Dr. Jackson on tradition, context and liberalism

Many thanks to Dr. Jackson for giving me permission to post his response to the previous quote regarding tradition and MacIntyre:

Salaam, Ebad: I am a bit rushed right now, but I wanted to jot a word to you before the next batch of emails comes in and yours gets pushed off my screen. Yes, I agree with McIntyre; in fact, this is precisely the point I try to make with my reference to "false universals." And, as you may or may not know, I think it also applies to Muslim intellectual history, wherein we imagine a single, undifferentiated, transcendent history as the context that produced the classical tradition AND as the context that we must assume for our lives in order to preserve that legacy's relevance, denying all other histories the right to any real consideration as a context in which Islam and Islamic tradition are to assume meaning, relevance or application. As you know, I believe that we MUST remain in perpetual discourse with our predecessors; but this is a discourse that assumes that our context is as relevant and operative as theirs, even as it contains good and bad elements, as did theirs. But in the end, there is no ONE unchanging context, and outside such fundamentals as lâ ilâha illa Allâh Muhammad rasûl Allâh and the reality of the Hereafter, there is no ONE single, concrete answer to all the "big questions," and those who defend the "single answer thesis" (be they those for whom everyone who does not agree with their thesis is a “deviant” OR those who in defense of Tradition tend to dismiss modernity as an entirely unworthy, non-probative context, chronologically as well as ideationally) -- all of these commitments are grounded in liberalism -- conservative or other. Indeed, it seems that the modern mindset -- globally as well as domestically -- is so drenched in liberalism that it often does not recognize what it is promoting. And, as you seem to recognize, this has serious implications for us in terms of how we relate to Islam and how we relate Islam to the modern, Western world.