Read Online Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism by Omid Safi - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Omid Safi
Tags: Religión, General, Social Science, Islam, Political Science, Ethnic Studies, Islamic Studies, Islam and Politics, Islamic Law, Islamic Renewal, Religious Pluralism, Women in Islam, Comparative Politics
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reformist movements have not always been in agreement, although many tend to conflate the two today. For more information on Wahhabism, refer to Ahmad Dallal, “The Origins and Objectives of Islamic Revivalist Thought, 1750–1850,” Journal of the American Oriental
Society 113 (3), 1993, 341–59; Michael Cook, “On the Origins of Wahhabism,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3(2), 1992, 191–202; and Hamid Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (Oneonta: Islamic Publications International, 2002).
“North” and “South” evoke the language of those who point out the hypocrisy and injustice of the global inequalities in the distribution of resources and consumption. The “North” represents those who consume more than their fair share, at the expense of the “South.” Many have favored using this terminology in place of the explicitly hierarchical language of “First World” and “Third World” (as if there is more than one world), or other euphemisms like “developed” and “underdeveloped” countries (as if “development” is unequivocal, or quintessentially positive).
As the Qur’an states in two separate passages, wa nafakhtu fihi min ruhi. God states, “I breathed into humanity something of My own spirit.” (Qur’an 15:29 and 38:72)
Post-modern critiques of modernity were developed in a whole range of academic disciplines, including feminist scholarship, anthropology, literary criticism, and post- colonial studies. The corpus of post-modern scholarship is truly vast, and often bewildering. A good starting point is the collection of essays by Habermas, Lyotard, Jameson, Eco, Rorty, and others in Thomas Docherty, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1992). Also useful is Ania Loomba, Colonialism/ Postcolonialism (New York: Routledge, 1998).
Shalu Bhalla, Quotes of Gandhi (New Delhi: UBS Publishers, 1995), 143.
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America , released by the White House of George W. Bush in September 2002. Available on-line at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/ nsc/nss.pdf.
I have deliberately avoided the term “fundamentalist,” since that term is open to so many interpretations and abuses. The groups that I address here combine a literal reading of
select texts with an exclusivist understanding to arrive at what in any other time in Islamic history would be seen as an extreme position on the spectrum of Islamic interpretations. Yet, contrary to what is often stated, their response is also a distinctly modern one, in the sense that it requires modernity as a foil against which it articulates itself. It is not, as its advocates might claim, simply “traditional,” or “the way things have always been.” Living as we do in these terrible days of Islam-phobia, it is important to point out that just as is the case in the Christian and Jewish traditions, one can be a literalist-exclusivist without necessarily resorting to violence. To put it in a shorthand fashion, not every Wahhabi (or Jama‘at Islami) is a terrorist. However, the communal enforcement of literalist-exclusivist ideologies such as Wahhabism so dehumanize entire groups both inside and outside the Muslim community that they narrow the gap to violence against both other Muslims and non-Muslims. So many places in the Muslim world where violence is a fact of life also feature these literalist-exclusivist interpretations of Islam.
For insightful reflections on tradition and modernity as related epistemic fields rather than binary oppositions, see Marilyn Robinson Waldman, “Tradition as a Modality of Change: Islamic Examples,” History of Religions 25, 1986, 318–40; Daniel Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Rabbi Zalman Schachter, cited in Roger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,1994), 43. I am deeply grateful to Reb Zalman for reminding me in a
conversation that as one commits
Society 113 (3), 1993, 341–59; Michael Cook, “On the Origins of Wahhabism,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3(2), 1992, 191–202; and Hamid Algar, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (Oneonta: Islamic Publications International, 2002).
“North” and “South” evoke the language of those who point out the hypocrisy and injustice of the global inequalities in the distribution of resources and consumption. The “North” represents those who consume more than their fair share, at the expense of the “South.” Many have favored using this terminology in place of the explicitly hierarchical language of “First World” and “Third World” (as if there is more than one world), or other euphemisms like “developed” and “underdeveloped” countries (as if “development” is unequivocal, or quintessentially positive).
As the Qur’an states in two separate passages, wa nafakhtu fihi min ruhi. God states, “I breathed into humanity something of My own spirit.” (Qur’an 15:29 and 38:72)
Post-modern critiques of modernity were developed in a whole range of academic disciplines, including feminist scholarship, anthropology, literary criticism, and post- colonial studies. The corpus of post-modern scholarship is truly vast, and often bewildering. A good starting point is the collection of essays by Habermas, Lyotard, Jameson, Eco, Rorty, and others in Thomas Docherty, ed., Postmodernism: A Reader (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1992). Also useful is Ania Loomba, Colonialism/ Postcolonialism (New York: Routledge, 1998).
Shalu Bhalla, Quotes of Gandhi (New Delhi: UBS Publishers, 1995), 143.
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America , released by the White House of George W. Bush in September 2002. Available on-line at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/ nsc/nss.pdf.
I have deliberately avoided the term “fundamentalist,” since that term is open to so many interpretations and abuses. The groups that I address here combine a literal reading of
select texts with an exclusivist understanding to arrive at what in any other time in Islamic history would be seen as an extreme position on the spectrum of Islamic interpretations. Yet, contrary to what is often stated, their response is also a distinctly modern one, in the sense that it requires modernity as a foil against which it articulates itself. It is not, as its advocates might claim, simply “traditional,” or “the way things have always been.” Living as we do in these terrible days of Islam-phobia, it is important to point out that just as is the case in the Christian and Jewish traditions, one can be a literalist-exclusivist without necessarily resorting to violence. To put it in a shorthand fashion, not every Wahhabi (or Jama‘at Islami) is a terrorist. However, the communal enforcement of literalist-exclusivist ideologies such as Wahhabism so dehumanize entire groups both inside and outside the Muslim community that they narrow the gap to violence against both other Muslims and non-Muslims. So many places in the Muslim world where violence is a fact of life also feature these literalist-exclusivist interpretations of Islam.
For insightful reflections on tradition and modernity as related epistemic fields rather than binary oppositions, see Marilyn Robinson Waldman, “Tradition as a Modality of Change: Islamic Examples,” History of Religions 25, 1986, 318–40; Daniel Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Rabbi Zalman Schachter, cited in Roger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,1994), 43. I am deeply grateful to Reb Zalman for reminding me in a
conversation that as one commits
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