Modernist and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam A Reader by Mansoor Moaddel and Kamran Talattof, eds. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 382 pages.)

Abstract

The two editors of this volume have successfully pooled their expertise in
sociology, politics, and modern Islam to bring together a cogent and wellorganized
reader of key texts depicting the self-statements of what may
be tentatively called Islamic “modernism” and “fundamentalism.” The
selection of 34 articles and treatises (18 on modernism, 16 on fundamentalism)
is preceded by a scholarly introduction that also contains short
biographies of the writers represented in this volume.
For the purpose of organizing this anthology, the editors chose to
highlight what they describe as two “episodes” in modern Islam: the
powerful wave of Islamic modernism that arose in the last quarter of the
nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth centuries, and the perhaps
more powerful wave of Islamic fundamentalism that arose from the
1930s onward. This semi-chronological division of two sociocultural and
ideological waves is to be taken not as a representation of rigid categories,
but merely as an heuristic devise meant to focus the reader’s
attention on the contrasts and differences between them. The editors are
aware that the designations “modernism” and “fundamentalism” are
ideal types, that the distinction between them begins to weaken as one
closely examines their particular and concrete manifestations, and that
one type may develop traits or characteristics of the other, given appropriate
social circumstances.
As ideal types, however, the editors believe that Islamic modernism
and fundamentalism may be identified on the basis of positions taken by
specific intellectuals or ideologues on five central and “historically significant”
issues: jurisprudence, politics, western civilization, gender, and
lifestyle. Consequently, these are the categories according to which they ...