Islam in History, Islamic History

The taxonomy of human religions, generated and confirmed as the guiding organizational grammar of European disciplines of religious studies, philology, and anthropology, claimed to map civilizational evolution. Muslim Modernists, in addition to locating Islam in this universal taxonomy, also explored Islam in history, rewriting Islamic history as the story of transcendent Islamic essence in a sequence of particular historical contexts. They determined the historical laws of progress that dictated the path of the ‘torch of civilization’ in order to provide a historical explanation for moments of progress, and to understand the reasons for present stagnation. These new Islamic Histories chart the interaction of Islam in historical context, beginning with the revelation of the Quran, the Prophet’s application of Quranic ideals – God’s intent – and the subsequent history of Islamic institutions in historical context, from the Rashidun through the Abbasid period. Islamic History demonstrated both the enduring relevance of Islam as essence, but also the need to re-contextualize it in the present. In making these arguments, Modernists were in dialogue not only with European Orientalist scholars, but also with their own Islamic historical tradition.