SUPERSTITION AND ABSTRACTION AS CHALLENGES FOR CONTEMPORARY ISLAM
SUPERSTITION AND ABSTRACTION AS CHALLENGES FOR CONTEMPORARY ISLAM

Summary/Abstract: Recent developments in the conflict between what we categorize as the West and the so-called Islamic countries reveal a strange parallelism between the two protagonists, who have the aspect of two opposed representations of the same course of action. This parallelism or similarity is based on the residual ideas of reality and appearance. There can be similarity only to the extent that something appears and can be identified by a comparing subject. Contemporary Islam should not be treated in isolation from its counterpart, the West, and due regard for all the necessary reservations and nuances. Use of the term contemporary Islam implies the existence of a special object, qualified by time, to be distinguished from another object nonetheless linked with it in certain ways. Thus, we imagine a kind of continuity through space and time that allows us to use the name Islam. This view is linked with the modern conception of history, which personifies collective phenomena as the “subjects” of their own history, taken to be the manifestation and development of their free will. Islam, to return to the main topic, is understood within this framework of active free will, thought of as the meaning of human nature as self-made modern man, assuming that man is that entity that constantly struggles to achieve its humanity through its own acts. [...]

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