Monday, November 15, 2010

"The view that texts and authors

can be approached, translated, and evaluated according to some universal principles of rationality is a liberal myth, MacIntyre believes, and one characteristic of “modernity, whether conservative or radical.” [20] To him, this view is deplorable, but not only because it leads us to gravely misunderstanding traditions other than our own. [21] The liberal view also underlies a hegemonic discourse where intellectuals positions from other traditions are decontextualized in translation and those at odds with liberalism are rendered innocuous by being recast as “debates within liberalism, putting in question this or that particular set of attitudes or policies, but not the fundamental tenets of liberalism...So so-called conservatism and so-called radicalism in these contemporary guises are in general mere stalking-horses for liberalism: the contemporary debates within modern political systems are almost exclusively between conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals. [22]
 -pg. 4-5 of Muhammad Qasim Zaman's The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change
(2002)

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