Muslim Modernities Expressions of the Civil Imagination
I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies
Modernity is commonly cast as a break with tradition – and a marriage with the secular. Rationalism, individual rights, democracy and cosmopolitanism are its favoured offspring, and their story is told as the rise of the modern West. Yet the essential values at stake – from civic culture to the ethos of intellectual life and science – have roots beyond the West. They extend to civilizations and histories of the Islamic world in all its diversity, giving us journeys into a modernity that is familiar but also different.
This book is about Muslim encounters with the modern: how Islam and those in its orbit have shaped and been shaped by histories that are overlapping and distinctive. Identity and citizenship, piety and protest, music and modes of dress are explored as expressions that bear on the making and remaking of modern public spheres. Muslim as well as non-Muslim scholars show in these pages that tradition and religiosity alike are active players in the making of the modern.
A vital theme is the role of the ethical imagination in expressions of the civil, fed by the diversity of religious and cultural narratives as sources of the self. This can be seen in struggles for civil society and democratic citizenship, in the grappling with new technologies, and in the challenges of political violence. Since the events of September 11, 2001, a failure to come to grips with plural modernities has spurred claims about a ‘clash of civilizations’. Fresh perspectives are offered here on what it is to be Muslim and modern, mindful of the rich narratives that inform both identities.
Acknowledgements
About the Contributors
1. Introduction
Amyn B. Sajoo
2. Scripture, History and Modernity: Readings of the Qur'an
Bruce B. Lawrence
3. Heroic Themes: An Invitation to Muslim Worlds
John Renard
4. An Andalusian Modernity in Narratives of Women
Hasna Lebbady
5. Civil Sounds: The Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia
Theodore Levin and Fairouz R. Nishanova
6. Forbidden Modernities: Islam in Public
Nilüfer Göle
7. Revivalism and the Enclave Society
Bryan S. Turner
8. Modern Citizenship, Multiple Identities
Eva Schubert
9. Globalization, Civil Imagination and Islamic Movements
Kevin McDonald
10. Reimagining the Civil: Pluralism and Its Discontents
Amyn B. Sajoo
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Amyn B. Sajoo lectured at Simon Fraser University in Canada and held visiting appointments at Cambridge and McGill universities before joining the Institute of Ismaili Studies in 2007. His publications include Muslim Ethics (2004), Civil Society in the Muslim World (edited, 2002) and Pluralism in Old Societies and New States (1994). Dr. Sajoo has served as an advisor with the Canadian departments of Justice and Foreign Affairs, and is a frequent contributor to the news media on both sides of the Atlantic.