Modernism in the Middle East

Introduction
The term modernism refers to efforts to create a synthesis combining existing and continuing traditions of culture and society with the new perspectives, methodologies, and structures of modernity. Modernism represents one distinctive approach among the many possible types of intellectual, religious, and ideological approaches by individuals and groups in the modern era. It is part of a broad spectrum of perspectives ranging from a rejection of the continuities of tradition to a rejection of the changes represented by “modernity.” Modernism and debates about “the modern” are an important part of religious life and thought in the modern era. These experiences are not limited to one or two religions, but instead, as was argued in the prescient and well-informed "Modernism as a World-wide Movement", written in 1925 by A. Eustace Haydon, “all the religions of the world have been shocked into awareness of a strange and startling transformation of the religious problem of the planet. Modernism is now a world-issue.” Haydon also gave a clear, if emotive, definition of modernism: “In one sense modernism is the struggle of the future to free itself from the clinging hands of a dying past; in another it is the anxious effort to adjust old values to a new era of larger knowledge and more complex activity.”
Early Studies
The foundations for Islamic modernism were laid by a group of important scholars and public intellectuals in the second half of the 19th century. Although the major centers where the new perspectives and methods were being articulated were in the eastern Arab world, especially in Egypt and British India, there were other important beginnings in the Ottoman Empire (outside of Egypt), Russian Central Asia, and Iran. Some of the most important groups came to be identified as “Salafiyah” (or “Salafiyya”), although 21st-century journalistic accounts use this term to refer to groups far removed from these early Islamic modernists. The detailed discussion of the historical Salafiyah provided in Shinar and Ende 1995 is a necessary antidote to current journalistic usage. The conception of “modernity” has also evolved from being identified exclusively with Western civilization and “Westernization.” Early Islamic modernists accepted this identity, but later, many came to think that modernity could take different forms, and many scholars began to think in terms of “multiple modernities.” This concept was articulated by S. N. Eisenstadt and developed in terms of an “Islamic modernity” by a number of scholars (see Multiple Modernities 2000 and Lapidus 1987). Important analyses of Islamic modernism in the middle of the 20th century, such as Gibb 1947 andSmith 1957, tend to view the movements within the framework of a Westernizing modernity. The important transition to understanding the possibility of a distinctively Islamic modernity can be seen in Lichtenstadter 1958.
Gibb, H. A. R. Modern Trends in Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947.
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This study was very influential in shaping the assessment of Islamic modernism following World War II. Gibb spoke of the “paralyzing romanticism” of the modernists of that time, but he was confident that Muslim scholars would create an effective synthesis of Islam and modernity.
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Haydon, A. Eustace. “Modernism as a World-wide Movement.” Journal of Religion 5, no. 1 (1925): 1–13.
DOI: 10.1086/480480Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Provides a very helpful introduction to the debates about “the modern” in the major world religions during the 1920s, when the issues were being clearly defined and Western-style modernity seemed triumphant. Concentrates on issues raised by “modern science” and “machine-driven civilization.”
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Lapidus, I. M. “Islam and Modernity.” In Patterns of Modernity. Vol. 2, Beyond the West. Edited by S. N. Eisenstadt, 89–116. New York: New York University Press, 1987.
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Provides an important portrait of Islamic modernity and the issues involved in understanding the cultural dynamics of Islamic modernisms.
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Lichtenstadter, Ilse. Islam and the Modern Age: An Analysis and an Appraisal. New York: Bookman, 1958.
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An early analysis of the shift from viewing modernism as a necessary process of borrowing Western modes to seeing it as part of the process of creating an “Islamic modernity.”
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“Multiple Modernities.” Special issue, Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 129, no. 1 (Winter 2000).
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Includes an essay by S. N. Eisenstadt defining “multiple modernities” and essays by Nilüfer Göle and Dale Eickelman on Islamic developments within the frameworks of multiple modernities.
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Shinar, P., and W. Ende. “Salafiyya.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol. 8. 2d ed. Edited by C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs and G. Lecomte, 900–909. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1995.
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Provides a careful and thoroughly documented discussion of the original Salafiyah movement as a modernist movement. Deals with North Africa and the eastern Arab world.
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Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. Islam in Modern History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957.
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An important study emphasizing the importance of religious reformers at a time when the advocates of modernization theory (both in the West and in the Muslim world) were predicting the decline of “religion.” Smith examines the challenges faced by both “religious” modernists and “secularist” modernizers.
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Later Studies
Scholarship on Islamic modernism tends to focus on specific movements or individuals rather than providing a broader view of the developments over the past century and a half. Esposito 2009, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, provides the most comprehensive collection of articles on people and groups, and Kurzman 2002 provides texts and biographical information for a broadly inclusive selection of people. However, there are few inclusive analytical narratives examining Islamic modernism, making Rahman 1982 virtually unique. Most broader studies tend to concentrate either on a particular region or on a special period in the development of modern Muslim thought. The most widely used and influential introduction to Islamic modernist thought is Hourani 1983, which concentrates on the Arab world, especially Egypt, and concludes with midcentury events. Most studies of Islamic thought and movements in the second half of the 20th century focus on the “Islamic Resurgence,” Political Islam, and Muslim militants. Ahmed 1992 provides a balanced analysis of the developments after those covered by Hourani, noting the transitions to what some are identifying as Muslim postmodernism or Islamic neo-modernism. Kamrava 2006 and Taji-Farouki 2004 provide essays by and about significant intellectual contributors to this late 20th-century evolution of Islamic modernism.
Ahmed, Akbar S. Postmodernism and Islam: Predicament and Promise. London: Routledge, 1992.
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A thorough analysis of the issues involved in the transition from 20th-century modes of thought to 21st-century modes of Islamic “modernism.”
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Esposito, John L., ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. 6 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
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A major expansion of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (1995), with entries covering virtually every aspect of Islamic modernism.
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Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
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A reprint (with a new preface) of the study that is the classic standard analysis of Islamic modernism, with a focus on the Arab world. The coverage of al-Afghani, Abduh, and Rida represents the historiographical foundation for an understanding of modernism.
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Kamrava, Mehran, ed. The New Voices of Islam: Reforming Politics and Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
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Contains essays on issues in contemporary Islamic thought by many of the major modernist and post-modernist Muslim intellectuals writing at the beginning of the 21st century.
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Kurzman, Charles, ed. Modernist Islam, 1840–1940: A Sourcebook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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Includes writings by and biographies of a broad selection of modernist thinkers.
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Rahman, Fazlur. Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
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Provides a relatively comprehensive study of the development of Islamic modernism from the perspective of one of the most important modernist thinkers of the second half of the 20th century.
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Taji-Farouki, Suha, ed. Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qurʾan. London: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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Contains essays about the scholarship of leading modernist and postmodernist Muslim thinkers and their understanding of the Qurʾan.
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Bibliographies
Bibliographies that deal specifically with Islamic modernism are found in some of the general books on the subject. Most bibliographies that cover Islam in the modern era will have some coverage of modernism. However, the best bibliographical resources are electronic and are usually accessible through libraries. It is important to keep in mind that these bibliographies are not the same as one would get simply by undertaking a general Internet search using one of the major search engines. The bibliographies listed here contain responsible and reliable sources, although, of course, they represent a wide spectrum of interpretations. These bibliographies have many entries that can be found by searching for “Islam AND modernism.” JSTOR, the Humanities Index, and ALTASerials Online have a broad scope, while the Index Islamicus is more focused on Islam. The websites provide identification but access to the actual bibliographical material is by subscription, so they are most easily used through a library.
ATLASerials Online.
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A collection of electronic versions of articles published in religion and theology journals. The site is maintained by the American Theological Library Association. A search for “Islam AND Modernism” yielded 282 entries in March 2009.
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Humanities Index.
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An older, well-established index of articles in journals dealing with the humanities in general. Some libraries have hard-copy issues of this resource, and the index is also available electronically. The listings tend to give less attention to non-Western subjects.
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Index Islamicus.
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An older, comprehensive index to articles on Islam. It has a published version to which some libraries subscribe.
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JSTOR
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A widely used collection of journal contents from many different fields in the social sciences and the humanities. Searches in JSTOR yield entries in journals in many disciplines and lists entries up to about three years prior to the current issues, so the most recently published issues are not available.
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Journals
Most of the coverage of Islamic modernism in journals appears in journals that deal with broader subjects or in journals of scholarly associations. Journals published by research centers in the Muslim world are an important source for studies of Islamic modernism, although they are often difficult to obtain in Western Europe and North America. Some representative examples of such journals that publish articles in English are Al-Shajarah (Malaysia), the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (North America), Islamic Studies (Pakistan), and Studia Islamika (Indonesia). These journals publish important analyses of Islamic modernism, and many of their articles are articulations of significant modernist positions.
