The Place for Islam in the Modern World

By Rebecca Masterton

Cambridge

23-2-11

In the Islamic tradition it is recommended to commence any talk by mentioning the

name of God, saying ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful’:
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim. This is because it is seen as logical to acknowledge
the one transcendent reality out of which everything, including ourselves, has come
into being. It is an acknowledgement that our actions and our endeavours do not arise
merely out of our own will, desire and ability, but that there is an existence, which is a
reality that operates in our lives through its own creative will. This being is
nevertheless so subtle that it is beyond all human conception.

Talks are also begun by sending blessings upon the Last Messenger, Muhammad, and
his family, as the carriers of a knowledge which is so deep and vast, that even if we
dedicate our lives to it, we can only just begin to grasp it. The Last Messenger was
the transmitter of a way of life that is designed to enable the human being to ascend to
a state in which he or she may attain cognition of the one existence that underlies all
contingent existences.

We can get glimpses of this existence in the way that our lives unfold and in
responses to our prayers – prayer being a means of connecting with a pure intention to
that pure entity. And in attempting to maintain a constant consciousness of that
existence, of that pure entity, our own perception broadens and deepens. We see
beyond our selves; and it is in seeing beyond our selves that we see things from a
certain perspective and with a certain kind of knowledge and understanding; that
knowledge and understanding being called ‘wisdom’.

Thus, in the Islamic tradition, we aspire to attain a state of wisdom; a state of

apprehending, acknowledging and understanding reality as it really is. The Islamic
path is a path that takes us out of a state of delusion towards a state of cognition:
cognition of the truth of our selves; of existence and of the one Reality that lies
beyond all immediate and apparent realities. The difference between knowing reality
and not knowing is equated, in Islam, with the difference between being alive and
dead: ‘Is he who knows the same as he who does not know?’

We have a choice in this life, as to how we wish to pass through it; what we wish to
leave behind; what state we wish to be in when we leave. I don’t necessarily mean a
choice as in which job we can get, which house we can live in, what happens and
doesn’t happen to us. Rather, the choice lies with us as to whether we are going to get
through this existence in a state of awareness, or a state of blindness. This is the
choice that is posed to us in the Holy Qur’an. This choice remains relevant no matter
what era or place we live in. At times, it becomes still more urgent; at times when
social, political and economic forces drive us away from our own selves. When we
are born into an age that has lost all trace of any path that leads to such knowledge, it

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means that we are born into an age where we are at risk of remaining dissociated and
disconnected from our selves. We will die without ever having found that place
within ourselves, which is the door to who we really are, and to that one Reality from
which we acquire wisdom and apprehension and understanding of our existence. As
one writer, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, has put it, we remain ‘exiled on the surface of
reality’.

Yes, we may live in an age where many questions are asked and ideas explored; but
how many are able to provide answers? And yes, we may live in societies in which
we are free, to some extent, to try out different lifestyles, be different people, say
certain things; yet what is freedom without knowledge? We could even say, ‘What is
freedom without self-knowledge?’ We have an ocean in front us, but we don’t know
how to swim.

If we are to understand Islam’s place in the modern world, there are a few things that
we need to understand: firstly, we need to examine the idea, held since Renaissance
times, that man is in a state of continuing on-going progress. We need to examine this
idea of progress itself, before assuming that everybody across the globe has the same
concept. Out of this particular concept of ‘progress’ has developed, in fact, a more
sceptical view of the direction in which mankind is heading. Thinkers have begun to
assess the state of ‘modernity’ in which a large part of the world now lives, and this
assessment interestingly corresponds with the Islamic view of future times. Marshall
Berman, whose study, All That is Solid Melts into Air, describes modernity as an age
of ‘agitation and turbulence, psychic dizziness and drunkenness, expansion of
experiential possibilities and destruction of moral boundaries and personal bonds […]
teeming cities that have grown overnight, often with dreadful human consequences
(Berman, 1983: 18). Nineteenth century African Muslim poet, Nana Asma’u, in her
poetry about future times, which is based upon the reports of the Prophet (s),
describes something similar:

‘[The signs] are deceit, oppression and misappropriation;

Misrepresentation, and drunkenness;
The construction of high buildings and disregard for the law;
Lack of interest in family and kinship;
Warfare that leaves too many women single;
The seeking of knowledge for worldly status’ (Boyd & Mack, 1997: 298

The second point which we need to be aware of is that the Holy Prophet (s) has said
much about the times in which his umma, his community, now live. He has spoken
about these times and even given directives to us, who remain his umma in spite of
being separated from him by time.

The European concept of progress, with the idea that mankind is moving ever
forward, developing and advancing, began with Europe importing goods such as
gunpowder, sugar and paper from China, and, ironically, from the Muslim world. The
modern world began to develop with the expansion of cities and improved
communications. It developed with alchemists such as Paracelsus taking a more
empirical and systematic approach to the practice of medicine, and gradually, moving
into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the revival of pure rationalism, and
the increasing doubt that we can ever really know the unseen, thinking in Europe

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gradually detached itself from intuitive apprehension; separated the speculative aspect
of the human being’s intellect from the deeper, intuitive aspect. Man begins to
attempt to understand himself by focussing on the physical world, and exploring how
he relates to his immediate environment. The connection to the one, subtle,
transcendent reality fades into the background of daily life. As Henry Corbin says ‘the
more we are immersed in the things of this world, the more the things that relate to
celestial light appear to us paradoxically like darkness and emptiness’ (Corbin,
‘Comparative Spiritual Hermeneutics’, p. 47).

Traces of the prophetic path, long since fragmented in Europe, begin to disintegrate
all together – this timeless prophetic path which cuts across the centuries and
overarches all eras, trends and fashions. We begin to move into the era of modernity –
an era of rapidly shifting boundaries, mass migrations, ever faster technological
developments and growing disparities. Modernity is the privilege of those who can
afford it and it is essentially supported by economic injustice. This is also an era of
rootlessness, reflected in the words of Jean Paul Sartre, in his novel Nausea, where
the protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, makes a similar observation: ‘Never have I felt as
strongly as today that I was devoid of secret dimensions, limited to my body, to airy
thoughts which float up from it like bubbles. I build my memories with my present. I
am rejected, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past’. (Sartre,
Nausea, p. 53). Even further, as Berman says, ‘we find ourselves today in the midst
of a modern age that has lost touch with the roots of its own modernity.’ (17).

In the midst of such fragmentation, more and more of us embody multiple identities;
identities fused together in a more transcendental, universal form. In this age of
globalisation, we are no longer seeing the simple straightforward Westernisation of
the world, or the homogenisation of cultures into a single, secular mould; rather, what
we are seeing is a mutual coming together of worlds that were assumed to be radically
different, even opposed. It is we Muslims, in our teens, twenties and thirties, from
diverse cultural backgrounds – European, Arab, Asian and African – who, by our very
existence, are breaking apart old fixed definitions of identity; we are redefining -
simply by being who we are - Islam in the twenty-first century. We are forging it and
developing it even now. This revival of a more global, universal Islam is in its early
stages. Muslims and non-Muslims are still working out the best ways in which it can
be manifested in our lives; but this is not a working out of Islam in order for it to fit
with modernity, or to ‘catch up’ with modern times. Let’s look at these times from an
Islamic perspective:

The most valued of treasures in Islam is knowledge of the One, Transcendent Reality.
Belief in such a reality is good, but the real aim of the Muslim is to attain complete
apprehension of that reality – complete to the extent of human capacity. Thus, human
progress is not judged by technological developments, but by the degree to which we
can master ourselves, develop our intellect, live in balance and attain cognition of that
Reality and by extension, cognition of one’s own existence as it is. Both Muslims and
non-Muslims can be measured against this criterion – the criterion of human
perfection.

