The Islamic Origins of Modernity

Abstract

Modernists saw in Islamic history the solution to the pressing question of why the Islamic world was ‘backward’ compared to the dynamic and powerful European great powers. The Abbasid “Golden Age” was touted by Muslim Modernists as empirical proof that Islamic essence, properly manifest in historical context, was a powerful motor of progress and civilization. Modernists claimed not only that Islam had produced superior civilizational levels compared to contemporary Europe, but that it could do so again. The prevalent European narrative of the ossification of Islamic institutions, and the concomitant rise of dogmatism that prevented intellectual inquiry, creativity, and ultimately, further progress, was by and large accepted by Muslim Modernists. However, they insisted that the ossification of tradition was not essential to Islam but rather, historically contingent. Modernists deployed the “Golden Age” argument to insist on the de-contextualization of Islamic essence and its re-contextualization in the present – the rescue of essence from history. Muslim Modernists, by comparing Islam in history to Christianity in European history, asserted the Islamic Origins of Modernity, thus enabling an indigenous future modern – the reclaiming of the ‘torch of civilization’.