ABSTRACT
To modernize is to Westernize, and to Westernize is to secularize. Such was the underlying assumption of most theories of development advanced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and global patterns of development seemed to prove the assumption correct. These patterns extended to the Muslim world and had taken firm root by the midpoint of the twentieth century when many Muslim peoples gained their independence and entered a phase of nation-building. Muslim majority countries as far removed and culturally diverse as Turkey, Pakistan, and Malaysia set themselves on a course of political, social, and economic modernization that explicitly mirrored Western models; and these changes were often framed in secular terms. Indeed, embracing secularization was a way for political leaders and the cultural elite to demonstrate their commitment to ending age-old practices and lifestyles that were thought to hold their societies back. Islam, at least the Islam exhibited by traditional scholars and institutions, was viewed as stagnant and mired in the past. Secularization, by contrast, was seen as progressive and future-oriented. By the end of the twentieth century, however, enthusiasm in Muslim societies for secular modernism had waned dramatically; and in some places, the idea of the secular was under full attack.
