Bassam Tibi - Islams Predicament With Modernity: Religious Reform and Cultural Change

Islams Predicament with Modernity presents an in-depth cultural and political analysis of the issue of how Islam has become a potential source of tensions and conflicts in post-bipolar world politics, and how this might be peacefully resolved.

Looking at the issue of modernity from an Islamic point of view, the author examines the role of culture and religion in Muslim societies under conditions of globalization, and analyses issues such as law, knowledge and human rights. He engages a number of significant studies on cultural modernity and Islam and draws on detailed case studies, rejecting the approaches of both Orientalists and apologists, and calling instead for a genuine Islamic pluralism that accepts the equality of others. Situating modernity as a universal project, he argues that a separation of religion and politics is required, thus presenting a challenge to the Islamic worldview.

This critical analysis of value conflicts, tensions and change in Islamic civilization will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of international relations, social theory, political science, religion, Islamic studies and Middle Eastern studies.

Bassam Tibi is Professor of International Relations at the University of Gttingen and A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. He taught and lectured at thirty university across the world in all the five continents. In 200909 Tibi is Senior Research Fellow at Yale Univesity. Between 1982 and 2000 he was at Harvard University in a variety of affiliations, the latest of which as the Harvard Bosch Foundation Fellow 19982000. Tibi is a prolific author and published in the past thirty years monographs in English, the first of which was Arab Nationalism. Between Islam and the Nation-State (3rd expanded edition 1997) and the last is his Routledge book: Political Islam, World Politics and Europe (2008).

First published 2009
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2009 Bassam Tibi

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tibi, Bassam.
Islam's predicament with modernity : religious reform and cultural change /
Bassam Tibi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Islam21st century. 2. Islamic renewalIslamic countries. 3. Globalization Religious aspectsIslam. 4. Religious awakeningIslam. 5. Culture conflict Islamic countries. I. Title.
BP161.3.T53 2009
297.27dc22 2008037898

ISBN 0-203-88155-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN: 978-0-415-48471-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-48472-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-88155-2 (ebk)

This book has grown from a variety of cross-cultural and international research projects, listed in the last part of the Introduction and in the first note of each chapter. The work related to it was embedded in those projects and draws on their findings. This book can also be viewed as a sequel to my Routledge monograph Political Islam, World Politics and Europe, completed between 2003 and 2006 but first published in 2008. The present study claims to be the summation of my lifes work. I have pursued research on the subject matter since the early 1990s. Unlike the 2008 book, this one does not focus on political Islam; rather, it deals with Islam in general, its core argument being that Islam has a predicament with cultural modernity. This argument is combined with the idea that the predicament has become a source of tensions and conflicts. The case is made for religious reforms and innovative cultural change, with the view that both could provide options for a peaceful resolution of conflict. Peace is therefore a major concern of the book. The 2008 book ends its chapter 7 with a debate on democracy and democratization, presented as the solution for the political crisis. This would be the proper response to existing political challenges. The present book analyzes a cultural predicament and proposes reform and change as the needed solution. This is a different focus, given the fact that the predicament is a civilizational one, as are the related implications. The presented insights are combined with thinking about the future prospect of the Islamic world, as conceptualized in terms of Ibn Khalduns ilm al-umram/philosophy of civilization. In this thinking I have not been alone, but was lucky enough to have been a participant in global networks, which I acknowledge below, all of them located outside the German academia in which I am not only a loner but also silenced. This is sad, but true.

The present book owes much to the impetus provided by research into the place of Islam and culture in international relations. At the head of the list is the Culture Matters Research Project/CMRP pursued at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, and the first person I should mention is Professor Lawrence Harrison of the Fletcher School, who chaired the CMRP. Repeated visits to the Fletcher School in order to write two contributions to Lawrence Harrisons Developing Cultures were both memorably pleasant and productive. In the final stages of writing this book, in spring 2008, I was based in Washington and traveled to Tufts to present my ideas to Larrys highly intelligent postgraduate students in his class at the Fletcher School. The final draft was completed at my home university of Gttingen, Germany.

Throughout, the book follows the pattern of . And so I single out my colleagues Larry Harrison, Helmut Anheier, and Y. Raj Isar, who gave particular support to the publication of this book, jointly with other scholars. Among them is Professor John Kelsay, to whom I am grateful for his support. German professors are conspicuously absent from the list I will not comment on this, but leave readers to draw their own conclusions.

Two other persons, not members of the scholarly community, were unhesitating in their support for the completion of this book. One is my editor, Joe Whiting, who has again been most supportive; he helped to breathe life into the project and to make it a reality. The other is my staff assistant, Elisabeth Luft. As a scholar who combines computer illiteracy with the stubbornness that each chapter must be rewritten at least ten times I am unable to write without technical assistance. In these circumstances, during the past decade Elisabeth Luft has been the major figure in my scholarly life in terms of book writing. Elisabeth Luft not only word-processed most carefully all of the drafts of the chapters that follow, but also drew my attention to my shortcomings. I also need to mention my research assistant Nicole Klitzsch, who was most important in the 2008 book; she provided research assistance for the first five chapters on this book before departing for Belfast, Northern Ireland, with a PhD grant. Following Nicoles departure, Thorsten Hasche took over and provided welcome research assistance. Thorstens contribution was most helpful. I am grateful to Paola Celli, my production editor, for her continued cooperation in this second Routledge book, and to Judith Oppenheimer for her superb copy-editing and straightening of my English.