EDITORIAL

Abstract

The present issue of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences represents a ground-breaking effort of sorts in that it is the first to be organized around a single theme. Thus, all papers presented here revolve around the issue of modernity and the response of Muslims to its challenges. Although this clearly is not a novel subject for the pages of the joumal, this thematic issue brings to its readership a number of informed perspectives that contribute significantly to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon as it relates to the contempomy Islamic experience. In “The Dance of the Pen, the Play of the Sign: A Study in the Relationship between Modernity, Immanence, and Deconstruction,” Abdel Wabab Elmessiri delves into the Western philosophical tdition and its discourse regarding modernity, recalling some of his earlier contributions in the pages of this joumal. Elmessiri takes a hard look at the underlying assumptions of modernity, including its view of humanity, and explains how the nature-matter paradigm has insinuated itself as the underlying paradigm of Western modernity. Of particular interest to readers will be his exploration of the idea of comprehensive secularism as opposed to partial secularism and his study of the metaphysics of immanence. The second study, M. Mumtaz Ali’s “The Concept of Modernization: An Analysis of Contempomy Islamic Thought,” may be viewed as an attempt to construct a working definition of Islamic modernization through a critical analysis of the Western concept’s epistemological foundations. The author discusses the responses of such contemporary thinkers as Iqbal, Qutb, Mawdudi, al-Faruqi, al-Attas, al-‘Alwani, and AbuSulayman on the subject of modernization and concludes by suggesting a four-phase project for the modernization of Islamic thought. While the next contribution to the joumal‘s theme takes the Indian subcontinent as its venue, its discussion of modernization, like the work of the poet Iqbal himself, is directed towad the entire ummah. Through Athar Farqui‘s translation, readers of English may now have a look at the work of Justice Javaid Iqbal. In his “Modern Indian Muslims and Iqbal,” Iqbal’s son, who is a scholar in his own right, analyzes the substance and significance of his father‘s thought as expressed in the controversial Madras lectures and The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam ...