Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur’an

TH E F O R C E S of modernisation have brought unprecedenteddisruption and change to Muslim societies during the twen-

tieth century. Indigenous to Western historical development, theylargely have been perceived as alien elements in the Muslimexperience, and the changes brought by them as enforced fromwithout. Even when such changes were welcomed, Muslims’ rela-tion to the modern was rendered profoundly ambivalent by theirexperience of the imperialist project, with which it was inextri-cably linked. The old and the ‘traditional’ thus survived the intro-duction of the new and the ‘modern’, leading to a state ofcontinuous tension in Muslim societies. As the relationship withthe self-past became problematised and cultural dignity wascompromised, Islamic thought in the twentieth century itselfbecame a discourse of crisis.

The responses of Muslim thinkers to the challenges posed bymodernity, and to its philosophical underpinnings and over-whelming effects,1 provide one example of the ways in whichadherents of the great religious traditions have dealt with moder-nity, and how they deal with change more generally.2 At the heartof these responses is a struggle to define the place of the sacredand that of human reason, and the role and implications of acommitment to transcendence. In facing the inexorable forces ofrationalism, liberalism and secularisation radiating from the West,Muslim thinkers have elaborated disparate responses, justifiedthrough the resort to Islamic tradition. Tradition is recruitedeither to legitimise change, or to defend against perceived

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innovation and to preserve threatened values. Consequently,tradition itself becomes the very substance of change.3 Reflectingthe absence of any level of consensus in Islamic thought in thetwentieth century, Muslim thinkers have become polarisedbetween two extreme types. There are those who argue from adefence of tradition for a comprehensive rejection of modernWestern influences, and the ‘return’ to a ‘pure’ Islamic culturalmode: this is commonly accompanied by a utilitarian stance vis-à-vis the material and technological products of modernity. Others,in contrast, start from the embrace of Western modernity (orspecific contemporary frameworks or worldviews generated by it),and radically remould tradition to justify this.4

Late twentieth-century thinkers of the latter tendency havecaught the attention of Western academic and media observers inrecent years, against a backdrop dominated by the successes, fail-ures and radicalisation of Islamist forces in the Muslim arena. Whilerejecting traditional Islamic thought outright as inadequate to thedemands of the modern context, these thinkers also repudiate thenumerous shades of Islamist formulation. They advance their ownprojects as appeals – and potential contributions – towards a renais-sance in Islamic cultural and intellectual life, and progress andreform in the material, social and political conditions of Muslimcountries. Their political ideas are often close to the heart of theliberal tradition, based on reason and values of freedom, liberty anddemocracy. Calling for detachment of the entire public spherefrom the purview of religion, they often project the Qur’an –Islam’s foundational text – as a source of general ethical guidelines,rather than the answer to all human issues. Reflecting their expo-sure to Western culture and intellectual life, their own approach tothis text and its meanings is often informed by contemporary intel-lectual trends and critical methods.

A selection of such thinkers from diverse national and culturalbackgrounds, and their intellectual projects, form the subject ofthis volume. As Muslims constitute increasingly diverse readingcommunities around the foundational text, projects of the kindadvanced by such thinkers might be expected to multiply incoming years. Muslims thus increasingly occupy a growing variety

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of cultural and intellectual settings, and participate in everwidening and diversified networks. They increasingly contributeto the global debate on the hermeneutical quest for meaning, andfunction as Western scholars, breaking down boundaries andassumed dichotomies.5 This is one reason for studying these proj-ects. At the same time, study of such projects highlights salientaspects of Islamic thought and Muslim experience in the twen-tieth century, especially as this moves into and is viewed from thevantage point of the early twenty-first century. Three majorthemes in particular are illustrated by these thinkers and theirprojects, and form the focus of this introductory chapter: () Theydemonstrate the continuing validity for contemporary Islamicthought of the problematic of ‘Islam and the West’ or ‘Islam andmodernity’. While these formulae may be somewhat jaded, andcan be legitimately critiqued and deconstructed on many fronts,6

they continue to capture a vital debate in Muslim thinking againstthe background of the long and complicated history that hasbound Muslims to the West, and vice versa. While several of thethinkers studied offer responses, if only implicitly, to this prob-lematic, their own projects at the same time illustrate a particularmode in the internalisation of Western or modern ideas andconcepts in contemporary Muslim discourses. () These thinkersexemplify the fragmentation and diffusion of intellectualauthority in contemporary Muslim societies. They reflect theexpanding multiplicity of voices and unprecedented uncertaintyconcerning who speaks for Islam, engendered by the cumulativeimpact of modernisation on traditional concepts and modes ofintellectual authority. () These projects highlight the absence ofconsensus concerning the purpose and methods of Islamicreform and its legitimate boundaries. Several of the thinkersstudied offer responses, again at times implicitly, to this funda-mental question, and it is in this context specifically that theirviews concerning the Qur’an come into play. In this respect, theirprojects also illustrate the continued centrality of the Qur’an (anddiscourses constructed on its basis) to contemporary Muslimdebates and politics, as the ultimate legitimising text of theIslamic tradition.

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Before considering these themes in turn, as with all collectedworks observations concerning the approach of this volume andassociated questions are in order.

Reflections on approach and some key questions

Any discussion of Muslim intellectual life in the twentieth centurymust take into account the defining context of modernisation,with its dislocating effects on structural, economic, societal, polit-ical and cultural realities in Muslim countries. Without theseprofound transformations, the unparalleled change on everyfront, and the problems this has generated, the projects studiedhere would hardly have been possible, and there is much to begained from viewing them as products of these changes. Theyform an intrinsic part of the evolving Muslim discursive arena,shaped by the nation-state and its associated discourses, colonialand post-colonial trends, the Islamic sahwa (revival) and itsimpacts, and processes of globalisation.

Reflecting this, the present volume eschews an exclusivelytextually based approach, aspiring to strike a balance betweenanalysis of the main texts and ideas studied on the one hand andexploration of their multiple contexts on the other. Contributingauthors were encouraged to take into consideration thinkers’personal and professional trajectories, and to examine thinkersand texts within the contexts of their origination and develop-ment, paying particular attention to national and ideologicaldimensions. The essays collected here ultimately reflect theirauthors’ own preferences and interests, however, and the degreeof attention to contextual matters hence varies widely from one toanother. Nevertheless, it remains an essential dimension in theattempt to position the thinkers studied, to understand whatdrives them to produce their texts, and to illuminate reactions tothese. For example, certain of these thinkers directly or implicitlycritique Muslim regimes for their privileging of Islamists and theircapitulation to Islamist demands in a bid to pre-empt their effec-tiveness as vehicles of dissent. They also criticise these regimes fortheir failure to foster democracy, nurture civil society, or respect

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human rights. Official postures concerning their texts (andconcerning attacks on these by other actors) must thus be under-stood in terms of the endeavour by states to manage both Islamistpressures and the force of a public opinion, especially amongyounger generations, considerably under the sway of Islamistideas.

Out of further consideration for the multiplicity andcomplexity of the contexts of their production, the presentvolume also aspires to avoid as far as possible the imposition of asingle preconstituted category or label on the projects studied.Thinkers studied here engage in widely scattered fields of activity.Were they to be asked many, if not all, might not wish to identifythemselves with some or all of the others. Subsuming them undera single label would obscure their diversity and distort their indi-viduality, each of which forms a significant dimension of thisstudy.7 Underlining this, they are approached as individual voicesin specific contexts: as ways of articulating a human existence in agiven society and culture under a particular political system, andin the context of collective struggles engaged therein.8 Theirprovenance within Muslim societies unites them.9 They also sharea role as modern intellectuals,10 who are products of a modern‘secular’ education or combine elements of this with aspects of‘traditional’ Islamic learning. The place of the Qur’an and itsmeanings for contemporary Muslim life forms a prominenttheme in their texts. Situated within a general concern withreform and an interest in intellectual modernity, it can bedescribed as a unifying focus of their projects. Nonetheless, thediverse contexts and specific concerns of these thinkers and theirconsumption patterns as readers exposed to disparate intellectualinfluences and spanning different generations are clearlyreflected in their texts, and are highlighted here.

Contributing authors were encouraged to explore perceptionsof thinkers and texts, and their reception within various contextsand specific audiences, especially the Muslim one (in the specificnational-regional-linguistic context of the thinker concernedand beyond this), and the ‘Western’ one. The reactions of Muslimaudiences illuminate struggles in Muslim societies reflected in the

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discursive arena, and point to their general intellectual andcultural milieux. The reception of these projects among Westernaudiences illustrates some contemporary Western attitudestowards Muslim societies, and expectations regarding their futurein a globalising world. To establish a precise profile of patterns ofconsumption of these texts among these two audience types, toquantify them or to map their distribution is a tall order.However, impressionistic comments concerning their receptionamong Muslim and Western audiences are possible as a first steptoward exploring the sociology of this literature. Many Muslimsfamiliar with certain of these thinkers dismiss them outright,deeming them unqualified to contribute to the debates in whichthey engage. Some are condemned for failing to respect thehistorical Muslim consensus concerning issues fundamental tothe Islamic religion, and the legacy of Islamic scholarship thatexpresses it. Others are accused of violating the sacred, andworking to destroy ‘Islam’ from within. A common Muslim viewemphasises how marginal certain of these projects are in contem-porary Muslim contexts, pointing to their failure to resonate withMuslim concerns and needs. In this view, such projects have nointrinsic value, and any interest in them derives from the ideolog-ical contexts of their production exclusively. A perception of thesmall circulation of their texts is contrasted with the widespreadcirculation enjoyed by other twentieth-century works onQur’anic meaning for the modern world.11 Some Muslims mightagree to disagree on specific aspects of these projects, neverthe-less seeing in them a potentially valuable contribution to illumi-nating the future development of Muslim culture and society,whether internally or in relation to significant others. Yet othersembrace certain of these projects unreservedly. Such positiveMuslim evaluations can be confined to specific constituencies,such as women, the youth, and those who are Western-educated,12 or educated to a high level in modern educationalinstitutions in Muslim countries. In comparison with competingIslamic formulations, however, it is fair to say that the appeal ofthese projects among Muslim circles in general appears to beconfined to a relatively small minority.

