Tag: modernity

Philosophy

Spiker’s Hierarchy & Freedom: A Case For Akbarianism Against the Poverty of Modernity

Hasan Spiker’s most recent work, Hierarchy & Freedom, explores the historical/philosophical relationship between “hierarchy” and “freedom” in Western thought, providing a convincing case for Platonism and its innate hierarchical structures in opposition to the empirical, positivistic philosophical structure forwarded by the West. Continue reading Spiker’s Hierarchy & Freedom: A Case For Akbarianism Against the Poverty of Modernity

Chaudhury Nafee Ibne Sajed3 Comments
Society & Culture

Lessons on the Pitfalls of Modernity in ‘The Road to Mecca’

Muhammad Asad’s autobiographical account The Road to Mecca (1954) is a fine work that moves between various genres, including historical narration, adventure tale and conversion story, presenting numerous entertaining anecdotes. More intriguing, however, is the unique and fascinatingly nuanced insight that Asad (formerly Leopold Weiss), gives into a soulless and lost Europe of the early twentieth century juxtaposed by his discovery of a strikingly different world. This was a world which had preserved a connection to the Divine throughout spheres in human life, predominantly infused by Islam, i.e. the lands which are now widely known as the MENA region. Continue reading Lessons on the Pitfalls of Modernity in ‘The Road to Mecca’

Jasmin Weinert1 Comment
Politics

رمضان: شهر مناهضة الإمبريالية

لقد عتاد المسلمون على العيش في حالة دفاع دائمة كثمن لوجودهم، ونشروا بسهولة تفسيرات لممارساتهم الدينية والثقافية. قد تكون هذه صفقة مقبولة وحتى مستحسنة للحفاظ على السلام في المجتمعات الحديثة المتنوعة، ولكن مع حلول شهر رمضان المبارك، لا يمكن للمرء أن يتجاهل الصبغات الحديثة المميزة في التفسيرات المتداولة لفوائدها العديدة. يتجاهل الخطاب المعاصر حول هذه الفوائد بشكل متزايد جوهرها الأخلاقي والميتافيزيقي، ويقدم تفسيرات مادية بدلاً … Continue reading رمضان: شهر مناهضة الإمبريالية

Traversing TraditionLeave a comment
Society & Culture

Andrew Tate and the Ethics of Sincerity in Digital Engagement

There is an obvious question for consideration here: why do some people come out in support of Tate while others come out against him? Why do some people seemingly materialize out of thin air to say we must have a good opinion of him, while other more progressive-leaning individuals come out to say Tate deserves the worst human punishment possible? Continue reading Andrew Tate and the Ethics of Sincerity in Digital Engagement

faizan123451Leave a comment
Book Reviews

Critiquing Modernity: Book Recommendations 2022 

The twentieth century and the rise of nation-states and commensurate isms, have propelled societies into an era that is driven by abandonment of God, ethic, and a cohesive worldview that perpetuates meaning. The following list was prepared to give readers the tools to better understand, critique, and provide solutions for the malaise of modernity. Continue reading Critiquing Modernity: Book Recommendations 2022 

Traversing TraditionLeave a comment
Essays

Language is a Grandmother: The Long and Torturous Death of Urdu in America

Language is a Grandmother is a reckoning with the inheritance of Urdu for Muslims in America, seeking to provoke devastating self-interrogation in a critical moment: What will be the legacy of Urdu in America? What should be its legacy? What is Urdu’s relationship to Islam? The essay twins the life of Urdu with the life of the author’s grandmother— that language cannot escape the breath, and the death, of its heirs, while also rivering into the Islamic tradition to unearth the project of language and revelation vis-à-vis the Quran and the Prophet ‎ﷺ: How should Muslims live joyfully with wahy in their own language? Continue reading Language is a Grandmother: The Long and Torturous Death of Urdu in America

baburshah12 Comments
Society & Culture

Towards An Islamic Theory of Culture Part I: On Culture & The West

While the term “cultural studies” would not emerge as a distinguished academic discipline until the 1960s (with the establishment of the Centre for Cultural Studies in Birmingham), culture as an aspect of social life was first given serious consideration in the nineteenth century. During this period, many of the thinkers occupying the academic sphere of Europe — and by extension America — observed what they believed to be distinct and radical shifts in the social and intellectual currents of their respective societies. By the early twentieth century, these observations of “culture” were explained as symptoms of a new historical era. Continue reading Towards An Islamic Theory of Culture Part I: On Culture & The West

Ibraheem AliLeave a comment
Philosophy

7 Modern Deadly Sins and Misunderstandings: Inequality

In any given society, there are certain common sense moralisms ingrained within that culture. Certain aspects of ethical life and sentiments may be universal in nature and span multiple countries and continents, as part of a generalized weltanschauung. Yet, the particular way in which that ethic is practiced is always subject to cultural conditions and specifics. The key part to this common-sense morality is that you do not think much about these things: they are simply the immediate ethical context one engages with and considers as obvious. As a result, one of the main arenas where we see a stark shift from pre-modern to modern societies, and from religious to liberal societies, is in ethical sentiments and “common sense.” Continue reading 7 Modern Deadly Sins and Misunderstandings: Inequality

faizan1234511 Comment
Philosophy

Conceptualization of Islam as a ‘Religion’ and the Possibility of the Secularist/Islamist Binary

The history of the modern Middle East is often narrated as a story of power struggles between competing ideologies. One such set of competing ideologies is Islamism and secularism. The aim of this paper is not to explore these ideologies in the light of Middle Eastern history and argue in favor of either one of the two; instead, this essay will attempt to explore one of the factors that enables this dichotomization in the first place. The conceptualization of Islam as a “religion” creates the possibility of characterizing actors as “Islamists” in opposition to those characterized as secularists. I argue that this “religion-making” is intricately linked to the workings of the modern state which makes “religion” essential to its existence as secular. Continue reading Conceptualization of Islam as a ‘Religion’ and the Possibility of the Secularist/Islamist Binary

Mudabir Hassan WaniLeave a comment