Muslims shouldn't be afraid of modernity

Every sacrament is funny in a own rare ways. It's formidable for me to confirm that deserves to win a Looniest of Them All award.

Christianity deserves consideration for a "born of a virgin" as well as "walked upon water" weirdnesses (among others). Judaism's rituals as well as requirements have been over strange (such as a Sabbath Feature upon a oven). Hindus have been in to all kinds of weird stuff, including Tantric sexual liquid transactions.

But during your convenience we review about how frightened Muslims have been of a complicated world, I'm struck by how dangerously funny this perspective is.

After all, Islam is a determining force in many important nations. When a large apportionment of humanity is stuck in a affinity for a past, it's tough for Muslim cultures to have many progress.

This leaves them as outliers in a increasingly global civilization, impiety a Western universe for leaving behind an Islamic anticipation of how good things were in a Middle Ages when orderly sacrament ruled a roost.

I bemoaned Muslim's fright of modernity upon my alternative blog behind in 2004, when we told a story of how we labored hard as well as long upon a paper that was submitted to a "Traditionalist" journal whose editor was a air blower of Fritjof Schuon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, as well as alternative bashers of complicated times -- when God took a well-deserved behind chair to science.

And a some-more we learned about Traditionalism, a some-more we became heedful of this approach to sacrament as well as spirituality (the intellectually voracious can review an extensive critique by a Muslim here; we determine with his simple points about Traditionalism, though disagree that Islam is a a single loyal religion). For example, Traditionalists have a strange affinity for Gothic times, when a Church ruled every aspect of society.

Since Traditionalism has a tighten tie to Sufism, as well as to illustrate to Islam, an! y truth that longs for a good old days when fundamentalist sacrament ruled a informative set down has to be looked during with a heedful eye after 9/11/2001. Especially after 11/2/2004, since a American eremite right would exchange hearty high-fives with many of a beliefs of Traditionalismleaving aside a minor detail of whether Islam or Christianity is a traditional sacrament that we bow down to.

Anyway, a letter wasnt during all what Sacred Web wanted, as we finished up being many some-more supportive of scholarship than a editor had anticipated. That was rejecting #1. we afterwards sent a shorter chronicle of a letter off to Science as well as Spirit magazine, figuring that my title was right up their alley. That was rejecting #2.

So right away we say, screw this a single during a time rejecting business, Ill put a square up upon a Internet for everyone in a total universe to omit simultaneously.

Heck, I'll do it again, six years later.
Download Science, Spirit, as well as a Wisdom of Not-Knowing

I was reminded of this strange Islamic modernity sucks! perspective when we came across an letter by Seyved Hossein Nasr this morning. "We as well as You -- Let Us Meet in God's Love" was submitted to a Catholic-Muslim Forum held during a Vatican in 2008.
Download We as well as You -- Let Us Meet in God's Love

It has a comfortable as well as hairy ecumenical title, as well as tries to disagree that Islam as well as Christianity have a lot in common, so they should get along. But Nasr lapses in to his fright of modernity, that flattering many destroys his topic that we're all a single big happy universe family.

There have been additionally poignant differences in between Islam as well as Christianity due to their really different encounters with modernism as well as secularism. Obviously in dealing with Christianity today, we Muslims have been not confronted with St Thomas Aquinas, Dante, as well as a builders of! a Colo gne Cathedral, however real these dimensions of traditional Western Christianity competence still be.

Rather, we face a Christianity that bears a low wounds of 5 centuries of conflict with forces opposed to religion, from a secular humanism as well as skepticism of a Renaissance to a materialism compared with a 17th century Scientific Revolution as well as a successive secularization of a cosmos to a common sense of a Age of Enlightenment, to a historicism as well as evolutionism of a 19th century to a current post-modern critique of eremite texts as well as a virulent atheistic attacks being made not long ago in a West against sacrament as such.

...Of course there have been those in a West who explain that a problem is precisely that Islam did not knowledge in abyss modernism as well as generally a Enlightenment to that Muslims would respond, thank God that this did not happen to us.

Wow.

What must be remembered is that these Dark Ages-adoring thoughts have been coming from a assuage Muslim, not an extremist. Nasr longs for a not-so-good old days when a fundamentalist religiosity permeated every aspect of multitude as well as culture, preventing a giveaway expression of ideas as well as open systematic investigate of nature's laws.

In my "Science, Spirit, as well as a Wisdom of Not-Knowing" essay, we wrote:

William Quinn, in his book The Only Tradition, discusses what he considers to be a last indeed traditional culture, Gothic Christendom. Maybe Im blank something, though this outline of a times doesnt set upon me as particularly appealing, or even honestly spiritual:

The informative norm was to imbue as well as understand in a many trivial as well as clearly insignificant charge a link to a dedicated whole, "Gods plan," to illustrate transforming that charge in to something poignant of a good (hieratic) sequence of being (and becoming). Barbara Tuchman writes that "Christianity was a matrix of Gothic life: even cooking! instruc tions called for boiling an egg during a time you can contend a Miserere." It governed birth, marriage, as well as death, sex, as well as eating, made rules for law as well as medicine, gave truth as well as scholarship their subject matter.

This bears an uncomfortably tighten resemblance to a prophesy of Christian fundamentalists in a United States, who write visit letters to my local newspaper job for a lapse to a values upon that this nation was founded (translation: they wish everyone to believe just a approach they do, as well as supervision should have sure that those beliefs turn a law of a land).

I agree, with Wilber, that whilst modernity has combined many problems, it additionally has brought many benefits: democracy, systematic advances, a end of slavery, freedom of inventive expression. How many readers indeed would prefer to live in 12th century France (as a serf, not a noble) rsther than than 20th century America, Canada, England, or any alternative complicated culture?

Well, Seyyed Hossein Nasr assumingly would, along with many -- hopefully not many -- of his associate Muslims.

Until they confirm to join complicated times, it's going to be formidable for Islam to fit in with a universe as it is, many of which, thankfully, is a lot different from a religion-dominated universe backward-looking Muslims reverence.