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Living in Harmony with Nature (Urdu)

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Restructuring Higher Education in Pakistan

Dr. M. Ashraf Adeel*

The challenges facing Pakistan in the socio-economic and educational sectors are overwhelming. Our participation rate in tertiary education is among the lowest in the world whereas neighboring India is globally the third largest producer of college/university degree holders, falling behind only China and the US. Moreover, the quality of our tertiary degrees, in many cases, falls drastically short of international benchmarks. As a result the overall moral and educational caliber of our society, as well as leadership at various levels has suffered from huge deficiencies. We are today bogged down in a mess of poverty, illiteracy, half-baked education, and extremism. No society can hope to come out of such a mess without broadly educating its people, highly educating its leaders in all sections of its life, and inculcating critical and scientific thought in its people, particularly the youth. Therefore, if we really understand our situation, the next decade or so in the life of national institutions like Higher Education Commission, HEC, are of the greatest significance for the very survival of our nation. The critical question then is how can we dig ourselves out of the quagmire we find ourselves in through expansion and qualitative improvement of our higher education.

I believe that we need a basic restructuring of our higher education to successfully address our current national crises in the long haul. First thing I propose in this regard is to bring our Bachelor degrees at par with international standards. It is a good thing that HEC has already instituted and encouraged 4 years Bachelor degrees in the country. This initiative needs to be augmented by requiring all institutions to phase out two years Bachelor degrees in natural and social sciences as well as humanities and allowing only 4-5 years degrees. But more critically we need to introduce the component of what is called General Education, GE, into the curricula for all degrees. Nobody should be able to get a Bachelor degree in sciences (both natural and social), medicine and engineering, or humanities without completing a certain number of credit hours in subjects falling under GE. For example typically one needs to complete around 120 credit hours for earning a Bachelor degree. Out of these one would earn about 80 credits in his/her major and the rest would be in GE. This distribution might vary in different universities or countries but through GE courses students are given well-rounded exposure to history of world civilizations, world religions, some world literature, Mathematics, at least one Natural Science course for students of Humanities and Social Sciences, Social Science and Humanities courses for students majoring in Natural Sciences, Computer Science course, a course in Critical Thinking and/or Logic, a course in Ethics, a course or two in Health and Wellness or physical education, and writing-intensive courses as well as courses in Oral Communications. In addition everybody should do at least one credit hour worth of social or community service.

We’ll continue to have Pakistan Studies and Islamic Studies as part of our GE program. The point, however, is that we need to broadly educate all our bachelor degree holders so as to inculcate in them critical and scientific thought and an awareness of the natural world and cultural diversity of human family. Without such an exposure our youth cannot attain competitive abilities for positive life in today’s global village and can turn myopic and, sometimes, self-destructive through narrow fanatical views.  

In addition, all curricula, from undergraduate to PhD level, including professional degrees, need to be systematically revised to update and modernize them and bring them at a par with comparable courses in the best institutions of the world. A cycle of curricula revision, with the help of best experts in different fields, needs to be started immediately with equal emphasis on quality for all branches of knowledge. Such a cycle should be repeated periodically.

Also as Pakistan needs to build human resources in sciences and technology, in order to catch on with its neighbors and the equivalent countries in Asia at large, we need to enhance production of PhDs in the country. This requires a strong undergraduate academic program and a careful assessment of the situation on the ground. HEC needs to galvanize the undergraduate, graduate and PhD programs in all the universities and colleges through systematic expansion of faculty, labs, research funding, and increased connectivity to worldwide digitalized educational resources. All admissions including those of PhD scholars plus the recruitment of faculty members will have to be made totally transparent and merit-based. Also for enhancing the quality of teaching in the country, HEC should increase the number and cycle of refresher courses for college and university teachers to ensure that all teachers are periodically updated in their knowledge of their discipline.

Furthermore, mechanisms for production of international standard textbooks, research Journals, and scholarly books need to be established in order to enhance local production and dissemination of knowledge.

Another important step that needs to be taken, in collaboration with Academic Staff of colleges and universities, is to introduce mechanisms for teacher/course evaluation (quality measurement) at the end of each semester. It should not be made into an instrument of harassment of teachers but should be so organized as to help teachers improve the quality of their teaching. This is important because, as a thinker once said, “if you cannot measure, you cannot improve”.   

An ambitious program also needs to be initiated for quantitative expansion of higher education. I believe that a National Endowment for Education, as envisaged by HEC charter, must be established immediately. HEC should run national and international drives for raising funds for expansion and improvement of higher education in the country in order to be able to meet the target of 20% of Pakistanis to hold quality college degrees by the year 2020. The Federal and Provincial Governments as well as Educational Boards of the country plus Banks and other institutions should contribute towards this fund on emergency footing. These funds should be combined with allocations from the Federal Government to open at least 4 world-class Pakistan Institutes of Technology and dozens of additional universities and colleges in all the provinces to make quality education accessible to our youth in all corners of the country. We need to create “KNOWLEDGE CITIES” around the country to really meet the educational challenge and defend our ideological boarders. Number of the universities and colleges should be sufficient to enroll about 20% of the people of the relevant age group. This action cannot be further delayed. Otherwise, we ‘ll again miss the train with disastrous consequences for our future.

We also need to make a careful assessment of the existing and emerging local, regional, and global market needs for human resources so as to adjust our academic programs in the colleges and universities to meet the manpower requirements of economies/industries. Degrees in emerging disciplines and the existing degrees should be adjusted to the market needs.

There is one other area where HEC needs to play a critical role for our national growth. It must galvanize all the Institutes of Education and Research, IERs, in all the Universities by not only having their curricula revised to make them all four years degree programs but also create wings in them for ongoing high quality refresher courses for school teachers of Pakistan. We need to revolutionize our school education and this cannot be done without an ongoing process of retraining our schoolteachers. HEC can lead in this field. In fact it should open a model IER for this purpose.

*Writer is the first Vice chancellor of Hazara University, former Professor of Philosophy at Peshawar University, and current Associate Professor of Philosophy at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. 

Modernity and Muslims: A Selective Retrieval

Modernity and Muslims:Toward a Selective Retrieval1M. Ashraf AdeelAbstractThis article is focused on some conditions in today’s world ofglobalized media, which are producing either an uncritical acquiescenceor fright in Muslim societies as a result of the interactionbetween these societies and the contemporary Westernpowers that represent modernity and postmodernity on theglobal stage. The rise of fundamentalism, a tendency towardreturning to the roots and stringently insisting upon some pureand literal interpretation of them, in almost all the religions ofthe world is a manifestation of this fright. The central concernof this article is to suggest that fundamentalism is neither theonly nor the most reasonable response for Muslim societies inthe face of contemporary modernity. Muslims need to adopt anindependent and critical attitude toward modernity and reshapetheir societies in the light of the ethics of the Qur’an, keeping inview the historical link between Islam and science in as much asIslamic culture paved the way for emergence of modern scienceduring European Renaissance. The necessity of a pluralistic orcontextualized modernization of Muslim societies is discussedalong with the need for the removal of cultural duplicity in therole of the West in relation to Muslim societies. All this leads toan overall proposal for modernization which is given towardsthe end.________________________________________________________________________M. Ashraf Adeel has held professorship in philosophy at the University of Peshawar, Pakistan;a senior visiting fellowship at Lincare College Oxford; and was the founding vicechancellor of Hazara University in Pakistan. Currently with Philosophy Department atKutztown University of Pennsylvania, his research and teaching interests include contemporaryphilosophy of science and language, epistemic and religious pluralism, and modernIsalmic thought.2 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1IntroductionThe issue of relationship between religion and modernity is a complex one.There are those who take modernity and religion to be antithetical.2 Suchis not the perspective that I am taking here. Religion is presumed here tobe compatible with the basic ingredients of modernity, and now postmodernity—ingredients such as universal (non-discriminatory and differencesensitive)ethics, sociopolitical institutions based on such ethics, scienceand technology, and more recently, globalization. William James, MuhammadIqbal, and more recently, Paul Hirst accept religious experience asan authentic form of experience and knowledge, which can take its placealongside of other forms of experience—experiences that are moral or aesthetic.3 In fact, plurality of types of experiences and forms of knowledgederived from them is, after Paul Hirst, taken here as an essential feature ofa genuine and mature phase of contemporary modernity.4However, this article is not focused on either epistemological pluralismor the nature of modernity5 or religion. It is focused on some conditionsin today’s globalized world, which are producing either an uncriticalacquiescence6 or fright in various traditional societies as a result of theirinteraction with the contemporary Western powers that represent modernityon the global stage. Under the impact of the forces of modernity, whichis attended by deep sociopolitical, economic, and moral discontents7 aswell as hollow pop culture—this fright is, more than anything else, a fearof losing identity and authentic values of the tradition. The rise of fundamentalism,a tendency toward returning to the roots and stringently insistingupon some pure and literal interpretation of them,8 in almost allthe religions of the world is a manifestation of this fright.9 In this article,my central concern is to suggest that fundamentalism is neither the onlynor the most reasonable response for Muslim societies in the face of contemporarymodernity. Muslims need to adopt an independent and criticalattitude toward modernity and reshape their societies in the light of theuniversal ethics of the Qur’an, as well as the historical link between Islamand science, and develop their own culturally contextualized modernity.The third element required for modernization (inclusive of democratization)of Muslim societies is related to the role of the West in the Muslimsocieties. The West needs to view the future of humanity as interdependentand must extricate itself from its standing tradition of double-talk and duplicitywhen it comes to the modernization and democratization of Muslim(and other) societies.Modernity and Muslims 3In Section 1 below, I address the notions of modernity and postmodernityand globalization. I highlight Harbermas’ understanding of modernity,his presentation of the Nietzschean critique carried out by a number ofthinkers, and his view that contemporary modernity is a “high modernity”rather than postmodernity. Then, I briefly discuss the notion of globalizationin order to bring out some contours of our today’s world as a “globalvillage.” In Section 2, I discuss the hegemonic impact of global Westernmedia networks on the Muslim societies and the way this phenomenon isleading to fright in those societies. In Section 3, I briefly explain the traditionaldouble-talk of Western powers throughout the twentieth centuryin relation to the modernization and democratization of Muslim societies.In Section 4, I offer a very brief glimpse of the universal dimension of theIslamic ethic, which can become a basis for modern social and democraticpolitical institutions in Muslim societies. In Section 5, I briefly note thehistorical linkages between Islamic culture and the emergence of modernscience and technology through the European Renaissance (a contributionthat in fact started in Muslim Spain). And, in the concluding section, I integratethe ideas discussed earlier into a proposal for the modernization ofMuslim societies.The Crucible of Modernity, Post-modernity andGlobalization: How Should Muslim Societies Respond?Although, in this paper, I do not focus on either modernity or globalization,I nevertheless aim at underscoring the need of Muslim societies toengage with modernity in a globalized world, albeit on an intellectuallyequal footing and after critical analysis of the equations of give and take.Given these goals in this article, it might be of use to look at the conceptsof modernity and globalization carefully right at the beginning and point tosome reasons why Muslim societies cannot avoid engaging these phenomena.The questions I will address in this section, therefore, are: what is thenature of modernity and globalization and what are their paradoxes; andwhy do Muslim societies have no choice but to engage these contemporaryphenomena? In the process, I will also touch on the issue of the emergenceof postmodernity.Let us look into modernity first. There are various perspectives to thecurrent debate on modernity and postmodernity. The philosophical perspectiveon this debate centers on some of the positions developed by JürgenHabermas.10 For him, the “project of modernity” is continuous with the4 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1humanism of European Enlightenment insofar as human reason is consideredto be the final arbiter in all matters pertaining to individual and sociallife, as well as an understanding of reality in general. Harbermas believesthat it was Hegel who first articulated what he calls “the project of modernity.”This project is based on a metaphysics and an epistemology whichhas come under attack from people like Nietzsche, Adorno, Foucault,Heidegger, Derrida, and their varied followers. This metaphysics and epistemology,according to Harbermas, is an epistemology and metaphysics ofobjects. According to Hegel, the tool to uncover the reality of these objectsboth ontologically and epistemologically is reason,. The key thing in thisoutlook is that being (the being of objects) is a manifestation of reason,and its knowledge is also possible through a person’s exercise of reason.The central notion here, according to Harbermas, is “subjectivity.” Hegel’scharacterization of this notion in terms of “freedom” and “reflection” impliedindividualism, autonomy of action, the right to criticize (rationally)any and all, and the idealist philosophy as a way of self-understanding. Itis these elaborations of subjectivity by Hegel, which turned this notion intoa centerpiece of modernity. Given Descartes’ and Kant’s emphasis on asubject-centered epistemology earlier, this characterization by Hegel wasobviously a continuation of the break with the medieval scholastic past,which was launched by Descartes and which culminated in Kant’s celebrationof pure reason. No longer were we to adjudicate in matters ofknowledge, values, reality—and even religion—except through the officeof reason. Hegel became the philosopher of modernity by elaborating thissubject-centered epistemology to the fullest. From now on, in this the newhistorical epoch, modernity was not to look to an earlier age as a source ofnorms. All norms were to be structured by human reason itself, the finalarbiter and judge in all spheres of life.Such a project and role for reason, according to Harbermas, impliednot only subjectivism but also fallibilism, insofar as human reason can gowrong. In addition it implied universalism insofar as the norms derivedfrom reason were considered universally applicable.In Harbermas’s own words:Autonomous public spheres can draw their strength only from the resourcesof largely rationalized lifeworlds. This holds true especially forculture, that is to say, for science’s and philosophy’s potential for interpretationsof self and world, for the enlightenment potential of strictlyuniversalistic legal and moral representations, and, not last, for the radicalexperiential content of aesthetic modernity. It is no accident that soModernityand Muslims 5cial movements today take on cultural-revolutionary traits. Nonetheless,a structural weakness can be noticed here that is indigenous to all modernlifeworlds. Social movements get their thrust-power from threats to welldefinedcollective identities. Although such identities always remain tiedto the particularism of a special form of life, they have to assimilate thenormative content of modernity—the fallibilism, universalism, and subjectivismthat undermine the force and concrete shape of any given particularity.11Harbermas’s point here is that modernity tends to subsume collective culturalidentities under universal, fallibilistic, and subjectivist interpretationsand, in the process, does violence to particularities. According to Harbermas,these characteristics make the project of modernity continuous withprogressive humanist agenda of European Enlightenment.12 The human asa rational subject is the unmistakable center of both Enlightenment andmodernity. However, Harbermas also looks at other historical developments,like the Reformation and French Revolution, as connected with thesubject-centered agenda of modernity. As described by social thinkers likeWeber, Mead, and Durkheim, through these developments, reason progressivelymanifested itself as the sole arbiter of human affairs, and thereby,societies became progressively “rationalized” and “secularized.” Secularization,therefore, is simply a progressive application of reason to the organizationof human societies and is linked with the project of modernity.This process was reinforced by Industrial Revolution and the resultant reorganizationof societies under new forms of socialization.As modernity unfolded itself as a political project through the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries, it became associated with liberalism as thedominant social and political philosophy—though by nineteenth century, italso saw the emergence of Marxism as a political alternative for the modernage. The association with liberalism was quite natural because liberalismis based on some of the same assumptions about subject-centeredepistemology that informed modernity in general. As John Gray points out,individualism, universalism, egalitarianism, and meliorism, are essentialingredient of liberalism.13 Individualism takes a person rather than a socialgroup to be primary from a moral point of view; universalism is the idea ofthe moral unity of mankind as more primary than cultural or political andreligious associations; egalitarianism asserts equality of all people in legaland political order; and meliorism is the affirmation that human institutionscan always be corrected and improved. Gray’s characterization of the elementsof liberalism can be easily seen to be linked to the subject-centered6 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1approach found in thinkers from Descartes through Hume and Kant toHegel. Despite their systemic differences, all these thinkers emphasizedthat subject-centered reason is at the core of our knowledge of the world.This is obviously a kind of individualism in epistemology. However, thisindividualism of rationality does not stop rationality from being universalor universalizable. For example, one can see this point from Kant’s moralphilosophy which is based on universal character of the so-called CategoricalImperative.What is rational in one case must be rational in all similar cases. Souniversalism is in-built into the subject-centered epistemology of modernists.But epistemic universalism quickly leads to political universalism insofaras it brings all human beings under the same moral principles undersimilar circumstances. Equality before the legal and political order, theegalitarian component of liberalism, then follows from moral equality ofhumans. Common moral imperatives imply similarity of legal and politicalstatus; otherwise, moral discrimination ensues.Since subject-centered epistemology is based on the idea that humanreason, though the sole arbiter and judge in all matters, is nonetheless fallible,all social and political institutions built by humans can therefore fallshort and can always be improved. Hence, meliorism is also a natural consequenceof a subject-centered epistemology.The overall point here is that for Harbermas a subject-centered reasonis an essential part of the agenda of the project of modernity. He believesthough that this project has come under attack from what he calls the “Nietzscheanism”of people like Adorno, Foucault, Heidegger, Derrida, andtheir followers. In this line of attack, Harbermas sees a “particularist” emphasisthat aims at challenging the universal goals of the project of modernity.While this is not the place to elaborate the ideas of these thinkers individually,it must be noted that all of them share a certain skepticism aboutthe subject-centered epistemologies of the project of modernity. For them,these epistemologies are what Dewey called “spectator epistemologies,”14and what more recently have been characterized as “representational” epistemologiesby Richard Rorty.15 These epistemologies are not necessarilya product of modern thinking. According to Dewey and Rorty, they havebeen with us in different forms from the days of Plato and Aristotle.A number of charges have been leveled against this type of epistemology.Derrida, focusing on texts, claims that through his deconstructiveapproach that all texts—including those of systematic theories suchas Platonism, structuralism, and phenomenology—undermine their ownModernity and Muslims 7ostensible meaning in many subtle ways. In this way, rational theories failto do justice to their subject matter, and in the process of developing such“rational” theories, the theoretician does violence to a number of aspectsof the subject matter. His ostensible meaning hides an alternative meaningthat undermines the rationality of his project. In Derrida’s own words, deconstructiveapproach aims at bringing this point out:Each time that I say ‘deconstruction and X (regardless of the concept orthe theme),’ this is the prelude to a very singular division that turns thisX into, or rather makes appear in this X, an impossibility that becomes itsproper and sole possibility, with the result that between the X as possibleand the ‘same’ X as impossible, there is nothing but a relation of homonymy,a relation for which we have to provide an account. . . .16With this approach, there can be no one rational interpretation of texts.Texts lend themselves to a variety of interpretations, and they always needto be deconstructed (analyzed) in order to allow the hidden dimensionsand differences of things to come into play. From this point of view, thesubject-centered epistemology, in its zeal to look for the universal, doesviolence to the particular, the contextual, and the different.Rorty charges that the representational epistemologies, at the heartof the modernity project, are suffering from an erroneous view of mind,which is understood as the mirror of nature. The idea that the human mindmirrors the world outside and this mirroring can be genuine insofar as wecan compare it with reality outside us (the so-called correspondence theoryof