The islamic ethos and the spirit of humanism

Abstract

The post-Cold War resurgence in ethnic conflict and religious extrem? ism has fed a vogue in theories of impending civilizational conflict, of mod? ernity profoundly at odds with traditionalism. Predicated on cultural differences being less mutable and hence less easily resolved than political and economic ones, this perspective singles out "the crescent-shaped Is? lamic bloc" as the most serious challenge to western democracy and human rights, over and above the "particularism of most Asian societies and their emphasis on what distinguishes one people from another".1 Francis Fukuyama, Lucien Pye, Bernard Lewis and Judith Miller are among a host of theorists positing an antithetical relationship between pluralism and Is? lam.2 They focus on radical trends but not their socio-economic roots, pos? tulate doctrinal rigidity in the face of modernist pressures, and center their analyses on the projection of national interests. It is an impoverished por? trayal of a complex reality and discourse about and within Islam?and also ignores the new clash of individualist and communitarian views in the West, one whose fault lines run through the core of public policy.3 This paper addresses some salient features of socio-political pluralism in the context of Islam's humanistic legacy, a nexus that merits and is gradu? ally receiving closer study. Muslims once defined modernity by their ac? complishments in the social and physical sciences; the challenge is not about returning to a halcyon past?as fundamentalists4 would have it?but about revitalizing norms and values that ought to undergird civil society. An extensive tradition of tolerance and engagement stands to be appraised, along with the contemporary interface between Islam and human rights. Points of convergence and disjunction raised by the latter are considered in view of pluralist imperatives and the 'secularist paradigm'. Seminal work by such Muslims as Nurcholish Madjid (on pluralism in Indonesia),5 Ab dullahi An-Na'im (on human rights and Islam),6 and Mohammed Arkoun 579