"Nevertheless, it is also true

that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Muslim modernists utilized the discourse of modernity differently. Vis-a`-vis those outside the Muslim community, they used the modern discourse to demonstrate that Islam was very much in tune with progress and social evolution. A few of them, for instance, justified women’s rights and justified the study of science and technology on modern grounds when traditionalists resisted these ideas. However, when it came to applying the intellectual harvest of modernity, namely the phenomenal developments in knowledge, to the study of religion itself, this elicited a different response. At that point modern knowledge was viewed with skepticism accompanied by a fear that it would undermine the canonical knowledge of Islam.

With some exceptions, the critical light of modern knowledge developed in the humanities did not illuminate the Muslim modernists’ theories, as applied to the interpretation of scriptures, history and society, the understanding of law, and theology. What they did not undertake or in some instances refused to undertake was to subject the entire corpus of historical Islamic learning to the critical gaze of the knowledge-making process (episteme) of modernity. They of course correctly suspected that a complete embrace of modernity as a philosophical tradition would result in an Islam that they would not be able to recognize. They still felt that the pre-modern Muslim epistemology as rooted in dialectical theology (‘ilm al-kalam) and legal theory (usul al-fiqh) was sufficiently tenacious, if not compatible with the best in modern epistemology. With a few exceptions, this expedient attitude towards modernity is an indication of both the good faith as well as the naivete´ of some of the modernist Muslim reformers.

-Ebrahim Moosa, "The Debts and Burdens of Critical Islam," p. 119