Modern Islam

What is Modern or Modernity?

– The word modern comes from the Latin words modo, meaning just now, and modus, meaning now, but the
term modernity has a stronger meaning.

– 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. 

– 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
– the term modernity was firstly coined in the 19th century, the first known use of the adjective modern was
in the late 16th century.

– it was used to distinguish the Christian era from the pagan age. However, the term did not gain widespread
currency until the 17th century.

– At the heart of modernity stand cultural and intellectual self-realization, self-consciousness and re-birth,

– 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
 Colonization & Dilemma of Muslims
– The initial emergence of the concepts of tradition, modern and modernity had nothing to do with Islamic scholarship
and the world of Islam.

– 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.

– 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.

– 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
– The Muslim dilemma thus revolved around the idea of universal modernity 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 stressing that all inventions (in religion)
are (religious) innovations (bid'ah), and each innovation is a misguidance, and every misguidance is Hell-
bound

– 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 societies

– nor completely turning it down on the grounds that it was utterly un-Islamic and bent on destroying Islamic
tradition and heritage
– 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”

– 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.

– 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
 Modernity of Islam
– 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.

– 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.

– 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 Sympatric enough.

– 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.

– 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.
 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.

– 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.
– 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.

– 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.

– 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 .
– 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.

– 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.

– 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.

– 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 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
– 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.

– 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, 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.

– Despite these heinous claims 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.
– 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’.

– 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

– 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.

– 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 on 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.