Modernity and Its Consequences

Pre-modern Reformers: the drive to recover original Islam.

Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) was a would-be reformer who critiqued the established legal traditions and the Sufi practices of his day, and called for a fresh return to the sources of law through ijtihad. His vision had little effect in his day, but it was revived in various forms by reformers in the 18th century:

• Muhammad Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab established a strict enforcement of a purified Shari`a in Arabia, which continues today in Saudi Arabia.
• Shah Wali Allah of Dehli, India, likewise called for a return to the Sunna and the Shari`a through ijtihad, though without the antipathy toward Sufi practices that characterized Ibn Taymiyya and Muhammad Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab.

Colonialism

European colonialism brought a number of challenges to Muslim societies, including dramatic economic changes, modern science and technologies, Christian missions, and secular parliamentary forms of government.

The case of India: The British began to operate in Bengal as rivals to existing landholders who paid allegiance to the Mughal empire, but they eventually became powerful enough to drop all pretence of submission to the Mughals, and openly conquered much of India. Initially they were organized as a strictly commercial enterprise that prevented missionary activity, but the the Evangelical revival movement in England convinced the British Parliament to force them to accept Christian missionaries in the areas under their control. Early missionaries such as William Carey launched the translation and printing of the Bible, and later missionaries such as Carl Pfander engaged in debates with Muslim scholars. The British found that they needed large numbers English-educated civil servants to operate their commercial, administrative, and judicial structures, so they established English schools that trained both Hindus and the more reluctant Muslims to fill government posts. This introduced modern science and Enlightenment thinking into the curriculum alongside studies in Indian languages and religions. Muslims disagreed sharply over how to respond: should they accept this training and seek government posts, or should they revive Islamic learning?

Four responses to colonialism and modernity

Secularism:

Adopt European social and governmental forms; relegate Islam to the private sphere.

Modernisms: Reforming Islam in line with modernity.

The modernist response to this question was to embrace modernity as essentially compatible with true Islam, and to reject traditional Islam (represented by the classical schools of theology and law) as a deviation from the dynamic rational and liberal spirit of Islam. Modernists deny that adherence to the interpretive principles of classical usul al-fiqh is necessary, and claim the right to go back and reinterpret the sources (the Qur'an and Sunna) for themselves, without being limited by the classical legal tradition.

In India, this approach was championed by Sayyid Ahmad Khan, who encouraged Muslims to get an English education and argued that the Qur'an could be reinterpreted as fully compatible with modern science.

Muhammad `Abduh launched a modernist movement in Egypt, pushing for the integration of European education and science with a reform-oriented vision of Islam. His disciples, however, tended to move either toward secularism (abandoning the effort to build society and government on an Islamic basis) or islamism. Read Muhammad `Abduh, "Religions and Human Progress: Their Culmination in Islam" (next-to-last item in the Coursepack, original pages 132-141), and answer the questions about Muhammad `Abduh in D2L.

{DAY 2}

Islamisms: Rebuilding society on a restored pristine Islam.

Like modernists, Islamists (also often called fundamentalists by analogy to Christian fundamentalists) inherited from Ibn Taymiyya and the Reformers of the 18th century the goal of recovering the original true Islam, but unlike modernists they held that this true Islam was the antithesis of modern Western values (though it is a basis for good science.) Like Modernists, Islamists deny that adherence to the interpretive principles of classical usul al-fiqh is necessary, and claim the right to go back and reinterpret the sources (the Qur'an and Sunna) for themselves, without being limited by the classical legal tradition - although they generally abide by that tradition more than Modernists do.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood gave the islamists a concrete institutional structure to further their efforts internationally. It came into violent conflict with secular Arab governments. Its most prominent spokesman was Sayyid Qutb, whose experience of confrontation with the secular Egyptian government led him to condemn all existing societies, Muslim as well as non-Muslim, as unislamic.

Read the chapter entitled "New Renaissance: The Viewpoint of the Muslim Brotherhood" (last item in the Coursepack, original pages 115-122). The introduction (in italics) is useful, but focus on the text in normal print, by Hasan al-Banna'. Answer the matching question on Hasan al-Banna' in D2L.

Traditionalism:

This response consists in defending classical Islamic law and institutions against the modern challenge. Traditionalists respond with scorn to the islamist vision of reform, which they regard as based on amateur Islamic scholarship. Traditionalists believe classical usul al-fiqh (legal theory) is an adequate method for continuing to adapt the classical Islamic legal system to changing circumstances.

(Note that we spoke earlier of Traditionalists like Ibn Hanbal, who rejected the speculative reasoning of kalam, and preferred to just quote the Qur'an and Sunna. Now we are using 'Traditionalism' to denote a different rejection - the rejection of secularist, modernist, and islamist challenges to traditional Islamic law.)

Also read Karen Armstrong, Islam: A Short History, ch. 5 (pp. 141-187).

Notes from class

We distinguished four Muslim responses to the Enlightenment and modernity that correspond very roughly to four Christian responses: