On Perception of Historical Time in Modern Islam

Abstract

In this article, the author examines the main features of the perception of historical time in the Arab, Iranian and Indonesian Muslim intellectual traditions in a comparative perspective. The purpose of the article is to analyze the images of “historical time” and its derivatives in the modern liberal segment of the Ummah. Therefore, the author analyzes 1) the peculiarities of the perception of historical time by liberal Muslim intellectuals, 2) the directions of assimilation of Western humanities methods, 3) the prospects for transforming the perception of historical time in the modern humanitarian situation through the prism of rising interdisciplinarity. Methodologically, the article is based on the principles proposed in interdisciplinary historiography, proposed in intellectual history and new cultural history through the prism of imaginative and interventionist turns. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of common and unique features of the perception of historical time and its derivatives by modern Muslim liberal intellectuals. The results of the study suggest that 1) Islam has become an important factor in the perception of “historical time”, 2) the categories of “event history” and “historical progress” are reduced to the history of the progressive development and spread of Islam, 3) the transplantation of Western interdisciplinary epistemology has become an important factor in the invention of historical time.