What we actually see over the centuries is a decline in this kind of progress, if not a
stagnation – particularly in the modern world. Society is not modelled on a pattern

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that is in harmony with the human being’s essential need to be connected to his
primordial self. In fact, the primordial self does not even come into the picture. From
the Islamic view, then, we see a degeneration in the knowledge that is most essential
for the human being, and we see human lives driven, measured and valued in largely
economic terms.

There is, then, in general in the modern, industrialised world, a migration towards
Islam by people from all strata of society and all cultural backgrounds. Being a
universal way of life, it is the most suited to an era of globalisation. It provides an
antidote to the dehumanisation of man; it is a framework within which man may
remain conscious and aware, in an age where so many things conspire to distract us.
How easy it is to spend our entire life in one big state of distraction.

Islam unifies where modernity disintegrates. As Marshall Berman says ‘modernity

can be said to unite all mankind. But it is a paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity’.
We are in an era where man is atomised. Particularly in societies that actively
promote freedom of the individual, that all too often gives way to selfish
individualism. It becomes about the worship of the self; the hungry pursuit of
material goals; the chase after social status. Ironically, this all too often leads as well
to insecurity, self-doubt, isolation, a sense of emptiness. How many, in the pursuit of
self-promotion, are actually at ease with themselves?

Islam similarly supports individual freedom, but it also balances that with individual
responsibilities. It is about thinking about other people. We only have to look at the
rights of the neighbours discussed by Zayn al-‘Abidin in his Treatise of Rights. Islam
is about protecting the soul; promoting self-awareness; living in a such way in which
one at the same time acknowledges a higher Reality – hence the modest dress code.
This is not just for social reasons, but also for spiritual reasons. Islam creates a third
space in the world. We don’t dress modestly just for the sake of warding off the
unlawful, stolen gaze; it is also because, while we are in the world, we are not of it.
We draw inwards towards God; promoting that connection with Him through the
heart, and it is in maintaining the connection through the heart, that we can weather
adversity, the ups and downs of life, the ugly things that we see in the world.

The secular understanding of man’s place in the world, as promoted in modern times,
is that he must be ‘of the world’. To be detached and to reserve a place within oneself
for just ourselves and our Creator is seen as threatening and suspect. Again, ironically
in a society that says it respects privacy and personal space, the privacy and personal
space that Islam creates for us is often seen as ‘anti-social’. I have argued before, that
if the Islamic way of life seems a bit alien in some quarters of the modern world
today, that is because those living in the modern world, and who are a product of the
modern world, have become so alienated from any concept of an initiatory, prophetic
path. To live life more deeply is seen as strange. To be a spiritual being that is not
packaged to suit a consumerist way of life is seen as sinister and subversive. And yes,
people do find it difficult to tolerate someone around them who is a very reminder of
uncomfortable issues such as the meaning of existence; the shortness of this life; the
reality of death. People do feel rather outraged that the safe, imaginary world that
they have created for themselves, in which they can live their entire lives conveniently
brushing such issues under the carpet, is challenged by someone whose way of life is
built on these very foundations.

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But you can’t run away from death forever, and Islam, if anything, is a realistic way
of life that faces up to potentially uncomfortable truths, and it is the desire to embrace
these truths and to live by them with conscious awareness, which draws people to
Islam. Islam is not going to go away, and in spite of all the rhetoric of certain
politicians, driven by their people’s anxiety about their national identity, it is going to
grow, develop, transform and adapt to the times in which we are living. But this
adaptation is not an assimilation, such that it can be conveniently ignored. Islam does
have a presence in the world, in our cities, on our streets. At the moment, some people
are struggling to deal with that, but it is a reality and a truth which is not going to be
managed in the way that Muslim societies were managed in colonial times. A
paternalistic attitude to Islam and Muslims is not adequately going to meet the
challenge that Islam poses to consumerist, capitalist cultures; for these cultures are not
able to meet the fundamental need of the human being to search out and connect with
the One, Transcendent Reality out of which all other realities emerge.