Islamic Modernism and the Re-Enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History

This book studies the complex relationship of religion to modernity and argues that modernity should be understood as the consequence, not the cause, of the new intellectual landscape of the 19th century. Shows how the adoption of historicism in the 19th century engendered Islamic modernism as a theological reform movement.

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Asks why Islamic Modernism took the shape it did and why it emerged when it didThis book studies the complex relationship of religion to modernity. Monica M. Ringer argues that modernity should be understood as the consequence, not the cause, of the new intellectual landscape of the 19th century. Using the lens of Islamic Modernism, she uncovers the underlying epistemology and methodology of historicism that penetrated the Middle East and South Asia in this period, both forcing and enabling a recalibration of the definition, nature, function and place of religion. And she shows that Muslim Modernists, like their counterparts in other religious traditions, engaged in a sophisticated project of theological reform designed to marry their twin commitments to religion and to modernity they were in conversation not only with European scholarship and Catholic Modernism but, more importantly, with their own complex Islamic traditions.