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In contrast with a limited and perhaps overwhelmingly unre-ceptive Muslim response, there is evidence of great interest insome of these projects in European and American circles.University courses devoted to them are being introduced andsome of the thinkers behind them have been enthusiasticallyhosted and adopted. This raises a number of questions. What rolehave Western academia and media played in promoting thesethinkers? Who benefits from the sale of their texts and whocontrols the means of their production? How has a Westerninvolvement impacted on Muslim perceptions of them? HasWestern interest in them bestowed an arbitrary and artificialweight on projects with little inherent intellectual substance whenmeasured against historical Islamic thought and its toweringfigures? What assumptions about these thinkers’ self-identities liebehind their projects? How do they wish to be received, and bywhom: for whom are they writing? What does a lack of receptivityto some of these texts reveal about many Muslims’ orientationsand concerns during the late twentieth and early twenty-firstcenturies? What is revealed by an exaggerated Western interest inprojects that are unrepresentative of more influential discursiveinterpretations in contemporary Islamic thought? Specifically,what does this interest reveal about Western attitudes towardsMuslim societies, or the ideological leanings of Western scholarsof Muslim societies, Islamic civilisation and culture?13 Does thisinterest manifest an innocent Western yearning for a Muslim‘other’ whose values resonate closely with those of the self? Itshould not be forgotten in this regard that perceptions of a long-standing Western interest in dissident voices are common inMuslim societies. Conversely, what do Muslim attitudes towardsthese projects reveal concerning perceptions of the Western‘other’ as internalised in the self-world and the formulation of itsreligious discourses?

While it is not possible to answer all of these questions here, it isimportant to draw attention to the fact that neutrality is ultimatelyunattainable in any analysis (including what follows), given thatevery context of analysis brings its own horizons, special concernsand biases. The deconstruction of underlying methodological

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expectations, presuppositions and assumptions in any attempt toassess their projects is further necessitated by the fact that severalof the thinkers studied here represent marginal voices. Theirsimultaneous if implicit critique both of regimes and Islamistsplaces them in a particularly vulnerable position, while theythemselves are often rejected by Islamists, Islamic traditionalistsand Islamic officialdom alike, and even sometimes by secularists.The intention here is neither to praise them nor to privilegenegative perceptions of them. Nor is it to suggest their intrinsic orrelative merit by drawing attention to them. It is rather to offersome elucidation of the bases of their reception among differentaudiences, while at the same time presenting their projects forfurther comparison and debate. The long-standing conventionsand methodologies of the Islamic tradition clearly shape theexpectations of many Muslim critics: from this perspective, theseprojects are unwholesome, hybridised, unconvincing and threat-ening. In contrast, Western enthusiasm for such thinkers – as anavant-garde of ‘Islamic liberalism’ or members of a new eliteadvocating an Islamic ‘reformation’ – expresses an underlyingassumption that this is what Islam ‘needs’ to render it capable ofexisting cooperatively in the modern world.

In what follows, Muslim expectations reflecting more tradition-ally oriented positions are given particular attention. While thispartly reflects this author’s own interests, it is a legitimate analyt-ical perspective for two reasons. Firstly, most of the thinkersstudied here self-consciously frame their discourse in terms of thetexts and culture of Islam. Secondly, their Western admirersadopt and fête them in their capacity as Muslim thinkers specifi-cally, perhaps seeing in them a desirable model of Islamicspokespersons.

Islam and Western modernity

In the nineteenth century, responses to the growing Westernpresence in Muslim societies took three distinct courses. At oneend of the spectrum ultra-conservatives called for a rejection of

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any interaction with the modern West, while at the other endsecularists urged its wholesale embrace. The via media charac-terised what is often termed the ‘Modernist’ trend. This crys-tallised during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century inthe form of a synthesis between modern values and systems on theone hand, and what were seen to be eternal Islamic values andsystems on the other, creating an ‘Islamic-Western’ composite.14

This paradigmatic response to Western modernity has beenassumed by much recent scholarship to underpin projects such asthose collected in the present volume, as evidenced by thepositing of a line of continuity between the historical ‘Modernists’and certain of these contemporary projects. All are subsumedunder a distinct trend, described either as ‘modernist Islam’ or‘liberal Islam’.15

The assumption of common underpinnings can be usefullyexplored here. The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuryulama, statesmen and intellectuals who advanced a synthesisbetween Islamic and modern Western values referred to them-selves as muslihun (reformists),16 or salafis,17 terms which under-score the Islamic character of their self-perceptions.18 While theimpetus for their reform project was provided by the challenge ofmodern Europe, its impulse lay within the Islamic tradition,19 andalthough modernity provided answers, the Islamic culturefurnished the integrating framework for these. The Islamicparameters and commitment of the early reformists’ endeavoursreflected the reality that this culture represented the only frame ofreference imaginable to them.20 In the late twentieth-centuryMuslim experience, in contrast, multiple frames of reference havebecome imaginable, thanks to the relentless penetration ofcompeting worldviews and cultural forms amidst the social, polit-ical and economic dysfunctions caused by modernisation. This isevidenced by some of the projects discussed here, for whichWestern modernity appears to be the starting-point and ultimategoal, whether consciously adopted or unconsciously assumed. Thisperspective might be projected through a discourse that resorts toIslamic tradition in a bid to lay claim to its culturally authenticatingforce, and by way of response to competing Islamic formulations.

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Both Muslim imaginings of the ‘West’ and Western self-imag-inings have undergone significant shifts since the era of the earlyreformists. Their approach to the West and their understandingof Western modernity was largely selective and apologetic. Forexample, they failed to discern, or preferred to ignore, its imperi-alist dimensions. The success, force and internal stability of thenineteenth-century Western experience had precluded theemergence of any serious critique of the Enlightenment and itsconsequences within Europe itself, let alone on the part ofMuslim reformists. Their enchantment with modernity and itsEnlightenment values can thus largely be explained in terms ofthe fact that its intrinsic crises and shortcomings were yet to beseen. Three important differences separate the experience ofMuslim thinkers of the late twentieth century from that of theearly reformists in this regard. First, the Western modernity theyencounter is significantly transformed from that encountered atthe century’s turn. In the course of the twentieth century, itspillars were shaken and its self-confident narrative of emancipa-tion and progress was undermined. World wars, unjust effects anddestruction of the environment caused by science and industry,social disintegration and the trivialisation of life reflected in muchof modern culture have all reduced confidence in the project ofmodernity. While its inherent problems have been starklyexposed, internal fragmentation, erosion and self-critiques havegrown.21 Second, compared with the early reformists, Muslimthinkers of the late twentieth century are generally more inti-mately familiar with Western modernity and its complexities.While for the early reformists it was a new discovery, made fromthe perspective of traditional Islam, contemporary Muslims havelong been exposed to its realities. The old enchantment has gone,and they are better placed and equipped to critique it. Finally,contemporary Muslims are widely convinced that an element ofcultural imperialism permeates Western attitudes and policieswhere Muslim societies are concerned. This creates an inhos-pitable climate for projects perceived to call for assimilation of theworldview or the cultural–intellectual products of Westernmodernity as a basis for the reform of Muslim societies and insti-

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tutions, and for projects which are openly grounded in Westernthought or enthusiastically supported by Western parties.

For their part, the reformists generally developed a critical facetto their overwhelmingly positive projection of the West only afterthe outbreak of World War One.22 The fate of their imagining ofthe West and its implications for future efforts to create a cultur-ally synthetic formula can be traced with particular clarity in theArab context. The dashing of Arab expectations and the ensuingcolonial policies cast serious doubt on the view of the West held bythe Arab-Islamic reformists, and led ultimately to the unravellingof their synthesis of ‘Islam’, the ‘West’, and a largely culturalArabism. Its constituent elements took shape in the inter-warperiod in trends of Westernised, secular intellectuals, radical Arabnationalists, and those upholding an increasingly ideologised,‘post-reformist’ Islam. Rejection of Western imperialism becamethe universal point of departure, while throughout the newdiscourses the West was increasingly imagined in terms of anirreconcilable animosity, projected as an unjust organisationalmodel and a morally degenerate and culturally corrupt society.Arab fascination with the West had been dealt a fatal blow by theend of the s. As Nafi puts it:

[G]one was the clean, harmonious, charitable, prosperous west thatwas depicted in al-Tahtawi’s Takhlis al-Ibriz; the west of the enlight-enment, of the French revolution … under whose impacts and inwhose image Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi … Muhammad Abduh and theyoung Rida moulded their visions of modern Islam. In its place, anew version was being pieced together of a ruthless, exploitative,self-destructive and lethal west.23

In spite of their self-conscious rejection of the West, however, itsoon became apparent that the self-same ‘West’ had reappeared,to occupy a significant place within these new discourses.24 Forexample, Arabism was cast in an overwhelmingly Westernconceptual mould, while Islamists gradually adopted Westernpolitical methods in their bid for state power, assuming themodern nation-state as the arena for their struggle. The West hadin fact remained to haunt even those discourses that explicitly andvehemently rejected it.25 The Arab experience in this respect was

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not unique: throughout the Muslim world, major ideas, assump-tions and methods of the modern West have become uncon-sciously internalised, where they have not been consciouslyadopted, in all types of ideological and discursive formulation.

