Understanding Modernity on One’s Own Terms

Abstract

How can the movements fighting for an Islamic state in which Shari’ah
(the Islamic Law) rules supreme best be understood-as part of a worldwide
reaction against modernist thought or as a broad and diverse
attempt to understand and tackle the problems of modemity through
reconnecting with an indigenous system of references for producing
meaning? This is the main question discussed in this paper.
Revolt Against the Modern Age?
In his book Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the
Modern Age,’ the American historian of religion Bruce B. Lawrence surveys
what he identifies as “fundamentalist” movements within the three
major religions of Semitic origin: Judaism, Christianity (American
Protestantism), and Islam. In seeking to understand how fundamentalists
relate to the d i t i e s of the modem world, Lawrence makes a distinction
between modernity and modernism. Modernity is seen as the concrete
facts of modem lie: the revolutions in production and communications
technalogy hu@ an by indusbialkm and the cowmnt changes in
material life and, to a certain extent, in social organization. Lawrence’s
fundamentalists are not opposed to modernity, with the possible excep
tion of the Natluei Karta group in Israel. They also are adept at utilizing
the most modem means of communications in their campaign or organizing
activities.
Modernism, on the other hand, is what characterizes the new way of
thinking that has o c c d in the West as a result of, or at least alongside,
the industrial and scientific revolutions. It is marked by a strong belief in
the powers of science and reason and by a basic skepticism toward any
substantial, absolute truth. To the modernist mind no “truth” is immune ...