Reform and modernity in Islam : the philosophical, cultural and political discourses among Muslim reformers

304 Pages·2013·2.153 MB·English

by  Ahmed, Safdar

Safdar Ahmed is Lecturer and Tutor in the Department of Islamic
and Arabic Studies at the University of Sydney, where he also obtained
his PhD.
AAhhmmeedd__PPrreelliimmss..iinndddd ii 44//3300//22001133 1122::4488::1155 PPMM
AAhhmmeedd__PPrreelliimmss..iinndddd iiii 44//3300//22001133 1122::4488::1155 PPMM
REFORM AND
MODERNITY IN
ISLAM
The Philosophical, Cultural and Political
Discourses among Muslim Reformers
Safdar Ahmed
AAhhmmeedd__PPrreelliimmss..iinndddd iiiiii 44//3300//22001133 1122::4488::1155 PPMM
Published in 2013 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada
Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright © 2013 Safdar Ahmed
The right of Safdar Ahmed to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by
the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof,
may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.
Library of Modern Religion 26
ISBN 978 1 84885 735 3
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress catalog card: available
Typeset by Newgen Publishers, Chennai
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
AAhhmmeedd__PPrreelliimmss..iinndddd iivv 44//3300//22001133 1122::4488::1155 PPMM
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction: Islam, Postcolonialism and Modernity 1
1. Islamic Modernism and the Reification of Religion 43
2. Literary Romanticism and Islamic Modernity:
The Case of Urdu Poetry 75
3. Education and the Status of Women 100
4. Muhammad Iqbal, Islam and Modern Nationalism 120
5. The Theory of Divine Sovereignty 148
6. Maududi and the Gendering of Muslim Identity 176
7. Progressive Islam: The Hermeneutical Turn 200
Conclusion 224
Notes 229
Bibliography 272
Index 291
AAhhmmeedd__PPrreelliimmss..iinndddd vv 44//3300//22001133 1122::4488::1155 PPMM
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The idea for this book began as part of my doctoral research with the
Department of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the University of Sydney.
I would specially like to thank my supervisor, Ahmad Shboul, for his
generosity of spirit and high standards of scholarship. What might
have seemed like difficult work was made pleasurable thanks to the
many informative and stimulating discussions which enabled me to
find my own perspective, and which assisted me at every stage of the
writing process. I am grateful to Nijmeh Hajjar, who was my teacher
in Arabic at the University of Sydney and to Hashim Durrani, who
assisted me in the translation of Urdu texts. I am also deeply indebted
to James Piscatori, Ali Mahafzah and Youssef Choueiri who provided
thoughtful and considered feedback on the entire manuscript, and to
Jim Masselos, who gave valuable support in the production of its se-
cond chapter. For their patient editing, which gave greater concision
and clarity to the text than I was able to achieve, I thank Emma Wise
and Hannah Wilks. I am also grateful to the staff of Fisher Library at
the University of Sydney and their inter-loan department. I have been
fortunate to teach and learn alongside some very bright students at the
University of Sydney, who have also been an important and inspiring
sounding board for new ideas.
For supporting me in other spheres of life, and for providing im-
portant feedback on particular chapters and themes which were then
under consideration, I am indebted to a number of cherished friends.
AAhhmmeedd__PPrreelliimmss..iinndddd vvii 44//3300//22001133 1122::4488::1155 PPMM
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
These including Briony Denver, Robin Denver, Anton Pulvirenti,
Ted McKinlay, Chris Matos, Renata Hoare, Chrissie Ianssen, Arthur
Lawrence, Lisa Worthington, Stephen Buckle and Heather and Ellen
McIlwain. Special mention must go to Jillian McIlwain for supporting
me during times of ill-health. In the requisition of books, I am grate-
ful to my stepmother, Farrukh Ahmed, and those family members in
Pakistan who purchased and sent books to Australia. Bilquis Ghani
and Omid Tofighian provided me with the sort of friendship that will
only grow as the years roll on, and which developed around our sup-
port of asylum seekers at Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre. Their
companionship has been precious to me. And lastly, this book would
have been impossible to write were it not for the encouragement, pa-
