Postmodernism and Islam:

Abstract

According to postmodemists, modemists have passed their intentional, planned, and personal assertions as laws to justify their oppression, injustice, terrorism, and exploitation of the poor peoples of the world for several centuries. A cursory look at the record of Euro-American colonialism and neocolonialism across the globe bears out this fact One can think of their laws, totalitarian state regulations, the Nixon and Carter doctrines, and many recent resolutions of the raped United Nations as examples of personal beliefs and desires, even whims, justified as laws. Paradoxically, the secular fundamentalist tradition of postmodernism itself has justified its own free-wheeling metanarrative as a revolt against all traditionalism without distinguishing between lasting and fleeting so­ cietal values. Sardar and Davies, in their Distorted Imagination (1990), illustrated this phenomenon by referring to Salman Rushdie's porno­ graphic writings, such as The Satanic Verses. This characteristic confusion of postmcxiernism can be partly tmderstood by the mission of one of its founders (Habennas), which was to complete the Wlfinished business of western modernism: a noble cause of enlightenment rooted in "objective science, universal morality, and autonomous art according to their inner logic." Baring the civil autonomy of art, tirades against objectivity and the universality of modernism and its morality are considered the very backbone of postmodernism. Ahmed's book is an excellent expose of this paradox of postmodernism as it relates to Islam. The quixotic western beliefs about, attitude to­ wards, and treatment of Islam and Muslims as the new perceived enemies are part of its central theme. He sees for Islam, in its fresh encotmter with the West and its powerful propagandist media, many problems and a pro­ mise. Keeping his tradition of critical self-evaluation, he points out many weaknesses of the Muslims and their present leadership. The promise, he feels, lies in the openness of the postmodernist and in the proven survivability of Islam's universal principles. The book features six chapters preceded by a preface and followed by exhaustive references and the two usual indexes. Ahmed states in the preface that this book is an attempt to understand the present times in terms of their prospects and promises, and that his arguments are based largely on his south Asian background, which may be impressionistic without necessarily being chronological or sequential. In reality, it is a compendium of cogent proofs exposing the illogical nature of the images and impressions of Muslims and Islam constructed by the global media ...