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Modern Islamic Political Thought by keeny ali
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Modern Islamic Political Thought |
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Government,Islam,Public Speaking
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Certainly Islamic modernism was not the first movement calling for revival, renewal and reform of the tradition in Islamic history. As early as the eighth and ninth centuries, Muslim thinkers had been involved in disputes over how Islamic sociopolitical life could best be structured as the challenges of Shi'i, Sufi, Mu'tazila, and Kharijite movements emerged alongside the formation of an Islamic orthodoxy. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, reformists sought to revive Islam amidst a waning Caliphate. Fazlur Rahman (Pakistan-US, 1919–88) cites a number of ‘premodernist’ reformation movements that ‘swept over the larger part of the Muslim World in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries’ and shared characteristics of a ‘consciousness of degeneration, and of the corresponding need to remedy social evils and raise moral standards’ (1970: 641). However, the difference between the ‘premodern’ and ‘modern’ reform movements is that whereas the former owed little Rahman goes so far as to say ‘nothing whatsoever’ to foreign inspiration, the latter is as much a reaction to the West as it is a continuation of the thought and activism of the premodernist Islamic reformers. As Charles Kurzman rightly notes, the movement that begins in the first half of the nineteenth century was not simply ‘modern’ (a feature of modernity) but also ‘modernist’ (a proponent of modernity). Activists [of modernist Islam] describe themselves and their goals by the Arabic terms jadid (new) and mu'asir (contemporary), [and] the Turkish terms yeni (new) and genç (young), and similar words in other languages. (2002: 4) Muslims often contend that, while Christianity is primarily a faith, Islam is complete and holistic in the sense of being a way of life as well as a religion (dunya wa din). Islamic law (shari'a) is understood as a comprehensive system containing principles regulating both mankind's relationship to God ('ibadai) and relationships among human beings (mu'amala). Islamic modernists had to combat the orthodoxy which claimed that not only is there no need to look outside of the Islamic tradition (turath) in organizing the social and political affairs of the community, but to do so is anti-Islamic. Many Islamic thinkers justified their use of modern values by arguing that Europe's current status was an outgrowth of the accomplishments of medieval Islamic thinkers, and thus they were only retrieving their own lost heritage. For example, Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi (Tunisia, 1822–90) claims that there is no reason to reject or ignore something which is correct and demonstrable simply because it comes from others, especially if we had formerly possessed it and it had been taken from us. On the contrary, there is an obligation to restore it and put it to use. However, the extent to which particular modernists were willing to borrow from the West ranged from those who argued, in the words of Mirza Malkom Khan (Iran, 1833–1908), that ‘in all the new institutions which Europe offers us there is nothing, absolutely nothing, which is contrary to the spirit of our religion’ (in Bakhash, 1978: 15); to those like Rashid Rida (Syria-Egypt, 1865–1935) who claimed Muslims need only to acquire Europe's ‘scientific achievements, technical skill and advanced industries’ (in Shahin, 1993: 49); to those who, like Afghani, look no more fondly on the blind imitation of the West than of the past, in that ‘experience and past evidence have taught us that imitators in every nation, and those who copy foreign customs, constitute the very chinks and loopholes through which foreign domination penetrates a country’. In the political discourse of modernist Islam, the primary concern was to articulate a tenable understanding of the relationship between religion and the state. One of the early strands of modernist Islamic thought gave Islam a nationalistic understanding, focused on building a strong state that could compete with the West. We see this, for example, in the work of Rifa'a Badawi Rafi al-Tahtawi (Egypt, 1801–1873): The love of religion and the passion to protect, which the people of Islam hold so tenaciously and which give them an advantage over other nations in power and force, [people in the West] call love of fatherland. However, among us, the people of Islam, love of the fatherland is just one branch of the faith, and the defense of religion is its capstone. Every kingdom is a fatherland for all those in it who belong to Islam, it combines religion and patriotism. Tahtawi sees no conflict between religion and patriotism and, in fact, views Islam as the basis of Arab nationalism, in general, and the foundation of Egyptian nationalism, in particular. In contrast, Rida claims that ‘one of the imperatives of Islam is its prohibition of partisanship in wrong for the sake of relatives, people, or fatherland. It prohibits enmity and divisions among Muslims’ (in Donohue and Esposito, 1982: 58). In the works of thinkers such as Afghani, Abduh and Rida, Islam took on a more pan-Islamic character and the aim was to reinstate the Muslim umma (community) in the image of the Ottoman Empire. This understanding of Islam and renewal became an important inspiration for later Islamists, discussed in the next section. infinity chess the online chess game for free
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