Contemporary Islam and the Challenge of History, by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad

Résumé du document

People have started to develop an interest in the history of Islam and famous Muslim personalities. This interest is the impact of the Islamic need for "dignity, identity and purpose? amid the unprecedented domination of another civilization which questions the perception Muslims have of themselves. Thus, the aim of this article is to "determine if there is an answer that can be called Muslim? as a confrontation with the modern world.

Extraits

[...] All of the authors studied agree that only an Islamic answer can maintain the authenticity and integration of the community. Although they may differ as to the extent of the domain of Islam in terms of social life, they all agree that to be valid an idea has to be Islamic as the Qu'ran encloses all the truth. The importance of the Umma is also stressed as to be strong Muslims have to be united because Allah would never support a divided community. [...]

[...] Many Muslims believe that to really understand Islamic history one has to be a committed Muslim because Islam can not be judged by secular criteria as Islam is the truth and there is no truth outside of Islam. One can consider that the author is faced with this contradiction and that she can not give an objective answer to the latter. At last, one can regret the lack of significance of this book. It raises a lot of very relevant questions and remarkably presents the theories of various Muslim thinkers but refuses to define a “universal history of Islam”. [...]

[...] They all react to the growing attacks on Islam from “orientalists” and many other western sources. Their response vary greatly as normativists bring into focus the lack of faith and deviationist practices that weaken true Islam and take the Medina community as the perfect Islamic society and hope to go back to these times. Acculturationnists and secularists in particular (the most “progressive” or “extremist” trend of acculturationnism depending on the point of view) blame rational factors such as military or political inferiority for being responsible for the Islamic retardation. [...]

[...] That is why I think this book lacked ambition and more could have come out of the analysis of the different writers. However, this book brings into focus a very important feature and credit must be given to him because of that. Contrary to an idea widespread in the West, the Muslim world possesses thinkers who emphasize changes within Islam and its history. Their views diverge greatly as to the role Islam, proving if need was that the Muslim thought is not at a standstill but moves forward and addresses the complexity of the modern world. [...]

[...] There is no answer outside of Islam as Islam is the truth. However, alien ideas and techniques should not be condemned but “Islamized” because a true idea is necessarily Muslim and so Muslims have to appropriate them. The second part of the book is a collection of seven neo normativists whose conceptions are rather different from one another but which have in common to try to define a real Islamic philosophy of history. In the opinion of these writers, the secularization of the studies on history as well as that of education led to the writings of books on Islamic and Arab history from a secularized perspective. [...]