Government College University, Lahore

Department of Philosophy & Interdisciplinary Studies

Programme: Master of Philosophy in Philosophy

Course Convenor: Doctor Sobia Tahir

Course Name: Live Issues of Contemporary Muslim Philosophy

Course Code: PHIL: 7208 (PLE1)

Session: 2022-2024

Credit Hour: 3

Semester: II

Assignment: Impact of Postmodernism on the radicalisation of Islam

Name: Junaid Faizan

Roll Number: 0755-MPHIL-PHIL-22

1. Introduction

The impact of postmodernism on the radicalization of Islam is a complex and controversial topic, with diverse
viewpoints and interpretations. To understand this influence, there is need to delve into the concepts of postmodernism, its
relationship with Islam, and how it may have contributed to the radicalization process. Before viewing postmodernism, it is
essential to delve into the impact of modernity on the Islam.

2. Modernity

The Muslim perception of modernity is very sundry, and it raised the issue of identity crises of Muslims. In general
modernity was rejected by the Muslim world, but very few imminent scholars inter alia S.H. Nassar, A. Soroush, M. Iqbal,
F. Rahman, M. Arkoun, M. A. Al-Jabri, N.H. Abu-Zaid, H. Hanafi, A. Laroui, B. Tibi and L.M. Safi postulated theories of
reconstruction of Islamic thought to make in consonance with modernity 1. Modernity is product of 19th century post
Enlightenment era characterised by the hegemony of reason and rationality. Metanarratives viz democracy, liberalism,
modern nationhood, capitalism, etc are the noteworthy achievements and outcomes of the modernity. The modernity
brought out grand claim that it brings the realities as labelled metanarratives which transcends all sort of spatial and temporal
boundaries2. Muslim labelled modernity as the product of Western occident and considered it as incompatible, hostile and
intimidating to the perceived popular understanding of Islam as the Muslims were Eastern orient at that time.

3. Impediments towards Modernity in the Muslim World

Various factors contributed towards the rejection of modernity by the Muslim world. The prime causes behind the
opposition of modernity at the behest of Muslims are categorised into two broad categories which would be discussed
succinctly.

3.1. Internal Factors

First is the internal repulsion by the Muslim world which was behind the hostility towards modernity as there was
intellectual dormancy in the Muslim world for over past five centuries. This thought developed due to worshiping and sticking
to a certain variant of Islamic thought primarily Shafi’ate and Ash’rite theory 3. These ideas were unfortunately considered
as the divine interpretation and made the religion of as manifested in the Muslims in the state of inertia. It merits to stress
here that the attitude of Muslim world clearly does not represent the Islamic wisdom. The sources of Islamic teachings are
just two viz Qur’an and Sunnah on which there is broad consensus among the Muslim world. The problem then comes in
the interpretation of these sources which are obviously performed by the humans. Throughout over the past the Islam is
interpreted very diversly, but the understanding which was given by the Islam by the prophet was not following blind dogma
but was founded upon voice of human reason. But this reason is not to be confused by the reason of modernity. The
companions and early Muslim generation of jurists and Mujhtahids documented this understanding in their methodology of
jurisprudence. They denounced any action which clashed with the voice of human reason. This term human reason will be
explained later when discussing the reason of modernity. Ergo, the stale and rancid intellectual attitude of Muslims must
not be confused with the Islamic principles and teachings. This is because actions of Muslims were justified with the art of
rhetoric as these actions were primarily motivated by the power politics as could be seen throughout the Muslim era
especially when they were in power.

1
Sobia Tahir, “LACK OF ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE MUSLIM WORLD: A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS,” Aligarh Journal of Islamic
Philosophy, n.d., 46.
2
J. Ranilo B. Hermida, “The Resurgence of Religion in the Advent of Postmodernity,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and
Culture 11, no. 4 (2008): 94–100, https://doi.org/10.1353/log.0.0010.
3
Mohammed Arkoun, essay, in The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought (London: Saqi Books in association with the
Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2002).
 Moreover, Muslims saw modernity as the by-product of the colonialism and imperialism because during the rise of
modernity almost all of the Muslim world Orient of the Occident (West) through whom the modernity emerged. The Muslims
were experiencing epistemic violence and were suffering the identity crises so in their defensive position they found
modernity as haunting. After the rise of new colonialism in mid 20 th century intellectuals like H. Hanafi, W. Hamarneh and
M.E. Beverley opined that due to the humiliating Arab defeat in 1967 Gulf war, Muslims probed their episteme in the glorious
past and tradition caused a resultant opposition towards modernity leading to disintegration of Muslims4. The paramount
ideology born out of this defeat gave rise of political Islam and Fundamentalism which caused severe repelling of modernity
and scholars like Sayyid Qutub and Mawdudi postulated Islamic modernism. This term viz Islamic modernism may be
misleading as there is no content of the modernity but instead this theology marked the returning to the orthodoxy and rigid
ideologies of Islam in which there is no need of scientific thought process. This theology although misinterpreted and
manipulated led to the rise of militancy, extremism and radicalisation in some Muslim countries like 1979 Iranian Revolution.
The radicalisation i.e. militant Muslims behaviour is founded upon the deviant interpretation of Islam which in no way are in
consonance with Islamic message and wisdom. On the contrary to this manipulated and illegitimate behaviour, the Qur’an
and Sunnah promulgates peace and does not explicate unequivocal Political Islam. This attitude of political extremism, and
militancy is found in the historical genes of the early Muslims. The Kharjities were first to opt this attitude, followed by
Ummayads and so on. Unfortunately, the Muslims especially Arabs were indulged in the violent, radical politics in thirst of
power. These atrocities were justified by the doctrines of fatalism, determinism and destiny5. This type of thought gave rise
to the radicalisation in the Muslim world. Throughout the Muslim history academic, ethical insolvency were the foremost
reason for the debauchery of Muslims6.

3.2. Innate Flaws

The second reason behind the rejection of modernity which is external Western cause through which the modernity
emerged. Parallelly with its achievements, modernity gave rise to the events like two World Wars which shook the faith in
this new emerging post-enlightenment product i.e. modernity. This modernity had caused the religion to be of secondary
importance as in the Nietzschean terms the god is dead and humans have killed him. The modernity caused humans to be
total alienated with religion. How on earth a concept like these fits in the domain of Islamic world. The eminent reason for
this is that modernity has overwhelming effect and trespassed its domain. The idea of objective and universal univocal
knowledge and reason is driven the naturalistic logic of induction. This claim is itself flawed as the Hand-Georg Gadamer in
one of his interviews opined that the claim of natural science that it is devoid of prejudices is the biggest prejudice. This is
because scientific knowledge obtains its validity by reliance on the narrative form of knowledge which is discarded by itself.
The knowledge claiming to be universal devoid of any mythical and narrative contents is itself a broad consensus of
scientists. Due to the sake of brevity the objectivity of this knowledge as enshrined by modernity will not be discussed further
due to the relevance of the discussion. Out of this knowledge reason of modernity which is unbiased and unprejudiced
flows, but certainly it does not fit into the domain of human understanding. The Islam thought lies in the sphere of human
understanding therefore various factors like German concept of Bildung and Italian concept of sensus communis discarded
by the reason of modernity influence it and strengthen this understanding. It is pertinent to add here that modernity is the
proposed solution of West going through its own experience. The remedy of modernity claiming to be unbound of temporality
and spatiality would be a forced narrative if imposed in the Islamic thought. As the values enshrined by the modernity are
Western some of which do complements the Islamic thought, but even then their manifestation differs.

4. Postmodernity

Muslim world was facing hard time with modernity, a phenomenon viz postmodernism captured Muslims with its
novel character. Postmodernism is the veiled end product of modernity even though it seemingly opposed the same idea.
Modernity claimed univocal, objective and strict & rigid universal ideals. In postmodernism there is no dominance of reason

