Journal of the Punjab University Historical Society
Volume No. 31, Issue No. 2, July - December 2018
Shirin Akter *
Postmodernism and its Reflection on Understanding Islam
Abstract
http://pu.edu.pk/images/journal/HistoryPStudies/PDF_Files/19_v31_2_july2018.pdf
Postmodernism is defined by an attitude of skepticism or distrust toward metanarratives, ideologies, the existence of objective reality and absolute truth. It apt
to deconstruct all of those elements in the current intellectuals, arts and cultural
processes. Postmodernism allows multiplicity of views, thus enhances the
possibility to know and understand one another. Islam is a universal religion that
approves some injunctions as absolute and eternal. It encourages to use reason to
understand the revelation but like postmodernism does not accept reason as
supreme authority. This paper is important because it attempts to show that how
the universal religion Islam, the worldview, can communicate with the society that
is nurtured by the skeptic and nihilistic thought. This study shows that Islam could
be understood by some aspects of postmodernism that are not contrary to Islamic
faith.]
Key words: Postmodernism, meta-narratives, deconstruction, postmodern
consciousness, relativism
Introduction
We are now living in post-modern age which has nothing in common, in its
philosophy, sciences, sociology, religion, politics etc., with the modern age. As a
matter of fact, the postmodern period is distinct and different from modern age
since modernism believes that through reason and rational thinking man has the
ability to acquire the knowledge of absolute truth. They consider reason as the
superior power of human being to know the objective reality and universal
knowledge. Modernist had a strong faith in an objective and impersonal truth and
made remarkable progress in the realm of knowledge in general and in science
particularly. But after the devastating consequences of World War II and the bad
impact of colonization, the claim of progress of modernism became futile.
The contemporary man of postmodern age has no faith in the objective truth. For
him any talk of ideology or ethical code is nonsense. But being a creature with
spirit and social instincts he cannot dispense with them. The predicament of postmodern man is that he has lost faith in the very thing which is his absolute
existential necessity. Consequently he falls into a severe crisis – the crisis of
meaninglessness. In this situation it is crucial to determine how to treat with
Islamic faith that admits some things as absolute and meaningful. This paper
focuses on this point.
*
Shirin Akter, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Chittagong University, Contact no:
+8801819-612900, E-mail: shirin_cu@hotmail.com.
JPUHS, Vol.31, No.2, July - December, 2018
218
As a complete code of life, Islam is not merely a religion in the sense in which
Hinduism or Christianity are religions, but as an ideology it can serve all in all
ages. But there are still some people who think old and outdated way, since they
even not fully aware of the great changes that have taken place in the various
domains of knowledge. To overcome this deficiency, we should understand and
interpret Islam anew- in the light of new life conditions, new realities and new
philosophical thought. In this paper it will be shown how contemporary
philosophical thought postmodernism plays a vital role in understanding Islam in
changing societies.
Method
Since this is a conceptual research, it has its own methods which is different from
research methods of natural and social sciences. In a conceptual research,
researcher has journeyed through different ideas and concepts that are developed
in the related field. After analyzing and compared those ideas, researcher points
out the gap of the research and try to fill up the gap by developing his new idea
and concept. In this study, we have followed this method. To perform this research
we have used different sources including primary and secondary sources of
reference. These includes printed books, original texts, online books and journal
articles, video lectures of prominent scholars that are pertinent to my research.
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a difficult concept to be defined accurately. It is the critique of
modernism. The problem with modernism lay precisely in the assumption of
universality and its claims to some kind of purity or absoluteness. The postmodern
difference lies precisely in its refusal include the radical critique of the modern and
its inability to establish such absoluteness. Postmodernism just is the collapse of
universals, and so it can ever be local and strategic (Connor, p. 83). It disqualifies
all those terms such as rationality, reality, objectivity, truth that the way
modernists have.
Modern philosophy focuses on the abilities of human beings to discover natural
and social truths. Modern theorists assume that reason is deemed distinctive power
that would enable humans to dominate nature and create moral and just society.
Faith in rationality was born in Renaissance of sixteenth and seventeenth and
enthroned in the eighteenth century Enlightenment. But many philosophers
disparage and eschew the notion of truth altogether. Among them, Friedrich
Nietzsche is one who is called the first postmodern philosopher. He declares the
„truth‟ to be nothing more than „a mobile army of metaphors‟ and „the more useful
errors of mankind‟. This is the rejection of Enlightenment thinking that embodied
the idea of „truth‟. Nietzsche argues that there are no eternal facts, just as there are
no absolute truths (Best & Kellner, pp. 286-289). Thus, postmodernism is defined
by an attitude of skepticism or distrust toward grand narratives, ideologies, and
various tenets of Enlightenment rationality, including the existence of objective
reality and absolute truth. It suggests a rejection of very idea of „human nature‟
and reconsideration of the nature of philosophy (Solomon, p. 2).
Postmodernism and its Reflection on Understanding Islam
219
Basis of Postmodernism:
Basically postmodernism always being relates to the subjectivity and elasticity of
values in human life, anti-rationalism and skepticism towards meta-narratives
(Abdullah, p. 36). There are some bases of postmodern thoughts:
1. The Death of the Author or Subject:
This view hold that human beings do not have concrete and reliable consciousness
of the reality. Text is nothing but a free play of signs within language. The reader/
listener involved in the articulation or interpretation of this play of language
should act independently of any supposed intentions of author. Attention to an
author for the meaning of the text means favoring of a particular set of meanings
(Butler, p. 23). From Sigmund Freud to Nietzsche- believed that human does not
possess any concrete consciousness. Claude Levi Strauss rejected the existence of
human objective consciousness and proposed culture and its structure as a medium
in understanding human cognitive ability (Abdullah, p. 36). For Derrida, „subject‟
is only a construction of culture and the author does not play any role in
constructing the „meaning‟. Michel Foucault announced the „Death of the Author‟.
