[This is a class paper on modernity I wrote a while ago. Please offer your critique.]

The issue of Muslim identity in the modern world centers on the question of how Muslims relate to other peoples, their religions and the resulting civilizations. The context in which this issue of identity arises is the dominance of Western civilization and their intervention in the Muslim world. Where for over a millennium the traditional socio-political worldview of Muslims sproting from the divine sources of revelation remained dominant, in the last several centuries this appeared no longer a reality. Western intervention and in ways subjugation of Muslim societies through the breakthroughs of modernity, chiefly the five aspects enumerated by Harvey Cox; the emergence of sovereign nation-states, science-based technology, bureaucratic rationalism, quest for profit maximization and secularization and trivialization of religion. The earliest responses to this challenge came from intellectuals considered fathers of Islamic modernism, chiefly Rifa’a Badawi Rai al-Tahtawi, Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Shaykh Muhammad Abduh, Ali Abd al-Raziq and Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Some discernible characteristics of this early discourse reveal admiration for the West. Therefore, an important question arises on the issue of identity – with those positive characteristics of Western civilization, how do Muslims set themselves apart from other civilizations? The twentieth century witnessed the maturity of Muslim responses to the west that began as early as the eighteenth century in Ottoman Turkey. Modernizing reforms as well as indigenous reforms all played a part in the game of catch-up with the West in the quest for self-assertion. John Voll in the book Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World views this issue, contrary to popular opinion, not in the sense of “Why did Islam fail?” but rather to discern traits in the experience of Muslims that show continued vitality in the global dynamics of recent centuries. Muslim response can be grouped in four broad categories; adaptationism, fundamentalism, conservatism and personal piety. With particular to the issue of identity, it involves a discourse of how Muslims view themselves in relation to others, taking into account the needs for internal development within the Muslim world, limits of tolerance and pluralism in co-existence with others, and the quest for a universality in its discourse. I argue that this debate is about the search for Divine transcendence in the midst of a leveling worldview subjugated by secularism.

In the Middle East, Islam is almost homogeneous throughout. This land was the seat of Islam’s glorious medieval civilization where before it was a tribal society in constant warfare. If pre-Islam, the dominant paradigm of identity is their tribe, the advent of Islam washed out tribal differences and there sprouted a unified identity of Islam-first and tribal allegiance playing second fiddle. The global dynamics of the twentieth century was the trend of emerging nation-states, a sole sovereign legally defined authority over a particular boundary. The Middle East were divided into apparently arbitrary small gulf states in addition to more dominant players of the Fertile Crescent. A mass of land once unified and prosperous under the banner of Islamic caliphate was splintered into smaller kingdoms, reminiscent of pre-Islamic Arabia. Western colonial powers were seen as culprit in this divide-and-rule strategy to subjugate the rich lands to their power. With the emergence of Israel smack in the heart of the Middle East backed by America, it was easy for Muslims in the Arab world to play the blame game of victimization in their failure to make any progress since the respective states’ inception. Not too different is the scenario and its responses in other parts of the Muslim world. This is the intellectual-laziness that Tariq Ramadan laments in The Arab World and the Muslims Faced with Their Contradictions. He iterates that while it is true that the Other did squander the fortunes of Arab nations, to play the blame game is not a very positive measure to avert the crisis. I contend that Tariq Ramadan’s central point of demanding Muslims to seek their own alternative internal solutions is correct, his contention that Arabs are split between violent radical protest and compromising resignation to Western intervention is too sweeping of a generalization. To cite an example, the movement that his grandfather Hassan al-Banna founded in Egypt, the Ikhwan al-Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood), is essentially a grassroots organization that is very mainstream and has focused on building their own sustainable financial and educational strengths. If free and fair elections were held, these Ikhwani-based parties and their offshoots in other parts of the Muslim world, is touted to win every time as evident in Palestine’s HAMAS. This is to show that this moderate movement is a popular movement and enjoys wide support amongst the lay person, and in general not a radical and violent organization if compared with Al-Qaeda and Al-Takfir Wal-Hijra. Yet, evidently, this moderate organization espousing Islamic fundamentals, with widespread popularity and focused on harnessing internal strength, despite existing for more than half a century, has failed to lift the Arab world from its crisis proves a counter-example to Tariq Ramadan’s rational-based thesis. Therefore, his proposed solution does not answer the identity crisis that Muslims face all too well though development-centered alternatives should rightly remain a thrust in the Muslim world. The case of Iran, which is a land never colonized and does have a functioning, though relatively youg modern state that came out within its traditions following the Iranian Revolution, will be an interesting experiment in this regard once they reach maturity. This is a case in which the transcendent dimension of Islam is asserted in its philosophy, which is missing in Tariq Ramadan’s dry and leveling advocacy of collaboration with the South and the global justice movement.

