Introduction

When Indiana University invited me to give the Patten Foundation Lectures 1 in 1982/3, the committee responsible for this distinguished annual series in the humanities also suggested that I address myself in my lectures to the theme of Islam and the Nation-State. In accepting this kind invitation I was conscious of a delicate undertaking. Not only was Islam at that time a widely discussed subject among academics, but the activities and policies of Muslim states and unofficial popular Islamic organizations attracted world attention-and concern. My first responsibility then was to academic standards: to discuss a complex and 'explosive' subject with sense, candour and goodwill without allowing the discussion to degenerate into cheap polemic or facile sensationalism. To say too much could well demolish my non-specialist audience and generate more heat than light. To dismiss the subject in a very captious treatment was to risk offending both my audience and my Muslim colleagues and friends. I settled on a concise introduction of the most salient features of a potential full treatment of the subject from an historical, doctrinal-legal and existential perspective. The lectures delivered on the Patten Foundation are reproduced here in Chapters 2 and 3.2

Over 20 years ago, E.I. Rosenthal published his Islam and the National State. 3 However, the two major attempts by Western scholars this century to examine Islam in the modern world were those by W.C. Smith, Islam in Modern History, 4 and H.A.R. Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam. 5 Earlier, the latter had edited a co-authored volume which considered the various aspects of the relation between Islam and modernity. Published by the Oxford University Press in 1931 as Whither Islam?, the chapter by Kamppfmeyer on the Society of Muslim Brothers in Egypt constituted at that time a singular, original contribution. Gibb's introduction and conclusion to the volume were thoughtprovoking pieces. Essentially a scholar of Arabic literature, Gibb concentrated his research on the impact of the 'modern world' on the literary, cultural and political response of Islam and Muslims. Himself the product of a missionary upbringing, Gibb sought desperately to explore the possibilities of a modern ethic in Islam for Muslims. In doing so he may on occasion have

tended to misinterpret the nature of Islam as an historical religious movement. Nevertheless, his seminal work, Modern Trends, set the boundaries if not parameters of the discussion of the relation of Islam to the modern world.