For him, „author‟ is a modern phenomenon that never exist in primitive and
traditional society (Foucault, pp. 141-160).
The text is thus really constructed by the reader. Meanings became the property of
the interpreter, who got freedom to deconstruct them. It was thought to be both
philosophically wrong and politically regressive to attempt to determine the
meaning of a text to particular ends. So, the postmodernists tend to reject the
domination of author in constructing the meaning of a text.
2. Denial of Reality:
Most of the postmodernists denied the existence of objective reality. They asserted
that the „reality‟ is just the construction of human mind or the result of social
process in certain context (Abdullah, p. 36). In this regard Baudrillard stressed that
the „reality‟ is just reflection of images which have no bases of „real‟ matter. These
baseless images give human being a kind of burden, which is the „information
loads‟ in the form of meaningless image simulations (Baudrillard, p. 79).
3. The Absence of Transcendental Signified meaning
Most of the postmodernists believe that there are meaning in text but they are
dependent on the interpretation of readers. We cannot reach to the transcendental
signified meaning through socially constitute language since there is no immediate
access to reality. For Derrida, difference is at the heart of everything: language has
meaning only through a linguistic chain of differentiations (Best & Kellner, p.
291). He hold that discourse or text is just symbol and does not contain any
meaning as he mentioned that “the text is all and nothing exist outside it” (Derrida,
p. 3). Meaning is created by human through linguistic chain which differs from
man to man and there is nothing but an endless chain of signifiers, or
„intertextuality‟.
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4. Rejection of meta-narratives and absolute truth
Metanarratives are “interpretive frameworks or ways of understanding the world
that are claimed to have truth or validity that crosses all spatial and temporal
boundaries, true for all people, at all times and in all places” (Hermida, p. 98).
Postmodernist thinkers tend to reject any meta-narratives and deny any claims of
truth. Among them Jean Francois Lyotard is pioneer who declares postmodernism
as incredulity towards meta-narratives. He argued that we now live in an era in
which legitimizing „master narratives‟ are in crisis and in decline. These narratives
implied by major philosophies, such as Kantianism, Hegelianism and Marxism or
includes theories or world-views that claim that history is progressive, that
knowledge can liberate us, and that all knowledge has a secret unity. Lyotard
attacks two main narratives of the progressive emancipation of humanity-from
Christian revitalization to Marxist Utopia and that of the triumph of science. He
considers that such doctrines have lost their credibility since the Second World
War (Butler, p. 13).
Postmodern philosophers such as Foucault and Derrida agreed that there are no
knowledge that is able to describe the truth about the reality of man and humanity.
Since they denied any kind of objective reality, there could not be any absolute
truth. So, postmodernists conclude that universal truth is impossible and relativism
is our fate.
5. Deconstruction:
The basic method in postmodern analysis is the „deconstruction‟ which was
introduced by some French philosophers like Derrida. Deconstruction is not as the
same as destroy. It attempts to undo logical contradictions and turn over rigid
conceptual oppositions. Simultaneously, deconstruction constructs new concepts
and meanings that could not be included in the old system (Best & Kellner, p.
291).
Jacques Derrida argues that each truth-claim can be deconstructed and shown to be
not based on any objective criteria. He and his followers also claim that
philosophy and literature in the western tradition had falsely supposed that the
relationship between language and world was well founded and reliable. It implies
that the meaning of a word has its origin in the structure of reality itself and hence
makes the truth about that structure directly present to the mind. This false logocentrism in language as the mirror of nature is an illusion. For Derrida, all this
amounts to a false „metaphysics of presence‟. His skepticism allowed his followers
to attack the beliefs that philosophy, science or the novel really described the
world accurately, or that a historical narrative can be true (Butler, p. 17).
Derrideans insisted that all words must be explained only in terms of their
relationships to the various systems. It follows that we are at best relativists and
can only know what they permit us to know about reality. Whatever we say, we
are caught within a linguistic system that does not relate to external reality in the
way we expect. This is because every term within each system also depends upon
the existence of other terms that are absent. For example, in English there is a
family of words for degrees of anger- from „irritated‟ to „furious‟. And French has
its own different family of words for this area. All the terms within each
Postmodernism and its Reflection on Understanding Islam
221
language‟s family rely upon one another to divide up the field of „anger‟ for native
speakers. But neither system, English or French, can fairly claim to finally encode
the „truth‟ about states of anger in the world. Therefore, for Derrideans, language
only seems to mark out clear differences between concepts. For meaning
continuously slips away from word to word within the linguistic chain (Ibid, p.
19). However, in spite of such differences we can understand through family
resemblance.
According to Derrida, we tend to rely upon particular „transcendental signifiers‟
such as „God‟, „reality‟, the „idea of man‟ to organize our discourse. The
conceptual oppositions we tend to employ to do this organization for us, such as,
speech versus writing, soul versus body, literal versus metaphorical, natural versus
cultural, masculine versus feminine – make us get lots of fundamental
relationships wrong. In particular, we tend to put one of these terms above the
other. For example, „woman‟ is thought as inferior to „man‟ or „Oriental‟ is
inferior to „Western‟. But within a more relativistic conceptual scheme, we can see
that they „really‟ depend on one another for their definition, because one cannot be
defined without the existence of other. Indeed, what apparently opposites are
really need one another. The relativists claim that the world, its social systems,
human identity are constructed by us in language. This construction can never be
justified by the claim that this is the way that such things „really are‟. We live, not
inside reality, but inside our representations of it. All this can give us the
confidence that the way we see the world can and should be changed and
deconstructed.
