ABSTRACT
In a way, the present academic study of Islam’s predicament with cultural modernity can be introduced by stating that it deals with the new and changed place of religion and culture in the present age. The focus is on Islam in the context of overwhelming globalization and post-bipolarity. In this overall context, one encounters a return of the sacred, associated with political claims. True, in the case in point, the Islamic civilization, the challenge is much older; it emanates from its exposure to modernity. However, under the conditions of post-bipolarity the context of the predicament assumes a new shape. There are cultural tensions that lead to international conflict. This is the major theme of the book. Some readers who are new to my work may single out one feature of the book to contest self-referentiality every time I refer to my own cross-cultural experience and relate it to the issues addressed. Readers who know me well are familiar with this aspect of my work and understand it. I therefore ask new readers for their understanding and beg their indulgence. I believe these references to be neither superfluous nor merely personal; they matter to the subject of the book as a current study of Islam that claims to be an academic inquiry – one that is underpinned, however, by the life experience of a Muslim on five continents during the past four decades. During this experience I have lived through all of the problems addressed. I therefore hope that this book will fulfill my intention of presenting a mature intellectual work to mark my retirement from a global academic career. I view this book as the summation of my work over the past four decades, and in this sense the few autobiographical asides form part of the undertaking. For many reasons, I have chosen to start the introduction in this way and to
begin with a personal note, which needs some justification. The inclusion of lived events in an academic inquiry is the result of relating them to the subject matter of the following eleven chapters, and this legitimates the autobiographical asides. During review of my manuscript some readers reacted positively to this, one noting that “these add a good bit of interest to the scholarly narrative.” I feel well understood, and this judgment makes me happy. However, I know from the reviews of my earlier books that there are others who do not like this style of writing. In the preface to my Routledge book published in 2008 I engaged in scholarly justification of my personal style with
references to Thomas Kuhn and René Descartes. I would appreciate readers consulting those pages, and assure them that I have done my best to restrict the autobiographical asides to underpinning the arguments that I present.
