muslim epistemologies.
Even the West has to understand Islam; not because Islam is the next
great threat, but because Islam contains so many ideas and moral
values that the West, for all its rampant secularism, still shares. The
West must also recognize the diversity of Muslim experiences across the
world.
Muslim societies do not only suffer from 'Islamic' problems; they suffer
the same problems long familiar in the West: political, economic,
ecological, social and moral development. As such, these are shared
human experiences and the beneficial resolutions: in science,
technology, medicine, education should also be shared equitably.
If Western nations believe in the value of their defining concepts:
individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality,
liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets, and the separation of
church and state. then they will have to be shared through sympathetic
dialogue, not forced upon others.
The idea of contending world views which define the good states from
the bad states will have to be scrapped. It has not worked in the West's
relationships with China, where the hypocrisy of the West's stance on
human rights has been highlighted by the West's attitudes towards
Algeria and Bosnia.
Western support, especially that by the United States, for the
authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Pakistan while
denigrating other exclusive Islamic authorities in Iran, Syria, Iraq, and the
Sudan, does not generate confidence among Muslim societies around
the world.
Western nations supported the Mujahideen in Afghanistan yet helped to
oppress Palestinians through support for Israel. The continued existence
of Israel is not negotiable, but the ways in which Western nations have
treated the concerns and sensibilities of the Palestinians have not been
sympathetic enough. Neither have the more aggressive Muslim attitudes
helped the situation.
Just as Western societies must reassess their ideas about the
superiority of their ideals, so too must Muslim societies understand that
their traditions need reinterpretation.
It is pointless for the ulama to keep on insisting that Islam is not simply a
different tradition: it is a superior tradition. In this light, Western ideas are
not only inferior, they are inapplicable and irrelevant to Islam and Muslim
society.
Islam and the West have much to offer each other. Nothing productive
will develop while the dominant attitudes are those of suspicion, bigotry,
and fear. Islam once played an essential role in preserving knowledge
during the ignorance and barbarism of Europe's 'dark ages'.
The rediscovery and refinement of this knowledge helped to set Europe
on the road to its modern dominance of science and technology. The
grip of worldly and corrupted religious leaders was broken in Europe.
At the same time the suppression of ijtihad and rational dissent within
Islamic societies by similar sorts of rulers caused the decline of the
Islamic world, permitting the Europeans to indulge in imperialism and
colonialism from the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.
A sympathetic exchange of knowledge, flowing this time from Western
societies to Islamic societies, may well revivify Islam and permit Islamic
societies to enjoy a more creative and significant role in the modern
world.
Simple material transfers are not enough. There has to be a reworking of
the central ideas in both societies. It may seem an obvious point, but in
the bigotry of the religious confrontation it is necessary to emphasize
that non-Muslims must recognize as a fact God's revelation of truth to
Muhammad (S.A.W)
If we can accept our own monotheistic traditions and the role of
prophets we must recognize the genuine prophetic claims of others. We
can critically examine the traditions but we must do so from recognition
 and knowledge not from denigration and outright rejection. Islam offers
much to Western societies presently dominated by the anarchic
demands of rampant individualism, materialism, consumerism and
secularism. Islam has preserved the central position of moral values as
the defining character of human society and not only that, Islam has also
been the reason for the evolving of the West as well.
It was Adelard of Bath who ventured to the Near East in search of the
scientific riches pouring out of cities like Antioch, Baghdad or Cairo,
whose libraries held hundred thousand books at a time when the best
European libraries housed, at most, several dozen.
In the frame of a dynamic scientific and intellectual tradition, the scholars
of Islam could measure the earth's circumference, a feat not matched in
the West for eight hundred years; they discovered algebra; were adept
at astronomy and navigation, developed the astrolabe and other
astronomical instruments, translated all the Greek scientific and
philosophical texts, including the whole corpuses of Aristotle, Galen,
Ptolemy, etc.
They made paper, produced lenses and mirrors, and developed
theoretical as well as practical branches of knowledge. Without them,
and the knowledge that travellers like Adelard brought back to the West,
Europe would in all likelihood have been a very different place over the
last millennium along with the following contributions:

 The ability to accurately tell time and determine dates. Here, the
chief instrument was the astrolabe, the most powerful analog computer
before the modern age.
 The art of alchemy, forerunner of modern chemistry.
 Trigonometry and spherical geometry – invaluable for making
maps, navigation, and locating cities.
 Algebra, geometry, trigonometry and our contemporary number
system.
 Star tables and almanacs capable of predicting celestial events,
like lunar eclipses, with considerable accuracy.
 Our modern technical lexicon: from azimuth to zenith,
from alcohol to zero.
 Many of the foods we eat – apricots, oranges, artichokes, hard
wheat for pasta, to name but a few.
 Natural philosophy, scientific cosmology and optics.
 And, most important of all, the notion that religion and science,
faith and reason, could coexist; this gave medieval Western intellectuals
‘permission' to explore the universe without impinging on the majesty of
God.

And Here is the list of the protagonists of great and intellect and
knowledge from whom the west benefited from just as much as Muslims
did:

 Al-Khwarizmi: Mathematician and astronomer, born around 783

near the Aral Sea in modern-day Uzbekistan. He was affiliated with the
House of Wisdom, and his star tables and works on arithmetic, algebra,
the astrolabe, and the Hindu-Arabic numerals profoundly influenced the
West.
 Al-Mamun: Abbasid caliph from 813 to 833. He took a direct
interest in science and philosophy and actively promoted scholars at the
House of Wisdom and elsewhere.
 Ibn Sina (Avicenna): 11th-century polymath and leading Muslim
philosopher and medical scholar. His influence on Western culture lasted
for centuries, in various fields, from philosophy to medicine.
 Ibn Rushd (Averroes): The famous Andalusian philosopher Abu 'l-
Walid Muhammed Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd. He flourished in Cordoba and
Marrakech in the 12th century. He exerted an enormous influence on
Christian and Jewish thought, primarily as a commentator on Aristotle,
and also as an original author in philosophy, logic, astronomy and
medicine.
 Al-Idrisi (Dreses): North African geographer and scientific director
of King Roger II of Sicily's World Map project, completed in 1154.
 Adelard of Bath: Pioneering explorer of the Islamic learning, who
brought the wonders of geometry, astronomy and other fields to the
medieval West.
 Frederick II: The Holy Roman Emperor and enthusiastic proponent
of Arabic culture. He was patron of Michael Scot and underwrote
translations of Ibn Rushd's commentaries on the Aristotelian corpus.
These examples clearly falsify the claims of the west that Islam is a
regressive religion which is one the problems faced even now as people
are unware of the Islamic history and its contributions to the world not only
the west and ignorant but open to the idea of what Muslims are portrayed
as through the media.