Postmodern Consciousness in understanding Islam
Every culture provides for man a certain world-view which is formed by the
general philosophical and scientific conditions of the time. To Muslim, Islam is a
world-view that is for all and equally applicable for all time. But Islam is
confronted today some kinds of contradictions. Now the fundamental task of an
Islamic thinker is to point out the inner contradictions and inconsistencies to which
the alien world-view of his time is exposed and give Islamic solutions which can
surmount these contradictions and incongruities.
Skepticism, nihilism and relativism are three main ingredients of postmodern
mind. There is an absolute and pervasive doubt that troubles every section of
society and every aspect of human life. There is an inevitable intrusion of
subjective element in all cognitive process which narrows the possibility of their
being completely objective, impersonal and non-human. When man perceives
reality it is always through a certain perspective which comprises the perceiver‟s
cognitive apparatus, his socio-historical environment, the language he speaks and
his basis and prejudices and interests. Man cannot by any means eschew these
perspectives. As a Word of God the universal message of the Quran cannot simply
exist for itself, but must meaningfully refer to the interpreter‟s own experience,
knowledge and environment. For Rahman, this highlights a circularity of meaning:
between the reader‟s prior understandings and the text‟s own normative content,
which returns meaning to, and for, the reader. This movement „from the present
situation of Quranic times, then back to the present‟ is the basis of any living
intellectual tradition (Rahman, p. 5).
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Kant had shown that all the categories in terms of which man apprehends outside
reality, even the space and time, are in his own mind. Besides, man is born and
brought up in a social setting which influences and determines his vision of truth
to an immeasurable degree. He cannot get rid of these influences and consequently
cannot perceive facts quite objectively. Therefore, objectivity in the province of
knowledge and truth is a complete myth and nothing more (Haq, p. 52).
Now the question is – what kind of relationship does Islam posses with this
postmodern condition? How postmodern philosophy affects in understanding
Islam? What may be the nature of response that an Islamic intellectual can offer
having been faced to it? Should he succumb, or make compromises or oppose it
wholesale? Moreover, in the case of conflicts what may be his basic task that he
should undertake in order to make his religion relevant and reasonable? In the
ensuing sections, there will be an endeavor to answer all these questions.
Postmodern consciousness is partly applicable to Islam. This new consciousness
offer several new methods in Islamic jurisprudence especially in the
epistemological level. It has gained strong attraction on some parts of Muslim
society as it promotes new ideas such as promoting equality of rights among
citizens and genders and safeguarding the minority groups‟ rights, honoring
spectrum of opinions in society. In the contemporary global world, these ideas are
highly acceptable and are also pertinent with Islamic faith. In this respect
postmodernist thought is complementary to understand Islam.
Postmodernism has also liberated human being from the shackles of the authority
of reason. Postmodern attitude to the superiority of reason is almost similar to that
of Islam. Islam does not accept the authority of reason as the supreme power,
instead it encourages to use reason to understand the Islamic fundamentals by
proclaiming in Quran in different verses. In Islam, reason is not contradictory to
the revelation, but cannot operate in a proper manner without the guiding force of
revelation. Ibn Taymiyya, in this connection, says that as Quran is the gift of God,
reason also one of the gift of God. Therefore, through reason we have to
understand revelation. It does not mean that reason is the final authority, which is
also admitted by the postmodernist. Reason cannot determine what is good or evil
without revelation. Yet, through reason people can determine what they should do
or should not do, only revelation can show them why they must do so. “Thus
reason can discover the existence of God and identify His most important
qualities, but cannot determine the correct forms of worship; revelation prescribes
all the details of the law of inheritance, but omits mention of the details of
governmental organization” (Kerr, pp. 110-116).
There are certain fields of knowledge that cannot acquire through only reason,
something more is needed, which is beyond reason. In this regard, postmodernist
claim that there is no absolute or true knowledge whilst Muslims believe that the
revelation is true which the Word of God, hence absolute is. In scriptural text
(Quran), there are some fundamental principles, which are unchangeable and
absolute for all and everywhere. This is the departure of postmodern thought of
Islam, and postmodernists‟ rejection of author as a constructor of meaning is
relatively appropriate in understanding Quran. But there are some injunctions and
guidance that are related to cultural, social and environmental factors, which
Postmodernism and its Reflection on Understanding Islam
223
should be time-bound issues. These issues are subjective and should treat in the
light of postmodernist thought, such as hermeneutics. For the purpose of present
understanding of Quran‟s universal message, an interpreter should understand the
Quran‟s „linguistic encoding‟ within a specific social and historical context. „Since
the message of Islam is believed to be valid to all human beings, regardless of time
and space‟, Abu Zayd asserts that the Quran requires „an endless process of
interpretation and reinterpretation which cannot but differ in time‟ (Nasr, p. 39).
This does not mean that the essential meaning of the text is open to change
inasmuch as its application to different circumstances. To understand the Islam‟s
eternal teaching and to interpret Quran correctly it is essential to separate the
normative aspect from the historical content of the sacred text.
Islam stands against the skeptical and nihilistic ethos of the new world of
postmodernism. Skepticism amounts to a total denial of knowledge- knowledge of
the world and knowledge of one‟s self; and nihilism is the state of one‟s being
completely disoriented in the matters of truth and value (Haq, p. 55). On the
contrary, Islam is a positivist and world-affirming religion. It takes for granted the
existence of physical universe and encourages people for the belief in God by
proclaiming in the Quran:
Say, "Do you indeed disbelieve in He who created the earth in two days and
attribute to Him equals? That is the Lord of the worlds. And He placed on the
earth firmly set mountains over its surface, and He blessed it and determined
therein its [creatures'] sustenance in four days without distinction - for [the
information] of those who ask. Then He directed Himself to the heaven while it
was smoke and said to it and to the earth, "Come [into being], willingly or by
compulsion." They said, "We have come willingly." Then He made them seven
heavens in two days and revealed to each heaven its law. And We adorned the
lower heaven with lamps, and firmly secured it. All this is the firm plan of the AllMighty, the All-Knowing” (al-Quran, 41:9-12).