4
Sobia Tahir, “LACK OF ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE MUSLIM WORLD: A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS,” Aligarh Journal of Islamic
Philosophy, n.d., 46.
5
Abdul Khaliq, “Muslim Philosophy,” Lahore: Aziz Publishers, 1981, 28–221.
6
C A Qadir, “Decline in the Muslim World,” essay, in A History of Muslim Philosophy, Ed., M. M. Sharif, vol. 2 (Kempten: Germany
Allagauer Heimatverlag GmbH, n.d.), 1427–28.
because the foundations of postmodernism stand on the pluralism and multiplicity. Postmodernism promulgates that reason
is not validating criterion for the ratification of knowledge due to three premises. Firstly, reason is prejudiced and affected
by subconscious, secondly reason is cultural relativistic and thirdly reason promotes the marginalisation of some forms of
knowledge as it results into paradigm of power. Postmodernism stresses on the vital point that modernity eliminated the
difference between the natural and artificial understanding. The modernity and its accomplishments presented dark
consequences for the humanity which included two world wars. One could sceptically argue modernity did not brought
enlightenment but instead vanished the humankind 7. Postmodernism built a discourse which pointed out the falsity of ugly
truth and grand claims of modernity veiled in the grand claim of enlightenment. Both postmodernism and modernity are the
epistemological consequences which flowed through the European and Western history and tradition.

5. Critique of Modernism-Postmodernism Blend

Regrettably, the ideas namely inter alia democracy, scientific reason, freedom and liberalism tossed out by
postmodernism is very much same which became recipe for orthodoxy leading to the radicalisation of Muslim world. The
rejection of these ideals empowered the fortification of outdated and crude religious interpretation of Islam. Amongst the
concepts discarded by postmodernism the prime one is reason is in consonance with the developed theology of Muslim
world. Having said all that the Muslim world was not affected by the postmodern thought because in true form because
Muslim world was still countering the modernity. It has attributed that repulsion of modernity and rising of unique ethical,
moral and radical political society is exhibited by postmodernism 8. This claim is devoid of any solid reality. The impact of
postmodernism is just an epistemological coincidence as Muslims world was devising political, radical and revolutionary
movements of so-called Islamisation in the wake of post-Colonial era or better framed as New Colonial world there was
parallelly developing the discourse of the postmodernism. Furthermore, the radicalisation of the Muslim world due to post
modernism is mere post-consequential justification. This means that some influential and rhetorical Muslim minds
extrapolated and forcefully juxtaposed the philosophy of postmodernism into their realm of thought and labelled these
thoughts as the Islamic socio-political interpretations. Postmodernism is not in consonance with the fabric of Islam.

The prime reason of this that postmodernism reject the dominance of reason and this not means just reason of
modernity but also the voice of reason of human understanding. The thought of Islam operates and flows within the human
mind and therefore it is enclosed in the hermeneutical understanding which is stated as the hermeneutic circle by H-G.
Gadamer. Whole of the hermeneutical or humanistic understanding rests on one entity which is truth. For all times this truth
has and will be appealed and manifested universality in nature. The truth of human understanding of Islam is universal,
objective and univocal. One should be wary of not confusing this universality and objectivity with that of modernity and
postmodernity. This univocality is shared consciousness of the society which poses a certain attitude of interpretation of
any thought here the Islam. This understanding is not also pure subjective understanding as labelled in this era by the eye
of modernity, because if one ought to allege any idea or thought then it is epistemological necessity that one turn towards
the source of that thought or concept. This is the main reason why people over the recent past and throughout the history
some Muslim minds has postulated very crude, vague and unreasonable interpretation of Islam especially after the mid-20th
century. The radicalisation in the Muslim world is not just contrary with the Islam but is both explicitly and impliedly severely
condemned by the Islam. If one ought to postulate a theory or thought being a rational and cognitive agent his may do so,
but premising a thought especially socio-political thought on the foundation of Islam, it is necessary to be in par with that
thought. Ergo, this grand claim is the ultimate truth which does not fit with the discourse of postmodernism as it outrightly
reject these claims and not accommodate the hermeneutic understanding. If one stands on the premise that postmodernism
had resulted into the radicalisation of Islam, it needs to befit in whole of the discourse. The epistemic thought does not work
by picking and choosing and avoiding the holistic approach.