American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences.
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The journal of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (located in Herndon, VA).
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Die Welt des Islams: International Journal for the Study of Modern Islam.
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A long-established, independent journal with articles in English, French, and German. It has especially good coverage of historical subjects dealing with movements of Islamic renewal.
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International Journal of Middle East Studies.
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The journal of the Middle East Studies Association, the major association of scholars studying the Middle East as a region. Regularly includes articles on subjects related to Muslim modernist groups and thinkers.
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Islamic Studies.
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A well-established journal with a prestigious editorial board, published by the Islamic Research Institute in Islamabad. It provides general coverage of Islamic subjects.
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Journal of Islamic Studies.
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Published by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, JIS covers the full range of cultural, historical, and religious subjects.
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Middle East Journal.
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Published by the Middle East Institute (Washington, D.C.), this journal provides important analyses of contemporary political and intellectual trends in the Middle East.
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Muslim World.
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A journal devoted exclusively to Islamic studies, established in 1911, with many articles over the years on Islamic modernism.
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Al-Shajarah.
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The journal of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) in the International Islamic University in Malaysia.
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Studia Islamika: Indonesian Journal for Islamic Studies.
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A journal coverage of many Islamic topics, giving good coverage to modern thought. It is published by the Center for the Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) in the major Islamic university in Jakarta.
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Major Modernist Texts
Many Muslim intellectuals and activists have written important books that both define the content of Islamic modernism as it developed and reflect the changing natures of modernity and religion in modern history. At the end of the 19th century, the intellectual foundations were laid for the specific ways that Islamic modernism(s) came to be known in the next decades. Four significant intellectual activists played a major role in setting the intellectual foundations: Jamal al-Din al-Afghani as a Pan-Islamic activist, Muhammad Abduh in Egypt, Sayyid (Syed) Ahmad Khan in South Asia, and Ismail Gasprinski (Gaspirali) in the Russian Empire. The next generation of modernists built on these foundations but also reshaped some of the content. Rida 1996 reshaped Abduh’s message in a more conservative way, and Iqbal 1968 added philosophical dimensions that were more critical of Western civilization than the earlier thinkers had been. A “third generation” of thought is represented by people like Bennabi 1988, who extended modernist modes of critical analysis in the context of midcentury nationalism, and Rahman 1965, whose historical-critical methods and teaching brilliance shaped Muslim thought around the world. At the end of the 20th century, many scholars worked to utilize new postmodern methodologies amid the changing conditions of globalization and the recognition of the existence of multiple modes of modernity. The work of Al-Azmeh 1993 provides an important example of these new trends.
Abduh, Muhammad. The Theology of Unity. Translated by Ishaq Musaʾad and Kenneth Cragg. London: Allen and Unwin, 1966.
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A translation of one of the basic statements of Islamic modernism. It has been widely read and was influential throughout the Muslim world, especially during the first half of the 20th century. Reprinted by Islamic Book Trust (Malaysia) in 2004.
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al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din. “Translations of Texts.” In An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn “al-Afghānī”. Edited by Nikki R. Keddie, 101–187. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
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This study of al-Afghani’s life and work contains translations of many of his significant essays.
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Ahmad Khan, Sayyid. A Series of Essays on the Life of Mohammed. Delhi: Idarah-i Adaviyat-i Delli, 1870.
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Provides an important statement of the historical-critical thinking of an important 19th-century South Asian Islamic modernist. Reprinted in 1981.
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Al-Azmeh, Aziz. Islams and Modernities. London: Verso, 1993.
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An important presentation of the rearticulation of modernism in the context of a recognition of multiple modernities and the utilization of “postmodern” modes of analysis.
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Bennabi, Malek. Islam in History and Society. Translated by Asma Rashid. Islamabad, Pakistan: Islamic Research Institute, 1988.
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A translation of Vocation de l’Islam, published in 1954 and a very important critique of both the “colonizable” Muslims and Western imperialist civilization. Reflects important developments in modernist thought.
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Gaspirali [Gasprinski], Ismail Bey. “Russian-Oriental Relations.” Translated by Edward J. Lazzerini. In Tatars of the Crimea: Their Struggle for Survival. Edited by Edward Allworth, 202–216. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1988.
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A translation of an essay written in 1896 by one of the leading figures in the development of Jadidism, the Islamic modernist movement in the 19th-century Russian Empire.
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Iqbal, Muhammad. The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. Lahore, Pakistan: Muhammad Ashraf, 1968.
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An important presentation of the philosophy of Islamic modernism. It was first published in the 1930s and continues to be widely cited. Reprinted many times and available electronically through the website of the Iqbal Academy in Pakistan.
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Rahman, Fazlur. Islamic Methodology in History. Islamabad, Pakistan: Islamic Research Institute, 1965.
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Presents a significant statement of modernist method and perspective by one of the most influential Muslim scholars in the second half of the 20th century. Reprinted in 1996.
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Rida, Muhammad Rashid. The Muhammadan Revelation. Translated by Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo. Alexandria, VA: Al-Saadawi, 1996.
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Provides a clear statement of the more conservative modernism of the most famous associate of Muhammad Abduh. The work was important in framing modernism in the first half of the 20th century.
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Works on Specific Individuals or Groups
The first half of the 20th century was when Islamic modernism became an established part of intellectual life in Muslim communities, and it was also the period when modernism had the greatest influence. The pioneers in the late 19th century, such as Abduh, Gasprinski, and Ahmad Khan, were competing with existing establishments and had to create public space for modernism. This mood can be seen in the engaging biography of Abduh by Amin 1953. In the second half of the 20th century, modernism lost much of its influence to so-called radical nationalism, and then to more militant movements of Islamic resurgence. These tensions between new modernist styles and more fundamentalist approaches can be seen in the experience of Ali Shariati (Rahnema 1998). In the Maghrib (North Africa), modernism provided important conceptual foundations for the development of political ideologies of nationalism and created an awareness of “Islamic modernity,” as seen inAbun-Nasr 1963. In South Asia, modernism had two political orientations, one represented by Iqbal (Mir 2006), who viewed Muslims as a separate community and ultimately advocated the creation of Pakistan, and a second represented by Azad (Hameed 1998), who viewed Muslims as a part of the Indian national community and became a major political and intellectual leader in independent India. Distinctive movements and organizations developed in other major Muslim societies, with the modernist Muhammadija in Indonesia becoming one of the largest Muslim organizations in the world (Peacock 1978). In Turkey, although explicitly Islamic organizations had major difficulty in the context of the Westernizing reforms of Kemal Ataturk, a popular modernist movement developed around the person and teachings of Bediuzzaman (Markham and Ozdemir 2005). Some modernists were also influential in areas on the frontiers of Islam, as can be seen in the work of al-Amin Mazrui in East Africa (Pouwels 1981) and Ma Jian in China (Ma 2006).
Abun-Nasr, Jamil. “The Salafiyya Movement in Morocco: the Religious Bases of the Moroccan Nationalist Movement.” In Middle Eastern Affairs no. 3. St. Antony’s Papers vol. 16. Edited by Albert Hourani, 90–105. London: Chatto and Windus, 1963.
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This older study still provides important analysis on the development of Abduh-inspired modernism in North Africa.
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Amin, Osman. Muhammad Abduh. Translated by Charles Wendell. Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953.
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A biographical essay by an Egyptian scholar within Abduh’s modernist tradition.
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Hameed, Syeda Saiyidain. Islamic Seal on India’s Independence: Abdul Kalam Azad—A Fresh Look. Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 1998.
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Provides a description of the life and thought of a significant South Asian intellectual and activist. Azad opposed the partition of British India and became a significant political figure in India, as a major leader in the largest Muslim national minority community in the world.
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Ma, Haiyun. “Patriotic and Pious Muslim Intellectuals in Modern China: The Case of Ma Jian.”American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23, no. 3 (2006): 54–70.
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Examines the development of Islamic studies in modern China, especially in the People’s Republic, by concentrating on the career of a Muslim modernist scholar and educator.
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Markham, Ian, and Ibrahim Ozdemir, eds. Globalization, Ethics, and Islam: The Case of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005.
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A collection of essays on an important and distinctive modernist tradition in Turkey.
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Mir, Mustansir. Iqbal. Makers of Islamic Civilization Series. London: I. B. Tauris, 2006.
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A readable essay on the life and influence of one of the most important intellectuals in the development of Islamic modernism in South Asia. The bibliographic essay is a very useful introduction to the literature on Iqbal.
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Peacock, James L. Purifying the Faith: The Muhammadijah Movement in Indonesian Islam. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin Cummings, 1978.
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A study of one of the world’s largest Muslim associations, established in the early 20th century as a modernist movement. Reprinted in 1992.
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Pouwels, Randall L. “Sh. Al-Amin b. Ali Mazrui and Islamic Modernism in East Africa, 1875–1947.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 13, no. 3 (1981): 329–345.
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Covers the development of Islamic modernism in the thought and activism of a major sub-Saharan Muslim modernist.
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Rahnema, Ali. An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shariʿati. London: I. B. Tauris, 1998.
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An important biography of an Iranian activist-intellectual who defined his reform as being a return to the Islam of Ali (the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law) and a rejection of medieval institutionalized Islam, which he called “Safavid Islam.”
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Islamic Modernism in Specific Countries or Regions
Islamic modernism developed different traditions in the diverse regions of the Muslim world. In many ways, however, the heartland of modernism was South Asia. The intellectual genealogies of modernists in India have deep roots in the traditions of Islamic renewal in India, going back to the 18th century and the important intellectual foundations that were laid by Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi. These roots and the development of modernism are noted in Ahmad 1967, and Brown 1997 gives an important survey of modernist thinkers and scholarship. Thinkers in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world also made important contributions. Adams 1933 provides a thorough picture of Abduh’s thought, and of his successors, while Commins 1990 gives an important reminder that cosmopolitan intellectuals in Syria also made important contributions to the development of modernism. Similarly,Merad 1967 notes the important development of activist modernism in North Africa. Important and distinctive modes of modernism developed in other regions. One important early modernism developed, as Jadidism, in the Russian Empire (Khalid 1998), but it was largely eliminated by the decades of Soviet rule. In Iran, by contrast, the politically engaged modernism that developed in the late 19th century provided a base for the dynamic modernism of the 20th (Rajaee 2007). In two regions on the frontiers of the Muslim world, strong movements of modernism developed. In sub-Saharan Africa, translations of the Qurʾanic message helped establish a Muslim-African modernity (Loimeier 2005). In Southeast Asia, Islamic modernism provided the intellectual base for some of the largest Muslim organizations in the world and has helped to give impetus to Indonesian intellectual dynamism in the study of Islam (Federspiel 2002).
Adams, Charles C. Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad Abduh. New York: Russell and Russell, 1933.
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The standard source for Westerners on the tradition of Abduh, and still the most comprehensive discussion of Abduh’s thought and Egyptian modernism in English. Reprinted in 1968.
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Ahmad, Aziz. Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857–1964. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.
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The classic study of modernism in South Asia, going beyond the intellectual frameworks of Orientalism.
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Brown, Daniel W. “Islamic Modernism in South Asia: A Reassessment.” Muslim World 87, nos. 3–4 (1997): 258–271.
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A useful survey of the “rise and decline” of Islamic modernism in South Asia, providing a very helpful introduction to the scholarly literature on the subject.
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Commins, David Dean. Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
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A thorough study of the way Islamic modernist thought developed in Syria in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Provides a clear definition of Salafiyah as a modernist movement.
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Federspiel, Howard M. “Modernist Islam in Southeast Asia: A New Examination.” Muslim World 92, nos. 3–4 (2002): 371–386.
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A remarkably comprehensive description of individuals and movements, as well as a sound discussion of current scholarship on the subject.
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Khalid, Adeeb. The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
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Examines the development of Islamic modernism within the Russian Empire. Khalid shows the broader dimensions of the movement and provides information about Ismail Gasprinski, its best-known leader.
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Loimeier, Roman. “Translating the Qurʾān in Sub-Saharan Africa: Dynamics and Disputes.”Journal of Religion in Africa 35, no. 4 (2005): 403–423.
DOI: 10.1163/157006605774832180Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Provides an important analysis of Islamic modernism in Africa through an examination of the debates about translating the Qurʾan into African languages.
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Merad, Ali. Le Réformisme musulman en Algérie de 1925 à 1940: Essai d’histoire religieuse et sociale. Paris: Mouton, 1967.
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An important study of the development of the Association of Algerian Ulama and of modernism in Algeria. Merad’s important general analysis of Islamic reformism may also be found in Merad’s essay, “Islāh,” in the second edition of The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1973), Vol. 4, pp. 141–163.
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Rajaee, Farhang. Islamism and Modernism: The Changing Discourse in Iran. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.
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Provides a remarkably comprehensive survey of 20th- and 21st-century Iranian debates about modernism. It provides an important perspective on Shiʿi forms of modernism.
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