Islam affirms the knowledge that man receives through senses or intellect or
intuition by proclaiming in the Quran: “Lo! We create man from a drop of
thickened fluid to test him; so We make him hearing, seeing” (al Quran, 76:2).
And “And by the soul and Him who perfected it. And inspired it (with conscience
of) what is wrong for it and (what is) right for it” (al Quran, 91:7-8).
Besides, there is an especial knowledge, Ilm, which God imparts to man by
revealing it to His chosen people, the Prophets, through some angelic agency:
“And thus We have revealed to you an inspiration of Our command. You did not
know what is the Book or [what is] faith, but We have made it a light by which
We guide whom We will of Our servants. And indeed, [O Muhammad], you guide
to a straight path”. (al Quran, 42:52).
In a word, Islam, as against the new spirit of faithlessness and non-commitment, is
a religion of absolute faith and total commitment. It accepts the possibility and in
some cases the certainty of knowledge. This dimension of Islam is different from
postmodern philosophy.
So far as the idea of relativism is concerned, it is as unacceptable to Islam as it is
dangerous for society. Islam is deeply opposed to relativism of knowledge and of
JPUHS, Vol.31, No.2, July - December, 2018
224
values which postmodernism advocates. Muslim societies face threats from the
propagation of tastes and lifestyles associated with consumerism and globalization
resulting from postmodernism, which threaten religious identity and adherence
(Emad Bazzi, p. 72). Moreover, relativistic attitude of truths and values and their
practical applications can result into a complete return to barbarism and social
anarchy. For, a person differs in his interests and attitudes as much as a society
differs from another society. If one admits to the demand of each society to have
its own personal system of truths only on the ground of unavoidable peculiarities
and characteristics, then he is bound to make the same concession for the
individual also. Consequently, there should be as many truths as the number of
individuals. This may put the social existence of man in peril (Haq, p. 57). The
point is that if relativism is true, then all individuals should be given equal
opportunity to live their life according to their own whims and wishes. It is
inconceivable since it never happens that a whole society or even a majority of its
members consciously agree upon this. This will also cause turmoil in the society,
consequently the social coherence will fall in threat.
But Islam cannot take any such attitude without honoring its independent
disposition. It is a religion with complete objectivity in metaphysical as well as
ethico-political realms. Islam‟s insistence upon ideological objectivity is quite
reasonable. Man cannot dispense with it as he is a member of a frame of reference
in which different individuals through their behavioral interaction build an
objective socio-political structure. The political organization of every nation
assumes an objective world-view upon which it bases its notions of rights and
duties, crimes and punishments etc. No society can eschew formulating these
notions unless it is willing to expose itself to the danger of complete annihilation.
(p. 58). But for postmodernists, there is no truth claim that is objective, each idea
is in deconstructed form. If we assume that view is correct, then the truth of the
Quran is also seem to be deconstructed, thus not objective. It is quite contrary to
Islamic faith. In Quran, there are some principles related to aqida and ibadat and
explicit injunctions related to practical life that are objective and true regardless of
time and place. Simultaneously, there are some other issues that can be
reconstructed with the change of time and place. Islam acknowledges and
encourages this reconstruction but not deconstruction. However, Islam is not fully
opposed to relativism. In fact, it may be content with relativism in the context that
all human interpretations of reality contain certain human elements. Obviously
man cannot avoid his prejudices and interests. He also cannot grasp reality in all
its complex multiple aspects. Therefore, relativism is a genuine doctrine since it
emphasizes this fundamental fact. But where it goes wrong is its view that all
truths are relative. In Islam, there are certain truths that are absolute. Islam itself
having its sources in a Being, Who is completely free from human limitations and
handicaps, thus absolute. One cannot bracketed Him with human ideologies whose
relativity is beyond doubt.
Indeed, whether it is relativism or nihilism, the source of all evils lies in the
limitations of man‟s capability and skepticism towards the possibility of
knowledge. Therefore, the most fundamental task for an Islamic intellectual is to
provide knowledge a new basis from a new perspective. It appears that it is only
possible through one way and that is to reconstruct knowledge. By reconstructing
Postmodernism and its Reflection on Understanding Islam
225
knowledge one can restore and rehabilitate man‟s confidence in the truth, in the
objectivity of truth and finally in Islam itself. Moreover, the Quran is not only an
ordinary philosophical book but also is the book of knowledge and spirit, which is
revealed as the Word of God to the prophet for all mankind. So, the language of
the Quran is different from any worldly text. There is far difference between
philosophical interpretation and Quranic interpretation, where the former is
unrestricted and open and the latter is restricted with certain conditions. And Allah
has provided the restrictions which protecting the Quranic language from
becoming distorted. This has been proved that the language of Quran is still
remaining undistorted and intact. Theologically, in Quran Allah Himself proclaim
that He has revealed the Quran and He Himself will protect it. In addition, Allah
also declare in Quran that “Indeed, upon Us is its collection [in your heart] and [to
make possible] its recitation. So when We have recited it [through Gabriel], then
follow its recitation. Then upon Us is its clarification [to you]” (Quran 75:17-19).
