Quranic Reason

Abdal-Hakim Murad

Faith in the future: Islam after the Enlightenment

"Yet the question, the big new Eastern Question, will not go away this easily. Palpably,
there are millions of Muslims who are at ease somewhere within the spectrum of
the diverse possibilities of Westernness. We need, however, a theory to match this
practice. Is the accommodation real? What is the theological or fiqh status of this
claim to an overlap? Can Islam really square this biggest of all historical circles, or
must it now fail, and retreat into impoverished and hostile marginality, as history passes it by?"

"Attempts to reject all of global modernity simply cannot succeed, and have not succeeded
anywhere. A more sane policy, albeit a more courageous, complex and nuanced one, has
to be the introduction of Islam as a prophetic, dissenting witness within the reality of the
modern world."

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Pervez Manzoor

Islam and the Crisis of Modernity

Modernity is facing a crisis today. And, it is a crisis not of power but of meaning, not
of the efficacy of modern instruments but of the legitimacy of modern goals,
not of the ability of modernity’s champions to carry its project forward but of the
ultimate beneficence and morality of the project itself. For modern societies are
not helpless at facing the inner challenges of governance and economy, primary
determinants of the human condition according to the modernist scheme of things,
nor are modern polities vulnerable to any threats by external enemies. No, there are no
slaves within the walls of modern Rome, or any hordes of barbarians at its gates. And
yet, the denizens of the modern city are not celebrating, they are not jubilant and
exultant but feel puzzled and chastised. Puzzled because their global city is not a city
of humanity, chastised because of the realization that no city in history can ever
incarnate perfect harmony, justice or truth. Thus, to their dismay, they have discovered
that the promise of modernity to create its own Utopia, the Cosmopolis of humanity,
will forever remain unfulfilled, that not all the modernity’s men and horses will be
able to put the Humpty-Dumpty of our humanity together again.

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Ibrahim Kalin

Does Islam Need Enlightenment?

Let's face it: The traditional Islamic ontology that shaped the worldview of Muslims
is alien to the modern world. The Muslim notion of placing everything within a
framework of transcendence has little appeal in an aggressively secular world.
Muslims are torn between a glorious past, a miserable present and an
uncertain future.  

Many ask how and why the Muslim world, which produced one of the most advanced
civilizations in human history, has become so desolate, backward, uncreative
and chaotic today. How can the Muslim world get out of this state of affairs and
recover its past glory? Can it create another world civilization while maintaining its
core values and by bracketing Western modernity? Is Islam the last foe of the
project of the Enlightenment? Does Islam need enlightenment?

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Abdolkarim Soroush

Interview: Enlightenmen & Philosophy in Islam

There has not been anything corresponding to the Enlightenment in the
European sense in the Islamic world: neither modern philosophy, nor modern
empirical science, nor the modern notion of freedom. These only gained
currency in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I believe, however, that
in the early twenty-first century, to blindly follow the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment may not be defensible anymore. Enlightenment in the European
sense has its historic specificity that cannot be recreated; a reform in Islamic
lands would be by definition different from the European Enlightenment.

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