Bridges Go Both Ways - Roy AB Tolentino

"The problem of Islam vis-a-vis pluralism is, therefore, the problem of how Muslims adapt themselves to the modern age. And this, in its turn, involves the problems of how they see and assess the history of Islam, and how they see and assess change and the necessity of bringing the universal and normative Islam into a dialogue with the temporal and spatial realities." (Madjid 1996:473)

Nurcholish Madjid’s diagnosis of the position of Islam in the contemporary world is as relevant today as it was more than a decade ago. Certainly, in the years following 9/11, much focus has been given to the manner in which Islam conducts itself in relation to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, more attention has been given to the radical elements of Islam than to those who seek a way to reconcile modernity with the Islamic tradition. It does not help that the Muslim world is also divided in its understanding of its relationship with modernity, such that openness on one hand can be construed as betrayal on the other.

Madjid provides an alternative framework, grounded in Islamic theology. The ineffable oneness of God allows for an interpretation that differentiates between the sacred and the profane. As Robert Hefner notes:

"This commitment to tauhid requires a never-ending effort to distinguish the divine from the merely human in Islamic tradition. In so doing, Madjid argued, tauhid also implies a commitment to reason, knowledge, and science, all of which can be understood as acts of devotion to a creator whose majesty is immanent in the natural laws of the world." (Hefner 2000:117)

Madjid called this process of differentiation (one could call it purification), secularization. “[T]hey consistently distinguished secularization, understood as the desacralization of domains wrongly valorized as sacred, from secularism, a Western ideology advocating a total separation of religion from politics and social life.” (Hefner 2000:118) However, almost predictably, his position was also assailed for its reliance on Western sources. This is where I think the dynamic Muslim intelligentsia often stumbles. There is much (certainly often valid) suspicion of Western ideas and principles, but this suspicion rarely results in critical understanding; too often, it remains merely suspicion, and at worst becomes radical rejection or paranoia. The intelligentsia have an enormous responsibility in utilizing this suspicion properly, but it is a responsibility sadly shirked. As Seyyed Hossein Nasr remarks:

"During the last two centuries the Islamic world has been witness to the appearance of a whole army of Western scholars, some outstanding scholars without predetermined prejudices and some even sympathetic to the Islamic cause... Yet, there have not been many studies of the other religions seriously from an Islamic point of view in a contemporary language in the same way that our ancestors studied other religions a thousand years ago." (Nasr 1993:239)

It is unfortunate since there is much knowledge to be shared, but it seems that some bridges have been built as one-way streets. It would be good to remember that bridges go both ways, after all.

Madjid, Nurcholish. “In Search of Islamic Roots for Modern Pluralism: The Indonesian Experiences,” in Toward a New Paradigm: Recent Developments in Indonesian Islamic Thought. Ed. Mark R. Woodward. Tempe: Arizona State University Press, 1996.
Hefner, Robert. Civil Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. A Young Muslim’s Guide to the Modern World. Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 1993.