(From Ziauddin Sardar’s Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures.) Islam is not so much a religion as an integrative worldview: that is to say, it integrates all aspects of reality by providing a moral perspective on every aspect of human endeavour. Islam does not provide ready-made answers to all human problems; it provides a moral and just perspective within which Muslims must endeavour to find answers to all human problems. But if everything is a priori given, in the shape of a divine Shari’ah, then Islam is reduced to a totalistic ideology. Indeed, this is exactly what the Islamic movements – in particularly Jamaat-e-Islami (both Pakistani and Indian varieties) and the Muslim Brotherhood – have reduced Islam to. Which brings me to the third metaphysical catastrophe. Place this ideology within a nation-state, … Read entire article »

Ziauddin Sardar is a notable Pakistani London based writer and cultural critic who has been writing for thirty years. Rethinking Islam is the first chapter of his 2004 collection of essays, Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures. The author addresses issues in this essay that hold significant relevance for our Pakistani condition. This informative essay is reproduced in three installments. Serious rethinking within Islam is long overdue. Muslims have been comfortably relying, or rather falling back, on age-old interpretations for much too long. This is why we feel so painful in the contemporary world, so uncomfortable with modernity. Scholars and thinkers have been suggesting for well over a century that we need to make a serious attempt at ijtihad, at reasoned struggle and rethinking, to reform Islam. At the beginning of the last … Read entire article »