Therefore, where Allah Himself takes the responsibility to protect the Quranic
language, and after 1500 years of its revelation the Quran remains the same as
before, this means that there are must be a neutral and permanent Being who
maintains all of these things. In addition, we have to understand Quranic language
through „commonsense reasoning‟ in which some-thing is established through a
simple inference. For example, the existence of God is established simply by
pointing to the extra-ordinary order and arrangement in the cosmos. We can infer
an indivisible Creator from the visible phenomenal world. So the point is that the
new reconstruction of knowledge must be based upon this simple procedure of
reasoning, not upon a mysterious intuitions.
Concluding Remark
Postmodernism dominates all spheres of life in contemporary societies. It marked
as a departure of modernism which affirmed the power of human beings to create,
improve and reshape their environment with the aid of rationality, practical
experimentation, scientific knowledge or technology. But in the long run it
brought immense sufferings to the humanity by the bad impact of two world wars
and colonization. Consequently, there developed a new world-view that reject the
supreme authority of rationalism, realism as well as the dominance of metanarratives and absolute truth, which are the hallmark of postmodernism. This
world-view is penetrating a new dimension to Islam for ensuring it stays relevance
with the changes of time, place and condition. We have to understand Islam with
this new perspective. Although there are some principles and injunctions that are
absolute and not changeable, but a lot of injunctions are historically related and
time bound, thus open to interpretation. We have to understand these time bound
issues with critical approach of postmodern perspectives that respect openness,
plurality of opinions, and alternative views. However, not all aspects of
postmodernism are applicable to Islam since there is an absolute Being who is
ultimate reality and as a Word of that absolute God the Quran is true for Muslims.
It does not mean that as a whole the Quran is not the subject of interpretation, still
there is scope for independent reasoning to understand and interpret the
changeable issues. These interpretations may vary from one to another due to the
differences in understanding, and the diversity of interpretations are accepted until
they do not contradict with the basic faith of Islam.
JPUHS, Vol.31, No.2, July - December, 2018
226
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Volume No. 31, Issue No. 2, July - December 2018
Shirin Akter *
Postmodernism and its Reflection on Understanding Islam
Abstract
http://pu.edu.pk/images/journal/HistoryPStudies/PDF_Files/19_v31_2_july2018.pdf
Postmodernism is defined by an attitude of skepticism or distrust toward metanarratives, ideologies, the existence of objective reality and absolute truth. It apt
to deconstruct all of those elements in the current intellectuals, arts and cultural
processes. Postmodernism allows multiplicity of views, thus enhances the
possibility to know and understand one another. Islam is a universal religion that
approves some injunctions as absolute and eternal. It encourages to use reason to
understand the revelation but like postmodernism does not accept reason as
supreme authority. This paper is important because it attempts to show that how
the universal religion Islam, the worldview, can communicate with the society that
is nurtured by the skeptic and nihilistic thought. This study shows that Islam could
be understood by some aspects of postmodernism that are not contrary to Islamic
faith.]
Key words: Postmodernism, meta-narratives, deconstruction, postmodern
consciousness, relativism
Introduction
We are now living in post-modern age which has nothing in common, in its
philosophy, sciences, sociology, religion, politics etc., with the modern age. As a
matter of fact, the postmodern period is distinct and different from modern age
since modernism believes that through reason and rational thinking man has the
ability to acquire the knowledge of absolute truth. They consider reason as the
superior power of human being to know the objective reality and universal
knowledge. Modernist had a strong faith in an objective and impersonal truth and
made remarkable progress in the realm of knowledge in general and in science
particularly. But after the devastating consequences of World War II and the bad
impact of colonization, the claim of progress of modernism became futile.
The contemporary man of postmodern age has no faith in the objective truth. For
him any talk of ideology or ethical code is nonsense. But being a creature with
spirit and social instincts he cannot dispense with them. The predicament of postmodern man is that he has lost faith in the very thing which is his absolute
existential necessity. Consequently he falls into a severe crisis – the crisis of
meaninglessness. In this situation it is crucial to determine how to treat with
Islamic faith that admits some things as absolute and meaningful. This paper
focuses on this point.
*
Shirin Akter, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Chittagong University, Contact no:
+8801819-612900, E-mail: shirin_cu@hotmail.com.
JPUHS, Vol.31, No.2, July - December, 2018
218
As a complete code of life, Islam is not merely a religion in the sense in which
Hinduism or Christianity are religions, but as an ideology it can serve all in all
ages. But there are still some people who think old and outdated way, since they
even not fully aware of the great changes that have taken place in the various
domains of knowledge. To overcome this deficiency, we should understand and
interpret Islam anew- in the light of new life conditions, new realities and new
philosophical thought. In this paper it will be shown how contemporary
philosophical thought postmodernism plays a vital role in understanding Islam in
changing societies.
Method
Since this is a conceptual research, it has its own methods which is different from
research methods of natural and social sciences. In a conceptual research,
researcher has journeyed through different ideas and concepts that are developed
in the related field. After analyzing and compared those ideas, researcher points
out the gap of the research and try to fill up the gap by developing his new idea
and concept. In this study, we have followed this method. To perform this research
we have used different sources including primary and secondary sources of
reference. These includes printed books, original texts, online books and journal
articles, video lectures of prominent scholars that are pertinent to my research.
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a difficult concept to be defined accurately. It is the critique of
modernism. The problem with modernism lay precisely in the assumption of
universality and its claims to some kind of purity or absoluteness. The postmodern
difference lies precisely in its refusal include the radical critique of the modern and
its inability to establish such absoluteness. Postmodernism just is the collapse of
universals, and so it can ever be local and strategic (Connor, p. 83). It disqualifies
all those terms such as rationality, reality, objectivity, truth that the way
modernists have.
