Editorial

Abstract

The question of modernity in its societal, historical, and literary unfoldings is the underlying theme of several articles presented in this issue of AJISS. Following in the hadition of Marshall G. S. Hodgson, John Obert Voll ventures into the history of Islam as an integral part of world history. In his numerous studies, Voll has always viewed the Muslim world from a global perspective, a trait that is even more evident ih his “The Mistaken IdenMication of ‘The West’ with ‘Modernity.”’ Voll’s article is based on a profound understanding of the West in t m s of the fundamental changes that have swept human life and society during the past two or three centuries. Modemity cannot be identified with the West, Voll argues, for the West, as a repertoire of traditions, was a concept related to the existence of civilizations. But “civilization,” as conceived in most of the studies and analyses of world history, is now a societal lifestyle of the past. It therefore follows that the transfomtion of societies and lifestyles has transcended the classical West and created a new world situation in which relations between Islam and the West are predicated on different bases. While it is true that Islam’s repertoire of concepts and principles is more clearly focused than that of the West, it is also true that, in the context of the global cosmopolitanism of our times, Islam and the West share a similar cultural, political, and social experience: Islam and the West are no longer simply two rival and clashing civilizations or even two different modes of modernity. They are now interactive partners, sometimes fighting and sometimes cooperating, involved in the co-constructed reality of the contemp rary world. Volls’ view of a modem shared experience is supported by Surmsh Irfani’s “New Discourses and Modernity in Postrevolutionary Iran.” For a society that has been portrayed in the most denigrating t m s by the western media, Irfani presents a powerfd human and creative image of contemporary Iran that touches upon a wide range of cultural revival: print media, film industry, literatute, and music. A common denominator of the works cited in his article, which is based on extensive field research, is the “aftempt to go beyond the fite!rary level ofkfeqrem‘ on and extant meaning ...