Certain of the projects studied here demonstrate the extent ofthis unconscious internalisation, others the degree of consciousadoption, in the context of discourses that engage primarily withthe Islamic texts and tradition. At the same time, these projects –and Muslim reactions to them – bear witness to the persistence incontemporary Muslim thinking of the problematic of ‘Islam andWestern modernity’, with its attendant challenge of culturalauthenticity or self-referentiality. Its continuing relevance isconfirmed by Muslim perceptions of the threat to traditionalcultural distinctions inherent in processes of globalisation, andthe perceived failure of the West to establish relations with theMuslim world based on cultural equality and exchange. ForMuslims exercised by such concerns, some of the projectsexplored here appear to actively discourage confidence in thecultural resources of Muslim societies, and do the West’s work ofcultural imperialism for it.26 In this view, it is no accident thatthese thinkers, projected as agents of Westernisation, have spentlengthy spells in the West and its academe. The Muslim experi-ence of the twentieth century has been one of enduring crisis,precipitated by the onslaught of Western modernity with its thirstfor domination, and perpetuated by continuing Western injusticetowards the Muslim world. In light of this, those who appear toadvocate Western solutions to the problems of Muslim societiesare naturally denounced as spokespersons for the ‘West’, ratherthan for Muslim concerns or for ‘Islam’, even when they relatetheir ideas directly to the Islamic textual tradition.27

Who speaks for Islam?

In traditional Muslim societies, a single social group spoke author-itatively for Islam: this was the class of the ulama. It had held thesocietal nexus throughout Islamic history, while safeguarding the

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tenets of the faith from a position of semi-independence from thepolitical system. From the late nineteenth century, the compre-hensive changes produced by the impact of European colonialismand modernisation gradually eroded its position. The control ofthe ulama over the educational process and legal systems wasbroken, and the bases of their economic power and independencewere lost. The ulama class would discover that its languages andmethods were not those of the emerging order,28 while its tradi-tional Islamic learning was perceived to be less relevant to the newconcerns and preoccupations of Muslim societies. New socialclasses created by modernisation rose to prominence, whilemodern education produced a new educated elite, professionalsand modern intellectuals. As the social position of the ulama classshrank, a rising intelligentsia with a self-professed commitment toIslam occupied a significant part of the resulting vacuum. Varioussocial actors entered the cultural arena with claims to speak forIslam: alongside intellectuals and professionals such as engineersand medical doctors, these included government officials andmilitary personnel, for example. In the course of the twentiethcentury, the traditional impulse to solicit and defer to the opinionof the ulama has been considerably weakened, not least by theircooperation with the modern state, and their failure to respondeffectively to the overwhelming discursive challenges of themodern era.29

The intellectual authority of the ulama class in pre-modernMuslim societies derived from societal recognition of itsmembers’ piety, and their specialist training in elite institutions ofIslamic learning. In madrasas and ‘mosque-universities’ such asal-Azhar, formal Islamic knowledge and the authoritative inter-pretation of tradition were transmitted directly from generationto generation, in a system where customs of ijaza-grantingsignalled mastery of a more-or-less fixed canon of traditionaltexts and the principles of interpretation established therein. Themonopoly of the ulama both on the transmission and the inter-pretation of formal Islamic knowledge was first broken by theintroduction of print culture in Muslim societies. This produced arevolution in access, through the mass production of books:

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Books, which they [the ulama] literally possessed … could now beconsulted by any Ahmad, Mahmud or Muhammad, who could makewhat they will of them. Increasingly from now on any Ahmad,Mahmud or Muhammad could claim to speak for Islam. No longerwas a sheaf of impeccable ijazas the buttress of authority.30

The ‘democratisation’ of direct access to the traditional texts ofIslam made possible by print has been complemented by the‘massification’ of modern education in Muslim countries sincethe mid twentieth century, creating unprecedented levels ofpopular literacy. The practical necessity to consult those with‘ulamatic’ training has thus been greatly reduced.31 The tradi-tional, hierarchical concepts of Islamic intellectual authority weredealt a further blow by the contribution of the reformists to therevival of the salafi notion of returning to a direct understandingof the primary texts of Islam. Their argument effectively liberatedMuslims from the need for specialist expertise, theoreticallyremoving all barriers of learning between the texts and theirreaders. This greatly weakened the assumption of ‘ulamatic’training as the necessary credentials for speaking on behalf ofIslam, throwing open the doors of interpretation to those withoutthe skills and qualifications that might ensure a degree of conti-nuity in this. Increasingly today those without formal training inthe Islamic disciplines claim direct interpretive rights over theIslamic texts as equals with the ulama, and in direct competitionwith them.32 Any possibility of uniformity or continuity of inter-pretation, or of a controlled diversity of readings, has been lost.

New claims to Islamic intellectual authority are tied to thenorms and expectations created by modern education.Compared with the exclusive, erudite and at times inaccessiblerepertoire of the ulama, new spokespersons for Islam frame theirdiscourses in forms accessible and relevant to modern-educatedreaderships, and adopt innovative techniques of interpretation.33

Marked by diffusion, diversification, and above all fragmentation,new modes of authority are linked to the rise of the professions, topolitical and social activism, and to the introduction of new infor-mation and media technologies in Muslim countries. As claims toIslamic intellectual authority multiply, new spokespersons for

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Islam are able to disseminate their interpretations to ever wider,anonymous audiences, while the control of information andopinion has become increasingly difficult, thanks to communica-tional changes reflecting an increasingly information-rich globalcontext.34 Increasingly, it is a matter of circumstance, indeedaccident, which of the myriad ‘authoritative’ voices, texts anddiscourses are encountered and embraced, as Muslims accessinformation across all boundaries. A ‘spectacularly wild growth ofinterpretations’35 in recent decades reflects the absence of anyguiding or uniting concept of intellectual authority, and of thecredentials that might underwrite it.

Several of the intellectuals explored in the present volumeprovide clear illustration of this trend. For the most part, theyneither graduated from traditional institutions of Islamiclearning, nor are they situated within these.36 Most are profes-sional academics in modern universities. Some are self-taught inthe Islamic disciplines, but most have engaged in the advancedstudy of Islam in modern universities, and many have had signifi-cant encounters with Islamic studies in the Western academe.Their roles as professional academics converge with their posturesas interpreters of Islam. Several consciously adopt and applycontemporary discourses and methods in the academic study ofIslam. In contrast with the so-called ‘Islamic books’ that haveflooded markets in many Muslim countries in the course of thelast decade or two,37 certain of the texts discussed here speak to amore elite readership, which is either familiar with thesediscourses and methods or seeks this familiarity. For some, theirappeal lies in their perceived achievement in incorporating thesediscourses and methods into the Islamic discursive arena, therebyrendering the latter relevant to global intellectual-cultural trendsand debates.

The general changes in Muslim contexts sketched above haveled some Western observers to note possible parallels with aspectsof the Protestant Reformation. The rupture of traditional Islamicintellectual authority, debates concerning intellectual leadershipand the authority of the past, the popularisation of access toIslam’s primary texts, and the rapid and widespread dissemina-

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tion of new ideas are all cited, among others, in this regard. Somefocus specifically on projects such as those collected in the presentvolume. For example, one scholar has suggested that the Syrianengineer Mohamed Shahrour’s al-Kitab wal-Qur’an: qira’a

mu‘asira may one day be seen as a ‘Muslim equivalent’ of MartinLuther’s Theses.38 Dismissive Muslim reactions to such analogiespoint to the lack of appropriate credentials among Shahrour andhis likes. They also emphasise widespread perceptions of theiralienation from their own societies, culture and historical tradi-tions.39

The Qur>an and the limits of Islamic reform

The lack of consensus concerning Islamic intellectual authorityand its requisite credentials is mirrored in the absence of anyagreement concerning the purpose, methods and, perhaps mostsignificantly, the limits of Islamic reform. The historical Islamicexperience was marked by a continuous tradition of internal revi-talisation, encapsulated in concepts of islah and tajdid.40 This wasconceived as an authentic dimension in the working out of theIslamic revelation in history, and thus went beyond purely practicalhuman needs or ends. Reflecting its inspiration in the vision of theearly era of excellence, its ultimate purpose was to bring existingrealities into line with the transcendent and universal standardembedded in the Qur’an and Sunna, through a process of restora-tion. There was neither a spirit of self-conscious innovation, nordependence on a notion of progress. The tradition of islah–tajdid

has consistently challenged the Muslim status quo from within thefundamental sources of Islamic inspiration. Its reaffirmation of thestatus of the Qur’an and Sunna as a unique and complete sourceof guidance informs a vigilance against anything that mightthreaten the integrity of the Islamic message, or compromise itsdistinctiveness. This often finds expression in a call for a return toa strict application of the Qur’an and Sunna, understood througha direct application of ijtihad, and rejection of rigid adherence topost-Prophetic elaborations as a source of authority.41

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While the modern period has witnessed numerous examples ofthis tradition, the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuryreformist or salafi project is among the most significant. Certainof the thinkers explored in the present volume share with thereformists their interest in Western modernity, their rejection oftraditional Islam, and their tendency to repudiate classical Islamicauthorities in the endeavour to understand Islam’s primary text.However, some of their projects present themselves more asevidence of the internalisation of Western modernity, and thus asa reflection of the problematic of ‘Islam and Western modernity’(as suggested above), than as efforts from within to achieveIslamic renewal. In place of the challenge set for subsequentgenerations by the model of excellence encapsulated in theSunna and the salaf, some evidently play to the challenge set bythe modern West. Responding to global forces and working fromwithin wide-ranging intellectual networks, some of the producersof these projects are hardly rooted in Islamic culture, althoughthey might invoke specific Islamic intellectual traditions in theirwork.42 Like the reform project of the turn of the twentiethcentury, their own projects create a rupture with the traditionalintellectual modes of the Islamic past. At the same time, however,some of these projects engender a disruptive conflict with theIslamic present, begging a question concerning their potentialcontribution to the cultural coherence of their producers’communities of origin, or the broader Muslim community.

Reform necessarily implies a challenge to current – and espe-cially dominant – religious, cultural and intellectual modes. As themost significant form of critical separation from the status quoacross Islamic history,43 the potency of islah–tajdid sprang from itsoperation within the fundamental sources of Islamic guidanceand the evolving consensus that set the boundaries of orthodoxy.While animating evolution of the cultural and religious life of theMuslim community, a leading concern of this tradition was topreserve its unity of faith and cohesion. In this spirit, an importantaim of the reform project at the turn of the twentieth century hadbeen to restore Muslim consensus. Throughout the century,Muslims moved by the same concerns have endeavoured to

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engage creatively with the foundational texts of Islam, debatingthe authority of the past in the service of applying the Islamicmessage under the changed conditions of modernity, within thebroad parameters of the sources of Islamic inspiration. At thesame time, however, it must be conceded that Islamic thought as awhole in the twentieth century is no longer internally generatedfrom within Muslim cultural traditions, but is substantially a reac-tion to extrinsic challenges. In contrast with traditional Islamicepistemology, where divergent opinions and schools of thought(which were tolerated and even celebrated) referred to acommon origin, contemporary Muslim thinking reflects bothinternal and external frames of reference, and is shaped bydiverse influences, which may be ideational or structural.44 Thequestion ‘what is Islam?’ has come to dominate Muslim debates,45

and there appear to be as many different responses (and inspira-tions for such responses) as there are Muslims prepared to reflectseriously upon the question. Shifts in the intellectual-culturalterrain are evidenced by the fact that ways of thinking about‘Islam’ which were virtually inconceivable for most Muslims a fewgenerations ago now circulate widely and are enthusiasticallyadvocated by some thinkers.

For many Muslims, some of the thinkers presented here appearoccasionally to question the very tenets of Islamic faith, especiallyin relation to the most sensitive issue: the status and meaning ofthe Qur’an as God’s authentic, uncorrupted and inimitableWord. At the turn of the twentieth century, the reformists werecareful to avoid the potential excesses of a rational-historicalinterrogation of the Qur’an, and would not touch the sanctity ofthe text. Certain of the thinkers presented here, in contrast,appear to see their own ‘return’ to an unmediated reading of theQur’an as an altogether free enterprise, driven exclusively by‘reason’ and mediated by the fruits and techniques of Westernintellectual life.46 In some cases, this ‘return’ is framed in anapproach to Islam that appears to reflect a postmodern mood ofradical criticism and suspicion, directed at meta-narratives ingeneral, and an interest in the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’.Viewed from the perspective of the Muslim community inter-

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preting its own heritage, even certain of those thinkers who takethe principle of God’s Word as revealed in the Qur’an as theirpoint of departure are deemed to have exceeded acceptablelimits.

Scholarship on the Qur’an in Western universities has recentlyadopted contemporary schools of literary theory and criticism,and hermeneutical theories.47 Such approaches demonstrate thatthe meaning of a text cannot be taken for granted but depends ondiverse textual, contextual and inter-textual factors, in additionto the circumstances of textual receptors in creating horizons ofmeaning.48 The contribution of Muslim academics to thecontemporary field is such that it is now commonly argued thatthe notion of a ‘divide’ between ‘Muslim’ and ‘non-Muslim’ or‘Western’ scholarship on the Qur’an is increasingly irrelevant.49

When such recent Muslim contributions have become knownamong a broader Muslim public, general reactions have betrayeda deep-seated unease, with many insisting that specific bound-aries be maintained around the text as the authentic repository ofGod’s uncorrupted, inimitable Word, as much in scholarly realmsof discourse as in others. The same unease has of course longinformed Muslim reactions to ‘Western’ studies of Islamic sacredliterature,50 but it is particularly acute when such scholarship is ofMuslim provenance.51

A Muslim scholar has recently characterised the challengefacing colleagues who write for Muslim readers, in their attempt toapply discourses such as those on literary theory, deconstructionand hermeneutics to discussions of textuality and determinationsof meaning in the Islamic context. Abou El Fadl has pointed tothe simple fact that such discourses are alien to the Islamic tradi-tion and its constructs of symbolism and meaning. They reflect aspecifically Western historical experience. His recommendation isthat Muslim scholars should start with the Muslim experience andconsider how such discourses might be utilised in its service. Theyshould be careful not to use categories that reconstruct andremodel it according to Western paradigms, and should notsuperimpose an epistemology upon Muslims that might notreflect the Muslim experience faithfully. While they are not

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necessarily to be rejected out of hand, transcultural epistemolog-ical transplants should thus be executed ‘with measured restraintand a degree of reasonableness so that the receiving body will notviolently reject them’.52

The pertinence of Abou El Fadl’s plea might be illuminatedfrom a somewhat different perspective with an example drawnfrom the practical experience of a developing Muslim participa-tion in inter-religious dialogue. Reflecting on the ‘entrance’ of‘Islam’ into dialogue based on an assessment of articles appearingin the Journal of Ecumenical Studies in the course of the last genera-tion, Leonard Swidler notes that the very first article by a Muslimauthor, which appeared in , was contributed by Isma‘il Ragial-Faruqi.53 He writes:

Faruqi was a traditionally orthodox Muslim … a highly knowledge-able Islamicist who did an immense amount to break open Islam todialogue. It was Isma‘il’s very traditional orthodoxy that allowed himto accomplish this so effectively. His often highly sceptical religiousconfrères trusted him implicitly not to ‘give away’ anything Islamic,and hence were open to being coaxed into joining the dialogue,although most often rather defensively.54

For most of the thinkers studied in the present volume, theirengagement with the Qur’anic text is, of course, far from anexclusively academic or scholarly project. This engagement itselfspeaks to the continued cultural centrality of this text, and thepivotal place it occupies in the struggles and aspirations ofcontemporary Muslim societies, as in Muslim politics.55 In thecontemporary world, millions of people refer to the Qur’an dailyto justify their aspirations or to explain their actions, reflecting ascale of direct reference unprecedented in the Islamic experi-ence.56 This can partly be explained in terms of new modes ofcommunication and information technology;57 it also reflects theimpact of the Islamic resurgence on the public arena and thelanguage of politics. Intellectuals from secular backgrounds whoare concerned with the future of a fragile civil society are facedwith the challenge both of radicalised Islamist forces and thegrowing successes enjoyed by their moderate counterparts in the democratic process. If they are to find an audience in the

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discursive arena, they must themselves appeal to the Islamic tradi-tion and its ultimate legitimising text.

Appeals to the Qur’anic text are not only framed in the contextof opposition to Islamist discourses, however. As the presentvolume demonstrates, such appeals also appear in strugglesagainst authoritarian regimes, as in those against dominant patri-archal modes of thought and social structures that marginalise orexclude women, and against traditionalist Islamic culture moregenerally. They are recruited in addressing concerns over threat-ening national disintegration and inter-communal strife, as inconcerns over cultural impasse, intellectual stagnation, and theabsence of material development in Muslim countries.

Like those of the Islamists with which many such appeals totradition take issue, they can ultimately be interpreted asresponses to the ongoing failure in the Muslim world to create aculturally viable, successful modern state. The Islamist reaction tothe failure of cultural modernisation and secularisation processeslaunched by the post-colonial elites is to invoke the self-past, re-imagined in terms of culturally authentic and ‘pure’ models, andmotivated by perceptions of the West (with its agents within theMuslim world) as a threat. In contrast, some of those surveyed inthis volume uphold the very same processes of modernisation andsecularisation, while dismissing, denying or refuting the issue oftheir ‘alien’ cultural provenance and their compatibility with anIslamic commitment to transcendence, through a re-imaginingof ‘Islam’ that itself rivals the Islamist one. This advocating of‘modern’ values via a re-imagined Islam nonetheless sets theirposture apart from that of the secular intellectuals.