Modern philosophy focuses on the abilities of human beings to discover natural
and social truths. Modern theorists assume that reason is deemed distinctive power
that would enable humans to dominate nature and create moral and just society.
Faith in rationality was born in Renaissance of sixteenth and seventeenth and
enthroned in the eighteenth century Enlightenment. But many philosophers
disparage and eschew the notion of truth altogether. Among them, Friedrich
Nietzsche is one who is called the first postmodern philosopher. He declares the
„truth‟ to be nothing more than „a mobile army of metaphors‟ and „the more useful
errors of mankind‟. This is the rejection of Enlightenment thinking that embodied
the idea of „truth‟. Nietzsche argues that there are no eternal facts, just as there are
no absolute truths (Best & Kellner, pp. 286-289). Thus, postmodernism is defined
by an attitude of skepticism or distrust toward grand narratives, ideologies, and
various tenets of Enlightenment rationality, including the existence of objective
reality and absolute truth. It suggests a rejection of very idea of „human nature‟
and reconsideration of the nature of philosophy (Solomon, p. 2).
Postmodernism and its Reflection on Understanding Islam
219
Basis of Postmodernism:
Basically postmodernism always being relates to the subjectivity and elasticity of
values in human life, anti-rationalism and skepticism towards meta-narratives
(Abdullah, p. 36). There are some bases of postmodern thoughts:
1. The Death of the Author or Subject:
This view hold that human beings do not have concrete and reliable consciousness
of the reality. Text is nothing but a free play of signs within language. The reader/
listener involved in the articulation or interpretation of this play of language
should act independently of any supposed intentions of author. Attention to an
author for the meaning of the text means favoring of a particular set of meanings
(Butler, p. 23). From Sigmund Freud to Nietzsche- believed that human does not
possess any concrete consciousness. Claude Levi Strauss rejected the existence of
human objective consciousness and proposed culture and its structure as a medium
in understanding human cognitive ability (Abdullah, p. 36). For Derrida, „subject‟
is only a construction of culture and the author does not play any role in
constructing the „meaning‟. Michel Foucault announced the „Death of the Author‟.
For him, „author‟ is a modern phenomenon that never exist in primitive and
traditional society (Foucault, pp. 141-160).
The text is thus really constructed by the reader. Meanings became the property of
the interpreter, who got freedom to deconstruct them. It was thought to be both
philosophically wrong and politically regressive to attempt to determine the
meaning of a text to particular ends. So, the postmodernists tend to reject the
domination of author in constructing the meaning of a text.
2. Denial of Reality:
Most of the postmodernists denied the existence of objective reality. They asserted
that the „reality‟ is just the construction of human mind or the result of social
process in certain context (Abdullah, p. 36). In this regard Baudrillard stressed that
the „reality‟ is just reflection of images which have no bases of „real‟ matter. These
baseless images give human being a kind of burden, which is the „information
loads‟ in the form of meaningless image simulations (Baudrillard, p. 79).
3. The Absence of Transcendental Signified meaning
Most of the postmodernists believe that there are meaning in text but they are
dependent on the interpretation of readers. We cannot reach to the transcendental
signified meaning through socially constitute language since there is no immediate
access to reality. For Derrida, difference is at the heart of everything: language has
meaning only through a linguistic chain of differentiations (Best & Kellner, p.
291). He hold that discourse or text is just symbol and does not contain any
meaning as he mentioned that “the text is all and nothing exist outside it” (Derrida,
p. 3). Meaning is created by human through linguistic chain which differs from
man to man and there is nothing but an endless chain of signifiers, or
„intertextuality‟.
JPUHS, Vol.31, No.2, July - December, 2018
220
4. Rejection of meta-narratives and absolute truth
Metanarratives are “interpretive frameworks or ways of understanding the world
that are claimed to have truth or validity that crosses all spatial and temporal
boundaries, true for all people, at all times and in all places” (Hermida, p. 98).
Postmodernist thinkers tend to reject any meta-narratives and deny any claims of
truth. Among them Jean Francois Lyotard is pioneer who declares postmodernism
as incredulity towards meta-narratives. He argued that we now live in an era in
which legitimizing „master narratives‟ are in crisis and in decline. These narratives
implied by major philosophies, such as Kantianism, Hegelianism and Marxism or
includes theories or world-views that claim that history is progressive, that
knowledge can liberate us, and that all knowledge has a secret unity. Lyotard
attacks two main narratives of the progressive emancipation of humanity-from
Christian revitalization to Marxist Utopia and that of the triumph of science. He
considers that such doctrines have lost their credibility since the Second World
War (Butler, p. 13).
Postmodern philosophers such as Foucault and Derrida agreed that there are no
knowledge that is able to describe the truth about the reality of man and humanity.
Since they denied any kind of objective reality, there could not be any absolute
truth. So, postmodernists conclude that universal truth is impossible and relativism
is our fate.
5. Deconstruction:
The basic method in postmodern analysis is the „deconstruction‟ which was
introduced by some French philosophers like Derrida. Deconstruction is not as the
same as destroy. It attempts to undo logical contradictions and turn over rigid
conceptual oppositions. Simultaneously, deconstruction constructs new concepts
and meanings that could not be included in the old system (Best & Kellner, p.
291).
Jacques Derrida argues that each truth-claim can be deconstructed and shown to be
not based on any objective criteria. He and his followers also claim that
philosophy and literature in the western tradition had falsely supposed that the
relationship between language and world was well founded and reliable. It implies
that the meaning of a word has its origin in the structure of reality itself and hence
makes the truth about that structure directly present to the mind. This false logocentrism in language as the mirror of nature is an illusion. For Derrida, all this
amounts to a false „metaphysics of presence‟. His skepticism allowed his followers
to attack the beliefs that philosophy, science or the novel really described the
world accurately, or that a historical narrative can be true (Butler, p. 17).
