Islam’s Predicament with Modernity

‘Allah does not change people, unless they change themselves’ (Q. 13:11). Bassam Tibi cites this verse from the Holy Qur’an on several occasions in this wide- ranging and thought-provoking book in an attempt to convince Muslims that they need to avoid self-victimization and placing the blame for their current problems on the non-Muslim ‘other’ (that is, the West) and instead view themselves and their cultures more self-critically. He rejects any idea of a monolithic Islamic culture. There are ‘thousands of local Islamic cultures’, he contends, ‘but only one, highly diversified, Islamic civilization constructed as a cross-cultural entity’. (p.328 n. 7) The point at issue he argues elsewhere (p.48) ‘is the understanding of Islam as a “cultural system”, i.e. a source of worldview and values, and not as a religious faith. Readers are reminded that the present study is a ‘social-scientific contribution, not a theological inquiry into Islam’. Nevertheless, the author is frank about his agenda for reform if not reformation within Islam.

Short sections of the book are unashamedly autobiographical. Bassam Tibi presents Islam’s Predicament with Modernity as the summation of forty years of academic work, but the enquiry is ‘underpinned… by the life experience of a Muslim on five continents during the past four decades’. In a telling passage (p.46), he recalls that at school in Damascus at the age of ten (c. 1954) he asked his teacher: ‘why are the conditions we live under not in line with verse 3:110 in the Qu’ran? (‘You are the best community (umma) that has ever been raised up for mankind.’) The Europeans and Americans were more advanced than his own community. Why was this so, ‘if Allah says we are superior to all non-Muslim parts of mankind?’ To this, his teacher replied without hesitation: ‘we are in crisis (mihna) and Allah is examining us.’ The answer was ‘neither satisfactory nor convincing’ to the author, and the search for a more comprehensive explanation has been an underlying quest in his research for the present book. Moreover, for this task ‘a Muslim is better qualified than are Western postmodernists to address these issues’, Tibi states with confidence and ‘without any Saidian bias’.