truth) is simply empty. One can not compare beliefs or propositions withthe external world. All we are capable of doing is to compare beliefs withbeliefs, and propositional contents with propositional contents. Any claimsthat we might make about the nature of reality itself are themselves justpropositional contents or thoughts or part of a conversation,17 and there isno Archimedean point from which we can compare our beliefs or thoughtswith reality per se.Nietzsche himself looked at everything, including human self, as aninterpretation. There was nothing with which these interpretations could becompared to check their truth. The point here, however, is not the detailsof this attack on modernity but its general elan. These thinkers despairabout the possibility of capturing universal truth regarding things in rationaltheories. Theories hide aspects of reality in the very process of makingcertain aspects of reality explicit. The particular and the different canescape their net. But as far as life goes—as far as people’s “lifeworlds” go,8 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1they are contextual and particular; they are different; they cannot be necessarilystrait-jacketed into some universal frames. Hence, these antimodernistthinkers believe the project of modernity to be violent in its spirit to theparticularist and contextual reality of people’s worldviews and cultures.Harbermas understands this attack on the modernist epistemology asan attack on the epistemology of objects. This epistemology aims at knowingthings through objectifying them and pushing them into so-called universalframes of reason. The fault, according to Harbermas, lies with thisepistemology and not with modernity itself. Harbermas proposes to replacethis epistemology of objects with an epistemology of reaching mutual understandingthrough what he calls “communicative action.” It is an actionbased on mutual recognition. In Harbermas’ opinion, therefore, the modernistuniversalist reason needs to be replaced with “communicative reason”rather than despairing of modernity as a whole. For him, we are livingin a period of “high modernity” rather than post-modernity. Communicativereason recognizes not only the world of objects but also the subjectiveand social worlds. In so doing, it does not do violence to the cultural orsubjective particularities. However, some of the antimodernists considerthe project of modernity not only to be pernicious in many respects butalso to have come to an end. A new period of postmodernity, they argue,has already dawned on us. It is this postmodernity which is sensitive to theparticular, the contextual, the different—and, hence, pluralistic and sensitiveto all sorts of cultural differences.There are a number of other stories that thinkers and analysts havetold about modernity and postmodernity.18 The important thing here is tokeep in view the fact that modernity did split into a bourgeois capitalist andanti-bourgeois socialist camps in the nineteenth century. In the process, itproduced massive industrialization and secularization in Europe as well asAmerica, and societies became massively urbanized. It is these societiesthat are the models of modernity in the contemporary world for everyoneall over the globe—including the Muslim societies, which as part of theso-called third world are themselves struggling against a host of problemsfrom poverty to political instability or autocratic governance, or both. Asmodernity unfolded itself in the West, Europe moved into an imperial modeand started colonizing vast regions of the globe. Colonialism became anothermanifestation of modernity, and the universalism of subject-centeredreason was turned into an instrument for exposing the “irrationality’ of thenative cultures. As I discuss below, Muslims—who had paved the wayearlier for emergence of modernity in Europe—encountered modernity asModernity and Muslims 9a colonized people in vast regions of their native lands. Today, recentlydecolonized Muslim societies still labor under the yoke of neocolonialismin our globalized world. Therefore, it is to the issue of globalization thatwe must turn now.Globalization like modernity has no fixed definition. One comes acrossa large number of characterizations in the burgeoning literature on the subject.19 However, a number of characterizations point out interconnectednessas central to globalization and then note a number of phenomena associatedwith it. It needs to be pointed out though that not all scholars agree thatthe world has already entered a new period of social organization called“globalization.” Those who dispute that we have entered a new period inhuman history argue that today’s interconnectedness and interdependenceis not greater than the period from 1890 to 1914.20 Proponents of globalization,on the other hand, point to interconnectedness of economies, cultures,information flows, and the flow of populations in the contemporary worldas some of the factors that have contributed to creating a “global village.”In their view the concepts of time and space have also undergone fundamentalchange because of this interconnectedness of the world throughtechnologies facilitating flow of information, people, and goods. This integrationof the world, they think, has generated new global forces frompolitics and economy to culture and media.As far as politics is concerned, globalization seems to have generatedapparently contradictory forces. On the one hand, when the nations getinterconnected and have greater interdependence, they can reinforce eachother’s progress and can work to strengthen peace and prosperity becauseof the reciprocity of their interests. On the other hand, local self-interestscan feel threatened by global integration, and as a result, conflicts canemerge and intensify. Both these trends are visible in the contemporaryscene. Emergence of fundamentalism in different religions of the world is anoteworthy flight toward the local,21 while the appearance of supranationalorganizations and institutions as well as non-state actors—nongovernmentalorganizations working for political goals like protection of human rightsand environment, for example, are taken as evidence of political integration.This is not the place to adjudicate between the contrary political pullsof globalization, but it needs to be noted that not only fundamentalismsof various kinds are a visible fact of contemporary global scene, but theopposite integrative trends have brought nation-states under considerablepressure. As Schirato and Webb say:10 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1According to some of the more enduring stories of globalization, the increasingsignificance of a global economy and communication networkhas gone hand in hand with a decline in the nation-state. The argumentis that the throng of trans- and multinational corporations, internationalbodies of jurisdiction and management, and the congeries of regional andinternational blocs means that the nation-state has lost its reason-to-be,and will necessarily wither away. What will replace it is not particularlyclear. . . .22Whether or not the nation-state will wither away is an open question. However,there is no denying the fact that a lot of the functions of the nationstateare slowly shifting to other global or regional entities. Therefore, it issafe to say that politically we are living in an era of contradictory forces:movements toward local identities pitted against integrative trends of aglobal or regional scale.Some scholars consider economic integration of the world throughInternet-based financial transactions as the originating feature of globalization.For example, Armand Mattelart says:Globalization originated in the sphere of financial transactions, whereit has shattered the boundaries of national systems. Formerly regulatedand partitioned, financial markets are now integrated into a totally fluidglobal market through generalized connections in real time. The financialsphere has imparted its dynamics to an economy dominated by speculativemovements of capital in a context of constant overheating. With theexpansion of the speculative bubble, the financial function has gainedautonomy from the so-called real economy and supplanted industrialproduction and investment.23Of course, the scale of flow of goods and services as well as interdependenceof markets and industries at a global scale is also in the backgroundof these financial transactions. Particularly with the advent of new information-age technologies, the economy of the world is definitely a globalsystem today in more ways than ever before. Commenting on these technologies,Schirato and Webb remark:The world changed radically over the twentieth century, and more so overthe past few decades: much of this change is associated with the developmentof new technologies. One outcome of this is the reduction of theeffects of space and time on everyday life and on trade. Through communicationtechnologies we talk to one another, view news and documentariesabout other parts of the world and other cultures, revisit history, andModernity and Muslims 11share in the cultural production of other social groups. Through othertechnologies we can rapidly traverse the globe physically, transmit informationalmost instantaneously, and send goods around the world in hoursor days, rather than months. The speed of transmission, and the mobilityof capital, mean that both space and time seem to have been truncated,or to have collapsed entirely. Not surprisingly, then, technology is one ofthe most prominent of the many areas used to characterize globalization,and the new communication technologies in particular are seen by manypeople as having radically changed the way the world works.24These technological developments and their concomitant political and economicchanges at the global level have had their implications in the culturalfield as well. However, despite the hegemonic role of American culturein the current state of globalization, there is growing diversity to what isbeing globalized. As Peter Berger and Samuel Huntington note: “On thecultural level, this [the challenge of globalization as continuation of modernization]has been the great challenge of pluralism: the breakdown oftaken-for-granted traditions and the opening up of multiple options for beliefs,values, and lifestyles.”25 The point is that in the context of dominantcultural trends, lifestyles, and beliefs, there is also a greater awareness ofdiversity of traditions in the globalized world. Also—in addition to globaltrade, travel, and immigration—this diversity is almost unavoidable in thecurrent state of media networks because of their global reach. It is not justthe jeans and burgers that have been globalized. One finds African, Asian,and Latin American cultural products and foods in most major cities of theworld, particularly so in the Western cities. Also, it is not just the knowledgeproduced in the West which is globalized. The traditional knowledgeof different cultures of the world is also flowing over to all parts of theworld at a much greater pace in the world of the Internet. Western, particularlyAmerican, hegemony is a not to be underestimated in today’s world,but the flow of diverse cultures across the globe is also a steady trend.Culturally, therefore, we might be said to be living in a hegemonic worldwhich is becoming diverse at its edges.The point of my foregoing remarks on modernity and globalization issimply to underscore the fact that, despite many paradoxical trends, we areliving in a world of “high modernity” or postmodernity which, accordingto a large number of scholars, is a globalized world. The question then ishow Muslim societies should act in this crucible of modernity and globalizationSpeaking a priori—is it at all possible for a society to either acceptor reject globalized modernity wholesale, or can it evaluate its values and12 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1norms along with those of globalized modernity and develop a synthesis ofmutually acceptable values? It is hard to imagine that any society can rejecthistorical developments like globalized modernity wholesale. But sometimesthe critiques of modernity and globalization are interpreted as if societiescan avoid entering into these modes altogether. This, however, seemsto assume that there are many ways for different cultures of the world togrow and go through stages of development. However, recent studies of thedevelopment of all the known cultures throughout history seem to point tothe contrary. Comprehensive surveys of these cultures by anthropologistshow that there are universal patterns to the growth of cultures.26 Giventhis understanding, there is no avoiding modernity for any mainstream cultureof the world, including Muslim cultures. This does not mean that allcultures will become Westernized. It just means that industry, technology,and social reorganization of societies on democratic lines within the frameworkof their own cultures are going to penetrate all major societies of theworld in due course. It is best, therefore, for all societies to bring about thenecessary adjustments in their practices in a conscious and directed fashionrather than imbibe global influences in a haphazard manner. The issue forover 1.5 billion Muslims in today’s world is not to find ways to sidestepmodernity or postmodernity but to adapt it to their cultural conditions andfaith. They need not accept all aspects of modernity, but as they live in itsglobalized context, they should find ways to enter into mutual evaluationand create their own modernity, just as their ancestors contributed to theemergence of (early) modernity in Spain. In fact, commenting on Islamicmovements, Peter Berger and Samuel Huntington seems to underscore thatthese movements are working for the same goal of alternative modernity:Islamic movements in Turkey and all over the Muslim world clearly intendan alternative modernity: not rejecting modernity in the style of theTaliban in Afghanistan or even the militant factions in the Iranian regime,but rather seeking to construct a modern society that participateseconomically and politically in the global system but is animated by aself-consciously Islamic culture. A comparable Islamic movement in Indonesia—procapitalist, prodemocratic, tolerant of religious pluralism,but decisively committed to the Muslim faith—was an important factorin the demise of the Suharto regime and the election of its own leader,Abdurrahman Wahid, to the presidency.27I take the notion of alternative modernity to be the notion of a synthesisof cultural developments in different regions of the world, where cultureis understood to be one’s total worldview. Such an approach appears toModernity and Muslims 13fit well with the contemporary critique of subject-centered argument discussedabove. A reason sensitive to difference and diversity—what Harbermascalls “high modernity” in cultures—is what is needed today, and whatmany others have considered a characteristic of postmodernity. If Muslimsinsist on such an approach to modernity and bring their unique cultural valuesand perspective to its evaluation and critical acceptance, then they notonly retrieve their own heritage in modernity but also join the global trendtoward a rationality and faith sensitized to plurality and diversity. Like everybodyelse, Muslim societies have to coexist with others in this world,and that requires understanding and tolerance for difference and diversity.I may add here that such a sensitized reason should be able to accommodatea variety of interpretations of modernity and its political thematiclikesecularism. Reason in this mode is not meant to be universal to thepoint of being blind to difference. It can accommodate Charles Taylor’scommunitarian critique of liberalism, as well Tala Asad’s critique of Europeansecularism. The reason is simple. Taylor’s emphasis on community28as a counterbalance to liberal overemphasis on individualism is in line withHarbermas’s critique of subject-centered reason discussed above. The subjectivityof the individual can be viewed as continuous with the life of thecommunity by an intention that is not separated from its social context ora process that is something like Harbermas’ communicative reason. SimilarlyTalal Asad’s view that secularism itself can turn into an oppressiveforce in the hands of the nation-state,29 need not be resisted by a reason thatrecognizes the violence inherent in the failure of full mutual recognition.Such a rationality—that is, rationality associated with “high modernity”—is indeed a basis for both Taylor’s Wittgensteinian and Talal Asad’s religiouscriticism of modernity.Managed Reality in Our Global Village andIts Hegemonic AspectIntercultural relations in today’s global village are among the most complexever at all levels. The scale and intensity of interactions between localas well as global cultures is unparalleled in human history because of adeep transformation in the concept of distance engendered by the ongoinginformation revolution. The media and Internet have truly turned us allinto next-door neighbors, though most of the time without providing uswith workable ethics to conduct ourselves in relation to our “new neighbors.”We interact with this new type of neighbor in impersonal but very14 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1complex ways and do so on a continual basis. There is no escape from eachother. In the process, we influence each other individually and collectively,pleasantly and unpleasantly, or positively and negatively, in almost all areasof life. Our religions, our moralities, our politics, our economies, ourscience, our technologies, our dress codes, our achievements and setbacks,our pains and joys, and our virtues and crimes—all influence our new typeof impersonal neighbors.30 Some of this influence is shaped by our owndecisions, but a lot of it is controlled by the policies and values of themedia, which we are opening up to or using to communicate with others.This means that we can come to love or hate our new type of neighborsbecause of the decisions made by the management of our global village. Ifthe management so desires and deems fit, it can help us look at our neighborin a friendly light even when our neighbor is not truly friendly to ourbest interests, or it can put them in an unduly unfavorable light. So, in theglobal village, we live in a world of managed reality most of the time. The“medium is becoming the message” if we understand this cliche as involvinga deliberate construction of the medium by vested interests. My basicthesis in this section, therefore, is that we are living in a world of managedreality because of the technological tools that have turned us into neighborsin our global village.Placing this idea of managed reality in the context of contemporaryphilosophical debate, it might be noted that Nelson Goodman has arguedthat, after all, there is no such thing as reality over and above different versionsof reality that we have when we work with versions of reality—thatis, reality as it is understood by different individuals or groups.31 Of course,this kind of relativism about reality is hotly contested by the advocates ofrealism who believe that there is such a thing as a mind-independent realityor world out there—and that our task is to try and discover or understand it.However, the notion of the managed reality that I want to talk about is notmeant to address the issues involved in the perennial debate between therealist and the nonrealist. Managed reality, as understood here, is simplythe reality that we come to know after it has been filtered through the technological,socioeconomic, political, or even religious sieve of the relevantpower groups. Whether or not there is an independent reality out there is aquestion I do not here concern myself with. Let me elaborate. It is clear thatthe picture of the world that filters through to us daily through our televisionsets is a constructed picture, and it is present throughout the globe. AsDon Ihde notes:Modernity and Muslims 15[T]he contemporary context is one of global communications networks.The image technologies occur in different ways in almost all the culturalcontexts of the world. In countries in which television is seen as a toolto “leapfrog” from tribal village life into the twenty-first century (India,for example), satellites beam programs into central village halls in whicha single television set is watched by all. In more developed countriestelevision plus many other communications technologies are decentralizedinto homes and offices. . . . How is the evening news or the MTVvideo constituted? In the case of the newsroom, editing is done from thespectrum of multi-screens which display, simultaneously, the multiplicityof events going on in the world (these already selected from a vastvariety of sources). The technician-editor scans the compound screensand selects and moves from one to another, forming a discontinuous narrativeof news fragments. The result is a “constructed” result, fragmentedbut deliberately designed. Similarly, the video is spliced and constructedfrom shots and takes, remnants from the cinema, united by the narrativeof the single song being sung over the discontinuities of the images. The“reality” is a constructed, edited reality.32It is obvious that those who supervise editing bring their policies as wellas sociopolitical, economic, and sometimes religious preferences to theprocess. The selecting and moving of bits from screens cannot be donein a culturally or politically neutral way. The media networks constructour reality according to their perspectives and preferences, and we receivefrom them a version of the world that they have arranged to appear ina certain way. The networks send out the messages that the managers ofthe networks choose to send out, in the images that they choose to put together.The events in the world, therefore, come to us after they have beenfiltered through the technical sieve of the image technologies—along withthe cultural and political sieve of the owners, managers, home cultures, andconditions of the media. This later cultural and political sieve is embeddedin the local power structure and its agenda. In Gramsci’s terminology,this sieve is comprised of hegemonic cultural forms, the forms that havedomination in the context of a certain culture, albeit through consent andnot coercion, in democratic societies.33This managed reality then becomes the main basis for our response toour neighbors in the global village. To our neighbor, who might belongto another major cultural tradition and be accustomed to different powerarrangements, this reality may not always appear to be a correct way ofrepresenting the truth simply because her or his cultural sieve will arrangeimages differently. Hence, the managed reality may appear to her or him tosuffer from either some or all of the following defects:16 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1• marred by ignorance of the culture of the neighbor• imposing a certain political and economic agenda on the rest of the peoplein the global village, and hence, biased• deliberately insulting the cultural or religious sensitivities of certainneighborsA whole lot of what goes on in the programs of global communicationsnetworks today in relation to the Muslim world is viewed in the Muslimworld as suffering from all the three defects above. The Western representationof reality, insofar as it lacks the universal elements to connect withthe Muslims’ representation of reality, appears to be offensive and distortedto the Muslim audience. The same would be true for any Muslim versionin relation to the Western audience if it had similar deficiencies. Therefore,generally, there is a huge trust deficit between the Western networks andtheir audience in the Muslim world.34 Part of the reason for a growingmistrust has to do with the failure of the networks to show reasonable objectivityin their accounts of the United State’ recent invasion of Iraq. Theyfunctioned as instruments for projecting official American announcements,which eventually turned out to be based on fabrications and lies.35 Iraq isnot a small story by any means. Therefore, these lies and fabrications andthe media’s failure to scrutinize them stand out in the popular mind andwill continue to do so for some time to come.In order to appreciate the complexities and negativity that this managedreality creates, we can look at some recent studies of the portrayal ofMuslims in the Western media. Let us take up the British media first. Ina recent study, Elizabeth Poole, in her chapter titled “The Effects of September11 and the War in Iraq on British Newspaper Coverage,” gives us adetailed analysis of the way the British newspapers the Guardian and TheTimes have covered Islam and Muslims. The years under study are 1994 to1997, 1999, and 2003. Poole reaches the following self-explanatory conclusion:It is clear that there is a continuation in the framework of reporting ofBritish Muslims since 1994. The newsworthiness of Islam is consistentwith previous frameworks of understanding and demonstrates how storieswill only be selected if they fit with an idea of who Muslims are.Not only is there a consensus of news values but newspapers providea particular interpretative framework for defining events. Unfortunatelythis means a continuation in the themes associated with the topics coverage.These being:Modernity and Muslims 171. That Muslims are a threat to security in the UK due to their involvementin deviant activities.2. That Muslims are a threat to British ‘mainstream’ values and thus provokeintegrative concerns.3. That there are inherent cultural differences between Muslims and thehost community which create tensions in interpersonal relations.4. Muslims are increasingly making their presence felt in the public sphere(demonstrated through the topics of politics, education and discrimination).The continuation of this framework represents the unresolved anxietiesaround these topics and the continuing struggle of all groups to establishhegemony. Whilst the variety of coverage of British Muslims has to someextent been maintained — and there have been positive developments inthe Guardian, with its attention to the increased discrimination Muslimsexperience due to September 11—this oppositional interpretation hasbeen marginalized by the dominance of the conservative interpretativeframework. The huge shift to focus on terrorism now unifies coveragewithin the orientalist global construction of Islam. One image dominates,that of ‘Islamic terrorism’. It would appear then that whilst Western/USdriven policy is now under question for various reasons, these powerfulgroups have been successful in maintaining a hegemony of ideas of Islam,sustaining ‘the myth of confrontation’. For example, policy in Iraqhas been under fire from various social/political groups and yet mediacoverage continues to offer us images of an anti-modern, political unstable,undemocratic, often barbaric, chaotic existence consistent withthe now widely established foreign new framework. The representationsof Muslims in the UK are now closer to the undifferentiated global aggressorthat theory postulates. The more persistent the framework, themore indicative it is of an essential Muslimness and is in danger of becomingfixed. These events then define for the public what it means to bea Muslim, and then Muslims worldwide can be managed through socialand aggressive policies.36I have quoted the conclusion of Poole’s study in full in order for us to appreciatefully the kind of damage that is being done to the quality of neighborlyrelations in our global village by this managed presentation of reality.Essentializing Islam and Muslims has become almost a pattern with Westernmedia.37 This can hardly help to win hearts and minds among Muslimaudience of this media and only adds to their mistrust of the West.Let us turn now to two publications from the American media as theycovered Islam prior to 2001. In a comprehensive content analysis of ar18The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1ticles carried by Newsweek and Time magazines on twelve Muslim countriesfrom 1991 to 2001, researchers Shahzad Ali and Khalid conclude thefollowing in their recent article:This article has presented a content analysis of 218 articles of twelveMuslim countries which appeared in two leading US news magazines;Newsweek and Time during period {1991–2001}. These twelve Muslimcountries were placed in three categories; United States allies (Egypt,Jordan, Saudi Arabic and Turkey). United States enemies (Afghanistan,Iran, Iraq and Libya) and neutral countries (Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysiaand Pakistan [sic]. The result of the study indicates that 1943 articlesabout 35 Muslim countries and Islam were published in 1098 issuesof the both magazines during the specified period of eleven year,(1991–2001). It was also found that cumulative coverage of all twelveMuslim countries in both the magazines was comprised of 899 articles.Out of these 899 articles about twelve Muslim countries, the contentanalysis of 219 articles were undertaken. Overall it was found that proportionof negative coverage (3553 sentences, 30.77%) was greater ascompared to proportion of positive coverage (1460 sentences, 12.64%).The both magazine, on the whole, carried 11546 sentences about twelveMuslim countries. Moreover, . . . [t]he first hypothesis stated that theproportion of negative coverage of all twelve Muslim countries will begreater than the proportion of positive coverage. This hypothesis wasaccepted. The data indicated that all twelve Muslim countries received30.77% (3553) negative coverage while the ratio of positive coveragewas 12.64% (1460) sentences.38The coverage of Islam in the Western media on both sides of Atlantic, therefore,is managed through certain generalizations that place Muslims in anegative light in the global village. Hence, the managed reality in today’sglobal village is playing a huge but negative role in attempting to bring theneighbors together. It is actually pushing them away from each other bycontinuing in its failure to bridge the trust gap. This hegemonic role of theWestern media networks39 is resented by many in the global village, andsuch resentment is by no means confined to the Muslim world.40 Recentsurveys have shown that anti-Americanism, for example, is on the rise almostglobally. Obviously, the information revolution and its technologiesare neither value-neutral nor free from cultural clash in their impact.This hegemonic role of the Western media has various aspects to it obviously.It is hegemonic over other media of the world; it naturally has hegemonyover the way Westerners think; and it sets itself up in a hegemonicrole over the way Muslims (and other peoples) think by trying to manageModernity and Muslims 19reality for them. The first and the third aspect reflect the overall hegemonythat the Western powers have exercised in relation to the Muslim societiesor other societies of the world in general. And such hegemonic agenda isstill unfolding in the perception of many throughout the world.41 Therefore,many societies, including some traditional or conservative religious groupswithin the West, look at the modernization process with great suspicionand feel threatened by it insofar as it seems to be tied up with the neocolonialagenda of Western powers and capitalism, or what is sometimesperceived as decadent secular values. What is unfortunate for many non-Western cultures of the world is the persistent perception that modernizationwas colonialism yesterday and is neocolonialism today. In the globalvillage of managed reality, this perception is being accentuated by the allpowerfulWestern media networks, which can be hardly challenged by thelocal media, and hence, appear to be the neocolonial instruments of controlover non-Western cultures. The result is the ongoing reaction and fright inall the societies where people are returning to what they perceive as theirroots, and fundamentalism is on the rise.42My focus in the previous paragraphs has been on the media, but globalizationis obviously not confined to this area alone. Management of theglobal village is driven by the Western hegemonic agenda at many differentlevels. The prevalent economic world order is heavily tilted in favorof the West and is contributing in a huge way to the increasing inequalitybetween the haves and have-nots of the world. The Muslim world is also anunfortunate victim of this exploitative order. Willy Brandt’s IndependentCommission on International Development Issues argued in its 1980 reportthat in order for us to survive “immense risks threatening mankind,” weneed to take urgent measures to address the problems of growing incomedisparity between the North and South, and increasing poverty as well asfinancial and economic instability around the world.43 More recently, Nobellaureate economist Joseph Stiglitz has also argued for an urgent correctionin the ways in which globalization is being handled to further enrichthe rich. In a poignant remark, he says that the two-dollar-a-day subsidythat a cow in Europe receives is more than what half of the world populationis forced to subsist on.44As a result of this grave disparity between the developing and the developedworld, as well as the internal systemic weakness of the developingcountries of the Muslim world, the scientific and technological gapbetween the two sides also keeps growing. Production of scientific knowledgeand technology at the local level requires long term and sustained20 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1political as well as educational investment. The Muslim countries havecome out of the clutches of colonialism only recently and still lack the rightenvironment for such investments.45 This absence of the right environmentis both a cause and an effect of lack of appropriate levels of modernizationin these societies.So the economic, scientific, technological, and information gap betweenMuslim societies and the West is tremendous and growing. Hence,in the global village of managed reality, the overpowering and hegemonicposition of the West naturally produces the reactions of fright and acquiescencenoted above. The only real way out of this dilemma for developingcountries of the Muslim world (and other countries) seems to be the acquisitionof the ability to make free and independent choices and decisions ascultures and societies. Such an ability basically requires the acquisition ofmodern scientific and sociological knowledge as well as technology. It isexactly in the sense of acquiring this knowledge and building their ownculturally contextualized institutions around it that Muslim societies needto modernize. They cannot and should not turn into copies of the Westerncultures because they will lose their identities in the process.That is obviously not in the interest of a pluralistic world order—socritically important from the point of view of what Harbermas calls “communicativereason,” a reason sensitive to differences of cultures and values.But, as just noted, such acquisition of knowledge is a long-term process.Meanwhile the hegemonic pressure of the developed world continues.It must be added that without appropriate levels of scientific and technologicalknowledge, the Muslim (and other non-Western) societies cannotproduce their competing versions of managed reality. The images bombardedon the citizens of developing nations are mostly either Western orlocal. But the local media simply lacks the capacity for a global reach. Thismeans that our global village has to live with just one version of managedreality, and this version produces either fright or acquiescence in its recipientsin the Muslim world—as well as the rest of the developing world andconservative sections of the West itself.Double-talk of Western Powers Regarding theModernization and Democratization of Muslim SocietiesHistorically, the Western powers have not remained consistent in their desirefor the Muslim societies to modernize and democratize. In fact, dependingon the colonial or neocolonial need of the moment, the WesternModernity and Muslims 21powers have either supported the forces of reaction or modernity in theMuslim world. One can notice this simply by casting a cursory look at theshort-term approach adopted by the Western powers in relation to suchmodernist leaders of the Muslim world as King Amanullah of Afghanistan,Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, Jamal Abdul-Nasir of Egypt, andZulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan. Britain and United States are known tohave used different tactics—including mobilization through bribes andother means, and in some cases, inciting conservative clerics to launchreactionary movements against modernization and democratization efforts.King Amanullah’s program of modernization in Afghanistan in the earlypart of twentieth century was derailed by forces of tribalism and conservatismnot without foreign involvement through the so-called Great Gamebeing played in Central Asia by Britain and Russia, in which Russia wasalso perceived by the Muslim world as part of the West. There is no questionthat had Amanullah succeeded in his reform and modernization effortin the period from 1919 to 1928, the history of Afghanistan and theentire region would have been radically different.46 This was an historicopportunity for the Afghan society to move into modern world by meansof Amanullah’s comprehensive reforms. But the short-term (and shortsighted)colonial goals of Western powers dictated policies that led to thederailment of modernization in that unfortunate society. Even today, we arein the grip of the consequences of that failure at modernization.Another glaring case in point is the way democracy was derailed in1953 by the United States in Iran by removing Prime Minister MohammadMossadegh from power through a CIA-led conspiracy.47 This case is an eyeopener in the sense that it led directly to the establishment of one of theworst oppressive regimes in the region under the Shah of Iran and ultimately,after twenty-five years, to the Iranian revolution of 1979 spearheadedby clergy. Mohammad Mossadegh was a popularly elected prime minister,Time Magazine’s man of the year in 1951, who was overthrown by the jointefforts of Britain and United States for short-term economic considerationsregarding oil. Democracy didn’t matter then. To get a sense of how CIA’slead man Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt,conducted this operation in Tehran, let me quote from Stephen Kinzer’sexcellent book on the subject:Roosevelt spent his first two weeks in Tehran conducting business froma villa rented by one of his American agents. Decades of British intriguein Iran, coupled with more recent work by the CIA, gave him excellentassets on the ground. Among them a handful of experienced and22 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1highly resourceful Iranian operatives who had spent years assembling aclandestine network of sympathetic politicians, military officers, clergymen,newspaper editors, and street gang leaders. The CIA was payingthese operatives tens of thousands of dollars per month, and they earnedevery cent. During the spring and summer of 1953, not a day passedwithout at least one CIA subsidized mullah, news commentator, or politiciandenouncing Prime Minister Mossadegh. The prime minister, whohad great respect for the sanctity of free press, refused to suppress thiscampaign.48The US involvement in the matter has finally been officially acknowledgedby Secretary Albright in a speech in 2000.49One hardly needs underline that had Mossedegh’s democracy beenstrengthened in Iran in mid 20th century, the region would have presented atotally different look in today’s world. Amanullah and Mossedegh’s casesare not exceptions. In fact case after case, the Western powers have tendedto engage in double talk regarding modernization and democracy in theMuslim countries. They claim to stand for modernity and human rights butactually follow their governing colonial or neo-colonial agenda of the momentin a very short-sighted manner.50This double-talk of the West continues even today. The story of Afghanistanis a classical lesson in the way Western imperial powers in pursuitof their conflicting agendas have and can destroy a nation. The thenSoviet Union and the United States fought out their war in 1980s on theAfghan soil and used local politicians and warlords in the name of eithertotalitarian socialism or jihad, as the case may be, to destroy completelythe fabric of that society. The country has been completely devastated bynow at all levels—including its environment, agriculture, towns, villagesand cultural resources.51 In addition, it is this conflict between two Westernpowers which directly produced men, materials, and environment forJihadist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 and, subsequently,on other Western powers as well as Muslim countries. The factthat Jihadists have nothing but destruction to offer to Muslim societies andto the world at large should be taken as the single most important dimensionof the outcome of imperialist tussles on Muslim lands.52 The moralbankruptcy of Western powers’ double talk can ultimately combine withother factors to produce only such a destructive outcome. This fact is alsotellingly exemplified, probably more so than anything else, by the story ofPalestinian people. Not even the worst repression of the Palestinian peopleseems to have moved Western powers out of their moral stupor and disModernityand Muslims 23sembling talk in this matter—and of course, this has produced terrifyingconsequences for the entire world.Overall, therefore, Muslim (and other developing) societies have notbeen treated with any degree of consistency by the West as far as the issueof democratization and modernization is concerned. In our global village,such treatment of neighbors can produce direct results in our own homes.Somehow, we need to break the hold of ethnocentricity on our minds andrise to a humanistic level of universal ethics in order to produce uniformstandards for the treatment of all our neighbors. Double talk has to go asa first step toward the integration of humanity under modern and pluralistcivic and political standards and values. Those who hold the reins of powerin the West must bring their policies in line with their claimed ethical paradigmof standing for modernity (read high modernity) and human rights.This ethical shift in the policies of Western powers is an absolute requirementfor the modernization of non-Western societies. Without fulfillmentof this precondition, the perception in the Muslim and the rest of the non-Western world that the West’s real interest is neocolonial, particularly thecontrol over oil and resources—and it is only paying lip service to thecause of modernization in the Muslim and other societies, will persist andensure the inequalities that presently exist between the West and the restof the world.Universal Islamic Ethics and ModernityMuslim societies also need to realize that acquiescence and a fear-drivenflight toward fundamentalism are not the right kind of response to modernity.Modernity with its social, political, and epistemic values is one ofthe biggest developments of human history and is ultimately based in andderived from all the major cultures of the world in one way or the other. Itis not an isolated phenomenon that emerged only in the West. It could nothave emerged at all without the base provided to it by the medieval Muslimsociety and earlier cultures in both East and West. This is not the placeto get into details of what Muslims contributed toward the emergence ofmodernity, or what India, China, Greeks, Romans, and many other societiesdid. The general point that needs to be emphasized is that some of thegreat values of modernity are a collective achievement of humanity. Itsuniversal orientation in ethics, which is the foundation for modern politicalinstitutions and human rights, is present in Confucian, Indian, and Islamiccultures, as well as other cultures. In addition, there is quite a bit of credibleanalyses of archaeological and anthropological data, which has shown24 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1that there are universal patterns to the development of cultures throughouthuman history. Cultures move through various levels of development andsophistication in a cumulative fashion. There is no evidence that only oneculture can spearhead all levels of development. Different levels have beeninitially achieved by different cultures, and then other cultures have movedto those levels in a systematic and cumulative pattern.53Therefore, there is some reason to believe that all cultures of the worldwould sooner or later realize their own forms of modernization. I say “theirown forms of modernization” to emphasize the fact that different culturesremain different even after passing through the same level or stage of development.They do not become the same as another culture simply byreaching equivalent stages in social formations and development.What needs emphasis here is that Muslims have to rise to a better levelof interaction with modernity than reacting to it by either feeling threatenedby it or simply succumbing to its pressure. They need to adopt whatPakistani philosopher Muhammad Iqbal calls an “independent and criticalattitude” toward modernity and its intellectual, political, social, andtechnological heritage.54 The point is not that of rejecting modernity out ofhand by identifying it with secular depravity, as the fundamentalists do,55or to become parochial in an evaluation of modernity by using nonuniversalstandards of judgment. The point seems to be that Muslims, as well asall other societies, will have to adopt vigorous but universal (read nondiscriminatory)standards in evaluating modernity. I am reiterating here thestatement I made in the previous section regarding the necessity of a profoundethical paradigm shift in Muslims’ attitude toward modernity and allother societies.56 All societies have to be accepted on an equal footing witheach other and with Muslim societies. Islamic ethics, in fact, are exactlythe same as universal-humanist ethics—and all parochial interpretationsof it in terms of both law and morality are based on narrow views of theQur’an and the life of the prophet of Islam.That the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet have a universal nondiscriminatoryethical message is hardly denied by any Muslim. However,over the centuries, various legal injunctions derived from the universal ethicsof the Qur’an have been allowed to be less than universal because ofthe social, political, or even administrative and defense exigencies of thetimes.57 Some orthodox laws about women, non-Muslim minorities, andapostates are cases in point. These laws appear to be based on a parochialapproach to a modern sensibility. In fact, there is no ethical bases in Islamfor these exigencies. These laws are based on the social, political, and adModernityand Muslims 25ministrative, as well as defense, needs of the medieval Muslim societies.Muslims are expected to live by ijtihad and ijmah—that is, creative andcritical thinking and the consensus of the community, as far as their policiesand laws go.58 That means that new generations must continuously reviewthe laws and interpret the Qur’an and life of the Prophet afresh when necessary.This is because the Qur’an stands for universal ethical standards,including justice, and allows for no discrimination against any human beingwhosoever. Due to various historical interpretations and cultural practicesprevalent in Muslim societies, the universal ethics or humanism of theQur’an are sometimes lost sight of by Muslims as well outside observers.Also, there has been no living Islamic law for many centuries in most oftoday’s Muslim societies59. That means that there has been no evolutionin the law through a legislative or interpretative process or through both.60This has caused the erroneous belief among many Muslims that Islamiclaw or Shar‘iah is a finished product given to us once and for all from aremote past and that the responsibility of the Muslims in today’s world isto find ways to implement that given law. This belief is dangerous and erroneous.It is dangerous because it has led contemporary fundamentaliststo make claims that they want to implement Shar‘iah in their respectivesocieties—meaning thereby that laws developed by early generations ofMuslim jurists are a given and meant for all times and there is nothingmore to be done by new generations of Muslims. Such a position effectivelylocks Muslims in their early history and militates against the dynamicspirit of Islam. It is erroneous because all law, as matter of course, requiresinterpretation in new times and climes and as the requirements of timeschange, newer interpretations have to be introduced in the best interests ofthe universal ethical ideals of humanity enshrined in the great religious andnon-religious documents of the world.The most fundamental assumption of Islamic ethics happens to be theidea that all human beings have been bestowed with an ability to distinguishright from wrong and chose between them. This is what the Qur’ancalls “the Trust”:We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth and the Mountains;but they refused to undertake it, being afraid thereof: but man undertookit. He was indeed unjust and foolish. (33:72)The seat of this Trust61 is human heart or fu’ad (plural al-af-i-da). TheQur’an says:26 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1It is He Who brought you forth from the wombs of your mothers whenye knew nothing; and He gave you hearing and sight and intelligence andaffections [al-af-i-da]: that ye may give thanks (to Allah). (16:78)From this seat of intelligence and affections come our approval or disapproval62of right or wrong. And for the Qur’an, there is no other criterion ofmoral judgment for God except righteousness:O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female,and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know [recognize] eachother (not that ye may despise each other). Verily the most honored ofyou in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allahhas full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things). (49:13)This is the universal foundation of Islamic ethics. Nothing except righteousness(or its absence) can count at the primary level in ethical evaluation.Muslim societies will have to bring these universal foundations ofIslamic ethics into the focus of their sociopolitical attitudes and institutionsas well as the legal provisions in treatment of all human beings. Theseethics can provide a powerful basis for restructuring Muslim societies andtheir institutions on modern lines. Without these ethics of Islam being insharp and central focus, modernization cannot take hold in Muslim societiesregardless of whether it is brought from without or initiated fromwithin. Muslim societies need the deep realization that it is their own ethicsthat call for modernization—on a nondiscriminatory and democraticbasis—of their