Islam,
Postmodernism, and Other Futures: A Ziauddin Sardar Reader.
Edited by Sohail Inayatullah (Prof, Tamking U, Taiwan & U of
the Sunshine Coast, Australia) and Gail Boxwell (Exeter U).
London & Sterling VA: Pluto Press, March 2003/374p/$24.95.
A
collection of Sardar's writings that offer a comprehensive
introduction to his thought. Selections are in three parts:
1) Islam:
rethinking Islam ("a serious attempt at
jihad,
at reasoned
struggle and rethinking, to reform Islam"), reconstructing Muslim
civilization as a dynamic problem-solving methodology, permanence
and change in Islam, the Shari'ah as the core worldview of Islam (a
system of ethics and values providing the major means of adjusting
to change, but it has been abused and misunderstood), Islam and
nationalism as contradictory terms, the potential of new information
technologies for remaking Muslim societies and culture, reformist
ideas and Muslim intellectuals;
2) Postmodernism:
modernity playing havoc with traditional cultures, the next 50 years
to be dominated by violent pendulum swings between modernism and
postmodernism (the world cannot be ruled by either extreme), Walt
Disney as the fast food of modern cinema (where we take on a
refashioned, predigested history, as in
Pocahontas),
Christian-Muslim relations in the postmodern age, aliens and others
in postmodern thought, Bosnia and the postmodern embrace of evil ("today's
victims of the west will become tomorrow's demons of the west, and
evil will have triumphed totally"), the Rushdie affair
as a clash of worldviews (militant and dogmatic secularism vs. the
religious worldview where freedom of thought and expression arise
from the sacred);
3) Other Futures: the futures studies problem (it
has been colonized by the west and "has become big business"), Asian
cultures between programmed and desired futures (three possible
cultural scenarios for the next 20 years: more-of-the-same,
fossilization of alternatives, and balkanization in China, India,
and elsewhere), non-western cultures in futures studies (bashing
Francis Fukuyama, Paul Kennedy, and the World Future Society),
medicine in a multicultural society, an Islamic perspective on
development, a non-western view of chaos theory.
The 23-page introduction by the editors, entitled "The
Other
Futurist,"
notes that "more than any
other scholar of our time, Sardar has shaped and led the renaissance
in Islamic intellectual thought, the project of rescuing Islamic
epistemology from tyrants and traditionalists, modernists and
secularists, postmodernists and political opportunists."
The editors go on to describe Sardar's dislike of disciplines as
artificial social constructions, his constructive approach to
rebuilding Muslim civilization and viewing Islam as an ethical
framework, his call for Islam to be reinterpreted for every epoch,
his response to Salmon Rushdie, and his goal to create intellectual
and cultural space for the non-west. Gail Boxwell concludes with an
impressive 12-page bibliography of Sardar's extensive writings in
the 1976-2002 period, including co-authorship of
Why Do People Hate America
(FS
25:3/124). [NOTE:
Some of these writings are quite possibly a key to a positive and
viable future for Muslims and Middle Eastern countries. Inayatullah
has performed a valuable service in bringing a selection of Sardar's
distinctive ideas together and identifying key themes. Sardar, the
current editor of Futures,
should not be confused with the Indian philosopher P. R.
Sarkar (1921-1990), analyzed by Inayatullah in
Understanding Sarkar
(Brill, 2002; FS
24:2/100).] (Ziauddin
Sardar's writings analyzed)