This volume

The three themes discussed above are brought to the fore by thepresent volume as a whole and, each to a greater or lesser extent,by its individual chapters. The structure of the volume presents aclustering of some chapters, reflecting certain features or tenden-cies loosely held in common among some of the thinkers consid-ered. The first chapter discusses the project of the late Pakistani

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scholar Fazlur Rahman, a towering figure of twentieth-centuryIslamic reform. Although he spent most of his academic life in theWest, as AAbbdduullllaahh SSaaeeeedd points out, Rahman remained firmlycommitted to an Islamic process of knowledge, while at the sametime subjecting traditional Islamic thought and methodologies toa profound critique. Rahman emphasised areas that have beenneglected in Muslim understandings of the Qur’an, and it is fromthis that his importance largely derives. Such areas include thesocio-historical context of the revelation, the spirit of its messageas a whole, and the retrieval of its moral elan, as a basis for elabo-rating a Qur’an-centred ethics. Rahman’s wide-ranging influ-ence is evident in the work of such thinkers as those who form thesubject of the two following chapters. These are his formerstudent Nurcholish Madjid, a prominent Indonesian publicfigure, and the American scholar Amina Wadud.

As AAnntthhoonnyy HH.. JJoohhnnss aanndd AAbbdduullllaahh SSaaeeeedd demonstrate, Madjidhas endeavoured to achieve a pragmatic realisation of Qur’anicvalues in a manner appropriate to the distinctive character andneeds of the Indonesian state. His aim in this is to safeguardIndonesia’s integration as a religiously and ethnically pluralentity, and to enhance the role of the Pancasila in its capacity asthe ideological cornerstone of national unity. His ‘contextualist’approach to understanding the Qur’an is informed by a recogni-tion of the pressing need for inter-religious harmony inIndonesia. It is equally motivated by his consciousness of thehistorically divisive impact of fiqh among Muslims there. Alsoinspired by Rahman and in contrast with Madjid, Amina Wadud’sconcern, as described by AAssmmaa BBaarrllaass, is with the problematic ofQur’anic interpretation and the marginalisation of women’s fullhuman agency within society. Wadud is a pioneer among agrowing cluster of Muslim women scholars who are developing afeminist reading of the Islamic tradition and foundational texts.As Barlas, herself a member of this cluster,58 demonstrates,Wadud highlights the connections between traditional tafsir

(exegesis) and the means of its production, explaining thegenre’s masculinist nature, and its resultant biases against women.She calls for a more egalitarian tafsir, inclusive of women’s voices,

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and reflecting new, holistic modes of understanding and partici-pation in Muslim religious life. The claim that it upholds theontological equality of the sexes stands at the core of her ownreading of the Qur’an, which thus serves the project of Muslimwomen’s emancipation.

It has been suggested that Rahman never consciously intro-duced analytic procedures derived from Western thinkers in amajor manner, and was not attracted to the ongoing debate inWestern intellectual circles, even in those areas that influencedhis methodology.59 In contrast, in the assessment of one scholar,in his employment of ‘the categories of post-modernity’ to callfor a rethinking of the whole Islamic tradition, the Algerian-French scholar Mohammed Arkoun,

seems to be using the Islamic tradition as a text upon which tocontinue a debate about Western epistemology. He pays little atten-tion to the specificity of the Islamic condition or tradition, as if theIslamic tradition is expected to serve as a yielding raw material forconstructing the epistemological edifice of the West.60

Arkoun presents his project as a detached, ideologically neutraland radical perspective on the development of the ‘religiousphenomenon’, and its implications for present and future humanconcerns. He rejects any link between his own thought and ‘islahi

(reformist) thinking’.61 Questioning the assumptions of thehistorical-critical method, his own critical reading of ‘Islamicreason’, his deconstruction of centuries of Islamic thought, andhis constructs of revelation and orthodoxy challenge bothacademic scholarship on Islam, and Muslim self-understandings.As UUrrssuullaa GGüünntthheerr suggests, the ‘Arkounian’ perspective has hadlittle impact on both potential constituencies thus far.

The Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd introduced alinguistic problematisation of the religious discourse to acontemporary Arabic readership in a substantial manner for thefirst time. As NNaavviidd KKeerrmmaannii shows, his approach is based onapplication of the most relevant achievements of contemporarylinguistics to the Qur’an, combined with literary study of the textand the adoption of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Itsconclusions are implicitly posited in opposition to contemporary

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Islamist discourses with their notion of a single, eternally validinterpretation of the sacred text. This provides the context forunderstanding postures adopted towards his writings in Egypt,and his trial.

Mohamad Mojtahed Shabestari’s project provides an exampleof the rethinking of the Islamic revolutionary tradition in Iran. Itrepresents one trend among post-revolutionary Iranian Islamicdiscourses, as they endeavour to address the contradictionsinherent in the paradigm of what FFaarrzziinn VVaahhddaatt terms ‘mediatedsubjectivity’, inherited from the founders of the Islamic Republic.Well-versed in German theological and philosophical scholar-ship, Shabestari relies on the principle of inter-subjectivity, whichhe situates within a religious model. He thus adopts ahermeneutic approach to subjectivity, which avoids any directinterpretation of Qur’anic texts. Vahdat sees in his hermeneuticconstruct of inter-subjectivity a framework in terms of which thediscourse of religious modernity in post-revolutionary Iran canbe advanced, as compared with the inherited paradigm.Shabestari’s critique of the negative side of human subjectivity isaccompanied by the suggestion that religion, projected as asource of permanent principles and general values, can helpameliorate the crises that accompany the unavoidable moderni-sation process in Muslim countries.

The Tunisian scholar Mohamed Talbi is best known for the casehe advances from an Islamic perspective for religious pluralismand inter-religious dialogue, and for his work as a historian ofNorth Africa. RRoonnaalldd LL.. NNeettttlleerr demonstrates how his progressive,liberal ideas are justified through a historical-contextualapproach to the Qur’anic text, which seeks to elucidate God’sintention in it. His ‘intentional’ reading is put forward as a foun-dation for resolving the current crisis in the Islamic encounterwith modernity, and a foil to the literal readings that plaguecontemporary Muslim understandings.

OOssmmaann TTaa£ttaann points to the pragmatic, utilitarian approach tothe Qur’an, and its legal content in particular, developed by theveteran Turkish scholar Hüseyin Atay. Atay’s extraction from theQur’an of practical solutions to specific Islamic issues serves a

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straightforward understanding and simplified practice of Islam.While this makes it accessible to the general practising public, itsrationalist, anti-traditionalist orientation clearly reflects and sitscomfortably with the established emphasis on modernity in theTurkish Republican context. This orientation is prominent in thepublications of many scholars who, like Atay, are situated inFaculties of Islamic Studies in Turkish universities.

The Syrian engineer Mohamad Shahrour and the Libyan writerSadiq Nayhum share common features. Both emanate fromessentially secular backgrounds, and are self-taught in the area ofIslamic learning. Driven onto the discursive arena carved by theIslamic resurgence, their engagement with the Qur’an partlyserves a critique of traditional Islamic and Islamist formulationsand contemporary political conditions. Shahrour advances his‘contemporary reading’ of the Qur’an as the foundation for acomprehensive project of cultural, social, political and materialrenewal in Arab-Muslim societies. AAnnddrreeaass CChhrriissttmmaannnn eluci-dates his employment of a linguistic analysis to reprogrammeQur’anic terminology, thereby estranging readers from conven-tional understandings and challenging traditional religiousauthority. As SSuuhhaa TTaajjii--FFaarroouukkii demonstrates, Nayhum recruitsQur’anic texts in the context of a call for a culturally rooted formof direct democracy, embedded in ‘Islam’ reconstructed as aformula for political emancipation. To some extent, his resort tothe Qur’an suggests a ‘ritualistic’ acknowledgement of the Islamictextual tradition. At the same time, it illustrates the appeal of the‘Qur’anic message’, however appropriated, among secular-oriented Muslim intellectuals confronting the experience ofalienation and fragmentation brought by modernity.

By way of conclusion to this introductory chapter, attention mustbe drawn to a reform-oriented but Islamically rooted voice, whichhas become increasingly influential during the late twentiethcentury, reflecting a certain resonance with a broad publicunderstanding in Muslim societies. This is the voice of reform-minded Muslim intellectuals and academics and a small number

Introduction

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of reform-minded ulama, whose diverse contributions, puttogether, bear witness to important patterns of intellectual devel-opment and change in contemporary Islamic thought.

While such reform-oriented thinkers might themselves besubject to various Western influences, having in some cases beentrained in Western universities, they work self-consciously fromwithin Islamic cultural and textual traditions, and adhere to anIslamic frame of reference. Often with an eye to invalidatingextremist Islamic postures, they address the ongoing challenge ofelaborating modern Islamic responses to the modalities anddemands of the modern experience, and the profoundly changedrealities and novel problems of modern Muslim life. Their inter-pretive approach to the Qur’an and Sunna is direct and paysattention to social and historical contexts, distinguishing betweenuniversal principles and the moral thrust of the revelation on theone hand, and directives that may be bound to its specific circum-stances on the other. In determining the meanings and implica-tions of the revelation, they draw on the rich legacy of Islamictradition in its diverse branches, while carefully probing thecomplex relation between this tradition and the context of itselaboration, taking into account aspects of its contingency.

Some of these thinkers deconstruct and critique aspects of theproject of Western modernity, often sharing common ground inthis with the critical discourse of modernity and its post-moderncritics. However, they part company with the latter in their Islamicframe of reference, and their concern to offer ‘constructive’responses to the human predicament. Refusing to bow to ablanket privileging of the modern over the pre-modern, theymaintain that modernity’s characteristic sense of superiority mustbe tempered with a respect for pre-modern sources which, ifproperly contextualised, can yield much that is of value. Othersdivest the modern West of its claims to universal validity; theircommitment to Islamic cultural resources derives further confi-dence from an awareness that, at this juncture in history, there is apossibility for other voices to be received with less prejudice.Crucially, their contributions explore and advocate significantcontemporary areas of reform within this culture, including

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democratisation, pluralism, tolerance, openness to other reli-gions, and equality of status for women and minorities in Muslimsocieties. Their arguments in this regard evince an alertness to thespecific worldview upon which concepts and institutions arepremised, identifying what may be incompatible with an Islamiccosmology and a commitment to transcendence.62

Certain of the thinkers presented in this volume clearlycontribute to this reform-oriented, Islamically rooted trend,which is exemplified to varying degrees by such figures as KhaledAbou El Fadl, Muhammad Salim al-‘Awwa, Mohammad HashimKamali, Taha Jabir al-‘Alwani and the ‘professional’ ‘alim Yusufal-Qaradawi, to name a few. Relative to them, others studied herecreate an impression that they are Westernised liberals still underthe spell of Western modernity, seeing in it a solution to the needsand problems of Muslim societies. In contrast with both, yetothers discussed in this volume appear to have set out on thepostmodernist road, which in its extreme form can ultimately leadto nihilism.63

The reform-oriented Islamic discourse sketched in theseconcluding lines remains intimately connected to the reformistdiscourse of the turn of the twentieth century. Those whocontribute to it are perhaps the genuine heirs to the reformists’legacy, while taking this into uncharted waters towards a destina-tion yet unclear, in an unpredictable and rapidly changingcontext. What is clear is the bid made by such thinkers to avoidthe pitfalls and excesses of modernity, and to preserve the moraland cultural integrity of the Islamic worldview, and the specialIslamic identity and cohesion of Muslim societies. In the widerworld, the contribution of this discourse perhaps lies ultimately inits non-negotiable commitment to applying an ethical dimensionto the exercise of reason and power. In Muslim countries, it mightrespond effectively to pressing concerns for the injection ofjustice and morality into the political and socio-economic order,while avoiding the problems and excesses inherent in certainIslamist options.64

The ‘West’ is now an omnipresent party to the ongoing processof re-negotiating Islam among Muslims, in which this reform

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trend represents one of many competing voices.65 This undeni-ably complicates the task that confronts it, whether in invalidatingextremist Islamic formulations, or galvanising Muslim opinion inthe endeavour to establish an effective bridge between thedemands of an ever-changing present and a commitment toeternal values and the tradition and culture that embody them.Indeed its foremost challenge perhaps lies in successfully navi-gating a path between openness to external influences and anenduring faithfulness to the internal cultural map and dynamicsof Muslim society, in a world where human interactions aregrowing dramatically.

It hardly need be pointed out that the Qur’anic text forms thebedrock of any Islamic discourse, reform-oriented or other,worthy of the name. Modernity has focused attention perhaps inan unparalleled way on the complexities of interactions betweentexts and readers. During the last few decades, Muslims have readthe Qur’an in a rich multiplicity of ways, something of which isillustrated by the present volume. It is hoped that the essayscollected here will point to some of the challenges, problems andresponsibilities contained within this act of reading.

NOTES

. For a classic discussion of ‘the maelstrom of modern life’, seeMarshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity(London and New York, ). For institutional transformations associatedwith it, see Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Oxford, ).

. The uprootings and dynamic of constant change that characterisemodernity have been of particular concern to the major religions, as theyare rooted in pre-modernity, and endeavour to sustain significant conti-nuity with the past. A ‘comparative religions’ perspective might thus bevaluable. There are evident parallels between Muslim responses and thoseof modern Christian theology, and between modern Muslim debatesconcerning approaches to the sacred text and Biblical studies and inter-pretation. However, a comparative perspective might perhaps moreusefully focus on Islamic and Jewish responses to modernity specifically,and on efforts of modern reform within the two traditions.

. Cf. Daniel Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought(Cambridge, ), pp. –.

. Modernity is referred to as ‘Western’ in this discussion in loose

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reference to its largely European origins, and thus to its alien provenanceas viewed from a Muslim cultural perspective.

. Cf. Patrice Broduer, ‘Arabic Muslim Writings on ContemporaryReligions other than Islam: A Framework for Inquiry’, in JacquesWaardenburg, ed., Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions: A Historical Survey(New York, ), pp. –.

. For an overview of some relevant ideas, see Gema Martin Muñoz,ed., Islam, Modernism and the West (London and New York, ), especiallypp. –.

. The preoccupation with ‘types’ in the study of modern Islamicthought and the use of essentialising formulations to denote them is inher-ently problematic. Western studies frequently focus on ‘Islam’ itself, ratherthan Muslims, as the object of definition and classification. It is approachedas an expandable range of ideological constructs, denoted by externallyimposed labels that are generally not employed by those concerned to self-define, and often elucidate the concerns of the labeller to a greater extentthan the labelled. References to ‘radical Islam’, ‘official Islam’ and ‘polit-ical Islam’ are commonplace, for example, while thinkers such as those inthe present volume are generally dubbed representatives of ‘liberal Islam’or ‘modernist Islam’. As expressions of Islamic thought become morediversified and fragmented, it is increasingly difficult to capture thiscomplexity adequately or to do justice to pervasive nuances, admixturesand internal tensions through the application of simple labels, which canbe usefully employed only as a heuristic device in academic study.

. Consistent with this, it must be emphasised that not all comments inthis introductory discussion apply at all times to all of those studied in thisvolume.

. Amina Wadud is an exception, having converted to Islam as an adult.. The term ‘intellectual’ is employed here to denote ‘people who are

specialists in ideas, images, and symbols’, in accordance with Shils’ defini-tion, cited in John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Makers of Contemporary Islam(Oxford, ), p. . The authors (pp. –) provide a useful discussion ofthe role of intellectuals in Muslim history and modern Muslim societies.

. Throughout the twentieth century, works on the Qur’an haveenjoyed vast circulation among all sectors of the reading public. Theseencompass works of tafsir, works of ‘ulum al-Qur’an and, more recently,works that draw on more than one Islamic discipline in a broader discus-sion of the Qur’an, such as Muhammad al-Ghazali’s Kayfa nata‘amalu ma‘aal-Qur’an (Herndon, ).

. It is perhaps noteworthy in this regard that some of the contributingauthors in this volume are Muslim scholars based in Western universities.

. As Brown (Rethinking Tradition, p. ) remarks, the tendency amongscholars of modern Muslim intellectual history to emphasise ideas that arenew, or seem to be the peculiar product of modernity, is a product ofcultural bias and a vestige of the Enlightenment idea of progress. Added tothis is the tendency to judge an author significant because their ideas areattractive to the scholar who studies them.

. For a classic discussion of this response, see Albert Hourani, Arabic

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Thought in the Liberal Age, – (Cambridge, ). See also Basheer M.Nafi, The Rise and Decline of the Arab-Islamic Reform Movement (London,); idem., ‘The Rise of Islamic Reformist Thought and its Challenge toTraditional Islam’, in S. Taji-Farouki and B. M. Nafi, eds., Islamic Thought inthe Twentieth Century (London, forthcoming). The discussion here draws inparticular on the latter two sources.

. See, for example, Ronald L. Nettler, ‘Islam, Politics and Democracy:Mohamed Talbi and Islamic Modernism’, in David Marquand and RonaldL. Nettler, eds., Religion and Democracy (Oxford, ), pp. ff; CharlesKurzman, ed., Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook and Modernist Islam, circa –:A Sourcebook (New York and Oxford, ; ); Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr,‘Religious Modernism in the Arab World, India and Iran: The Perils andProspects of a Discourse’, The Muslim World, LXXXIII, (), pp. –.

. On the root notion of islah see Hamid Algar, ‘Islah’, Encyclopaedia ofIslam, ed. H.A.R. Gibb et al., new edn (Leiden, – ), vol. , pp. ff.(Hereafter references to this edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam are indi-cated as EI2). In contemporary Islamic literature the term denotes specifi-cally ‘reformism of the type that emerges in the doctrinal teachings ofMuhammad ‘Abduh, in the writings of Rashid Rida, and in the numerousMuslim authors who are influenced by these two masters and, like them,consider themselves disciples of the Salafiyya.’ The Qur’an describes al-muslihun as engaged in God’s work. See John O. Voll, ‘Renewal and Reformin Islamic History: Tajdid and Islah’, in John L. Esposito, ed., Voices ofResurgent Islam (New York and Oxford, ), pp. –.

. See, for example, Emad Eldin Shahin, ‘Salafiyah’, The OxfordEncyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. John L. Esposito (New York andOxford, ), vol. , p. .

. This is in contrast with the term ‘Modernist’, which from a contem-porary perspective reflects more the preoccupations of Western scholar-ship or internal Muslim polemics.

. While the reformist project was undoubtedly a response to the crisisengendered by European dominance, its origins within the intrinsic histor-ical Islamic tradition of renewal and reform must be highlighted. Significantexamples of internally generated calls for renewal and reform arose acrossthe Muslim world well before the European colonialist challenge. TheWestern ‘other’ was instrumental neither in their appearance nor in theirideas. What set the modern reformists apart from their predecessors was thereality of Western superiority, which presented as the central concern.

. Their appeal to Islam cannot be reduced to a stratagem for justi-fying the embrace of modernity, whether for its own sake or as a means torestore the balance of power vis-à-vis Europe. For example, while the posi-tive projection of the West in reformist thought manifested a desire toadopt from it, it was equally employed in the conflict with those who clungto traditional Islam, in the service of what the reformists believed could bethe only viable Islamic future. See for example Nafi, ‘The Rise of IslamicReformist Thought’. For an alternative view characterising the legacy of‘modernism’ in terms of an Islamic tendency divorced from the very foun-dations of Islamic thought (as a result of its departure from traditional

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Islam), see Nasr, ‘Religious Modernism’.. Postmodernism might be understood to have ‘de-centred’ the

West, by recognising that the claims made by modernity are in many ways‘less like reflections of universal truths and more like narcissistic fantasies’.It has revealed ‘the limit of modernity’s intellectual, moral and culturalmastery’, putting into question the idea that ‘West is best’. Moreover, thecharacteristic postmodern suspicion of meta-narratives has cast doubt onthe most powerful narrative of the last two hundred years, which told ‘thetale of the West’s destiny’. See Bobby Sayyid, Association of Muslim SocialScientists (UK) Newsletter, ().

. Certain reformist elements indeed diverted their attention todefending Muslim freedom from the West by force. From onwards, forexample, the great reformist Rashid Rida became actively involved in theSyrian revolt, the Palestinian struggle, and the Moroccan anti-Spanish andanti-French resistance.

. Nafi, The Rise and Decline, p. .. Ibid., pp. –.. As Sadri and Sadri note, ‘Those who are quick to point out that…

Islamic liberalism has borrowed from mainstream Western liberal theories,forget that the Islamic fundamentalists have also borrowed from Westerncountercurrents of populism, fascism, anarchism, Jacobinism, andMarxism.’ Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri, trs. and eds., Reason, Freedomand Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of ‘Abdolkarim Soroush (Oxford andNew York, ), p. xvi. For his part, Nasr (‘Religious Modernism’, p. )argues that Islamic revivalism, which he projects as linked causally with‘modernism’, shares in common with it ‘the assimilation and absorption ofWestern ideas and worldviews’.

. It is common among Islamists in particular to refer to a process of‘cultural invasion’ (al-ghazw al-thaqafi) as a major consequence of Westernimperialism, aimed at weakening Islam and Muslims by transferringWestern ideas into Muslim culture, thus creating an ideological battlewithin the latter. For an example from the writings of Muhammad al-Ghazali see Ibrahim Abu Rabi‘, ‘The Concept of the ‘Other’ in ModernArab Thought: From Muhammad ‘Abdu to Abdallah Laroui’, Islam andChristian-Muslim Relations, , (), pp. –.

. At the same time, of course, large sectors of Muslim populationshave an appetite for the material, political and cultural trappings ofWestern modernity, created by expanding mass education and communi-cations, and the impact of processes of globalisation.

. Nafi, The Rise and Decline, pp. , .. Cf. Esposito and Voll, Makers of Contemporary Islam, pp. –; Nafi

and Taji-Farouki, ‘Introduction’ in Taji-Farouki and Nafi, eds., IslamicThought in the Twentieth Century.

. Francis Robinson, ‘Technology and Religious Change: Islam andthe Impact of Print’, Modern Asian Studies , (), pp. –. As theauthor demonstrates, this in turn made possible ‘radical leaps forward’ inreligious thinking, typically among Muslims who were not graduates ofseminaries or formally trained ulama, and whose thinking has been partly

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shaped by access to sources on Western civilisation. The link between newtechnologies and new interpreters must be underlined. See for exampleJon W. Anderson, ‘The Internet and Islam’s New Interpreters’, in Dale F.Eickelman and Jon W. Anderson, eds., New Media in the Muslim World: TheEmerging Public Sphere (Bloomington, IN, ), p. .

. Dale F. Eickelman, ‘The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and itsSocial Reproduction’, in Juan R. I. Cole, ed., Comparing Muslim Societies:Knowledge and the State in a World Civilisation (Ann Arbor, ), pp. –;Dale F. Eickelman, ‘Mass Higher Education and the Religious Imaginationin Contemporary Arab Societies’, in George N. Atiyeh, ed., The Book in theIslamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East (NewYork, ), pp. –.

. Augustus Richard Norton, ‘The New Media, Civic Pluralism, andthe Slowly Retreating State’ in Eickelman and Anderson, eds., New Media,pp. –; Nafi and Taji-Farouki, ‘Introduction’.

. Dale F. Eickelman and Jon W. Anderson, ‘Redefining MuslimPublics’, in Eickelman and Anderson, eds., New Media, p. .

. See for example Anderson, ‘The Internet and Islam’s NewInterpreters’, p. ff.

. Fazlur Rahman, ‘Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies: ReviewEssay’, in Richard C. Martin, ed., Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies(Oxford, ), p. .

. For this reason, such intellectuals are sometimes described as‘secular’, while it is pointed out that they nevertheless believe Islam has animportant role in the contemporary world. See for example Abdou Filali-Ansari, ‘Can Modern Rationality Shape a New Religiosity? Mohamed AbedJabri and the Paradox of Islam and Modernity’, in John Cooper, RonaldNettler and Mohamed Mahmoud, eds., Islam and Modernity: MuslimIntellectuals Respond (London, ), p. .

. That is, popular Islamic publications conveying a ‘vernacularised’Islamic discourse addressed to the new readership created by mass educa-tion. See Dale F. Eickelman and Jon W. Anderson, ‘Print, Islam and theProspects for Civic Pluralism: New Religious Writings and their Audiences’,Journal of Islamic Studies , (), p. ; Eickelman and Anderson,‘Redefining Muslim Publics’, pp. –.

. Eickelman, ‘Inside the Islamic Reformation’, Wilson Quarterly(Winter, ), p. . In addition to its approach and conclusions, heconsiders this book important because it has sold ‘tens of thousands ofcopies’, in spite of being banned in many Arab countries. Eickelman argueswith some confidence that the ‘Islamic Reformation’ is underway. For a lesssanguine reading of the current situation in Muslim countries see AbdouFilali-Ansari, ‘Islam and Secularism’, in Martin Muñoz, ed., Islam,Modernism and the West, pp. –.

Eickelman is not alone in his opinion concerning Shahrour specifi-cally. See for example Michael Jansen, ‘Syria’s Islamic Reformer OutsellsMullah’, The Irish Times, Aug . Similar arguments have beenadvanced in relation to the Iranian pharmacologist-intellectualAbdolkarim Soroush, also dubbed the ‘Luther of Islam’. See for example

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Robin Wright, cited in Sadri and Sadri, Reason, Freedom and Democracy, p. xv.. The debate concerning the reality or possibility of change in

Muslim societies amounting to an ‘Islamic Reformation’ might revisit thehighly influential salafi intellectual tradition, and its impact, which hasfound very broad expression during the twentieth century. Its characteristicbid to recover the foundational texts of Islam from the accumulated weightof classical Islamic tradition through a direct reading finds expression, incertain of its more radical articulations, in an attitude towards receivedauthority reflected in the following dictum, concerning the producers ofthe legacy of historical learning: ‘We are men, and they are men’.

For discussion of parallels between sixteenth-century Protestantreformers and contemporary Islamist movements specifically relating tothe direct reading of scripture and implications for views concerning thesocialisation required for its authoritative interpretation see Ellis Goldberg,‘Smashing Idols and the State: The Protestant Ethic and Egyptian SunniRadicalism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, , (), pp. –.The author points out that Shukri Mustafa (radical salafi leader of the sEgyptian Islamist group Jama‘at al-Muslimin) argued that the only toolthat may be needed to explain some of the terms of the ‘clear, ArabicQur’an’ was a good Arabic dictionary. This argument was in open defianceof the control of the ulama elite over scripture and its authoritative inter-pretation; ibid., p. .

. The notion of tajdid is generally referred to a hadith encapsulatingGod’s promise to send renewers of the faith to the Muslim community atthe head of each century. On islah, see n. .

. This paragraph draws on Voll, ‘Renewal and Reform’, pp. ff.. The Mu‘tazili tradition is a case in point, including what has been

termed the ‘spirit of the Mu‘tazili discourse’ with its emphasis on ‘reason,dialogue with others and a rational basis of ethics’. See Richard C. Martinand Mark Woodward with Dwi S. Atmaja, Defenders of Reason in Islam:Mu‘tazilism from Medieval School to Modern Symbol (Oxford, ), p. . A goodpart of the historical assumptions and worldview of this tradition, held incommon with its theological opponents, has of course been quietly aban-doned.