Francis Lamand, President of the French Association 'Islam and the

West', considers that:
"Islam can contribute to the rebirth, in the West, of three essential
values: the sense of community, in a part of the world that has become
too individualistic; the sense of the sacred; and the legal sense. This can
be the contribution of Islam to Western societies"
In return the West has to control its arrogance and reassess its stance
towards the rest of the world. The notion of there even being a 'rest of
the world', from whatever perception, is something we all have to
change.
While the Muslims need not have any undue aversion to Islamic tradition
because Islam was never a cause of any darkness or ignorance
chapters in Muslim history. There were no dark ages in Islamic
civilization.
Such a thing would be an anomaly in a religion of ultimate light, truth and
guidance for humankind as Islam is. On the contrary, Islam was the root-
cause of all goodness that originated in Islamic civilization and from
which not only Muslims, but also non-Muslims, benefitted. It was only
certain Muslims' recurring misconduct that time after time held up the
progression of Islamic civilization, in the end causing it to come to a
standstill.
The problems thus were never Islam's, but rather Muslims'. The same
holds true for the latest conundrum with regard to the notions of tradition
and modernity and what relationship ought to exist between them.
In the same vein, Muslims need not have any unwarranted or worship-
like reverence for Western modernity crusade because, in essence,
conceptually and epistemologically it was so conceived as to correspond
to the immediate Western needs created by the Western Middle Ages or
Medieval period Not the word of God.
Modern science must be studied in its philosophical foundations from the
Islamic point of view, in order to reveal for Muslims exactly what is the
value system upon which it is based and how this value system
opposes, complements, or threatens the Islamic value system which for
Muslims comes from God and not simply merely human forms of
knowledge.
which are based by definition upon human reason and the five external
senses, and specifically denying any other possible avenue for authentic
knowledge. Muslim thinkers must stop speaking of modern physics as
not being Western but international, while hiding its provincial
foundations grounded in a particular philosophy and value system
related to a specific period of not global, but European history.
in the creation of an authentic Islamic science, Syed Hossein Nasr
strongly advised that "the first necessary step is to stop the worship-like
attitude towards modern science and technology which is prevalent
today in much of the Muslim world . . . This trend must be reversed and
the whole of modern science and technology be seen not with a sense of
inferiority complex as if a frog were looking into the eyes of a viper, but
from an independent Islamic worldview whose roots are sunk in Allah's
revelation and which could be compared to the case of an eagle who
roams the horizons and studies the movements of the viper without
being mesmerized by it. In the light of this worldview, the whole notion of
decadence in Islamic civilization, especially as far as it concerns the
sciences, must be re-examined.”
 Islam & Modern-day challenges

The primary challenge faced by Islam is the Jihad undertaken by

Mujahedeen’s across the globe. The Jihadists consider west as their
mortal enemy and go to all the measures in combating with them. As a
result of all their activities, people of the world consider Islam as an
intolerant and destructive religion that only accepts the existence of
Muslims in the world and has no tolerance for people from other beliefs
and religions.
Moreover, this image of intolerance of Islam complimented with
Jihadists activities make people think that Islam relies on the force of
power to eradicate all those who resist Islam or are not Muslims.
The second challenge that Islam faces is its impression as a regressive
religion. People who have limited knowledge of Islam, especially the
people from West think that Islam is a regressive and backward religion
that does not adapt and sticks to the teachings of Quran that was
revealed 1400 years ago.
Muslims believe that Islam is a universal religion and the teachings of
Quran are also universal as well. This is what gives rise to another
allegation where people think that Quran is not universal, for them Quran
is just a book with religious instructions and it has no other implications
regarding any matter of the world.
Allah himself challenges critics that Qur'an is not composed by any
human but is the word of God (Allah), the Glorified, and Exalted. As he
(subhanutallah) states in the following verse in the Holy Quran:
"Or do they say, 'He fabricated the Message'? Nay, they have no
faith! Let them then produce a recital like unto it -If it be they speak
the Truth" (Al Tur 52:33-34).
This challenge is given not only to deniers at the time of its revelation but
is addressed for all times to those who deny its divine origins. It was
repeated three more times in Mecca and for the last time in Medina

Moreover, further to this allegation people also attribute the Muslim

association and affiliation with Quran as a source of Muslims being
backward and knowing nothing about the contemporary world. If that
were true then Adelard of Bath would have never visited the scholars of
Islam.

Economic frustration and unequal opportunities are fertile breeding

grounds for dissent and protest. Equally important is the failure of most
Muslim governments to confront the demands of general education.
"Modernity, the circumstance of being 'modern', is, in a central sense,
inescapable. It is the necessary context for every tolerably well-informed
life-journey undertaken in the contemporary world".

