Islam and Modernism
Why is the experience of Muslims about modernization and modernity different from Western modernization and modernity? Why do we have modernities (plural), not modernity (singular)? How did modernity divide Muslims into conservative or traditionalists, fundamentalists or revolutionaries, quasi-conservatives, reformists, and revisionists? How does each of these five camps introduce Islam? This course tries to respond to such questions, as the key questions of Islam and modernism. We focus on the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries’ main debates, tensions, responses, and adaptations, and cover the major classics of this period.