. Esposito and Voll, Makers of Contemporary Islam, pp. –.. See further Taji-Farouki and Nafi, ‘Introduction’.. On the ‘objectification’ of Islam in Muslim consciousness and the

impact of ‘objectified understandings’, see Dale F. Eickelman and JamesPiscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton, NJ, ), pp. –; Eickelman,‘Inside the Islamic Reformation’, p. ; Dale F. Eickelman, ‘IslamicReligious Commentary and Lesson Circles: Is there a Copernican revolu-tion?’, in G. W. Most, ed., Commentaries - Kommentare (Gottingen, ), pp.–.

. They either dismiss the Sunna, or show little interest in it. Earlymodern architects of islah–tajdid emphasised the Sunna as the best modelfor Islamic life. Rashid Rida, for example, referred to the historical mujad-didun as regenerators of the faith and the Sunna: by safeguarding the latter,they protected the continuity of the original values of Islam. Algar, ‘Islah’,

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p. . For modern debates over Sunna see Brown, Rethinking Tradition.. Stefan Wild, ed., The Qur’an as Text (Leiden, ), p. ix. The author

suggests that there has been a shift of attention away from the preoccupa-tion with the constitution of the text characteristic of much Western schol-arship of the last years. Recent decades have marked the rise of a newinterest in the Qur’an as textual corpus, regardless of its scriptural history,while the history of its reception, interpretation and aesthetic role isbecoming an important new focus of research. This development is linkedto ‘a general hermeneutical awareness, to a new interest in literary formsand structures, to the development of semantics, semiotics, and textuallinguistics, to the theory of discourse, and possibly to other internationalcurrents’. For an overview of methodology in contemporary Qur’anicstudies (displaying the author’s characteristically radical, criticalapproach), see Mohamed Arkoun, ‘Contemporary Critical Practices andthe Qur’an’, Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe(Leiden, ), vol. , pp. –. For an example of the application of ‘thelanguages of late twentieth century critical discourses’ to the field, see JaneDammen McAuliffe, ‘Text and Textuality: Q. : as a Point of Intersection’,in Issa J. Boullata, ed., Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qur’an(London, ), pp. –.

. Boullata, ed., Literary Structures, p. xi.. Many point to the ongoing collaborative project of the Encyclopaedia

of the Qur’an by way of illustration. . See for example Muhammad Abdul-Rauf, ‘Outsiders’

Interpretations of Islam: A Muslim’s Point of View’, in Martin, ed.,Approaches to Islam, p. . The author argues that: ‘The given truthsaccepted and upheld by all Muslims for the past fourteen centuries – thelife of the Prophet, his Sunna, the text of the Holy Qur’an, virtually theentire sacred content of the faith of Muslims – have been subjected tomisguided critical analysis, sometimes ruthless and usually insensitive.’ S.Parvez Manzoor projects the ‘Orientalist’ enterprise of Qur’anic studies as‘an unholy conspiracy to dislodge the Muslim Scripture from its firmlyentrenched position as the epitome of historic authenticity and moralunassailability.’ Thus: ‘The ultimate trophy that the Western man sought …was the Muslim mind itself. In order to rid the West forever of the“problem” of Islam, he reasoned, Muslim consciousness must be made todespair of the cognitive certainty of the Divine message revealed to theProphet. Only a Muslim confounded of the historical authenticity ordoctrinal autonomy of the Qur’anic revelation would abdicate his universalmission and hence pose no challenge to the global domination of the West.Such, at least, seems to have been the tacit, if not the explicit, rationale ofthe Orientalist assault on the Qur’an.’ Cited in Toby Lester, ‘What is theKoran?’, The Atlantic Monthly, January .

. The following comment by a reform-oriented Egyptian salafi intel-lectual echoes this unease: ‘Tinkering with the … texts … of the Qur’anand Sunna … is unacceptable. They ought to remain beyond the reach ofthose who claim freedom of expression and research, and advance argu-ments aimed at undermining…[them].’ Fahmi Huwaydi in relation to the

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Abu Zayd affair, cited in Fauzi M. Najjar, ‘Islamic Fundamentalism and theIntellectuals: The Case of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd’, BRISMES Journal, , (), p. . As one Western scholar puts it, Muslims, who have ‘thebenefit of hindsight of the European experience’, know very well that ‘onceyou start questioning the holy scriptures, you don’t know where it will stop.’Christoph Luxenberg, cited in Alexander Still, ‘Radical New Views of Islamand the Origins of the Koran’, The New York Times, March .

. Khaled Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authorityand Women (Oxford, ), pp. –. See also pp. and . Referringspecifically to conceptual frameworks and categories of analysis in the fieldof hermeneutics as this developed in the West, the author suggests that theimportant consideration is to apply these ‘with the requisite degree ofsensitivity to the specificity of the Islamic context and also with a certainamount of deference to established Muslim systems of belief’.

. The journal was launched in . In , al-Faruqi joined as anassociate editor.

. Leonard Swidler, ed., Muslims in Dialogue: The Evolution of a Dialogue(Lewiston, NY, ), p. v.

. Characterised as ‘an engagement to argue over correct interpreta-tions’; see Eickelman and Anderson, ‘Redefining Muslim Publics’, p. .

. Cf. comments by Arkoun, cited in Lester, ‘What is the Koran?’. For example, it has been pointed out that the ‘democratisation of

tafsir’ has begun, thanks partly to the presence on the world wide web ofthousands of references to the Qur’an, and the absence of scholars orulama to police or censor web sites. See Herbert Berg, ‘Computers and theQur’an’, Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an, vol. , pp. –.

. In Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of theQur’an (Austin, TX, ), Asma Barlas (whose work Wadud describes as acontinuation of her own) claims to derive a method of reading the Qur’anfrom the Qur’an itself, both in its theological and its hermeneutic aspects.Through a historical analysis of religious authority and knowledge, shedemonstrates how Muslims came to read inequality and patriarchy into theQur’an in order to justify existing religious and social structures. Her ownrereading points to a Qur’anic affirmation of the complete equality of thesexes, providing a basis for theorising radical sexual equality from withinthe framework of its teachings.

. Earle H. Waugh, ‘The Legacies of Fazlur Rahman for Islam inAmerica’, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences , (), p. . Cited byAbdullah Saeed, chapter . Compare with Farid Esack, Qur’an, Liberationand Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity against Oppression(Oxford, ), p. ff.

. Abou El Fadl, Speaking in God’s Name, p. . The author refers toMohammed Arkoun, Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, UncommonAnswers, tr. and ed., Robert D. Lee (Boulder, CO, ). He attributes tothis the fact that the book finds little resonance in the Islamic context.

. Esack, Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism, p. .. The fundamental point here is summed up by Parvez Manzoor:

‘The ultimate conflict between Islam and modernity…is neither over

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governance, nor over technology, not even over society and social engi-neering, but over transcendence and the nature of ultimate reality. As againstthe immanentist claim of modernity, Islam holds that the ultimate reality istranscendent.’ S. Parvez Manzoor, ‘Modernity, Transcendence andPolitical Theory’, Encounters, , (), p. .

. Reflecting on the ‘postmodern mind’, for example, Tarnas refers toits ‘quasi-nihilistic’ rejection of all forms of ‘totalization’ and ‘metanarra-tive’. By virtue of its own ‘self-relativising critical awareness’, however, the‘postmodern mind’ recognises that its position in this respect is itself notbeyond questioning. This underlies what Tarnas describes as ‘the unstableparadox that permeates the postmodern mind’. Thus: ‘On its own terms,the assertion of the historical relativity and cultural-linguistic bondage ofall truth and knowledge must itself be regarded as reflecting but one morelocal and temporal perspective having no necessarily universal, extrahistor-ical value. Everything could change tomorrow. Implicitly, the one post-modern absolute is critical consciousness, which, by deconstructing all,seems compelled by its own logic to do so to itself as well.’ Richard Tarnas,The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that have shaped ourWorldview (London, ), pp. –. For differing Muslim views ofPostmodernism, see Tomas Gerholm, ‘Two Muslim Intellectuals in thePostmodern West: Akbar Ahmed and Ziauddin Sardar’, in Akbar S. Ahmedand Hastings Donnan, eds., Islam, Globalization and Postmodernity (Londonand New York, ), pp. –, esp. pp. –. See further ZiauddinSardar, ‘Deconstructing Postmodernism’, Encounters, , (), pp. –.

. Such concerns for justice and morality constitute a reaction to thecorruption and marginalisation generated by the modern state. Cf. MartinMuñoz, Islam, Modernism and the West, p. .

. For example, particularly since the events of September ,American and European statesmen have publicly underlined the essentialcompatibility of Islam with American and European values. Some Muslimsin Europe and the USA have self-consciously echoed their sentiments. Forexample, American Muslim activists recently underlined the consistency ofthe goals of the shari‘a with the constitution of the USA. For their part,some second-generation educated European Muslims project their Islamicaffiliation (in terms of universal values such as justice, democracy andtolerance) as a nexus with the European societies in which they live. SeeSalam al-Maryati, ‘The Rising Voice of Moderate Muslims’, text of speechdelivered to US State Department Open Forum, January , and FouadImarraine, cited in Time Magazine, December .

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Documents

Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur’an