By Roshan Shah, New Age Islam
29 July 2017
The Islamic Enlightenment—The Modern
Struggle between Faith and Reason
Author: Christopher de Bellaigne
Published by: The Bodley Head, London
Year: 2017
Pages: 398
No culture has been—or can be—immune to
change, no matter what self-styled purists may demand or expect. Change is a
hallmark of human life, personal as well as collective. Even if some people would like to preserve
cultures intact, as in a museum, this can never happen. Internal developments
as well as the impact of external events ensure that cultures are always in a
process of flux.
Notwithstanding this, some people single
out ‘Islamic civilization’ or ‘Muslim culture’ and present it as allegedly
impervious to any transformation. Ironically, this untenable claim is often
made by people supposedly on polar opposites of the ideological spectrum—by
hardcore Islamophobes, on the one hand, and hardliner Islamist ideologues, on
the other. They both project ‘Islamic civilization’ as something static, frozen
forever in time and as allegedly immune to change.
In this well-researched book, de Bellaigne
indicates that these suppositions are fallacious. Reflecting on some of the
challenges posed by the advent of Western modernity in Muslim contexts, he
points to some creative ways in which Muslims sought to fashion an ‘Islamic
Enlightenment’. Such an ‘enlightenment’ sought to incorporate key values such
as the rule of law, representative governance, acceptance of the benefits of
science, rationality, and tolerance. De
Bellaigne’s analysis focuses particularly on Iran, Egypt and Turkey, but
several of his findings are of wider relevance to much of the ‘Muslim world’
generally.
Recognising that Muslims (like many other
people, one may add) across the world are today creatively seeking to deal with
the imperative of being ‘modern’ and universal, on the one hand, and adhering
to religious, cultural and other such identities, on the other, this book urges
its readers to recognise the positive transformations underway in Muslim
societies in the direction of an ‘Islamic Enlightenment’ that don’t often get
reported in the media. At the same time though, de Bellaigne would probably
readily recognise that this ‘enlightenment’ still has to contend with
considerable opposition or indifference on the part of numerous Muslims
themselves.
If, as de Bellaigne contends, the
interaction between Muslims and Europeans over the past couple of centuries has
indeed helped spawn an ‘Islamic Enlightenment’ (which may not be widely known
or recognised or appreciated sufficiently), it indicates the importance of
recognising multiple ways of being ‘modern’. At the same time, it urges us to
recognise that many non-Western cultures have much to contribute in terms of
evolving forms of modernity, especially insights and teachings related to the
demands of the spirit and to the relationship between humankind and the Divine.
URL: http://www.newageislam.com/books-and-documents/roshan-shah,-new-age-islam/the-islamic-enlightenment—the-modern-struggle-between-faith-and-reason/d/112015
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