Modernizing Islam

As the political climate between many western and Muslim nations continuesto intensify, the rhetoric of a “clash of civilizations” has reemerged inour news media, governments, and academic institutions. Muslims andnon-Muslims, with varying political agendas, insist that Islam is inherentlyincompatible with modernity, democracy, and the West. Yet the contributorsto Modernizing Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in the Middle Eastand Europe demonstrate otherwise as they examine the (re)Islamization ofEurope and the Middle East and reveal the ways in which “Islamic politicalactivism” (p. 3), or Islamism, promotes modernization.In the first of three sections, “Issues and Trends in Global Re-Islamization,” François Burgat describes how the progressive components of Islamization get hidden under a myriad of misconceptions. The termIslamist, he asserts, often serves to essentialize Muslim political activists bydepicting them as a homogenous group comprised of Islamic militants. Theuse of this term also “tends to strengthen the idea that Islamists are the onlyones using … religion for political purposes” (p. 28), though clearly otherindividuals, institutions, and religious organizations use religion for politicalends as well. Due to the essentialized and reductionist uses of the term, thereal characteristics of Islamism as a “relative, plural, and reactive” phenomenonare rarely recognized (p. 18). These obscuring lenses blur the image(s)of Islam even more in a country like France, where issues related to religionare often relegated to the “irrational.” In such contexts, Islamist movementsare constantly invalidated, though the activists’ reasons for opposition maywell be rooted in legitimate political, economic, and social factors.The obscurants that Burgat details in chapter 1 often cause individualsto view Islamists as anti-modernist and retrogressively reactionary. Yet inchapter 2, “The Modernizing Force of Islam,” Bjorn Olav Utvik argues “thatif Islamism is a reaction it is a progressive one, a step forward into somethingnew, not trying to reverse social developments, but rather to adapt religionso that it enables people to cope with the new realities” (p. 60). Utviklinks modernization to both urbanization and industrialization and characterizesit as a phenomenon that results in increased individualization, socialmobilization, and recognition of state centrality in achieving political ends(p. 43). He then proceeds to draw parallels between the goals of Islamistmovements and characteristics of modernization.In the next chapter, “Islam and Civil Society,” John Esposito furtherdemonstrates Islam’s compatibility with modernization and, more specifically,with democracy. He surveys Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Iran,and the Gulf states in an effort to illustrate the importance, functionality,and popularity of their Islamic organizations. Importantly, he asserts thatwhile most of these Islamist movements begin by working within the foldof the governments’ established political processes, “the thwarting of a participatorypolitical process by governments that cancel elections or represspopulist Islamic movements fosters radicalization and extremism” (p. 92).Esposito suggests that increasing open competition for political power inthese countries and sustaining a reexamination of traditional Islamic rulingsregarding pluralism, tolerance, and women’s role in society will result ingreater compatibility between Islam and democracy ...