Islam And European Enlightenment
Krishnaswamy Dara
South Asian Islam And British Multiculturalism by Amir Ali Routledge (South Asia edition), New Delhi, 2018, 170 pp., 595
August 2018, volume 42, No 8

Multiculturalism as a political idea has gained significance with the encounter of Islam and liberalism in the West. Although the idea is not limited to Islam and Muslims in the so-called liberal societies, the debates surrounding it in the United Kingdom has taken on this unique dimension. Liberalism as an offshoot of Enlightenment has always had a troublesome relation with Islam and its advocates. Attempts have been made to reconcile the two, but with disapproval from certain quarters amongst Muslim intelligentsia and western liberals. Islam’s relation with western modernity and enlightenment, as argued by many, is espoused to be contributory and complementary.

Islamists are at pains to show how European enlightenment was partly triggered by its encounter with the mediaeval Islamic philosophical and scientific endeavours. Meanwhile, post 1960s, the critique of enlightenment values and modernity has gained currency within western academia and left-liberal circles. Popular trends like ‘postmodernism’, ‘postcolonialism’ and ‘critical theory’, emanating from the Frankfurt school, have launched a critique of enlightenment. In today’s academia, critiquing enlightenment and modernity is a sign of criticality and progressive engagement.  Even the splendid works of Jonathan Israel and Steven Pinker have not made a serious dent in the movement against the Enlightenment. Broadly speaking, contemporary problems in the world are principally attributed to the philosophies of enlightenment.

Enlightenment and modernity are the dominant discourses of the West and this in turn enables the West to claim moral superiority over the rest. Any critique of Enlightenment, according to Akeel Bilgrami, is suspected as harbouring a ‘germ of irrationality’. He writes: ‘From quite early on, the strategy has been to tarnish the opposition as being poised in a perpetual ambiguity between radicalism and irrationalism (including sometimes an irrationalism that encourages a fascist, or incipiently fascist, authoritarianism.) Nietzsche was one of the first to sense the theoretical tyranny in this and often responded with an edginess of his own by flamboyantly refusing to be made self-conscious and defensive by the strategy, and by explicitly embracing the ambiguity.’

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