Derrideans insisted that all words must be explained only in terms of their
relationships to the various systems. It follows that we are at best relativists and
can only know what they permit us to know about reality. Whatever we say, we
are caught within a linguistic system that does not relate to external reality in the
way we expect. This is because every term within each system also depends upon
the existence of other terms that are absent. For example, in English there is a
family of words for degrees of anger- from „irritated‟ to „furious‟. And French has
its own different family of words for this area. All the terms within each
Postmodernism and its Reflection on Understanding Islam
221
language‟s family rely upon one another to divide up the field of „anger‟ for native
speakers. But neither system, English or French, can fairly claim to finally encode
the „truth‟ about states of anger in the world. Therefore, for Derrideans, language
only seems to mark out clear differences between concepts. For meaning
continuously slips away from word to word within the linguistic chain (Ibid, p.
19). However, in spite of such differences we can understand through family
resemblance.
According to Derrida, we tend to rely upon particular „transcendental signifiers‟
such as „God‟, „reality‟, the „idea of man‟ to organize our discourse. The
conceptual oppositions we tend to employ to do this organization for us, such as,
speech versus writing, soul versus body, literal versus metaphorical, natural versus
cultural, masculine versus feminine – make us get lots of fundamental
relationships wrong. In particular, we tend to put one of these terms above the
other. For example, „woman‟ is thought as inferior to „man‟ or „Oriental‟ is
inferior to „Western‟. But within a more relativistic conceptual scheme, we can see
that they „really‟ depend on one another for their definition, because one cannot be
defined without the existence of other. Indeed, what apparently opposites are
really need one another. The relativists claim that the world, its social systems,
human identity are constructed by us in language. This construction can never be
justified by the claim that this is the way that such things „really are‟. We live, not
inside reality, but inside our representations of it. All this can give us the
confidence that the way we see the world can and should be changed and
deconstructed.
Postmodern Consciousness in understanding Islam
Every culture provides for man a certain world-view which is formed by the
general philosophical and scientific conditions of the time. To Muslim, Islam is a
world-view that is for all and equally applicable for all time. But Islam is
confronted today some kinds of contradictions. Now the fundamental task of an
Islamic thinker is to point out the inner contradictions and inconsistencies to which
the alien world-view of his time is exposed and give Islamic solutions which can
surmount these contradictions and incongruities.
Skepticism, nihilism and relativism are three main ingredients of postmodern
mind. There is an absolute and pervasive doubt that troubles every section of
society and every aspect of human life. There is an inevitable intrusion of
subjective element in all cognitive process which narrows the possibility of their
being completely objective, impersonal and non-human. When man perceives
reality it is always through a certain perspective which comprises the perceiver‟s
cognitive apparatus, his socio-historical environment, the language he speaks and
his basis and prejudices and interests. Man cannot by any means eschew these
perspectives. As a Word of God the universal message of the Quran cannot simply
exist for itself, but must meaningfully refer to the interpreter‟s own experience,
knowledge and environment. For Rahman, this highlights a circularity of meaning:
between the reader‟s prior understandings and the text‟s own normative content,
which returns meaning to, and for, the reader. This movement „from the present
situation of Quranic times, then back to the present‟ is the basis of any living
intellectual tradition (Rahman, p. 5).
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222
Kant had shown that all the categories in terms of which man apprehends outside
reality, even the space and time, are in his own mind. Besides, man is born and
brought up in a social setting which influences and determines his vision of truth
to an immeasurable degree. He cannot get rid of these influences and consequently
cannot perceive facts quite objectively. Therefore, objectivity in the province of
knowledge and truth is a complete myth and nothing more (Haq, p. 52).
Now the question is – what kind of relationship does Islam posses with this
postmodern condition? How postmodern philosophy affects in understanding
Islam? What may be the nature of response that an Islamic intellectual can offer
having been faced to it? Should he succumb, or make compromises or oppose it
wholesale? Moreover, in the case of conflicts what may be his basic task that he
should undertake in order to make his religion relevant and reasonable? In the
ensuing sections, there will be an endeavor to answer all these questions.
Postmodern consciousness is partly applicable to Islam. This new consciousness
offer several new methods in Islamic jurisprudence especially in the
epistemological level. It has gained strong attraction on some parts of Muslim
society as it promotes new ideas such as promoting equality of rights among
citizens and genders and safeguarding the minority groups‟ rights, honoring
spectrum of opinions in society. In the contemporary global world, these ideas are
highly acceptable and are also pertinent with Islamic faith. In this respect
postmodernist thought is complementary to understand Islam.
Postmodernism has also liberated human being from the shackles of the authority
of reason. Postmodern attitude to the superiority of reason is almost similar to that
of Islam. Islam does not accept the authority of reason as the supreme power,
instead it encourages to use reason to understand the Islamic fundamentals by
proclaiming in Quran in different verses. In Islam, reason is not contradictory to
the revelation, but cannot operate in a proper manner without the guiding force of
revelation. Ibn Taymiyya, in this connection, says that as Quran is the gift of God,
reason also one of the gift of God. Therefore, through reason we have to
understand revelation. It does not mean that reason is the final authority, which is
also admitted by the postmodernist. Reason cannot determine what is good or evil
without revelation. Yet, through reason people can determine what they should do
or should not do, only revelation can show them why they must do so. “Thus
reason can discover the existence of God and identify His most important
qualities, but cannot determine the correct forms of worship; revelation prescribes
all the details of the law of inheritance, but omits mention of the details of
governmental organization” (Kerr, pp. 110-116).
