Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

3 2Islam i n World Cult u r e st e m p o r a ry Iran: From Islamic Revolution to Moderating Reform,” conceptionsof the nation-state were at the heart of debates over Islam and its role inc o n t e m p o r a ry society. In other settings, modernity and Islam met in culturalcontexts where race had become a primary locus for debates, as discussed inthe chapters by Abdulkader I. Tayob (Chapter 9, “Race, Ideology, and Islam inC o n t e m p o r a ry South Africa”) and Edward E. Curtis (Chapter 10, “Peril andPossibility: Muslim Life in the United States”). Elsewhere, issues of Islam in relationto identity formation shaped up along different fault lines, such as thatof ethnicity, as can be seen in the contributions by Adeeb Khalid (Chapter 5,“Islam in Contemporary Central Asia”) and Dru C. Gladney (Chapter 6, “Islamin China: Accommodation or Separatism?”). Tim Carmichael, in Chapter 8,“Religion, Language, and Nationalism: Harari Muslims in Christian Ethiopia,”examines issues of language and history among the Muslim Harari minority ofEthiopia through the lenses of national language policies and popular publicationscirculating within that community. All of these various phenomenahave factored into the ways Muslims experience the world, and they thereforeare important elements to be considered in examining the place of Islam inworld cultures.Islam in Contemporary SocietiesAlthough they deal with a wide range of cultural and geographical regions, thechapters in this text share a common concern with examining the ways newconceptions and understandings of Islam have developed in relation to modernization.In many Muslim societies, these developments might be viewed interms of Islamization. For the purposes of this book, “Islamization” refers notjust—or even primarily—to the conversion of non-Muslims. Rather, it refers tothe myriad ways Muslims throughout history have attempted to adapt to ane v e r-changing world by envisioning and implementing ever-new ways to makethemselves “better Muslims.” This perspective on Islamic civilization follows amodel of Muslim history that Marshall Hodgson referred to as “the venture ofIslam”: a continuous unfolding and exploration of Muslim understandings oftheir religion across vast stretches of time and space (Hodgson 1974). Seen inthis way, the recent history of, and contemporary developments in, Muslim societiescan be examined as phenomena in which processes of Islamization andmodernization do not necessarily function as competing visions for the futurebut, rather, are interrelated in complex ways.H o w e v e r, in many instances, the interdependence of modernization and Islamizationin contemporary societies is obscured. This problem has been exacerbatedboth by the rhetoric of Western ideas of a “clash of civilizations”(Huntington 1996; cf. Qureshi and Sells 2003) and by that of Islamist ideo-