Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Seyyed Hossein Nasr and...

Question: Who, apart from Seyyed Hossein Nasr, has really used the intellectual tools of Western modernity to attempt to defend classic conceptions of Islam against Western modernity?

Many people have, of course, used the intellectual tools of Western modernity to try to bridge the gap between it and Islam, from Sayed Ahmed Khan and Muhammad Abduh to Mohammed Arkoun and Abdullahi An-Na'im. This is the so-called “modernist” stream of Islam, and what emerges from it is rather different from classic conceptions of Islam. Many people have simply refused or attacked Western modernity and then moved on to (or back to) something else, but who apart from Nasr has produced an intellectually sophisticated justification for this?

Answer: All sugegstions welcome.

My thanks to TK for the conversation during which this point emerged.

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