Modernizing Islam Religion in the Public Sphere in the Middle East and Europe by John L. Esposito and François Burgat, eds. (Piscataway, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2003. 304 pages.)

Abstract

As the political climate between many western and Muslim nations continues
to intensify, the rhetoric of a “clash of civilizations” has reemerged in
our news media, governments, and academic institutions. Muslims and
non-Muslims, with varying political agendas, insist that Islam is inherently
incompatible with modernity, democracy, and the West. Yet the contributors
to Modernizing Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in the Middle East
and Europe demonstrate otherwise as they examine the (re)Islamization of
Europe and the Middle East and reveal the ways in which “Islamic political
activism” (p. 3), or Islamism, promotes modernization.
In the first of three sections, “Issues and Trends in Global Re-
Islamization,” François Burgat describes how the progressive components of Islamization get hidden under a myriad of misconceptions. The term
Islamist, he asserts, often serves to essentialize Muslim political activists by
depicting them as a homogenous group comprised of Islamic militants. The
use of this term also “tends to strengthen the idea that Islamists are the only
ones using … religion for political purposes” (p. 28), though clearly other
individuals, institutions, and religious organizations use religion for political
ends as well. Due to the essentialized and reductionist uses of the term, the
real characteristics of Islamism as a “relative, plural, and reactive” phenomenon
are rarely recognized (p. 18). These obscuring lenses blur the image(s)
of Islam even more in a country like France, where issues related to religion
are often relegated to the “irrational.” In such contexts, Islamist movements
are constantly invalidated, though the activists’ reasons for opposition may
well be rooted in legitimate political, economic, and social factors.
The obscurants that Burgat details in chapter 1 often cause individuals
to view Islamists as anti-modernist and retrogressively reactionary. Yet in
chapter 2, “The Modernizing Force of Islam,” Bjorn Olav Utvik argues “that
if Islamism is a reaction it is a progressive one, a step forward into something
new, not trying to reverse social developments, but rather to adapt religion
so that it enables people to cope with the new realities” (p. 60). Utvik
links modernization to both urbanization and industrialization and characterizes
it as a phenomenon that results in increased individualization, social
mobilization, and recognition of state centrality in achieving political ends
(p. 43). He then proceeds to draw parallels between the goals of Islamist
movements and characteristics of modernization.
In the next chapter, “Islam and Civil Society,” John Esposito further
demonstrates Islam’s compatibility with modernization and, more specifically,
with democracy. He surveys Tunisia, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Iran,
and the Gulf states in an effort to illustrate the importance, functionality,
and popularity of their Islamic organizations. Importantly, he asserts that
while most of these Islamist movements begin by working within the fold
of the governments’ established political processes, “the thwarting of a participatory
political process by governments that cancel elections or repress
populist Islamic movements fosters radicalization and extremism” (p. 92).
Esposito suggests that increasing open competition for political power in
these countries and sustaining a reexamination of traditional Islamic rulings
regarding pluralism, tolerance, and women’s role in society will result in
greater compatibility between Islam and democracy ...