ABSTRACT
This chapter goes on using the trusteeship critique of Taha Abderrahmane by focusing this time on the way modernity is interpreted to overcome what has been termed in this work “classical dichotomous thought” that sees opposition between religion and modernity or reason and religion. First, Euro-modernity is critiqued, and rehabilitated by re-integrating the religious ethos into it. “Spiritual modernity” or the “essence of modernity” is theorized instead; it centralizes the human being as a being whose essence is ethical and, based on this, human acts are either ethical or are not. Reason is a means to realizing this new centralized essence. Second, as a form of critical evaluation, the chapter goes back to the earlier concepts of European Islam and re-interprets them according to the three principles and six pillars of the “second modernity” as conceptualized within the trusteeship paradigm. Synthetically, the concept of “perpetual modernity” is coined to reflect the cosmologically moral dynamics European Islam envisions in its reading of revelation and modernity; European Islam integrates ethical religiosity through its contextualist theology. The chapter ultimately argues that European Islam’s modernity is perpetual and is consolidated based on three reasons, which are presented following the triadic axes of world–society–individual and humanization–historicization–rationalization used earlier: it is (1) perpetual in the sense that the inheritance of the world, through an innovative humanization plan of reading revelation, matches the principle of majority as enshrined by the essence of modernity; it is (2) perpetual in the sense that practical fiqh (shari‘a flexible law), through an innovative historicization plan, matches the principle of universality as enshrined by the essence of modernity; it is (3) perpetual in the sense that the rationalization of ethics and faith, through an innovative rationalization plan, matches the principle of criticism as enshrined by the essence of modernity.
