Islam in Today's World

Islam in Today's World

Introduction

Islam is a major monotheistic faith, but 'Islam' also is used as a term identifying a way of life, a civilization, a culture and a historic community. This variety of definitions creates confusions when people discuss Islamic history and current events. Some of this confusion is simply the result of using the same term for different phenomena. The confusion may also reflect the need for a redefinition of the basic conceptualizations involved in the study of the historic community of Muslims and their faith. Analysis of the historical experience of the believers requires different methods from those used to debate the truth of revealed religions. However, even in the discussion of historical Muslim experience, the terminology needs to be examined. In many discussions of Islamic history, 'Islam' is conceived of as an historic 'civilization', but this framework for analysis may be misleading and historically inaccurate.

The terms 'Islam' and 'Islamic' are used, as Marshall Hodgson noted more than 30 years ago, 'casually both for what we may call religion and for the overall society and culture associated historically with the religion'. Confusion is created by describing Islam using general terms that are thought to be universal but may, in historical reality, be the label for a particular type of human organization. Islam is often called a 'civilization', as is the case in the famous analysis of Samuel Huntington. However, that type of analysis tends to use the term 'civilization' as a generic category for any large-scale human socio-cultural unit rather than recognizing that, in world historical analysis, there are many different types of large human groupings, and that 'civilization' is simply one type of grouping with a relatively specific and clear definition, at least in scholarly analysis (Toor, 2006). It is useful to ask whether the complex of social relations that is often called 'Islamic civilization' is really a 'civilization' or if there are alternative conceptualizations that can provide a more effective basis for analysis of Islamic history.

Discussion

The Many Description of Islam

If it ever was, it is no longer a simple exercise to describe Islam in the West. Several intersecting voices currently speak to this field of study so that it is no longer sufficient to talk about 'Islam' as if it is one kind of entity; nor can one speak with confidence of one meaning of 'The West'. The words each define themselves precisely by the way in which they intersect with each other. Indeed, one might even say they need each other in order to maintain some deeper sense of identity.

Many books and much writing of the past have been outrun by world affairs. Where it was once sufficient to speak of classical Islam as presently understood, mediate it somewhat by modernization, and mix with notions of adaptation and integration, it no longer is. That conception was constructed on the view of Islam as part of an 'other', that is, as part of an Eastern reality unconnected with the West and its ...