Description:
The present issue of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciencesrepresents a ground-breaking effort of sorts in that it is the first to beorganized around a single theme. Thus, all papers presented here revolvearound the issue of modernity and the response of Muslims to its challenges.Although this clearly is not a novel subject for the pages of thejoumal, this thematic issue brings to its readership a number of informedperspectives that contribute significantly to a deeper understanding of thephenomenon as it relates to the contempomy Islamic experience.In “The Dance of the Pen, the Play of the Sign: A Study in the Relationshipbetween Modernity, Immanence, and Deconstruction,” AbdelWabab Elmessiri delves into the Western philosophical tdition and itsdiscourse regarding modernity, recalling some of his earlier contributionsin the pages of this joumal. Elmessiri takes a hard look at the underlyingassumptions of modernity, including its view of humanity, and explainshow the nature-matter paradigm has insinuated itself as the underlyingparadigm of Western modernity. Of particular interest to readers will behis exploration of the idea of comprehensive secularism as opposed topartial secularism and his study of the metaphysics of immanence.The second study, M. Mumtaz Ali’s “The Concept of Modernization:An Analysis of Contempomy Islamic Thought,” may be viewedas an attempt to construct a working definition of Islamic modernizationthrough a critical analysis of the Western concept’s epistemologicalfoundations. The author discusses the responses of such contemporarythinkers as Iqbal, Qutb, Mawdudi, al-Faruqi, al-Attas, al-‘Alwani, andAbuSulayman on the subject of modernization and concludes by suggestinga four-phase project for the modernization of Islamic thought.While the next contribution to the joumal‘s theme takes the Indiansubcontinent as its venue, its discussion of modernization, like the workof the poet Iqbal himself, is directed towad the entire ummah. ThroughAthar Farqui‘s translation, readers of English may now have a look at thework of Justice Javaid Iqbal. In his “Modern Indian Muslims and Iqbal,”Iqbal’s son, who is a scholar in his own right, analyzes the substance andsignificance of his father‘s thought as expressed in the controversialMadras lectures and The Reconstruction @Religious Thought in Islam ...