The Muslim world met with another challenge of Globalisation which somewhat became an intricate reason for the
radicalisation of Muslim world. The Globalisation coupled with the epistemic violence caused by the colonialism and post-
Colonialism/New-colonialism resulted in the identity crises. The Muslim world adopted their social identity in global sphere

7
David West, “An Introduction to Continental Philosophy,” Cambridge MA: Polity Press in Association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd,
1996, 190–94.
8
Muqtedar Khan, Islam, Postmodernity and Freedom, 2022, http://www.ijtihad.org/discourse.htm.
as the Other. The Muslim extremist leaders and so-called Islamic Modernity remedied this identity crises of Otherness
caused a sever extreme radicalisation of Muslims. But this radicalisation did not occur solely from the Muslim ideology, but
it was boosted with the aid of Enlightened Modern West. The radicalisation of Muslims paved it way by the Jihadist
movement introduced by the United States of America. The pseudo-intellectual and tools of this Jihadi movement was
funded and provided by the Modern world of West. This was further exploited by the Islamophobia which is a postmodernist
discourse. The Islam was labelled an extremist religion due to inhumane atrocities of very few groups and labelling their
radical actions as the Islamic thought and idea. This was furthered by the Western support of dictatorial support established
in some Muslim Staes. Furthermore, due to the advent of the Global Institutions a concept was introduced to unify and make
the world a Western land and to vanish the cultural and social identity of the East. This was purely a invention of modernity
and can only be justified by the doctrine of Victor’s and Power’s Justice. The value enunciated in the postmodernism is that
of power discourse. So, overwhelming majority of Muslim world refused to be slaves of this Victor’s and Power’s Justice
victimisation process started at the behest of the postmodernism.

6. Conclusion

In the concluding remarks it will be promulgated that Islam more appropriately Muslim world had never any issue
with the postmodernity as the they still live in the pre-modern era. The Muslim world intellectually countering the narratives
of modernism principally which are themselves meta-narratives. Islamic thought was never in resonance with the
postmodernism and rather it was also impliedly and secondarily combatting with the postmodernity while openly opposing
the modernity. The political Islam which gave rise to radicalisation of Muslim world were primarily due to the internal attitude
of Muslims of which fright of fragmentation, infirmity to modern challenges, scholastic slackness, worshiping and clinging
on to past, corrupting the domain of ethics and moralities with power especially power and authoritarian regimes in the
States were embedded rationale. This internal despondence was fuelled with the external factors like epistemic violence,
superimposition of ideals and illusory mutuality with postmodernist epistemological critique of reason 9 and universality. Yet
these were the reasons behind the radicalisation of Muslim world. The Islamic thought on the other hand is both different to
modernity and postmodernity as for the former, the Islamic Sources if viewed holistically and contextually it rejects the
objectivity and univocal universality of reason of modernity. Islam which operates in the humanistic domain claims Truth
and humanistic hermeneutical universality which manifests according to the shared horizon of consciousness, defies the
postmodernity due to rejection of truth and instead accepting many truths which is absurdity of epistemological jargons.

The proposed solution which remedies the venom of modernity and postmodernity resulting into radicalisation of
Muslim world is that Muslims should abandon their extremist attitude in straightly rejecting modernity in toto. The Muslims
feeling modernity as inimical to Islam also denounced its relevance in the Islamic framework. Islamic wisdom preaches for
excelling in all science; therefore Muslims should progress by opting modernity in field of natural sciences. The methodology
of inductive logic is to be appreciated and Muslims should avoid viewing the religion of Islam from the lens of natural science.
The only sources of Islam viz Qur’an and Sunnah only stresses on the outrivalling in natural sciences, but it does not
enunciate the methodology and criteria for this field. On the other hand, caution should be observed by not trespassing the
domain of modernity and postmodernity. In the field of ethics and morality or humanism on larger stance, the methodology
of modernity has no place. This domain is only to be understood voice of human reason hermeneutically by the
intersubjective objectivity of tradition, convention, language, history and other factors. The humanistic hermeneutical
understanding should be manifested in swinging to-and-fro in the hermeneutical circle which ensures the lived experience
both liveable and in state of flux. Lastly, the promulgation of Political Islam should be avoided because scholars forcefully
superimpose their ideologies into Islamic framework which is unsustainable. As the Qur’an and Sunnah does not provide
the political framework for this or future era, instead they just provide the jurisprudential political principles the manifestation
could be diverse. These solutions inter alia would suppress and ultimately wipe off radicalisation from the Muslim world as
Muslims would developing the tolerance by respecting the other culture and societies, yet at the same time retaining their

social identity which will in consonance with the demands of social consciousness.

Total Word Count: 3034 Peace Out

9
Emad Bazzi, “Islam and the Postmodernist Deconstruction of Metanarratives: Epistemological and Sociological Implications,” Asian
Journal of Humanities and Social Studies 3 (February 1, 2015): 66–72.
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