Description:
Any Muslim intellectual who has a serious concern for the relativelydeteriorating condition of the Muslim Ummah with respect to the WesternWorld would be depressed and confused. However, the recent history of theMuslim World shows how many determined reformist movements playeda positive role in changing the Muslim condition. But these movements metwith partial or limited success.It was in the late seventeenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries,an ascendant Europe undermined and overran much of the UthmaniDuwlah (Ottoman Empire) and finally put an end to it, much to the shockand dismay of the Muslim World. The powerful European challenge andthis drastic event elicited two contrasting responses from the Muslim eliteand the masses. While many of them resorted to superficial imitation andinitiated capricious copycat reform movements, some harnessed the risingawareness and the attendant spirit of resistance to launch more genuineefforts and reform movements. Understandably, these efforts were conflicting,emotional, and limited in their scope but they eventually helpedMuslim societies to gain political independence in the post-World War IIera. At the heart of these reforms and political liberation was the Muslimpeoples’ desire to realize their Islamic, national, and cultural aspirationsalong with the hope of enjoying a standard of living comparable to that ofthe West.Unfortunately, these hopes were not achieved and the cultural reformscontinued to be emotional, arbitrary, and patchwork (talfiq). The conditionof the Muslim people continued to deteriorate and the gap between theWestern world and the Muslim world continued to widen. The former continuedto dominate and exploit that latter. All this proved that arbitrary,emotional, superficial, and limited patchwork reforms would not have aserious impact on the conditions of the Muslim people and will fail to realizetheir national or Islamic aspirations ...