Friday's Read: Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition

Rahman, Fazlur. Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)
_____
Well-loved Oxford-educated Pakistani scholar Fazlur Rahman’s (1919-1988) Islam and Modernity: The Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (1982) describes Rahman’s aspiration to weave together the curriculum and methods of the traditional Islamic madrasah with scientifically-grounded rationalist thought. Rahman first surveys Islamic intellectual heritage in chapter one, then continues to a discussion of “Classical Islamic Modernism” and “Contemporary Modernism” (through the 1960s) in Islamic education. "Contemporary Modernism" includes the impact of the West on the rise of Islamic modernism and on intellectual institutions themselves. He argues that the traditional religious establishment is overly arcane and obscurantist, and that even modern Islamic reformers are not systematic enough in their reformist goals. Like Fouad Zakariyya, he is unimpressed with contemporary Islamism’s anti-intellectualism. Instead, Rahman argues, Muslims must return to the Qur’an to formulate a contemporary Islamic metaphysics. Indeed, Western doctoral training, Rahman argues, does not equip Muslim students to “think Islamically” (124).  In this view, only by disengaging from preoccupations with the West and returning to Muslim foundations will Muslims be able to develop an autonomous, intellectually rigorous, authentic and modernized Islam.

______

Further reading: Panjwani, F. "Fazlur Rahman and the Search for Authentic Islamic Education: A Critical Appreciation." Curriculum Inquiry, 42 (2012), 33–55.