Conforming or Confirming? The Task of Muslim Intelligentsia

Abstract

Religious Traditions flourish over time in the forms their adherents re-live and re-imagine them. By this creative historical process great religions have continually adapted themselves, successive generations reshaping and transforming received Tradition. And religion still holds the power to re-shape individuals and to transform the human existence we share in common. “To re-live or to re-imagine inherited religious traditions” - what does this mean in the age of pervasive globalisation? The great majority of religious adherents are convinced that their own doctrinal faith tradition has maintained its original integrity reaching them essentially unaltered with a pristine efficacy continuing to function as it did over centuries. For most religious persons Truth is ever one and the same, it does not change fashionably with the times but retains eternal validity with its original format. Our responsibility is to conform to this unchanging truth - not to realise its confirmation in one’s direct experience.