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The Heritage of Islam in the Modern World (III)*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
Extract
If the Islamic Community was founded to constitute the nucleus or model of the ‘good society’ on earth, why has it so manifestly failed to do so? This is the problem which haunts all thinking Muslims, confronting them with an insistent, nagging, exasperating demand to which self-respect requires an answer. The simple Muslim answer, which points to the ideal, says that it is ‘because we, the Community, have ceased to live now for many centuries in faithful obedience to the Sharî'a and in conscious striving to live up to its ethic’. Another mocking Western answer points to practice in the world of Islam: ‘because you Muslims did not learn to control your inward violences you were forced to submit to tyranny in political life and allowed your social institutions to be ravaged by lust and greed’. For the true Muslim, however, neither answer is satisfactory. To the Westerner he reacts with a natural surge of hot and outraged pride: ‘What kind of social ideals do you imagine your practice holds out to the world? We at least have nothing to learn from atheists, infidels, hypocrites and Hollywood’, he says. But when he contemplates the simple Muslim answer, he becomes aware that here too something is wrong. Only the most simplehearted believer can continue to take the entire Sharî'a system on trust, although there are many Muslims who want no change because the existing system suits their interests.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971
References
* For parts I and II, see Int. J. Middle East Stud., vol. I, no. I (January 1970), pp. 3–17 and no. 3 (July 1970), pp. 221–37.
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