it is how to find a better way to engage with the tradition. Ghazali did not surrender to tradition: he imitated and invented simultaneously. Contrary to what many contemporary Muslims claim – modern educated ones as well as those who assert a traditionalist pedigree – Ghazali shows that being faithful to tradition includes the ability to question and reinterpret it. Unfortunately contemporary Muslim thought displays two distressing tendencies: surrender to the authority of tradition or the complete jettisoning of tradition.
The French scholar of Islam Jacques Berque very pithily summarizes contemporary Islam's struggle to negotiate true progress without falling prey to an imperialist positivism. "Today, all too many militants and intellectuals," he observes, "are proponents of either an authenticity with no future or of a modernism with no roots."
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