Karen Armstrong: "Think Again: God"

An excellent piece in Foreign Policy called "Think Again: God" by Karen Armstrong (who just came out with a new book called The Case for God)

[Thanks to Ayesha Mattu for this]

ebaadenews.blogspot.com/

On Modernity

Karen Armstrong's race through history (from c. 20000 to c. 1500 CE) in her small book A Short History of Myth (2005) is worth reading to really appreciate her last chapter on 'The Great Western Transformation (c. 1500 to 2000).

Before I get there, in her introduction, 'What is a Myth?' she writes:

Today the word 'myth' is often used to describe something that is simply not true...Since the eighteenth century, we have developed a scientific view of history; we are concerned above all with what actually happened. But in the pre-modern world, when people wrote about the past they were more concerned with what an event had meant...Mythology is an art form that points beyond history to what is timeless in human existence, helping us to get beyond the chaotic flux of random events, and glimpse the core of reality.(7)

She writes of our modern times:

Our modern alienation from myth is unprecedented. In the pre-modern world, mythology was indispensable. It not only helped people to make sense of their lives but also revealed regions of the human mind that would otherwise have remained inaccessible. (10-11)

There was a new optimism in the West. People felt that they had more control over their environment. There were no more sacred, unalterable laws. Thanks to their scientific discoveries, they could manipulate nature and improve their lot. The discoveries of modern medicine, hygiene, labour-saving technologies and improved methods of transport revolutionised the lives of Western people for the better. But logos had never been able to provide human beings with the sense of significance that they seem to require. It had been myth that had given structure and meaning to life, but as modernisation progressed and logos achieved such spectacular results, mythology was increasingly discredited. As early as the sixteenth century, we see more evidence of a numbing despair, a creeping mental paralysis, and a sense of impotence and rage as the old mythical way of thought crumbled and nothing new appeared to take its place.(122)

Indeed she writes: "We may be more sophisticated in material ways, but we have not advanced spiritually beyond the Axial Age: because of our suppression of mythos we may even have regressed." (135)

Reading this brings a struggle I have sometimes have when reading Nasr or Eaton (what would be called 'Traditionalist') vs. reading someone like Tariq Ramadan (who some would label as 'Modernist'). The 'Traditionalist' critique of the modern world I think is important in reminding us of what we are losing in modern society. But sometimes when I read it I feel so dis-empowered, so 'the world is so messed up, beyond fixing' that it's disheartening. The 'Modernist' perspective I feel is empowering as it calls on us to engage with what's going on in the world..

A while ago, I transcribed this from a lecture Shaykh Hamza did with Chris Hedges called "Does God Love War?":

And there's three religious responses to modernity. One is assimilation, another is withdrawal, and the fourth [the third] is confrontation. And so we're seeing a confrontation going on now and we're in a period of what sociologists call anomie where things - the carpets's been pulled out under people and we don't really have grounds for morals anymore. We're just seeing a lot of major changes in society and religion which is often informed by pre-modern concepts of morality which are still very important to many religious people, they're really groping with what's going on. So some of it is growing pains because there's things we need to abandon from the past but others are genuine conflictual experience inside. (1:35:06 - 1:36:02)

An article that I found to be intellectually stimulating in both critiquing and also appreciating 'Modernist' Muslim thinkers is Ebrahim Moosa's "The debts and burdens of critical Islam" in Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (2003, 4) ed. by Omid Safi.