Renaissance: A metaphor and Historical Patterns 

European modern history started with the European Renaissance that took place in southern Europe at the frontier of cultural exchange between Islam and the West. It was the contrast between the self and the other that brought about the first signs of cultural change. For many of us, European Renaissance is the metaphor, a frame of reference, that guide our discussion and tickle our imagination. 

Speaking of Muslim renaissance goes far beyond the language of metaphor, as it relates to historical patterns of change that can be traced to literally every known human civilization: Sumerian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Islamic, and Western civilizations have all gone through a renaissance of a sort before developing into a universal culture, and before growing to become the great civilizations they are and were. 

Muslims of today live in the modern western civilization, but are greatly influenced by the Islamic civilization. Indeed, Islamic civilization, its cultures and accomplishments, are both a source of inspiration and constraint for Modern Muslims. 

Sailing into the Rough Terrain of Social Change 

While the general patterns of cultural and civilization change are evidently similar, the sequence and character of change are not identical. Historians today, particularly in the Muslim world, describe the resurgence of Islam as a reawakening, and this reawakening took place under the rising pressure of European colonialism. 

The call of early Islamic reformists, such as Afghani, Abdu, and Iqbal did not lead Muslim societies to liberation and strength, but rather it was followed by a state of oppression and weaknesses, from which the Muslim world is yet to recover. The reawakening is yet to lead to a state of affairs whereby the universal and sublime values of Islam are capable once again of shaping and guiding the practices and institutions of modern Muslims.  

The repressive power of the modern nation state in the Muslim world left no room to creative reform. All aspects of society came under the heavy hand of the modern state.

Reconciling Islam with Modern Society 

Faced with oppression, lack of opportunity for creativity and growth, many Muslims found their ways to the West, seeking the opportunity to grow: academically, spiritually, economically, politically, and socially. 

Muslim presence is the US as a growing and vibrant community is quite recent, and it is still too early to tell the direction to which this almost unprecedented experimentation is going. But regardless of that direction, the US provides a free, relatively speaking, environment for Islam to interact with modern society. 

And here lies the tremendous responsibility, and possibly the historical meaning, of Muslim Americans. The question we face today is two fold: can we do it and how? Can we reconcile modern practices and institutions with Islamic values and assumptions. 

In the last two or three decades, Muslim Americans displayed a great energy and marked ability to build communities and to reassert their Islamic commitments and identities. The vibrancy of the Muslim American community is manifested in the many Islamic centers, schools, and national organizations developed over the last two decades. In many ways those efforts reflect a marked ability to adapt and catch up with the vibrant American society. 

September 11 tragedy came to complicate the life of Muslims in the West, but also to bring Muslim Americans closer to achieving their historical role. September 11 put American Muslims in the spotlight, and pushed them to the heart of evolution of world history. Muslim Americans no more afford to speak to themselves or to operate in the splendid isolation of the past three decades.  

As you can see we are faced with tremendous challenges but we also have unparalleled opportunities. We have the opportunity to give Islam a new expression, suitable to our age that it had never had in recent years. We have also the opportunity to rescue modern society of its current predicaments.

The Opportunity to Transcend both Islamic Traditionalism

and Western Modernism 

Islamic traditionalism permeates our practices and thinking. Many of our customs and social habits are the continuation of historical practices. The core of the Islamic message consist of universal values and principles, as well as basic concepts and beliefs: justice, compassion, honesty, cooperation, equal dignity of human beings, respect for the religious and moral freedom of others, etc. Those values are abstract notions that can function only when they are given a specific interpretation. All interpretation are historically bound because they are provided by historically bound human beings. 

Today, many of the social, economic, and political ideas that are learnt from works are not suited for today’s and future society, because this ideas dealt with historical situations that were particular to past generations of Muslims. 

At the same time we live in a modern society that emerged, and have been greatly influence by the particular historical experience. At the heart of this experience is the process of secularization. 

Secularization is the West operates today at two levels: 

(1)   Political secularization, which basically means in the US that the state shall neither impose one religion on the rest of society, nor deny the exercise of religion. However, in many part of the world political secularism has taken a militant form the one can see in many Muslims societies, most notably Turkey.

(2)   Social secularization, which means that continuous purging of religious foundation of social morality. This brand of secularism has lead to the gradual erosion of social morality. 

That has led to the resurgence of religion and its encroachment of the public sphere. But the brand of religiosity we hear expressed in the public sphere is the bigoted and divisive one the remind us of that prevailed in the pre-modern West. The recent attacks by Evangelical ministers, like of Robertson and Falwell, is indicative of the type of the political desecularization we are facing. It is evident the attacks are political in nature and are a prelude to violation of Muslim rights and to violence.

Muslim Americans Place in the Islamic Renaissance 

Muslims can provide an alternative model of society in which religion is reconciled with the modern society. In so doing, Muslim can provide new vision of how Islam can be lived in modern society to the full extent, and how religion can be reconciled with social living without relapsing into the medieval way of life. 

But for that to happen Muslims need to meet two conditions. They need to liberate themselves from traditionalism by deepening the commitment to the universal values of Islam. And they need to forge ahead with a lot of courage and confidence that the Islam they love and embrace has a lot to offer to future humanity.

Louay M. Safi
Editor
American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences