ABSTRACT
Islam and post-modernity – where lies the principal difficulty? A post-modern society is an open society where individuals can choose their belief systems on the basis of freedom and reflection, where a multiplicity of viewpoints are in open contest and where reason and argument are employed when different ways of life meet. The ethical prophecy of Mohammed placed Islam in the same position as Judaism with Moses and Christianity with Paul. Its strict monotheism seems to better serve Islam than Christianity, which in its primitive and medieval versions propagated an economic ethics, nourished more by divine will than a rationalist ethics. To understand rationality in Islam one must include the relations between political power and religious power, including the nature of Islamic law. The political institutions of Islam were always simplistic, focusing upon how the Koran would be inculcated in politics and law.
