[Download] "Tradition and the Past: Impediments Or Boons to Envisioning the Future of Islam?" by Currents in Theology and Mission # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Tradition and the Past: Impediments Or Boons to Envisioning the Future of Islam?
- Author : Currents in Theology and Mission
- Release Date : January 01, 2008
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 267 KB
Description
"Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." (1) This aphorism by the historian of Christianity Jaroslav Pelikan sums up one of the greatest challenges faced by world religions today. After more than three centuries of Enlightenment critiques of religious "enthusiasm" and obscurantism, "traditionalism," says Pelikan, "is what gives tradition a bad name." This statement is particularly apt for contemporary Islam. Islamic traditionalism--or, more accurately, the attempt by various groups of Muslims to reconstitute tradition under conditions of postcolonial modernity--is giving Islam a bad name all over the globe. One could cite as an example the superficial traditionalism of the Taliban of northwest Pakistan and Afghanistan, who ignore the actual intellectual traditions of Islamic history and idolize a constructed past that puts more emphasis on tribal custom and the vanities of male self-image than on the establishment of justice or respect for women and minorities. One could also cite the postmodern pseudo-traditionalism of Al Qaeda, which combines an overt rejection of modern political and social thought with a covert embrace of the destructive potential of modern technology. The interest in technological warfare of Osama Bin Laden and his closest associates stands in stark contrast to the Luddite simplicity of their personal lives, their ascetic moral code, and their desire to recreate Medina, the Prophet Muhammad's City of God, in the postmodern environment of the contemporary Muslim world. Although the nostalgia for a purer and simpler past has always existed in the Muslim world, one is hard put to find Medina among the skyscrapers of Dubai or Kuala Lumpur.