The voices of Islamic modernism from South Asia

Abstract

Islamic modernism is a rich Islamic intellectual tradition and it permeates the thinking of many scholars, intellectuals, reformists, and poets in South Asia. Even in the Muslim communities of South Asia, especially among the educated urban classes and in their foreign diasporas, one can find modernist thinking deeply entrenched. It has empowered Muslims to practice Islam paying great attention to its rituals and its traditions while also pursuing modern scientific education, and contributing to science and modern economic and political development. Even those who belong to the school of reformist Islam are informed by the modernist perspective. Slowly and steadily, one can argue, there is an intellectual modernization taking place among Muslims in Turkey, Pakistan, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Egypt, Iran, and Morocco, even as there is a rise neotraditionally. The main modernist ideas that are taking root are that Islam can adapt to different time-space contexts through ijtihad. Islam is compatible with modernity, and the so-called new and modern values of democracy, freedom, political equality, gender justice, scientific outlook, rational and critical thinking, and even secularism are not entirely alien to Islamic ethos. They, too, can be absorbed within the umbrella of Islamic ethos. The future is indeed going to be shaped by Islamic modernist thinking that seeks to balance tradition with newness.