For The Record: For An Islamic Modernity

Freedom, knowledge and gender equality have to be its pillars

- M J Akbar

Has Islam ever been in the forefront of modernity? Only clarity in a question can lead to honesty in the answer. Muslim communities are still, largely, wandering through a haze, as they grapple with, on the one side, internal doctrinaires who have laced regressive thinking with the opium of romance, and on the other, an external pseudo-intellectual assault that stereotypes all Muslims into images of violence and gender oppression.

This external assault is framed along binaries heavy with prejudice, for instance: “Islam and the West”. The linkage is obviously biased and false. Islam is a faith. West is a geography. How do you compare the two — unless you have turned the terms into silent metaphors where West is a replacement of modernity and Islam implicitly equivalent to medievalism and the dark ages? The world is in the midst of a revolution of ideas that will make the 21st century into the golden age of individual freedom and collective achievement: But of what use will it be to us if the revolution sweeps through the streets outside our homes, but we remain trapped in the past because we refused to open doors?

Modern. Secular. State. Each term has been constantly redefined by human advance, and each advance has been momentous.