Introduction: Historicism, Modernity and Religion

Abstract

Historicism, as the premise of historical context, together with ideas of universalism and progress, created a new epistemological and methodological landscape that by the 19th century demanded a redefinition and reconceptualization of the nature and function of religion. Muslim intellectuals, like modernists in other religious traditions, historicized Islamic history and proposed a new approach to the Quran, Hadith and the nature of tradition itself. They rejected tradition as historically constructed and thus contingent, proposing that tradition as content, and precedent as method, be discarded in favor of the reinterpretation of the ‘essence’ of Islam according to contemporary needs. Studies of modernity should shift from an attempt to align definitions with empirical realities, and instead focus on the emergence of claims to the modern. This enables us to understand commonalities and differences among various modernities – and to avoid falling into worn paths of seeing modernity as a process of diffusion from the West to the ‘Rest’ while also not asserting the irrelevance of Europe. Islamic modernism has been treated as an instrumentalist language in the historiography of Middle Eastern modernization projects, and not appreciated for its deeply theological innovations and participatory role in engendering modernity.