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Islam, the Modern World, and the West: General Considerations
Many students are shocked when they realize that modern
Euro-American culture is the embodiment of a multi-dimensional world view
or belief system that is commonly called "modernism." Some of the beliefs
of modernism in comparison to Islam are discussed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
professor at George Washington University and one of the foremost scholars
of Islam.
One of the most significant political dimensions of modernism was
modern Euro-American imperialism.
A world renown professor of Comparative Literature at
Columbia University, Said wrote a highly influential, paradigm shifting
book Orientalism [at
Amazon.com], which deals with Euro-American imperialism and its
distorting influence on the writings of Western scholars about non-Western
cultures. Subsequently Said wrote Covering
Islam [at Amazon.com], which focuses on how Euro-American scholars and
journalists slant what they write about Islam. A recent interview with
Said originally published on 27 March 1999 in the International Herald
Tribune is Roots of the West's Fear of Islam.
Western attitudes to Islam are portrayed in the scholarly article The
Utility of Islamic Imagery in the West, written by Prof. J. A. Progler
of City University of New York (CUNY), Brooklyn College and in the
excellent readings at the site Imaging Islam and Muslims.
The political significance of Islam is certainly the most important
reason why Islam has been occupying center stage in the world
consciousness at the outset of the 21st century. One essay published after
9/11 that can provide a useful focus in thinking about the political
dimensions of Islam today is Theorizing Islam by Professor Richard Bulliet of Columbia University. This work
is among the many informative articles published by the Social Science
Research Council (an independent NGO which is probably the chief funding
agency for all varieties of social science research in the world) on its
website After September 11:
Perspectives from the Social Sciences
The on-line journal ISIM Newsletter, which is
produced by the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the
Modern World at Leiden University is an excellent source containing
numerous articles.
Unfortunately, in their writings on Islam, many Western non-Muslims
have been motivated not merely by an enlightened desire to understand but
rather by desires to dominate and control.
Such desires -- based somewhere between the extremes of lust for
Western political and economic domination, on the one hand, and fear of
Islamic domination, on the other -- may not always take on the obvious
polemical overtones found in some "orientalist" discourse or the in
hate/scare-literature distributed by certain Western religious or
political groups.
Sometimes, in the writings of today's post-orientalists or
neo-orientalists, the anti-Islamic polemic is subtly marshalled by
innuendo and by ironic comments, the metatext of which is that "We --I,
the scholar, and you my Western readers -- are superior to Islam and
Muslims."
Among the various polemics flung by non-Muslims toward Islam are that
Islam advocates violence and terrorism, restricts basic human rights,
oppresses women, and promotes slavery. In other words, non-Muslims often
criticize Islam on the grounds that it advocates beliefs and actions that
perpetrate injustices. Nevertheless, Muslims base their beliefs primarily
on the Qur'an, and the Qur'an states unequivocally that God does not act
in unjust manner (as in the following verses: "... and not one will thy
Lord treat with injustice" [Surat al-Kahf (the Cave):49], and "Allah is
never unjust in the least degree: if there is any good (done), He doubleth
it, and gives from His Own Self a great reward" [Surat an-Nisa
(Women):40]). Hence, God cannot have revealed Islam as a force which
should impose injustice on people, and Muslims must similarly neither act
in an unjust manner nor formulate Islam in unjust manner. Dr. Aziza
al-Hibri has concisely summed up this principle, "If something is unjust,
it is un-Islamic."