tience and unconditional love of my family: Anna Broom, Nazeer
Ahmed, Iqbal Ahmed and Zehra Ahmed.
AAhhmmeedd__PPrreelliimmss..iinndddd vviiii 44//3300//22001133 1122::4488::1155 PPMM
AAhhmmeedd__PPrreelliimmss..iinndddd vviiiiii 44//3300//22001133 1122::4488::1155 PPMM
INTRODUCTION
ISLAM, POSTCOLONIALISM
AND MODERNITY
The overarching theme of this book is that there is no singular or
transcendental definition of modernity next to which other variant or
lesser modernities are compared. This is not to claim that modernity
is so diffuse as to bear no meaning or that it connotes different things
to different people. Rather, modernity must be placed in its histor-
ical setting, which is to release it from the exclusionary Eurocentric
paradigms by which it is commonly defined. Whilst modern ideas,
movements and ideologies properly begin in Western Europe during
the time of the Enlightenment, their historical paths (under the
engines of colonialism, global capitalism, nationalism and globalisa-
tion) are so fractured and complex as to exceed any particular doctrine,
culture or essence. To speak of modernity in historical terms, therefore,
is to invoke a cluster of contested philosophical ideas and practices
which provide the conditions, or common ground, for the generation
of diverse ideologies both in and outside Europe.
Yet, too often, when historians, media pundits and policy analysts
sit down to interpret modernity in the context of contemporary Islamic
thought, a homogeneous, flat and hackneyed conception of the modern
world emerges. This is not a consequence of Islam’s own encounter
with modernity, but of its being placed in an anterior historical and
chronological position to that of the modern West. Islam, we are told,
must get through its religious wars, find its Martin Luther and learn
AAhhmmeedd__CChhaapptteerrss..iinndddd 11 44//3300//22001133 1122::4488::4466 PPMM
2 REFORM AND MODERNITY IN ISLAM
to separate the powers of church and state if we are to see the arrival of
such things as democracy, human rights and women’s freedoms in the
Muslim world. This claim gets co-opted by secular political discourses
in which modernity or a modern ‘way of life’ is opposed to Islamic
revivalism – or Muslim culture more generally – in tones reminiscent
of the Cold War. At its most distorted, this dichotomy simplistic-
ally conflates modernity with all that is rational, forward-looking and
civilised, to be defended from an Islam cast as irrational, totalitarian
and atavistic.
In the reactive and often shallow political commentary of policy
analysts, media pundits, journalists and opinion-piece writers, Islam or
Islamist movements are placed against a normative definition of secular
modernity. Francis Fukuyama, for one, has likened the reactionary or
anti-modern character of contemporary Islam to the worst strains of totali-
tarian thought, using the pejorative term: ‘Islamo-fascism’.1 Likewise, one
often hears contemporary Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brothers
in Egypt or the Islamic regime in Iran, described as ‘anti-modern’ or
‘un-modern’ for purportedly opposing the tenets of political liberalism:
a stance which constitutes them as walking anachronisms, or relics of
another time.2 Yet in the use of terms such as ‘Islamic terrorism’, as Alain
Badiou points out, ‘the predicate “Islamic” has no other function except
that of supplying an apparent content to the word “terrorism”, which is
itself devoid of all content’.3 In this sense, ‘terrorism’ (like ‘fundamen-
talism’ and ‘fascism’) is conflated with the adjective which precedes it,
becoming, in turn, a part (the ‘problem’) of Islam itself.
Alas, rhetorical cues such as the ‘war on modernity’ and the ‘threat
to the Enlightenment’ cannot accommodate Islamic reformism’s
complex and sustained entanglement in the historical and political
conditions of modernity. The implication that Islam simply needs to
‘catch up’ with the West involves a one-dimensional image of both
Islam and the West which reduces their internal complexities whilst
overlooking the histories they share. One cannot understand the con-
temporary societies of the Muslim Middle East, for instance, without
accounting for the communications, differences and interactions which
have occurred amongst and between European powers and indigenous
peoples since the colonial period. Before I explore the implications of
AAhhmmeedd__CChhaapptteerrss..iinndddd 22 44//3300//22001133 1122::4488::4466 PPMM