There are Muslim intellectuals working to understand what it means to

be a Muslim in the modern world, but they do not receive the
prominence given to the extremists in Western reports.
Western media are more interested in the violent and emotional than
they are in quiet, but deeply significant, debates about the eternal values
that remain, despite the anarchic individualism of Western communities,
the essence of being human.
Not only are Muslim intellectuals under pressure from the conservative
elements of their own societies, they are not receiving the recognition
and support they deserve from the West. Yet it is at this level of ideas
and reassessments that Muslim leaders will have to convert the
modernization of their societies into general acceptance.
The renaissance of ijtihad will be needed to reinterpret the principles of
Islam, to retain the critical moral core while jettisoning the dubious
accretions of traditional and worldly Muslim authorities.
Development investment in Muslim countries is slow simply because
investors are put off by the more extremist agitations and the
perceptions in the West about Islamic legal proscriptions of such
financial mechanisms as interest. Muslim investors appear quite happy
to send their money into the non-Muslim economies, where greater
profits are available and the political and social circumstances are much
more settled.
In other cases, where people are trying to help their communities they
often encounter problems from unlikely sources. The Grameen Bank in
Bangladesh has been lending small sums of money, mostly to rural
women so that they can engage in small enterprises, but also to
collective groups.
The sums are small and the interest is fixed, with the principal being
repaid first and the interest calculated on the diminishing principal.
Twenty per cent interest per year still seems high, but it is tiny when
compared with the twenty per cent per month or ten per cent per day
demanded by the traditional money-lenders, or the compound interest at
Bangladesh's commercial banks.
The Grameen Bank lends money to people who would not be eligible in
the normal commercial sense. People are helped to determine the best
way to satisfy their needs and are helped by the bank's officers in the
villages.
The Grameen Bank goes out to its clients and it permits the good sense
and honesty of its clients to prevail: it has a recovery rate of some 98%.
The bank faces conflict from the traditional money-lenders, the
commercial banks which claim that the scheme is too small to create the
economic growth necessary in Bangladesh, and from the Muslims who
see the scheme emancipating women in the villages. The bank fulfils the
ideals of Islamic thinking but is attacked by established interest groups
defending their interpretation of Islamic practice.
The main danger arises if Muslims accept the more extreme view of the
difference of Islam and the insistence on establishing 'the third way'. If
everything Western is to be discarded, then the creative and productive
dynamism inherent in Islamic traditions will be suppressed yet again.

Is Islamic resurgence giving enough attention to the challenges of

poverty and hunger, disease and illiteracy? Have Islamic resurgent’s
gone past, or are they still stuck on, their rhetoric regarding education
and knowledge, science and technology, politics and administration,
economics and management in their preferred Islamic order? To what
extent have Islamists become pre-occupied with forms and symbols,
rituals and practices? Do they regard laws and regulations in a static
rather than a dynamic manner? Is there a tension between the
extremists' positions and the principles of the Quran and sunnah about
the roles of women in society and the place of minorities in Muslim
societies? The moral question is at the heart of the matter.

Fazlur Rahman stated that Islam needs:

"some first-class minds who can interpret the old in terms of the new as
regards substance and turn the new into the service of the old as
regards ideals”
Can the modernists who want modernization without Westernization
expect to realis their hopes? There is evidence enough in Western
society that modernization, with all its technological developments, has
radically changed values by putting traditional attitudes under pressure
and then instituting a new ethic.

Untrammeled economic growth and development has resulted in

consumerism, institutionalized selfishness, ill-gotten wealth, rising
expectations, laxity in sexual behaviors, the dissolution of the family,
essentially independent electronic media, the influx of foreigners and
foreign values, the materialism of modern science and technology and
greater amounts of secularism.
The true message of religion is peace and guidance for the humanity.
However, at present it has been alleged of fanaticism, extremism,
regression, violence and so on.
In short, the true teachings of Islam are full with love, peace, learning
and progression. It’s the followers of Islam who don’t have enough
knowledge about Islam and some Westerns who are not objective in
their approach when it comes to Islam that has put a negative
impression of Islam in front of the world.