Experiences of Modernity, Colonial and Postcolonial 'NA AMRIKA, na Rusia, superpower hai Khuda.' 1 Even if one part of this slogan has come true, is there not more to it than simply its anti-imperialist sentiment? Does not the invocation of God as the only superpower reveal a more generalized desire for the re-enchantment of the modern world? Similarly, is there not more to the attacks of 9/11 than political grievances, despite Osama Bin Laden's reference to the 80 years since the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate? Ironically, like so much else, lost amidst the debris of 9/11 is the deadly combination of rational scientific calculation with a martyr's heavenly reward. Whatever else 9/11 represents, surely it stands as a pre-eminent sign of the appropriation and deployment of modern scientific knowledge, technology and skill against the very heart of economic and institutional modernity in the name of religion. It is the deployment of modernity against itself. Two generations earlier, the Nazis had turned the technological fruits of modernity against the Jews, many of whom were the leading lights of modernity. 9/11 reminds us of the distinction that the Frankfurt School made between formal and substantive rationality and alerts us that 'others' have appropriated the scientific, rational calculations of large-scale death and destruction -the dark underbelly of modernity -just as cultural modernity becomes globalized.Yet the obsession of the jihadists and of other neo-revivalist and revolutionary movements with re-enchanting the political obscures more holistic treatments of modernity from a Muslim perspective. Of course, the economic and political weakness of Muslim societies constitutes a very important element in the lived reality of Muslims. The failure of postcolonial Muslim societies to actualize the fruits promised by modernization schemes and development programmes, while exposing those societies to the values inherent in such programmes, highlights the entrenchment not only of
Followers of the Islamization of Knowledge project probably know thework of Ziauddin Sardar best for its trenchant critique of that project. Yetthe prolific British-Pakistani intellectual has written thoughtfully on topicsranging from the social consequences of science and technology and thefuture development of Muslim societies to cultural studies and the impactof postmodernism on religious belief. Since Sardar’s work is scatteredacross books, academic journals, and science and news magazines, the Reader is a most welcome compendium that showcases the breadth of hisengagements.The book contains 20 selections, which are divided almost equally intothree sections; the editors' introduction, which I discuss below; and a workingbibliography of Sardar's writings and index, both of which are very usefuladditions ...
One effect of 9/11 has been that Muslim voices, which until then had beenmostly ignored, are increasingly reaching a wider audience of other Muslimsand non-Muslims. In Europe and North America, this has meant that selfidentified“progressive” Muslim scholars who emphasize social justice, aswell as “traditional” Muslims who emphasize Islam’s spiritual or esotericdimension, have been contributing in a much more vocal manner to the contemporaryinterpretation of what it means to be Muslim. Since most of theleading figures presented herein are Sufi Muslims of a particular strand ofesoteric Islam, this book helps fill an important lacuna concerning the developmentof the traditionalist position – a position that has been voiced bysuch Muslim scholars as Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Martin Lings.Sedgwick promotes the book as a biography of René Guénon (1886-1951) and an intellectual history of the traditionalist movement that heinaugurated in the early twentieth century. Guénon’s movement combineselements of perennial philosophy, which holds that certain perennial problemsrecur in humanity’s philosophical concerns, and that this perennialwisdom is now only found in the traditional forms of the world religions ...
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