Postmodernism and Islam: Predicament and Promise By Akbar S. Ahmed. London: Routledge, 1992, 294 pp.

Abstract

According to postmodemists, modemists have passed their intentional,
planned, and personal assertions as laws to justify their oppression,
injustice, terrorism, and exploitation of the poor peoples of the world for
several centuries. A cursory look at the record of Euro-American colonialism
and neocolonialism across the globe bears out this fact One can
think of their laws, totalitarian state regulations, the Nixon and Carter
doctrines, and many recent resolutions of the raped United Nations as examples
of personal beliefs and desires, even whims, justified as laws.
Paradoxically, the secular fundamentalist tradition of postmodernism
itself has justified its own free-wheeling metanarrative as a revolt against
all traditionalism without distinguishing between lasting and fleeting so­
cietal values. Sardar and Davies, in their Distorted Imagination (1990),
illustrated this phenomenon by referring to Salman Rushdie's porno­
graphic writings, such as The Satanic Verses. This characteristic confusion
of postmcxiernism can be partly tmderstood by the mission of one of
its founders (Habennas), which was to complete the Wlfinished business
of western modernism: a noble cause of enlightenment rooted in "objective
science, universal morality, and autonomous art according to their
inner logic." Baring the civil autonomy of art, tirades against objectivity
and the universality of modernism and its morality are considered the
very backbone of postmodernism.
Ahmed's book is an excellent expose of this paradox of postmodernism
as it relates to Islam. The quixotic western beliefs about, attitude to­
wards, and treatment of Islam and Muslims as the new perceived enemies
are part of its central theme. He sees for Islam, in its fresh encotmter with
the West and its powerful propagandist media, many problems and a pro­
mise. Keeping his tradition of critical self-evaluation, he points out many
weaknesses of the Muslims and their present leadership. The promise, he
feels, lies in the openness of the postmodernist and in the proven survivability
of Islam's universal principles.
The book features six chapters preceded by a preface and followed
by exhaustive references and the two usual indexes. Ahmed states in the
preface that this book is an attempt to understand the present times in
terms of their prospects and promises, and that his arguments are based
largely on his south Asian background, which may be impressionistic
without necessarily being chronological or sequential. In reality, it is a
compendium of cogent proofs exposing the illogical nature of the images
and impressions of Muslims and Islam constructed by the global media ...