Islam and the Languages of Modernity

Abstract

The secular bias of modernization theory has had a significant role in deflecting attention away from the role of religious practices and values in contemporary societies, particularly in the Muslim majority world. In the early 1960s, a leading public intellectual saw the Muslim world as facing an unpalatable choice: either a "neo-Islamic totalitarianism" intent on "resurrecting the past," or a "reformist Islam" that would open "the sluice gates and swamped by the deluge. A principal difficulty with Huntington's "West versus the Rest" formulation is that, having reintroduced culture and religion to thinking about politics, he overstated their coherence and force, in addition to treating the Muslim world as a monolithic bloc. Culture became an independent variable. As a result of direct and broad access to the printed, broadcast, and electronically recorded word, more and more Muslims take it upon themselves to interpret the textual sources—classical or modern—of Islam.

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