Modernist And Fundamentalist Debates In Islam

With resurgent interest in the Muslim world and in particular political Islam, this collection of translated essays by major Muslim thinkers from the Middle East and South Asia demonstrates the ongoing and contentious debate between modernizers seeking to adapt Western ways and fundamentalists who rejected them. From Jamal al-Din al-Afghani in the nineteenth-century to Ayatollah Khomeini in the twentieth, the selections provide an opportunity to examine a diversity of Muslim thinkers thoughts on important topics like jurisprudence, politics, relations with the west, and women in their own words.

Also available in paperback as "Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam"During the second half of the nineteenth century, a group of prominent Muslim theologians began to critically examine classical conceptions and methods of jurisprudence and devised a new approach to Islamic theology. This new approach was nothing short of an outright rebellion against Islamic orthodoxy, displaying an astonishing compatibility with nineteenth century Enlightenment-era thought. In the 20th century this modernist movement declined, to be replaced by another cultural episode, characterized by the growing power of Islamic fundamentalism. This volume looks at these two very different approaches to Islam. The editors have selected the most prominent Islamic thinkers of modernist and fundamentalist viewpoints, diverse nationalities, and from both the late decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the 20th century. The writers discuss their own views with regard to such issues as philosophical and political perceptions of democracy, the state, the history of Islam, women's rights, personal lifestyle, education, and the West.

Also available in paperback as "Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam"During the second half of the nineteenth century, a group of prominent Muslim theologians began to critically examine classical conceptions and methods of jurisprudence and devised a new approach to Islamic theology. This new approach was nothing short of an outright rebellion against Islamic orthodoxy, displaying an astonishing compatibility with nineteenth century Enlightenment-era thought. In the 20th century this modernist movement declined, to be replaced by another cultural episode, characterized by the growing power of Islamic fundamentalism. This volume looks at these two very different approaches to Islam. The editors have selected the most prominent Islamic thinkers of modernist and fundamentalist viewpoints, diverse nationalities, and from both the late decades of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the 20th century. The writers discuss their own views with regard to such issues as philosophical and political perceptions of democracy, the state, the history of Islam, women's rights, personal lifestyle, education, and the West.

With resurgent interest in the Muslim world and in particular political Islam, this collection of translated essays by major Muslim thinkers from the Middle East and South Asia demonstrates the ongoing and contentious debate between modernizers seeking to adapt Western ways and fundamentalists who rejected them. From Jamal al-Din al-Afghani in the nineteenth-century to Ayatollah Khomeini in the twentieth, the selections provide an opportunity to examine a diversity of Muslim thinkers thoughts on important topics like jurisprudence, politics, relations with the west, and women in their own words.

A comparative historical analysis of the social changes that have affected the Islamic world in modern times & of the failure to achieve consensus on important social issues such as the form of government, the status of women, national identity & rule making.

This book studies the complex relationship of religion to modernity and argues that modernity should be understood as the consequence, not the cause, of the new intellectual landscape of the 19th century. Shows how the adoption of historicism in the 19th century engendered Islamic modernism as a theological reform movement.

Islam is a burning topic in modern scholarship and contemporary world affairs. It is a subject poorly understood by Western observers, and in this book Professor Montgomery Watt takes a significant step towards its demystification. Montgomery Watt examines the crucial questions of traditional world-view and self-image which dominate the thinking of Muslims today. This traditional self-image causes them to perceive world events in a different perspective from Westerners – a fact not always appreciated by the foreign ministries of Western powers. Professor Watt presents a brilliant and critical analysis of the traditional Islamic self-image, showing how it distorts Western modernism and restricts Muslims to a peripheral role in world affairs. In a scholarly and incisive way, he traces this harmful image to its origins in the medieval period and then to the traumatic exposure of Muslims to the West in modern times. He argues that Muslim culture is suffering from a dangerous introspection, and in his closing chapters presents a constructive criticism of contemporary Islam, aimed at contributing to a truer, more realistic Islamic self-image for today. First published in 1988.

Voicing at least two Muslim opinions in each area of debate, this book challenges the idea that all Muslims think identically. While Muslims and Modernity is designed primarily for use an undergraduate textbook, reference to accessible Internet material,