After development comes the issue of tolerance and pluralism in the formation of a global Muslim identity. Osman Bakar advocates inter-civilizational dialogue in Islam and the Malay Civilizational Identity: Tension and Harmony Between Ethnicity and Religiosity. Central to his analysis is the ability of Islam as a universal religion to merge in harmony with local ethnic contexts, giving some textual proof in addition to historical proof in the fusion of Islam in the previously Hindu Malay civilization, citing the role of tolerant Sufis in inculcating the holistic Islamic worldview to this civilization. Implicit in his article is the transcendent superiority of Islam and its universal qualities, justifying Islam and Malay protection in Malaysia’s constitution. Osman Bakar, however, avoids the question of intellectual pluralism that Nurcholish Madjid had to answer in his article Islamic Faith and the Problem of Pluralism: Relations Among the Believers. In Osman Bakar’s context of Malaysia, local conditions made it possible for such harmony to exist on the surface level. The Malaysian colonial encounter, beginning with the Portuguese and later the British was relatively mild as opposed to Muslim experience in India and neighboring Indonesia. What resulted was, according to Voll, the continued relevance and vitality of traditional religious institutions. The social fabric was still intact. The process towards independence saw Malay Muslims firmly in control of the political arena with special-preference to the Malays embedded in the constitution itself. Voll adds further arguments why there is apparent harmony in Malaysia, that is the fact that radicalism that emerged in Malaysia was Chinese communism, which gave a bad reputation to dissent in general. Also, Chinese and Indians in Malaysia were merchants and commercial notables who did not have an interest in social change, and they later formed the ethnic based parties MIC and MCA that allied with the Malay party UMNO. The British role in providing administrative experience to elite Malays and the preservation of the royal institution to maintain conservative Islam were two factors too strong to leave any vacuum for radicalism and dissent. However, if the recent Malaysian general elections were of any indication, it is that the days of communal politics is closing to an end with multi-cultural political parties storming through Parliament in what was dubbed a political “tsunami,” seen as the second wave of racial dissatisfaction after the 1969 racial riots. Conversely, in Indonesia, multiculturalism emerged very early on with the unifying nationalist ideology of Pancasila. Madjid examines the Quranic roots in this imperative for pluralism based on classical as well as modern Quranic commentators. Avoided here, however, are the controversial issues such as Christian missionary activities and implementation of Sharia law. If there is tolerance and respect for other religions, where is the limit of Islam’s transcendent value over the all-leveling of secularism? Indonesia has been tussling with this issue since independence, and Malaysia will join in the foray very soon.

To provide a solid foundation for this debate, a universal mode of discourse has to be developed. Muqtedar Khan and Ali Mazrui contends that this role should be played by human reason. More adept in Islam’s classical tradition, Khan examines the usage of Ijtihad in ways reminiscent of Kant’s Sapere Aude. Seeing the shortcomings of classical understanding in ijtihad as being limited only to analogical reasoning, he proposes the full employment of reason in Muslim discourse. A glaring weakness in Muqtedar Khan’s analysis is poor choice of reference, limiting it to only Shafii’s Risala. Instead, he should have consulted the wider corpus of traditional intellectual discourse encompassed in the field of usul (foundations), maqasid (purposes) and qawaid (maxims). If the depths were thoroughly explored, just perhaps, he will see the usage reason in abundance to make sense of Sharia. Mazrui’s view on reason is somewhat heterodox, and lacking in its engagement with the already elaborate and established theological discourses on the usage of reason. A crucial point of contention is his over-reliance of his own reason without doubting it being shaped and conditioned by the overarching epistemology of secularism. He juxtaposes the most literalist and shallowest of conservative Muslim opinion with his rational method and ignoring the moderate voice that are more engaged with both modern worldviews as well as classical thought in which crystallized those various schools of Islamic thought. The emergence of post-modern philosophy has demonstrated the shortfalls of positivism and Enlightenment ideals. We are again asked, if all there is to revelation today is the consensus of Western modes of legal thought, where is the transcendence of Islam’s divine sources?

In conclusion, there are three issues being examined in the quest for a global Muslim identity uniquely Islamic. Foremost of these is a common identity for internal development that has to come out of its own ideals. These options are out there, but have yet come to fruition. Another issue is the limits of tolerance and pluralism where increasing transparency and globalization demands a melting pot of multiculturalism in place of quiet subordination of others in the name of communalism. A global Muslim identity in the modern world also requires a global mode of discourse that is capable of engaging with pre-modern insights as well as sophisticated tools of modern intellectual analysis.

References:

Ramadan, Tariq. “The Arab World and the Muslims Faced with Their Contradictions.”

Cox, Harvey (1965). “The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective.”