institutions and attitudes. The ethics required by modernityare already present in Islam.That historically this ethics did not always reflect in all the politicaland social institutions of Muslim societies is in large part due to historicalcircumstances of these societies. For the better part of Islamic history,Muslim societies have been ruled by kings and dynasties whose politicalvestedinterest did not match the requirements of Islamic ethics. They werealways more interested in perpetuating their own or their dynasty’s rulethan in establishing equal political and civil rights for the masses basedon Islamic ethics.63 A lot of jurists who served these dynasties were alsomotivated by the perpetuation of the status quo rather than rule throughthe consent of the people.64 There is no wonder, therefore, that universalIslamic ethics never got properly channeled into political and social institutionsin Muslim societies. Had its political and social implications been understoodproperly and made the basis for governance in the Muslim world,things would have been totally different today. The contradiction betweenModernity and Muslims 27Islamic ethics and dynastic rule, for example, is so blatant and clear thatone wonders how dynastic rule and kingship ever got institutionalized inthe medieval Muslim societies to begin with.Historically the dynastic rule that persisted for centuries in blatant violationof the ethics of Islam was replaced in most of the Muslim societiesby the worst form of governance known to humanity—that is, colonialrule. Here, we have a situation where Muslim masses were systematicallysubjected to exploitation and humiliation for no reason at all except thattheir dynastic rulers were too weak (and depraved) to stand up and defendtheir lands. The colonial powers, as Edward Said argues65 for example,were interested in exploitation and psychic destruction of the people in theMuslim lands rather than contributing to their societies and institutions.A lot of the times, Muslims were portrayed as ignorant fanatics face toface with the civilized world. (Churchill in his day, for example, frequentlyrefers to Muslim tribes as “savages” and “fanatics.”66) Under these historicalcircumstances, it is obvious that the masses in the Muslim world havenever been allowed a genuine opportunity to construct their sociopoliticalinstitutions on the basis of their own ethics. Therefore, Muslim societiesneed not take the dynastic or colonial past as reflecting their true ethicsand can move forward to capture the universal ethical spirit of the Qur’anand create fresh democratic political institutions that are truly reflective ofequal rights for all. Such institutions are naturally going to be Muslims’way of participation in modernity, without becoming Westernized.Islam and Science and TechnologyThere are at least four levels at which science and technology relate toIslamic societies. First, there is a deep and underappreciated historical linkbetween Islam and modern science and technology. Second, even in thepopular perception in the Muslim world, science and technology are notviewed as antithetical to religion. Third, scientific study of nature is directlyencouraged by the Qur’an as a way of understanding God’s signs innature. Fourth, Muslim societies should not accept only an instrumentalistview of technology, but instead, they should continually adjust and reviewtheir attitude to the relationship of science and religion.First, a few words about the historical link. There is at least one schoolof science historians and thinkers who strongly believe that modern scienceowes its emergence in the West primarily to the influence of Islam.Robert Briffault, 67 George Sarton, Montgomery Watt, and John Hayes,among others, believe that without the contributions of Muslims and Arabs28 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1to mathematical, methodological, and practical levels, the emergence ofmodern science in the West would have been impossible. Such historiansargue forcefully and with extensive evidence that the Renaissance was adirect result of Arabic influence in Cordova, a place where many Arabicbooks were obtained for translation into Latin by Europeans and where alot of European scientists received their training as students. The universitiesthat were established in Europe were based on Arabic learning andused books that were obtained in Cordova and translated from Arabic intoLatin. Jews that came from Cordova with William of Normandy to Englandestablished a school of science at Oxford and taught Arabic sciencethere. It was under their successors that Roger Bacon later studied bothArabic and Arabic science. In Robert Briffault’s own words: “It was underthe influence of the Arabian and Moorish revival of culture, and not in thefifteenth century, that the real renaissance took place. Spain, not Italy, wasthe cradle of European rebirth.”68However, this fact has been systematically minimized by Western historiansfrom the earliest days to our times. Briffault notes this point withcharacteristic force:The fact has been set forth again and again. But it has been neverthelessstubbornly ignored and persistently minimized. The debt of Europe to the‘heathen dog’ could, of course, find no place in the scheme of Christianhistory, and the garbled falsification has imposed itself on all subsequentconceptions. Even Gibbon treated Islam depreciatingly, an instance ofthe power of conventional tradition upon its keenest opponents.69Lest someone think that Briffault is too outdated a source to quote in supportof my claims, let me point out that many very recent studies by a groupof scholars have successfully established that the most important developmentin Renaissance science—that is, the Copernican Revolution—was adirect product of astronomy and science as it was developed in the Muslimworld. George Saliba, a leading member of this group of scholars says:Between the years 1957 and 1984, Otto Neugebauer, Edward Kennedy,Willy Hartner, Noel Swerdlow, and the present author, as well as others,have managed to determine that the mathematical edifice of Copernicanastronomy could not have been built, as it was finally built, by just usingthe mathematical information available in such classical Greek mathematicaland astronomical works as Euclid’s Elements and Ptolemy’sAlmagest. What was needed, and was in fact deployed by Copernicus(1473–1543) himself, was the addition of two new mathematical theoModernityand Muslims 29rems. Both of those theorems were first produced some three centuriesbefore Copernicus and were used by astronomers working in the Islamicworld for the express purpose to reform Greek astronomy. In otherwords, the research that has accumulated over the last forty odd years hasnow established that the mathematical basis of Copernican astronomywas mainly inherited from the Greek sources—mostly from Euclid andPtolemy—except for two important theorems that were added later onby astronomers working within the Islamic world and writing mainly inArabic. Furthermore, the same recent findings have now demonstratedthe context within which these theorems first appeared in the Arabic astronomicalsources, namely, the context of criticizing and reformulatingthe Greek astronomical tradition. We also know that the works containingsuch theorems were mostly produced during the thirteenth centuryand thereafter. Accounts of such works have been detailed in variouspublications.70The theorems that Saliba is talking about are Urdi’s Lemma and Tusi Couple.71 These theorems and the work of Ibn al-Shatir were absolute essentialsfor reforming the Greek astronomy, and there would have been nosuch thing as the Copernican Revolution without them. That is why Salibacalls Copernicus “the last Maragha astronomer,” referring to the famousMaragha observatory established by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in 1259 in Iran.Now it is hardly possible to underestimate the significance of CopernicanRevolution for modern science. If the foundations of this revolutionwere laid by Muslim scientists, then modern science in many ways is a byproductof Islamic culture as well. Scholars listed in the above quote fromSaliba and many others are systematically engaged in the task of delineatingthe history of science in Islam and its influence on the modern science.For our purposes here, it is enough to conclude from this recent work in thefield that Briffault is not outdated in his claim that Renaissance (emergenceof modern science) owes its very existence to the world of Islam.A lack of appreciation of the historical link between Islam and modernscience in the West is also fully paralleled by today’s Muslim societies.Both the traditional religious seminaries (madrassahs) and modern universitiesin the world of Islam are more or less devoid of any systematic coursesof study in history of science and technology, which emphasize Islam’srole in the emergence of modern science and technology.72 As a result,neither the modern educated nor the traditionalists have a good grasp ofthe fact that one major component of modernity—that is, modern scienceand technology have their roots in their own classical culture. This igno30The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1rance and its perpetuation through lack of credible courses and research onthe subject are almost beyond comprehension. However, it does exist. Asa result, the new generation is not growing with the right kind of attitudetoward modernity in the Muslim world. Modernity is identified with theWest—and then with the depravity of the pop culture in the West. Scienceand technology rarely emerge in the consciousness of ordinary folks at themention of modernity.73It should go without saying that this anomaly needs to be correctedboth in the Western conception of the history of modern science and in thehistorical understanding of the Muslims of their own past. The persistenceof deliberate misrepresentation in the West and systematic ignorance inMuslim societies creates the space in which both sides can focus on thenegative in each other and engage in mutual demonizing. The West andthe world of Islam need to realize, at the deepest level possible, that theymore than any other culture of the world perhaps, are directly responsiblefor the achievements as well as ills of modernity. The contemporary environmentalcrisis, the abuse of and the potential for abuse of new technologies,and the mindless pursuit of wealth by the corporate world at the costof the poor communities throughout the world are some of the grave ills ofmodernity. Great achievements in areas such as health and education, andsociopolitical rights and democracy are some of the positives of the modernworld. Insofar as Islamic culture paved the way for the emergence ofmodern science, technology, and commerce, it must share both the blameand credit for their outcomes for humanity. However, if the Muslim worldand the West do not have a correct historical understanding of each side’srole in the emergence of modernity, they’ll forever suffer from a distortedview of each other.The second point that needs to be made here is that, although scienceand technology are rarely linked today with Islam in any deep historicalsense by ordinary folks in the Muslim world, they still do not look at themwith suspicion. In the popular perception in the Muslim world, science andreligion are not antithetical. People do have a great admiration for modernscience and technology and believe them to be generally consistent withtheir faith. While there can be an occasional reaction against some scientificideas, there is no systematic official opposition of any scientific theoryby the religious establishment. As a whole, therefore, the religious establishmentseems to be far more accepting of scientific ideas in the Muslimworld than it is in the West.74 This, I believe, is a happy reflection on theoverall culture of Muslim societies and points toward the psychologicalModernity and Muslims 31space in modern societies for the acceptance of one of the most importantingredients of modernity.This generally positive attitude of Muslim societies toward science andtechnology relates to my third point mentioned above—that is, the encouragementin the Qur’an for the study of nature. This is not the place to gointo details of the Qur’anic worldview. It suffices to note that the Qur’andescribes its own verses and the phenomena of nature both as “signs” (ayat)of God. Therefore, equivalence is established by the Qur’an in the study ofits own verses and study of the phenomena of nature. Both are supposedto open up one’s heart and mind to the Truth (al-Haq)—that is, God.75 Thetext of the Qur’an and the texture of nature are linked in the Qur’anic metaphysicsthrough the being of Truth that both embody. Science is only a wayof studying or grasping that truth as far as humanly possible.It is because of this worldview of the Qur’an that science both cannotand has never been systematically opposed in Muslim societies. As I mentionedabove, George Saliba and others have recently established the indispensabilityof Muslims’ contribution toward the emergence of Renaissancescience. Hence, the culture of Islam in the Middle Ages was particularlyconducive for the development of scientific ideas and new technologies,and this same environment can be regenerated in Muslim societies withproper effort and investment.This brings us to my fourth and last point in this section. Muslim societiestoday need not take only a naive view of modern technologies. Theseare not value-neutral problem-solving instruments. While there is no questionthat modern technologies play a tremendous role in our lives and addressa wide range of problems in our lives, they do have their own metaphysicalunderpinnings and ethical implications. This is obvious from theethical problems that have arisen for all societies in areas like informationand medicine. The Internet and genetic engineering are revolutionizing ourcontrol over health, life, medicine, surgery, distance, and the flow of information.This has brought us face to face with huge moral issues in bioethicscyber crime, including the exposure of children to pornographic materialson the Internet or the possibility of their sexual exploitation by predatorsin cyberspace. These problems know no boundaries and are being faced byall societies in today’s global village. Like other societies Muslims are alsotrying their best to deal with these issues as best as they can in the lightof their religious, spiritual, and ethical values. There is an urgent need,however, for an institutionalization of this process of dealing with theseproblems resulting from the use of modern technologies. Even as Muslims32 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1modernize by imbibing new technologies, such institutionalization at thestate level, along with the necessary legislation, can help Muslim societiesmanage these issues effectively and in accordance with their values andreligious understanding.The Overall Proposal for ModernizationThe points that emerge from the preceding sections are:1. In our global village today, the reality appears to be managed mostly bythe Western media networks representing the hegemonic and neocolonialagenda of Western powers. Muslim and other developing societies havelittle power to match this Western-managed reality with their own alternatives.As a result, their members are either overwhelmed and acquiesceor feel threatened and adopt a rejectionist attitude toward modernityor postmodernity, which they identify with the Western representation ofreality through the media and pop culture.2. The global rise in disparity between the rich and poor has turned intoa real crisis. In the present conditions of the world, where half of theworld population lives on less than a two-dollar-a-day subsidy that a cowreceives in Europe, how can one expect the huge populations of the developingMuslim world to believe that the West is playing fair with themin the current economic order. Western hegemony and domination hasvery concrete day-to-day consequences for the “wretched of the earth”in today’s world.3. Western powers have offered a systematic double-talk as far as modernizationand democratization of the developing Muslim (and other)societies are concerned. Throughout the twentieth century, they have deraileddemocratization and the modernization processes in the Muslimsocieties time and again in order to pursue their own governing agendaof the moment. Hence, there is a trust deficit between Muslim societiesand the West when it comes to believing the West’s claims of working formodernization and democratization of these societies. An ethical shift inthe Western attitude toward Muslim societies is a precondition for anyprocess for the modernization of Muslim societies to go forward.4. Within the Islamic tradition, we do have a universal ethics available thatcan be made a foundation of sociopolitical reorganization of Muslim societieson modern lines with a guarantee to all citizens of equal rightsand liberties. This would mean the end of military