Islam and Modernity Islam KEY ISSUES AND DEBATES Edited by Muhammad Khalid Masud, Armando Salvatore and Martin van Bruinessen 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. and 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 Modernity 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. Key Features • Each chapter contains an overview of relevant secondary literature and concludes with a summary of the key ideas presented and a set of questions • Contributing authors include some of the best-known academics from various disciplines Bruinessen and Martin van Armando Salvatore in the field presenting state-of-the-art scholarship in their specialised areas Edited by Muhammad Khalid Masud, Edited Muhammad Khalid Masud is Chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology in Islamabad. His recent publications include the edited volumes Travellers in Faith, Studies on Tablighi Jama’at Islam and (2000) and Leading Muslim Intellectuals of Eighteenth Century India (in Urdu, 2008). Armando Salvatore is Associate Professor of Sociology of Culture and Communication at the Oriental Studies University, Naples. Among his most recent books are The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism, Islam (2007) and Public Islam and the Common Good (co-edited with Dale F. Eickelman, 2004). Martin van Bruinessen is Professor of the Comparative Study of Modernity Contemporary Muslim Societies at Utrecht University. His publications include Kurdish Ethno-Nationalism versus Nation-Building States (2000) and Sufism and the ‘Modern’ in Islam (co-edited with Julia D. Howell, 2007). KEY ISSUES AND DEBATES ISBN 978 0 7486 3793 5 Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh E EH8 9LF dinburgh www.euppublishing.com Edited by Muhammad Khalid Masud, Jacket image: iStockphoto Jacket design: www.paulsmithdesign.com Armando Salvatore and Martin van Bruinessen Islam and Modernity Islam and Modernity Key Issues and Debates Edited by Muhammad Khalid Masud, Armando Salvatore and Martin van Bruinessen Edinburgh University Press © in this edition Edinburgh University Press, 2009 © in the individual contributions is retained by the authors Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11/13pt Monotype Baskerville by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 3792 8 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 3793 5 (paperback) The right of the contributors to be identifi ed as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 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. Sufi sm, ‘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 develop- ing 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 litera- ture 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 delib- erations 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 ques- tions 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 specifi c aspects of their social and political dynamics. The four chapters in the third part, ‘Debating Modernity’, survey how Muslim scholars and intellectuals have per- ceived 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 ten- sions 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. Preface vii 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 prima- rily 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 conten- tious issues being debated concerns the idea of the uniqueness and singularity of Western modernity versus the notion of inherently multiple modernities unfold- ing 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