Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity. Tariq Ramadan

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СКАЧАТЬ real transmutation of the order of values. Alain Touraine explains this phenomenon clearly: “The West has, therefore, lived and thought modernity as a revolution. Reason recognises no gain; it sweeps clean the beliefs, the social and political forms of organisation which do not rest on a demonstration of a scientific type… the idea that society is the source of values, that the good is what is useful to society and evil is what harms its integration and efficiency, is a basic element of the ideology of modernity.” ³

      Placing the phenomenon of modernisation on the historical plane allows us to better comprehend the logic which rendered it so positive, so liberating and so human. At the same time, this procedure clarifies to us the principles which will straightaway characterise modernity. These principles are its opposition to any tradition, any established order, against any sacredness or inquisitive clergy, against any revelation or imposed values; it is the affirmation of man as an individual, the claim of freedom, the defence of reason and, by extension, an appeal to science and progress. As Touraine and Castoriadis said, from now it is man – society – which fixes norms and values.

       II. The Lessons of History

      The great movement born in Europe beginning from the sixteenth century brought about outstanding changes to economic, political and social levels. Economic modernisation was to transform society, becoming synonymous with enrichment and the improvement of the conditions of life. On the political level, one witnessed the creation of the state of law, a recognition of individual and religious liberty within secularisation, and finally to the birth of open democratic societies. The social sphere evidently profited from the whole of these upheavals: the rights of individual and citizen, and his social rights (work, participation, representation) followed this same positive evolution.

      Who can deny the contribution of modernisation in Europe when comparing the two models of society – feudal and civil? Who can question the validity of modernity? To consider the facts from this angle, modernity has given everything to man in the West: from liberty to knowledge, from science to technology. In short, it restored him to his humanity and to his responsibilities.

      Yet, more and more voices are heard criticising modernisation and the founding principle of modernity. In analysing today’s societies, some intellectuals level the reproach of excess (without being able to clearly designate those responsible). By dint of giving privilege to rationality, efficiency and productivity for more progress, our societies are on the edge of an abyss. On the economic plane, we witness a continuous course of growth with the consequence of an incredible fracture between the North and the South. On the political level, the democratic ideal is falling apart; and on the social plane, unemployment and exclusion are the lot of an increasing number of men and women.

      We repeat, modernisation was in its origin, a revolution. Being an expression of rejection, it actualised itself against an order, and every barrier stripped away was in itself a liberated stronghold, a gain of liberty. It conveyed, at the same time, an unlimited optimism and a profound faith in man. Without any other authority, except its spirit, and without any other norm except the real, it was apt to establish values and fix limits for the good of humanity. As with all revolutions, this one has not escaped excess. Very often, the means of liberation become ends in themselves in an amnesia of any normative value. Liberty has called for more liberty and change has engendered change. Efficiency and productivity in the production of things are henceforth the measure of the good, growth is self-justified within a process which gives privilege to the most extreme pragmatism, and which makes out of any traditional reference, or reference of identity, a reactionary enemy – that is in love with a past which is fortunately passed by. Rationality has become the truth and progress the meaning and value; with the advent of our century was born a new ideology: modernism. It is clearly a distortion of the first élan, but, at the same time, it seems that this is the logical result. Defenders of modernisation, because of historical data, have wanted to cut themselves off from any reference in order to rush forward to the future in all freedom. In the name of this same freedom, the ideologues of modernism have made of this élan the reference itself, the only reference. It will have as a name: growth, progress, science or technology, but the substratum is the same.

The West is passing today through a crisis which we might render, with Touraine, as “a crisis of modernity”. ⁴ The rationalisation which is elevated to the rank of an infallible doctrine marks its own limits, and man, who was supposed at the beginning to become the master of the game, is outrun by the logic which he set in motion. The forces of attraction combined with efficiency, productivity, growth, investment and consumption have dispossessed man of a part of his humanity. Without references, in search of new values (ethic), he is subjected to the meaning of progress and the march towards the future, more than he decides them.

      From economic crises to political and social crises, from the imbalance of the North-South divide to ecological imbalances, it is nonetheless imperative that man’s gain becomes the subject of his history, that he reinvests in diverse fields of activity in order to fix priorities, limits, meanings; this for lack of being able to determine values.

      It is difficult, as we see, to disassociate the positive and negative aspects of modernity. In its origin, it is a claim of liberty, a call for autonomy of reason in an acceptance of change. The evolution, in course from the seventeenth century through to and mainly in the twentieth century, has provoked excesses and given birth to an ideology. It is this that we have attempted to identify, so that the ground is cleared for a more precise usage of terms, and in order to avoid indulging in a hotchpotch. Hotchpotch, for example, would consist in confusing the process of modernisation with its recent excessive rendering, and thus justifying, in the process, all the rejections. In the same fashion, by reinserting the process of access to modernity in its European history, it is possible for us to avoid inoperative comparisons, and so especially, avoid confusing modernity with occidentalism. This because to accept the principles of liberty, autonomy of reason or the primacy of the individual is something, but it is something else to identify these solely with Western history which has seen their accession to the social field being done after a conflict whose extent and consequences on mentalities is still unappreciated. The West has given us a particular form of modernity, it partakes of its history and points of reference. Another civilisation can, from within, fix and determine the stakes in a different fashion. This is the case of Islam at the end of this twentieth century.

       Notes

1 We know nowadays how much the Middle Ages were, on the contrary, rich and burgeoning with ideas that have, for many, influenced the form that the Renaissance later took.

2 Dominique Wolton, La dernière utopie, Flammarion, 1993, p.71.

3 Alain Touraine, Critique de la modernité, Fayard, 1992, pp. 25 and 30.

4 Ibid., title of Part II of his book.

       Part One

       At the Shores of TranscendenceBetween God and Man

       At the Shores of Transcendence

In our Introduction we identified that for the women and men of the West, Islam seems to be resistant to any idea of modernity. We read such notions in the first pages of certain American, English and French magazines when they address the rise of Islamism in titles such as Islam or Modernity, and Islam or Democracy. СКАЧАТЬ