dictatorships or monarchiesor other forms of despotism in the Muslim world. The West andMuslim societies need to stand for such changes firmly on the basis ofuniversal ethical principles.Modernity and Muslims 335. There is a deep historical link between modern science and technologyand Islamic civilization, which provided the foundations for theiremergence through Muslim Spain and Sicily. Also, the overall culturalattitude of Muslim societies toward science is quite accepting, and theQur’anic worldview also encourages scientific study of nature.6. Both the West and Muslim societies suffer from a deep misconception orignorance, or both, about the historical link between Islam and modernity,especially its science component. This has resulted generally in anarrow view of the capacity of Muslim societies to achieve and practicemodern science and technology—as well as sometimes the possibility ofmodern institutions on both sides for creating space for mutual demonizing.If this situation is corrected, a better outlook and mutual appreciationof a common heritage can open new avenues for modernization.7. An ongoing critical evaluation of the metaphysical and ethical implicationsand consequences of modern technologies is a basic need of all in theglobal village, including Muslim societies. Each culture needs to addressthis issue from its own angle so that a diversity of ways for dealing withtechnologies is available to humanity.In this kind of a complex situation, one is a little puzzled by the calls tomodernity or postmodernity coming from both the West and the Muslimworld itself, though for different reasons. In case of the West, there is verylittle credible evidence that modernity in the Muslim world is its real agenda.In case of the voices of modernity within the Muslim world, what ispuzzling is the focus of all the major thinkers. They almost all focus onthe issue of the modernization of the religious form of knowledge and itsinterpretation.76 There is very little attention paid to modernization of a sociohistoricalform of knowledge based on the universal ethical teachings ofthe Qur’an, or on readopting of scientific form of knowledge at a comprehensiveand deep cultural level. There has to be a deep change of outlookboth in the West and in the Muslim societies—a sort of paradigm-shift—inorder to expand the process of modernization for the Muslim world in adirected way.Some basic questions that may be asked here, however, are as follows:Why should Muslim societies modernize and why should the Westernpowers help them modernize? These are very broad questions and cannotbe fully answered in the scope of a short article like this one. However, Ihave been working in this article with the assumption that it is in everybody’sinterest to help modernize the developing societies of the world inkeeping with the universal principles of their traditions. Such pluralistic34 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1modernization can ensure greater prosperity for all, and it is as importantfor the survival of human family, as biodiversity is for the survival of ourbiological world. Developed, diverse, and vibrant modern cultures on theglobe will definitely enhance our overall happiness as well as prosperityand growth. The history of humankind does not have a diversity of culturesin place for nothing. Despite peoples’ prejudices toward each other overthe millennia, they have always learnt from each other and have progressednot in isolation but through mutual influence.If this assumption is correct, then it is absolutely reasonable to workboth in the West and the developing societies (including the Muslim society)for the (pluralistic) modernization of the later. Humanity can succeedin creating a vibrant and balanced global village only by ensuring bothdevelopment and diversity in it. That is possible only through diverse culturalpaths to modernization based on universal ethics and the absorptionof modern science and technology in all the cultures. On the one hand,Islamic societies do have the ethics as well as the historical and culturalbackground for restructuring their sociopolitical institutions—and, on theother hand, they have the ability to expand their scientific and technologicalknowledge. However, as I hinted earlier, there seems to be a total absorptionamong recent Muslim thinkers with the reinterpretation of religiousforms of knowledge rather than working in a balanced way on theethical and scientific forms as well. Also, the West is not clear in its moralcommitment to the goals of diversity and the universal development onthe globe, at least not in practice. This situation on both sides needs to berectified urgently in order to cause a paradigm shift of the response to theneeds of humanity.Endnotes1. This article has benefited from comments from George Rudebusch, JohnLizza, and anonymous referees.2. The European Enlightenment is considered responsible for emergence ofmodernity in Western circles. A lot of eighteenth century intellectuals representingEnlightenment take a rather dim view of religion and consider itdetrimental to the free and autonomous exercise of human reason or subjectcenteredreason—a defining feature of Enlightenment and, of course, modernity. For a discussion of Enlightenment and its attitude in this regard,see Guenter Lewy, Why America Needs Religion: Secular Modernity and itsModernity and Muslims 35Discontents (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), ch. 2.3. William James provides us with possibly the best analysis of the authenticityof religious experience in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Studyin Human Nature (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1978); see lectures 16and 17 especially. Muslim philosopher Muhammad Iqbal takes a similarlypositive view of the authenticity and autonomy of religious experience as asource of knowledge in Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore,Pakistan: Kazi, 1999), especially ch. 1 and 2. More recently the Britishphilosopher Paul Hirst has enumerated seven basic forms of experience orknowledge as basic to human civilizations in Knowledge and the Curriculum(London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1974). His list includes religious experienceas an autonomous form. The other forms that he notes are empirical,ethical, aesthetic, mathematical, philosophical, and sociohistorical.4. In “Religion in Modernity as New Axial Age: Secularization or New ReligiousForms,” Sociology of Religion 60:3 (1999): 303–333, Yves Lambertprovides us with helpful analysis of recent trends as far as the relationshipbetween religion and modernity is concerned. He argues that modernity producessecularization as well as new religious forms. He correctly notes thatgreat religions of the world have adapted to modernity and a new pluralisticrole for religions in contemporary societies cannot be ruled out. In his ownwords, “we are left to wonder whether or not we might be in the middle of anevolution toward a third threshold that could define as ‘pluralistic secularization’in which the religion has the same ascendancy on society and life as anyother movement or ideology, but can also play a role outside of its specificfunction and have an influence outside of the circle of believers as an ethicaland cultural resource. . .” (326).5. Without going into an explicit discussion of the nature of modernity, as isclear from section I below, this article works with Harbermas’ characterizationof modernity. It may be added here that Karl Jasper’s characterizationof modernity is similar in important respects. Jasper notes four basic featuresof modernity: modern science and technology, a craving for freedom,emergence of masses on historical stage (nationalism, democracy, socialism,social movements), and globalization. See Jaspers, The Origin and Goal ofHistory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953). In elaborating Jasper’scharacterization, Lambert (Lambert, “Religion in Modernity”) notesthat primacy of reason is a feature of modernity presupposed by Jasper. Lambertalso emphasizes development of capitalism and functional differentiationas aspects of modernity.6. The term acquiescence in this context needs to be clearly defined. What Imean by this term is as follows: If under the pressures of contemporary historicalsituation of the world a Muslim society accepts Western modernityor major parts thereof uncritically—that is, without proper evaluation in thelight of Islamic values and ethics—then such an acceptance is acquiescence.The idea is that cultural give and take between the Muslim societies and the36 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1West needs to take place in a somewhat directed fashion. Instead of followingthe West in all directions in a thoughtless fashion, Muslim societies need tounderstand the contemporary Western modernity intellectually and then acceptonly those elements which suit some (of its own) universal standards ofethics, knowledge, and views of reality.7. In Why America Needs Religion, Guenter Lewy argues that secular modernityis responsible for the decline of the institution of the family and theemergence of underclass in America. His book points out the negative consequencesof a secular approach to moral concerns of a society.8. For a helpful characterization of fundamentalism let me quote Karen Armstrong’ssummary of Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby’s analysis givenat the outset of their monumental six-volume Fundamentalist Project. “They[fundamentalist movements] are embattled forms of spirituality, which haveemerged as a response to a perceived crisis. They are engaged in a conflictwith enemies whose secularist policies and beliefs seem inimical to religionitself. Fundamentalists do not regard this battle as a conventional politicalstruggle, but experience it as a cosmic war between the forces of good andevil. They fear annihilation, and try to fortify their beleaguered identity bymeans of a selective retrieval of certain doctrines and practices of the past.To avoid contamination, they often withdraw from mainstream society tocreate a counterculture; yet fundamentalists are not impractical dreamers.They have absorbed the pragmatic rationalism of modernity, and, under theguidance of their charismatic leaders, they refine these “fundamentals” so asto create an ideology that provides the faithful with a plan of action. Eventuallythey fight back and attempt to resacralize an increasingly skepticalworld.” See Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God (New York: Ballantine,2001) xiii.In the context of Muslim societies, all the groups who insist upon implementationof traditional Shari‘ah in Muslim societies are fundamentalistsinsofar as they motivate their support for Shari‘ah by literal and traditionalinterpretations of the religious texts. These interpretations are traced backby them to the earlier generations of jurists and are presented as the onlyauthentic interpretations. Alternative interpretations of the religious texts forjuridical purposes, i.e., for the sake of modernizing Islamic laws in the lightof contemporary developments are considered deviant, misguided, and heretical.This characterization of Islamic fundamentalism is quite broad andincludes both politically motivated Islamists and a lot of ulema (traditionalscholars) in the world of Islam.Most of these people take their attitude towards Islamic law as naturaland based on a traditional methodology which takes the religious texts relatedto law literally. This methodology fails to prioritize various values ofthe Qur’an, as noted by Ismail al-Faruqi (see his “Towards A New MethodologyFor Qur’anic Exegesis”, Islamic Studies(1962)) [Please provide volumenumber and page numbers.], and, hence, can end up creating a huge clashModernity and Muslims 37between modern sensibilities and the kind of laws they recommend underShar‘iah.It must be added that here we are working with the assumption that alltraditions are open to multiple interpretations. One can “return” to a traditionfor interpreting it afresh for his or her times or one can “return” to it forinsisting on the truth of some outdated interpretation of it. It is the secondsense of “returning to the roots” that I have problem with. One of the waysin which the advocates of this second sense of returning to a tradition justifytheir attitude is that they claim their interpretation to be pure and literal. Otherwise,in the strict epistemological sense, there is no such thing as a pureand literal interpretation. All are tainted by the psychology of the interpreterand his or her historical setting. (Again see al-Faruqi’s article on methodologyof interpreting the Qur’an for an understanding the difference betweeninterpretations that fail in important respects methodologically and the onesthat wouldn’t.).9. Karen Armstrong makes this point forcefully in The Battle for God by placingthe role of modernity in a historical context. She says “[t]he unification ofSpain, which was completed by the conquest of Granada, was succeeded byan act of ethnic cleansing, and Jews and Muslims lost their homes. For somepeople modernity was empowering, liberating and enthralling. Others experiencedit—and would continue to experience it—as coercive, invasive, anddestructive. As Western modernity spread to other parts of the earth, this patternwould continue. The modernizing program was enlightening and wouldeventually promote human values, but it was also aggressive. During thetwentieth century, some of the people who experienced modernity primarilyas an assault would become fundamentalists.” (4).10. See Jurgen Habermas, “Modernity-An Incomplete Project,” in InterpretiveSocial Science: A Second Look, ed. Paul Rainbow and William M. Sullivan(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), 141–56 and The PhilosophicalDiscourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge,MA: The MIT Press, 1987).11. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 365.12. See Habermas, “Modernity-An Incomplete Project,” 141–56.13. See John Gray, Liberalism (Minneapolis, MN: University of MinnesotaPress, 1986), 82.14. John Dewey, “The Quest for Certainty,” in Pragmatism, Old and New: SelectedWritings, ed. S. Haack and R. Lane (New York: Prometheus Books,2006), 393.15. See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1979), ch. 4 in particular.16. Nicolas Royle, Deconstruction: A User’s Guide (London: Palgrave Macmillan,2000), 300.17. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 170–71.38 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:118. For a comprehensive overview of various aspects of modernity, see MateiCelinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avante Garde, Decadence,Kitsch, Post-modernism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987). Foranother view that we have not yet entered postmodernity and are still livingin a period of high modernity, see A. Giddens, Consequences of Modernity(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990); for the view that we havealready entered postmodernity, see David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1990.19. See Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity and Giddens, Consequences ofModernity above and Eleonore Kofman and Gillian Youngs, Globalization:Theory and Practice. (London: Continuum International Publishing GroupLtd., 1996) and D. Held, A. McGrew, D. Goldblatt, and J. Perraton, GlobalTransformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. (Cambridge, UK: PolityPress, 1999).20. See, for example, P. Hirst and G. Thompson, Globalization in Question, 2nded. (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999).21. See S. P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations: Remaking of World Order(New York: Touchstone, 1996) and Paul Hopper, Living with Globalization(Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers, 2006).22. Tony Schirato and Jenn Webb, Understanding Globalization, (London:SAGE Publications, Inc., 2003), 104.23. See Armand Mattelart, , Networking the World, 1794–2000, trans. Liz Carey-Libbrecht and James A. Cohen (Minneapolis, MN: University of MinnesotaPress, 2000).24. Schirato and Webb, Understanding Globalization, 46.25. Peter L. Berger and Samuel P. Huntington, Many Globalizations: CulturalDiversity in the Contemporary World (New York: Oxford University Press,2002), 27.26. For an insightful survey, see Peter N. Peregrine, Carol R. Ember, and MelvinEmber, “Universal Patterns in Cultural Evolution: An Empirical AnalysisUsing Guttman Scaling,” American Anthropologist 106, no. 1 (March 2004):145–49.27. Berger and Huntington, Many Globalizations, 24.28. Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1992).29. Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (PaloAlto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 6.30. For an analysis of the reach and impact of globalization, see Axel Dreher,Noel Gaston, and Pim Martens, Measuring Globalization: Gauging its Consequences(New York: Springer, 2008).31. Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1978).32. Don Ihde, “Image Technologies and Traditional Cultures,” in Technologyand the Politics of Knowledge, ed. Andrew Feenberg and Alastair Hannay(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995), 154–56.Modernity and Muslims 3933. oseph Femia, “Hegemony and Consciousness in the Thought of AntonioGramsci,” Political Studies 23, no. 1 (1975): 29–48.34. Recent surveys have all reported growing mistrust between Islam and theWest. Most recently, The World Economic Forum, in collaboration withWashington’s Georgetown University, launched its report Islam and theWest: Annual Report on the State of the Dialogue. It described “an alarminglylow level of optimism regarding dialogue between Islam and the West,”said the chairman of The World Economic Forum, and “a majority believedthe interaction between Western and Islamic communities is getting worse”(The Irish Times, 22 January 2008).It must be added that we do not have comparable Muslim versions ofWestern reality available, simply because—al- Jazeera and al-Arabiyya beingrelatively new in the field—there are no comparable global Muslim Medianetworks around. In fact, one is surprised to learn that the English programsof al-Jazeera are “all but banned” in the United States—the largest exporterof Western versions of reality to the Muslim world (Rachel Maddow Show,MSNBC, April 16, 2009). However, if comparable Muslim versions cameto be and suffered from the same deficiencies as the Western ones, they willproduce the same kind of trust deficit.35. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence available all over the place bynow that Bush Administration lied profusely regarding the link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, as well as about Hussein’s program for makingweapons of mass destruction. For an overview, see “Bush Administration’sLies about WMD Unraveling,” Dissident Voice News Service Compilation,updated June 3, 2003, www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles5/DVNS_Iraq-WMD-Lies.htm.36. Elizabeth Poole and John E. Richardson, eds., Muslims and the News Media.(London: I. B. Tauris & Company Ltd, 2006), 101–102.37. See Elzain Elgamri, Islam in the British Broadsheets: The Impact of Orientalismon Representations of Islam in the British Press (Dryden, NY: IthacaPress, 2008), 214.38. Shahzad Ali and Khalid, “US Mass Media and Muslim World: Portrayal ofMuslim by ‘News Week’ and ‘Time’(1991–2001),” European Journal of ScientificResearch 21, no. 4 (2008), 576–77.39. The issue of media hegemony has been focused upon in Lee Artz and YayaKamalipour, eds., The Globalization of Corporate Media Hegemony (Albany,NY: SUNY Press, 2003). The expanding corporate hegemony of global medianetworks across continents is examined here in a number of casestudiesthat show various ways in which local cultures are appropriated to furtherthe interests of global capitalism. In the case study of Africa, for example,Lyombe Eko remarks: “Indeed, African television represents hegemony atits finest—absent alternatives—local audience willingly consent to globalmedia standards.” (207). Earlier Lee Artz underlines the issue of hegemonyin global media networks by saying that “[t]hree concepts—globalization,40 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1media hegemony, and social class—provide the necessary framework forunderstanding contemporary international communication.” (3). It appears,therefore, that whatever the details of interactions between local media andcommercialized global media networks, hegemonic role of the later is anundeniable fact.While Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest forGlobal Dominance (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003) gives only a generalportrayal of America’s ongoing hegemonic tendencies in the context ofIraq war, it may be noted that in this war global media networks were alsoused by the Pentagon for its hegemonic purposes through embedded reporterswho generally could give only the American or Western version of events.This has been highlighted in various studies. An example is Dr. OlugbengaChristopher Ayeni ‘s discussion concluded by the following remark: “Thecoverage of war has changed forever with the new found role for reportersat the frontlines as embeds, getting real life images from the battle groundand giving new meaning to war news. As part of that, we have the overridinginfluence of Hollywood make believe and the overbearing role of the governmentpropaganda machinery. The face of war coverage will change forthe better, especially from the government hegemonic position while it willbode ill for the audience who will have to settle for less than objective andbalanced news.” See “ABC, CNN, CBS, FOX, and NBC on the Frontlines”in Global Media Journal, http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/gmj/dialogue/gmj_dialogueTOC.htm.British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is another media network, whichis comparable in its reach to the U.S networks. Its coverage of major recentevents like the Gulf War and Iraq War has not been tellingly different thanthat of the U.S. networks. BBC went along with the official British story inmatters like the justification for the attack on Iraq, just as the U.S. networkswent along with the official Washington story.40. For an insight into the global rise of anti-Americanism, see chapter 7 in 2005Trends, Pew Research Center’s report, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/206/trends-2005.41. The colonial history is too fresh for anyone to forget. Also neocolonialismcontinues unabashed throughout the non-Western world.42. To get a sense of the rise of fundamentalism worldwide, the publicationsof the Chicago University Fundamentalism Project need to be looked into.Particularly relevant is G. A. Almond, R. S. Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan,Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 2003).43. The full report is available on http://www.stwr.org/special-features/thebrandt-report.html.44. Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (New York: W.W. Norton,2002).Modernity and Muslims 4145. For a general overview of why Muslims lag behind in science and technologyin today’s world, see Aaron Segal, “Why does the Muslim World Lagin Science?” Middle Eastern Quarterly 3, no. 2 (June 1996): 61–70. Theoverall output of the Muslim countries in scientific research today is amongthe worst in the world.46. See Leon B. Poullada, Reform and Rebellion in Afghanistan: 1919–1929;King Amanullah’s Failure to Modernize a Tribal Society (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 1973); Also see Iraj Bashiri, “Afghanistan: An Overview,”2002, www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Afghanistan/AfghanOverview.html.47. For details of this conspiracy, see Stephen Kenzir, All the Shah’s Men: AnAmerican Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Somerset, NJ: Wiley,2004).48. Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots ofMiddle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley Sons, Inc., 2003), 5.49. In a speech before the American-Iranian Council in March 2000, then Secretaryof State Madeline Albright admitted, “In 1953 the United States playeda significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister,Mohammed Mossadegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed itsactions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setbackfor Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranianscontinue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”Medea Benjamin and Caroline Kornfield, “Let’s Learn from the Death ofMohammed Mossedegh,” www.commondreams.org/views05/0304-21.htm.50. It must be noted that even as I now write, Western powers are supporting anumber of dictators and kings in the Muslim world—in order to protect andenhance their neocolonial interests.51. The spectacle of devastation in Afghanistan is truly unprecedented in today’sworld. A vast majority of towns and villages throughout the country havebeen either partly or almost wholly destroyed by the past thirty years of warfareand strife. Reconstruction effort, however, is dismally ill-suited for theneeds of this unlucky country.52. This fact should not be lost sight of that the imperial tussle between the superpowers(the United States and Russia) constitutes an important backdropfor the emergence of some major manifestations of terrorism.53. See Peter N. Peregrine, Carol R. Ember, and Melvin Ember, “Universal Patternsin Cultural Evolution, 145–49.54. Iqbal, Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, vi.55. For example Syed Qutab’s Milestones identifies modern societies in thisfashion. See Chapter 3 of his Milestones for a characterization of modern andancient non-Islamic societies, http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Milestone/index.htm.56. As has been noted, Muslims either adopt a rejectionist attitude toward themodern secular values or acquiesce to it uncritically. The shift required is42 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1from these attitudes to an attitude of critical evaluation in the light of universalethics in order to adopt from modernity what fits ethical standards andreject what does not.57. This mistake is similar to what the West has been doing in its treatment of theMuslims and other developing societies (or minorities in their own midst) insofaras it deviated from the standards of the universal human rights espousedin today’s world.58. For an insight into this process see Fazlur Rahman, Islamic Methodologyin History (Karachi, Pakistan: Central Institute of Islamic Research, 1965).Islamic methodology of law making expects Muslims to live by ijtihad andijmah. It may be added that fresh interpretations of a tradition have to comefrom the community, its legislatures, and scholars—and are generally viewedas reformist. That is not a flaw in itself. Although, it is widely known thatRahman’s views were taken as “subversive” by Pakistani religious scholars,their actions are once again not an argument against the scholarly validityof his views. Indeed, this fact goes to show that the entrenched traditionalistsamong religious scholars have generally adopted a rejectionist attitudetoward modernist interpretations of Islam.59. Although Saudi Arabia and Iran are not dynamic in the sense of possessingmechanisms for changing traditionalist interpretations of law, neither countryhas Islamic legal systems in place. Indeed, they are imitative and bound totradition.60. Here one might ask as to whether it is the lack of evolution that has led to thebelief about the nature of the law, or the belief about the nature of the law thatled to the lack of evolution? It is actually the lack of evolution. In this regardplease see Rahman’s Islamic Methodology in History for an alternative viewabout the nature of law. He argues that the earliest generations believed in amore dynamic view of the law, as well as the Sunnah of the Prophet. Morerecently, Wael B. Hallaq has argued systematically about the evolution ofIslamic Law in its early four formative centuries. See Wael B. Hallaq, TheOrigins and Evolution of Islamic Law (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2005), particularly ch. 2 and 3 where he traces the emergence ofprophetic authority.61. For an interpretation of trust as (moral) responsibility or choice, see AbdullahYousaf Ali’s commentarial notes 3378–3379 in The Meaning of the HolyQuran, 11th ed. (Beltsville, MD: Amanda Publications, 2004). The wordtrust in the translation of the quoted verse is interpreted by most authoritiesas referring to this ability to choose between good and evil. Also, the verse isabout mankind as a whole and as such is talking of a universal trust. Hence, ifthe authorities like Abdullah Yousaf Ali are right in taking this trust as moralchoice, then the verse says that it has been given to all human beings and therest of the nature does not possess it.Secondly, for ethical systems, which argue that humans possess this abilityto choose ethically, this ability has to be conceptually the most fundamenModernityand Muslims 43tal thing because the rest of the ethics—that is, ethical behavior—is contingentupon it.62. This claim is a direct logical consequence of the idea that humans have theability to choose between right and wrong. According to most philosophers,ethical approval and disapproval involves affections. (See, for example,Hume’s position in C. D. Broad Five Types of Ethical Theory [London: Routledge,1962], 85). The affections of approval or disapproval are at the basis ofethical choices or our ability to choose. Since the Qur’an places intelligenceand affections in fu’ad, it follows that fu’ad is the source of such approval ordisapproval.63. For some insight into the intricate relationship between the early kingshipsand evolution of religious law, see M. Q. Zaman, Religion and Politics underEarly Abbasids: The Emergence of the Proto-Sunni Elite (Leiden, The Netherlands:Brill Academic Publishers, 1997).64 It needs to be understood that the Qur’an is explicit on the nature of rule in Islamwhen it says: “[They] conduct their affairs by mutual consultation” (42:38).Most modernists take this to be the Qur’anic basis for democratic rule, or ruleby the people. For an excellent discussion of how modernists interpret shura(consultation), please see Fazlur Rahman’s article “The Principle of Shura andthe Role of the Ummah in Islam,” in State, Politics, and Islam, ed. MumtazAhmad (Indianapolis, IN: American Trust Publications, 1986), 90–91, 95.See also John O. Voll and John L. Esposito,“Islam’s Democratic Essence”Middle Eastern Quarterly (September 1994), www.meforum.org/151/islamsdemocratic-essence.In addition, it needs to be mentioned that the great early jurists undoubtedlywere often at odds with the dynastic rule. However, given their timesand historic conditions, they could not have obviously seen the modernistimplications of the rule through shura. In general, however, the politicallypowerful tried to influence the law in its formative years. ( For a more informedand detailed discussion see Wael B. Hallaq, The Origins and Evolutionof Islamic Law, ch. 8)65. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism, Vintage Books Edition (New York, RandomHouse Inc., 1979), 31–49 where Said characterizes the attitude of thecolonists toward the Arab-Oriental.66. W. S. Churchill, The Story Of Malakand Field Force (Rockville, MD: WildsidePress, 2006).67. Robert Briffault, The Making of Humanity (London: G. Allen and UnwinLtd., 1928). See Briffault’s chapter on Dar ul Hikmat for an extensive catalogof Muslims’ scientific and cultural contributions toward the emergenceof modernity. Also helpful are John Hayes, ed., Genius of Arab , Civilization:Source of Renaissance, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1983) andMontgomery Watt’s A History of Islamic Spain (Edinburgh, UK: EdinburghUniversity Press, 2001).44 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:168. Briffault, The Making of Humanity, 188.69. Ibid., 189.70. See www.columbia.edu/~gas1/project/visions/case1/sci.2.html. Also, for adetailed discussion of the whole influence of Islamic sources and the so-calledTusi and Urdi theorems that made Copernican Revolution possible, pleasesee George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007), particularly 201–209.71. For details of these theorems, see Chapter 4 of Saliba, Islamic Science andthe Making of the European Renaissance.72. For a good overview of the situation, see Segal, “Why Does the MuslimWorld Lag in Science.” Also, in my search for courses in major universitiesof the Muslim world on the history of science and technology in Islamic culture,I did not find any. There might be some in some universities, but I couldnot find them.73. This observation is based on my own life experience in a Muslim society.Young people in the universities hardly think of modernity as also linkedhistorically with Islam.74. One needs look only at the intense opposition that evolution theory facesfrom the creationist in the United States.75. See the chapter on “Nature” in Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an(Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1989).76. As far as one can tell, major Muslim writers of our time have not explored theissue of the autonomy of ethics from religion. Their discussions of the ethicalteachings of the Qur’an take ethics only as a consequence of the religiousprinciples of the Qur’an. While there is no doubt that the Qur’an establishes aclose linkage between religion and ethics, the ethical teachings of the Qur’anare philosophically not dependent on its religious teachings. Hence, theseteachings can stand on their own, and their validity can be judged purelyas an ethical system. Overemphasis on any one component of the Qur’anicworldview generates both intellectual and practical problems. A balancedemphasis on the ethical teachings will lead to their application to religionbasedlaws in order to round them out to universal standards.