Islam, Modernity and the Concept of Progress (Islam, Pemodenan dan Konsep Kemajuan)

This paper aims to review definitions and scope of modernity and analyze it in the context of a specific religion, Islam. The paper then highlights the harmony between progress and Islam based on the historical examples from the glorious eras of Islamic civilization in Andalusia and the Abbasid caliphate, in which modernity and religion were complementary in producing the novel innovations of that time. Knowledge creation and technological advancements were strongly pursued during that time by numerous renowned Muslim scholars, intellectuals and philosophers. This paper then examines the current situation in the Muslim world. The majority of Muslim nations are backward, impoverished and stagnant due to rigidity and restrictions in political and intellectual freedom, in addition to gender inequality and discrimination. As the paper finds, these unprecedented qualities are not a part of Islamic teachings, but the consequential effect of post colonialism and the politicization of religion by certain squatters using Islam for political interests and purposes. Keywords: Modernity, Islam, Islamic Civilization and innovations, Muslim Spain, Abbasid Caliphate, Modernity today, Islam and modernity. Abstrak Penulisan ini bertujuan untuk mengulas definisi, dan skop kemodenan seta menganalisa hubungan antara modernisasi dengan agama iaitu, Islam. Terbukti pemodenan boleh wujud dengan keharmonian antara kemajuan dan Islam itu sendiri dengan mengaplikasikan contoh sejarah daripada zaman kegemilangan tamadun Islam seperti di Andalusia dan Abbasiyah dimana pemodenan dan agama saling berkait rapat antara satu sama lain untuk menghasilkan inovasi yang terbaik pada waktu itu. Penciptaan ilmu pengetahuan dan kemajuan teknologi tercetus dengan kelahiran ulama, ahli intelek dan ahli falsafah Muslim. Selain itu, bahagian berikut bagi penulisan ini mengkaji situasi masa kini di dunia Islam dimana majoriti negara Islam dikatakan mundur, dibelenggu kemiskinan dan berfikiran jumud disebabkan ketegasan dan pembatasan didalam kebebasan berpolitik dan intelek, kesaksamaan jantina dan diskriminasi. Penulisan ini menemui, sifat sifat negatif tersebut tercetus bukan berdasarkan daripada ajaran Islam, tetapi kesan daripada pasca penjajahan dan pempolitikan berlandaskan agama daripada puak tertentu yang menggunakan Islam atas tujuan kepentingan politik. Kata Kunci: Pemodenan, Islam, Tamadun Islam dan inovasi, Muslim Sepanyol, Khalifah Abbasiyah, Kemodenan hari ini, Islam dan pemodenan.

Islam and Modernity in Crosshairs of History

Static view of religion is a cause of concern in all religious communities because it not only gnaws at their dynamism, more often it tends to swing history back to the old life patterns which have lost their validity and moral force. On the other hand history moves forward and seeks its direction intuitively. So, traditional view of religion collides with the forces of history in futile effort to cease the torrential stream of time. Resultantly, time or history crush them or throw them in the yokes of slavery of others who entertain ever fresh and dynamic view of history and religion. Same went with Islam. With an advent of modernity after European renaissance when Europe collided horns with Islam, once all the Muslim world submerged in European colonialism.it forced Muslim intelligentsia on serious soul search and brought forth three schools of thought the traditionalist who strictly cling to tradition even if it had relevance to the emerging realities of history or not; the revivalists who seek assuage in pristine Islam and turn the tide of history back while modernists sensing new realities harness materieux of history for moral cause and go hand in hand with history. Modernity is also a departure from mythos to the rationale so the most crucial question of todays’ scholarship is whether Islam and modernity are compatible or poles apart in context of history.

Is Islam Compatible with Modernity? An Analysis of Modernity as Modern Civilization

The relation between Islam and modernity as modern civilization is frequently faced contradiction. The disclaimer of a secular state for instance, leads to the debate by which the articulation of some Muslims who reject it is much more than those who accept it. Another example is humanism such as religious freedom and capitalism, although the disclaimers of these two issues are softer than those who denied the nation-state. However, the conceptual analysis points out that Islam is compatible with modernity as modern civilization. The main reason is that Islam was first emerged as a critic against the previous religion that was not engage the social transformation for the Arab society before Islam. Islam is also encouraged contemporary thought and social reform with the concept of ishlah (reform) and tajdid (renewal). If this case is measured based on the dimension of modernity, it obvious that Islam Islam as a teaching/conceptual frame/mindset in this article does not have conflict with it. Islam is in line with the nation state, secular country or secularism itself, democracy as political system, rationalism and empirical science, and capitalism. This paper is expected to strengthen the Integration of Islam as society with the modernity as modern civilization in the East and West countries.

Modernity and interreligious dialogue. Difficulties posed by the ideological translation of religious categories

The relationship between Islam and Modernity is often explained in antagonistic terms. On the one hand, because Islam is a holistic system, where the political and religious spheres remain connected, resisting a modern definition of “religion”. On the other, because Modernity has been associated with the evolution of the liberal State and democracy, whose bases are deeply relativistic. Along these lines, we propose some arguments about the origin of this disagreement. To do this, we focus on the ideological reductionisms “religion” and “state” applied to the theological categories Dīn and dawla. The trace of this modern homologation can be traced through the historical connection of the West with the Islamic Arab world. Enlightened approaches and their ideal of progress found their best expression in reformist thinking. Since the 18th century, the solution to the problems derived from colonialism necessarily went through making the dogmatic foundations more flexible, injecting sceptical principles. The birth of this “political Islam” necessarily brought its “national” translation. The processes of construction of these states would feed the liberation movements, spreading for decades the deep wound of political violence and its export to the world. It is from this context that the Catholic Church has appealed to theological foundations as the only possible way to reverse the damage caused by geopolitics. Unfortunately, the states of opinion generated around this work divide, in the first place, Catholics. Throughout these pages, we will try to provide lines of reflection that add to our responsibility to generate a Christian conscience, open, reasonable and without interference, with respect to Islam.

From Traditional Islam to End-oriented Islam

There are three approaches to the discussion of the compatibility of Islam (or more precisely shari‘a and fiqh) with modernity among Shi‘ite Muslim thinkers in the past century and a half. Although the ‘Constant and Variable Perspective’ in its different expositions by Na’ini, Tabataba’i and Muhammad Baqir Sadr, is the most famous perspective of the compatibility of Islam and modernity, it has four serious problems. Ayatollah Khomeini’s Perspective of ‘Governmental or Expedient Fiqh’, which is the official policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, aside from its flexibility, encounters four problems too. The perspective of ‘End-Oriented Islam’ is the third approach that the author argues has four advantages. It has the capacity to give a new interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) in the modern world based on the spirit of Islam and the goals of the Qur’an, the Sunna (Tradition) of the Prophet. He finds the ‘End-Oriented Islam’ as a perfect perspective for the modern world.

The Principles of Compatibility between Islam and Modernity

This chapter examines the relationship of Islam and modernity as a collection of issues which includes human rights. Muslim reformists have brought together modernity and intellectualism on the one hand, with Islam on the other. In this intellectual and faith movement, human rights and divine obligation, individual freedom and social justice, collective wisdom and religious ethics, human rationality and the divine prophecy, peacefully coexist. The thinkers of reformist Islam have accepted the Islamic message together with the jewel of modernity. The characteristics of reformist Islam or the principles of the compatibility of Islam and modernity are as follows. First principle: re-reading the texts of religion on the basis of its higher ends; Second principle: the high place of reason in the understanding of religion; Third principle: the permanent right to choose how to live; Fourth principle: the possibility of legislation and public policy on the basis of religious values.