BOOK REVIEW: Roy on France and Islam by Khaled Ahmed
Roy seeks new thinking among Muslim intellectuals, most of whom live abroad, Muhammad Arkun, Abdul Karim Soroush, Khaled Abu El Fadl and Abu Zayd, who believe that early Islam was a free-wheeling adaptive Islam that was gradually arrested by a specific Arab-dominated culture that makes the faith impervious to modernisation. Looking at Pakistan in the light of this observation one can say that it is not Islam that is destroying Pakistani culture through Talibanisation but a certain interpretation frozen in Arab culture. Iranian intellectual Abdul Karim Soroush actually appeals for a contraction of religion (qabz-e-din) away from the political sphere as well as culture.
Roy speaks of aporia when he discusses the advocates of the modern Islamic state. (Aporia: a figure of speech in which the speaker professes to be at a loss about what course to pursue, where to begin to end, what to say, etc.) From Maududi to Khomeini to Muslim Brotherhood, he finds Muslim thinkers drawing the definition of the Islamic state, not from the sharia or the political traditions of the Islamic world, but an Islamic reading of modern political concepts (p.63). This takes him to the next step of seeing the separation of religion and politics proclaimed by Grand Ayatollah Sistani of Iraq.
Secularism confronts Islam;
By Olivier Roy;
Columbia University Press 2007;
Pp128; Price $19.60;
Available at bookstores in Pakistan
The author has already written elsewhere about the failure of political Islam because of the non-compatibility of the Islamic imaginary with the structure of the modern state. A political agenda based on Revelation will be bound to coercively suit society to law rather than the other way around
Roy speaks of aporia when he discusses the advocates of the modern Islamic state. (Aporia: a figure of speech in which the speaker professes to be at a loss about what course to pursue, where to begin to end, what to say, etc.) From Maududi to Khomeini to Muslim Brotherhood, he finds Muslim thinkers drawing the definition of the Islamic state, not from the sharia or the political traditions of the Islamic world, but an Islamic reading of modern political concepts (p.63). This takes him to the next step of seeing the separation of religion and politics proclaimed by Grand Ayatollah Sistani of Iraq.
BOOK REVIEW: Roy on France and Islam by Khaled Ahmed
Secularism confronts Islam;By Olivier Roy;
Columbia University Press 2007;
Pp128; Price $19.60;
Available at bookstores in Pakistan
The author has already written elsewhere about the failure of political Islam because of the non-compatibility of the Islamic imaginary with the structure of the modern state. A political agenda based on Revelation will be bound to coercively suit society to law rather than the other way around
posted by temporal at 8/24/2008
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