___________________
This is from Ebrahim Moosa's review of Tariq Ramadan's Western Muslims and the Future of Islam in the Winter 2006, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. It's called "Islamic Reform or Designer Fundamentalism?"
Like nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Muslim modernists, Ramadan uncritically equates notions of universality in Muslim thought with Enlightenment universality. Not only is such an equivalence questionable, but it also challenges his ringing allegiance to the "classical" tradition of Islam. Often Ramadan is unable to reconcile the contradictory implications of Muslim and Western universal claims. Indeed, his attempt at platitudinous reconciliation does not resolve the dilemma.
With refreshing clarity, Sherman A. Jackson, professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Michigan, notes that in their zeal for reform, Western Muslim advocates routinely engage in a number of false universals to illustrate the compatibility of liberal thought and Islam in an attempt to portray the latter as tolerant and pluralistic. The result of this process is something more than a homogenization of time, place, and experience. When read through Jackson's critical eye, Ramadan's book promotes "a chic, prestigious, and powerful universal," but in the end is nothing more than a sophisticated form of "designer fundamentalism." According to Jackson, endemic to the approach adopted by the likes of Ramadan and a generation of Muslim modernists is a "subtle civilizing mission that aims at obliterating one historical consciousness, without altering the history that produced it." In doing so, reformist Muslims embrace another historical consciousness, namely that of Protestant modernity, without questioning its assumptions. (141)
ebaadenews.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment