Understanding Modernity on One’s Own Terms

Abstract

How can the movements fighting for an Islamic state in which Shari’ah (the Islamic Law) rules supreme best be understood-as part of a worldwide reaction against modernist thought or as a broad and diverse attempt to understand and tackle the problems of modemity through reconnecting with an indigenous system of references for producing meaning? This is the main question discussed in this paper. Revolt Against the Modern Age? In his book Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age,’ the American historian of religion Bruce B. Lawrence surveys what he identifies as “fundamentalist” movements within the three major religions of Semitic origin: Judaism, Christianity (American Protestantism), and Islam. In seeking to understand how fundamentalists relate to the d i t i e s of the modem world, Lawrence makes a distinction between modernity and modernism. Modernity is seen as the concrete facts of modem lie: the revolutions in production and communications technalogy hu@ an by indusbialkm and the cowmnt changes in material life and, to a certain extent, in social organization. Lawrence’s fundamentalists are not opposed to modernity, with the possible excep tion of the Natluei Karta group in Israel. They also are adept at utilizing the most modem means of communications in their campaign or organizing activities. Modernism, on the other hand, is what characterizes the new way of thinking that has o c c d in the West as a result of, or at least alongside, the industrial and scientific revolutions. It is marked by a strong belief in the powers of science and reason and by a basic skepticism toward any substantial, absolute truth. To the modernist mind no “truth” is immune ...