Pub Date : 2020-09-15DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0005
Monica M. Ringer
Modernist histories historicized and reimagined the Prophet Mohammad the prescriptive model of a rationalized, internalized ‘modern’ Islam. The historicization of the Prophet, and the emphasis on his ability to negotiate essence in context, suggests an entirely new Islamic methodology. The essence of Islam is located uniquely in the Quran, and the Prophet becomes an example of accurate understanding of this essence – God’s intent – and its manifestation in “laws” and institutions appropriate for his specific historical time period. Prophetic Hadith, therefore, must be historicized, in order to extract their essence, or intentionality, from their specific manifestation in context. This methodology destabilized the entire premise of the Sunna, and effectively unbound ‘Islam’ from Tradition. Tradition as precedent gave way to the continual contextualization of essence – a ‘permanent becoming.’ This enabled reformers to go ‘back to the Quran’ and retrieve God’s intent. This innovative hermeneutics of the Quran and Hadith formed the basis for a new methodology for discovering and implementing ‘God’s Intent’ in the modern age.
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Pub Date : 2020-09-15DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0003
Monica M. Ringer
The taxonomy of human religions, generated and confirmed as the guiding organizational grammar of European disciplines of religious studies, philology, and anthropology, claimed to map civilizational evolution. Muslim Modernists, in addition to locating Islam in this universal taxonomy, also explored Islam in history, rewriting Islamic history as the story of transcendent Islamic essence in a sequence of particular historical contexts. They determined the historical laws of progress that dictated the path of the ‘torch of civilization’ in order to provide a historical explanation for moments of progress, and to understand the reasons for present stagnation. These new Islamic Histories chart the interaction of Islam in historical context, beginning with the revelation of the Quran, the Prophet’s application of Quranic ideals – God’s intent – and the subsequent history of Islamic institutions in historical context, from the Rashidun through the Abbasid period. Islamic History demonstrated both the enduring relevance of Islam as essence, but also the need to re-contextualize it in the present. In making these arguments, Modernists were in dialogue not only with European Orientalist scholars, but also with their own Islamic historical tradition.
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Pub Date : 2020-09-15DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0001
Monica M. Ringer
Historicism, as the premise of historical context, together with ideas of universalism and progress, created a new epistemological and methodological landscape that by the 19th century demanded a redefinition and reconceptualization of the nature and function of religion. Muslim intellectuals, like modernists in other religious traditions, historicized Islamic history and proposed a new approach to the Quran, Hadith and the nature of tradition itself. They rejected tradition as historically constructed and thus contingent, proposing that tradition as content, and precedent as method, be discarded in favor of the reinterpretation of the ‘essence’ of Islam according to contemporary needs. Studies of modernity should shift from an attempt to align definitions with empirical realities, and instead focus on the emergence of claims to the modern. This enables us to understand commonalities and differences among various modernities – and to avoid falling into worn paths of seeing modernity as a process of diffusion from the West to the ‘Rest’ while also not asserting the irrelevance of Europe. Islamic modernism has been treated as an instrumentalist language in the historiography of Middle Eastern modernization projects, and not appreciated for its deeply theological innovations and participatory role in engendering modernity.
{"title":"Introduction: Historicism, Modernity and Religion","authors":"Monica M. Ringer","doi":"10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Historicism, as the premise of historical context, together with ideas of universalism and progress, created a new epistemological and methodological landscape that by the 19th century demanded a redefinition and reconceptualization of the nature and function of religion. Muslim intellectuals, like modernists in other religious traditions, historicized Islamic history and proposed a new approach to the Quran, Hadith and the nature of tradition itself. They rejected tradition as historically constructed and thus contingent, proposing that tradition as content, and precedent as method, be discarded in favor of the reinterpretation of the ‘essence’ of Islam according to contemporary needs. Studies of modernity should shift from an attempt to align definitions with empirical realities, and instead focus on the emergence of claims to the modern. This enables us to understand commonalities and differences among various modernities – and to avoid falling into worn paths of seeing modernity as a process of diffusion from the West to the ‘Rest’ while also not asserting the irrelevance of Europe. Islamic modernism has been treated as an instrumentalist language in the historiography of Middle Eastern modernization projects, and not appreciated for its deeply theological innovations and participatory role in engendering modernity.","PeriodicalId":128040,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Modernism and the Re-Enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117091863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-15DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0002
Monica M. Ringer
By the nineteenth-century, the idea of ‘religion’ as a universal phenomenon had become firmly entrenched. Religions in the particular were therefore expressions of this universal phenomena, mapped onto human civilizational evolution. The explanation of difference moved away from a theologically-based true/false binary, and was relocated onto a universal taxonomy of mankind’s religious evolution. In this conception, ‘primitive’ religions were symptomatic of ‘primitive’ civilizations, ‘advanced’ religions likewise belonging to and reflecting ‘advanced’ civilizations. Historicism, as contextualization, enabled religions to be located in this taxonomy according to new criteria of civilizational progress. This chapter explores Islamic Modernists’ ‘location’ of Islam in this universal, phenomenological and civilizational taxonomy. The focus is on elucidating their understanding of Islam as part of, and contributing to, universal human history, and ways in which this new set of intellectual paradigms shifted their categorization and understanding of Islam as a universal religious phenomenon, as opposed to a set of texts, traditions, practices, and so forth. This chapter also elaborates the complex debates that Islamic Modernists engaged in with their Christian, religious studies scholarly counterparts, particularly over the position of Islam relative to other monotheistic traditions.
{"title":"Locating Islam","authors":"Monica M. Ringer","doi":"10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"By the nineteenth-century, the idea of ‘religion’ as a universal phenomenon had become firmly entrenched. Religions in the particular were therefore expressions of this universal phenomena, mapped onto human civilizational evolution. The explanation of difference moved away from a theologically-based true/false binary, and was relocated onto a universal taxonomy of mankind’s religious evolution. In this conception, ‘primitive’ religions were symptomatic of ‘primitive’ civilizations, ‘advanced’ religions likewise belonging to and reflecting ‘advanced’ civilizations. Historicism, as contextualization, enabled religions to be located in this taxonomy according to new criteria of civilizational progress. This chapter explores Islamic Modernists’ ‘location’ of Islam in this universal, phenomenological and civilizational taxonomy. The focus is on elucidating their understanding of Islam as part of, and contributing to, universal human history, and ways in which this new set of intellectual paradigms shifted their categorization and understanding of Islam as a universal religious phenomenon, as opposed to a set of texts, traditions, practices, and so forth. This chapter also elaborates the complex debates that Islamic Modernists engaged in with their Christian, religious studies scholarly counterparts, particularly over the position of Islam relative to other monotheistic traditions.","PeriodicalId":128040,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Modernism and the Re-Enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130418266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-15DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0004
Monica M. Ringer
Modernists saw in Islamic history the solution to the pressing question of why the Islamic world was ‘backward’ compared to the dynamic and powerful European great powers. The Abbasid “Golden Age” was touted by Muslim Modernists as empirical proof that Islamic essence, properly manifest in historical context, was a powerful motor of progress and civilization. Modernists claimed not only that Islam had produced superior civilizational levels compared to contemporary Europe, but that it could do so again. The prevalent European narrative of the ossification of Islamic institutions, and the concomitant rise of dogmatism that prevented intellectual inquiry, creativity, and ultimately, further progress, was by and large accepted by Muslim Modernists. However, they insisted that the ossification of tradition was not essential to Islam but rather, historically contingent. Modernists deployed the “Golden Age” argument to insist on the de-contextualization of Islamic essence and its re-contextualization in the present – the rescue of essence from history. Muslim Modernists, by comparing Islam in history to Christianity in European history, asserted the Islamic Origins of Modernity, thus enabling an indigenous future modern – the reclaiming of the ‘torch of civilization’.
{"title":"The Islamic Origins of Modernity","authors":"Monica M. Ringer","doi":"10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Modernists saw in Islamic history the solution to the pressing question of why the Islamic world was ‘backward’ compared to the dynamic and powerful European great powers. The Abbasid “Golden Age” was touted by Muslim Modernists as empirical proof that Islamic essence, properly manifest in historical context, was a powerful motor of progress and civilization. Modernists claimed not only that Islam had produced superior civilizational levels compared to contemporary Europe, but that it could do so again. The prevalent European narrative of the ossification of Islamic institutions, and the concomitant rise of dogmatism that prevented intellectual inquiry, creativity, and ultimately, further progress, was by and large accepted by Muslim Modernists. However, they insisted that the ossification of tradition was not essential to Islam but rather, historically contingent. Modernists deployed the “Golden Age” argument to insist on the de-contextualization of Islamic essence and its re-contextualization in the present – the rescue of essence from history. Muslim Modernists, by comparing Islam in history to Christianity in European history, asserted the Islamic Origins of Modernity, thus enabling an indigenous future modern – the reclaiming of the ‘torch of civilization’.","PeriodicalId":128040,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Modernism and the Re-Enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115333113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-15DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0006
Monica M. Ringer
The ‘modern’ understanding of the nature of religion transformed the relationship between God and mankind, from one characterized by external recognition of the immanence and ‘supernatural’ power of God, to one characterized by the internalization of the Divine in man, and the centrality of individual consciousness. Modern religion folded humanism into an enduring eschatological framework, whereby God’s intent was consistent with civilizational progress of humankind. Religious Modernism’s fundamental project was the unification of religion and modernity. Historicism problematized and revealed Tradition to be constructed, yet in its deconstruction lay the possibilities of reconstruction. Freedom from Tradition and dogma enabled freedom to rediscover essence, to re-contextualize essence in contemporary context – to reinterpret, and reconstruct religion. Modern Islam was cast as a return to truth, the rectification of the distortions of Tradition and the reignition of Islam’s essential capacity for progress and civilization. Modern Islam was the fulfilment of the eschatological promise of God’s intent, folded into new conceptions of progress and civilization. Like other religious modernisms, Islamic modernism drew on Historicism as disenchantment with Tradition, to affect a re-contextualization of religion – the re-enchantment of Islam in the modern.
{"title":"Conclusion: God’s Intent – The Re-enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History","authors":"Monica M. Ringer","doi":"10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474478731.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"The ‘modern’ understanding of the nature of religion transformed the relationship between God and mankind, from one characterized by external recognition of the immanence and ‘supernatural’ power of God, to one characterized by the internalization of the Divine in man, and the centrality of individual consciousness. Modern religion folded humanism into an enduring eschatological framework, whereby God’s intent was consistent with civilizational progress of humankind. Religious Modernism’s fundamental project was the unification of religion and modernity. Historicism problematized and revealed Tradition to be constructed, yet in its deconstruction lay the possibilities of reconstruction. Freedom from Tradition and dogma enabled freedom to rediscover essence, to re-contextualize essence in contemporary context – to reinterpret, and reconstruct religion. Modern Islam was cast as a return to truth, the rectification of the distortions of Tradition and the reignition of Islam’s essential capacity for progress and civilization. Modern Islam was the fulfilment of the eschatological promise of God’s intent, folded into new conceptions of progress and civilization. Like other religious modernisms, Islamic modernism drew on Historicism as disenchantment with Tradition, to affect a re-contextualization of religion – the re-enchantment of Islam in the modern.","PeriodicalId":128040,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Modernism and the Re-Enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History","volume":"131 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115047744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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