Cosmopolitanism, Identity and Authenticity in the Middle East by Roel Meijer

Author:Roel Meijer [Meijer, Roel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781136812132
Google: IH6sAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-14T05:55:36+00:00

Tawhid and the duality of religion and science

In this sense, Islamist epistemology and the project create a duality between religion and science: religion postulates permanent and unchangeable principles, while science or human thought develops contemporary and changeable principles relating to the changing needs of society, though science does not have for Islamism and the project any epistemological claims. Consequently, science, which includes history, does not play any normative role in the formation of Islamist thought because no historically developed process can assume a normative role, except the age of the Prophet and the age of the four rightly-guided caliphs. The exception of the latter age is not fully developed; it is the close historical proximity between that age and the Prophet or it is the historical interactions between the Prophet and the age, or simply it is history as well as textual quotations from the sunna. Besides this, there are few rational grounds for justifying this very important and exceptional age of normative construction of both philosophical views and political doctrines, such as shura, election, ijma’ and so forth.

Thus, because of the weakness of human thought in the understanding of the metaphysical or epistemological meaning of the basic texts and of its basic principles like tawhid, then metaphysical doctrines, especially tawhid, take on a general religious meaning that must be translated into practice. Tawhid becomes then essentially meaningful in a social or political setting that provides Muslims with the possibility of living a virtuous and good life. Without a proper setting, the good understanding of the text becomes extremely difficult.

This is why Islamism and the project also develop the need for setting up a new society on newly developed thought while insisting on the Islamicity of every social theory. Although Islamism and the project reject the traditional modes of understanding entertained by the public or the elites as shown in the methods of theology, philosophy, Sufism and jurisprudence, they insist on the validity of the Qur’an and the sunna as the source materials for a comprehensive Islamic revival. While democracy is accepted by major Islamist political movements, it is however turned either into an operational activity of election and referendum or an Islamic shura.

On yet another level, Islam is presented as the alternative to all other systems or worldviews and as the only ideological stand that should be used in order to renew local, regional and international behaviours, philosophically, morally and politically. In the absence of a true philosophical understanding, mankind should stick ultimately to the text while using whatever advancement is achieved in order to live a proper material life. The possibility that the Text and its interpretation become identical seems remote and therefore the alternative is to always subject the human to the textual in order to prevent the human from transgressing against the divine.

Although tawhid is profoundly a unifying concept in principle, it leads, in practice, to a duality of thinking: Western paganist thought and Islamic religious thought. The problem lies however in trying to superimpose one on the other.

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