There are certain fields of knowledge that cannot acquire through only reason,
something more is needed, which is beyond reason. In this regard, postmodernist
claim that there is no absolute or true knowledge whilst Muslims believe that the
revelation is true which the Word of God, hence absolute is. In scriptural text
(Quran), there are some fundamental principles, which are unchangeable and
absolute for all and everywhere. This is the departure of postmodern thought of
Islam, and postmodernists‟ rejection of author as a constructor of meaning is
relatively appropriate in understanding Quran. But there are some injunctions and
guidance that are related to cultural, social and environmental factors, which
Postmodernism and its Reflection on Understanding Islam
223
should be time-bound issues. These issues are subjective and should treat in the
light of postmodernist thought, such as hermeneutics. For the purpose of present
understanding of Quran‟s universal message, an interpreter should understand the
Quran‟s „linguistic encoding‟ within a specific social and historical context. „Since
the message of Islam is believed to be valid to all human beings, regardless of time
and space‟, Abu Zayd asserts that the Quran requires „an endless process of
interpretation and reinterpretation which cannot but differ in time‟ (Nasr, p. 39).
This does not mean that the essential meaning of the text is open to change
inasmuch as its application to different circumstances. To understand the Islam‟s
eternal teaching and to interpret Quran correctly it is essential to separate the
normative aspect from the historical content of the sacred text.
Islam stands against the skeptical and nihilistic ethos of the new world of
postmodernism. Skepticism amounts to a total denial of knowledge- knowledge of
the world and knowledge of one‟s self; and nihilism is the state of one‟s being
completely disoriented in the matters of truth and value (Haq, p. 55). On the
contrary, Islam is a positivist and world-affirming religion. It takes for granted the
existence of physical universe and encourages people for the belief in God by
proclaiming in the Quran:
Say, "Do you indeed disbelieve in He who created the earth in two days and
attribute to Him equals? That is the Lord of the worlds. And He placed on the
earth firmly set mountains over its surface, and He blessed it and determined
therein its [creatures'] sustenance in four days without distinction - for [the
information] of those who ask. Then He directed Himself to the heaven while it
was smoke and said to it and to the earth, "Come [into being], willingly or by
compulsion." They said, "We have come willingly." Then He made them seven
heavens in two days and revealed to each heaven its law. And We adorned the
lower heaven with lamps, and firmly secured it. All this is the firm plan of the AllMighty, the All-Knowing” (al-Quran, 41:9-12).
Islam affirms the knowledge that man receives through senses or intellect or
intuition by proclaiming in the Quran: “Lo! We create man from a drop of
thickened fluid to test him; so We make him hearing, seeing” (al Quran, 76:2).
And “And by the soul and Him who perfected it. And inspired it (with conscience
of) what is wrong for it and (what is) right for it” (al Quran, 91:7-8).
Besides, there is an especial knowledge, Ilm, which God imparts to man by
revealing it to His chosen people, the Prophets, through some angelic agency:
“And thus We have revealed to you an inspiration of Our command. You did not
know what is the Book or [what is] faith, but We have made it a light by which
We guide whom We will of Our servants. And indeed, [O Muhammad], you guide
to a straight path”. (al Quran, 42:52).
In a word, Islam, as against the new spirit of faithlessness and non-commitment, is
a religion of absolute faith and total commitment. It accepts the possibility and in
some cases the certainty of knowledge. This dimension of Islam is different from
postmodern philosophy.
So far as the idea of relativism is concerned, it is as unacceptable to Islam as it is
dangerous for society. Islam is deeply opposed to relativism of knowledge and of
JPUHS, Vol.31, No.2, July - December, 2018
224
values which postmodernism advocates. Muslim societies face threats from the
propagation of tastes and lifestyles associated with consumerism and globalization
resulting from postmodernism, which threaten religious identity and adherence
(Emad Bazzi, p. 72). Moreover, relativistic attitude of truths and values and their
practical applications can result into a complete return to barbarism and social
anarchy. For, a person differs in his interests and attitudes as much as a society
differs from another society. If one admits to the demand of each society to have
its own personal system of truths only on the ground of unavoidable peculiarities
and characteristics, then he is bound to make the same concession for the
individual also. Consequently, there should be as many truths as the number of
individuals. This may put the social existence of man in peril (Haq, p. 57). The
point is that if relativism is true, then all individuals should be given equal
opportunity to live their life according to their own whims and wishes. It is
inconceivable since it never happens that a whole society or even a majority of its
members consciously agree upon this. This will also cause turmoil in the society,
consequently the social coherence will fall in threat.
But Islam cannot take any such attitude without honoring its independent
disposition. It is a religion with complete objectivity in metaphysical as well as
ethico-political realms. Islam‟s insistence upon ideological objectivity is quite
reasonable. Man cannot dispense with it as he is a member of a frame of reference
in which different individuals through their behavioral interaction build an
objective socio-political structure. The political organization of every nation
assumes an objective world-view upon which it bases its notions of rights and
duties, crimes and punishments etc. No society can eschew formulating these
notions unless it is willing to expose itself to the danger of complete annihilation.
(p. 58). But for postmodernists, there is no truth claim that is objective, each idea
is in deconstructed form. If we assume that view is correct, then the truth of the
Quran is also seem to be deconstructed, thus not objective. It is quite contrary to
Islamic faith. In Quran, there are some principles related to aqida and ibadat and
explicit injunctions related to practical life that are objective and true regardless of
time and place. Simultaneously, there are some other issues that can be
reconstructed with the change of time and place. Islam acknowledges and
encourages this reconstruction but not deconstruction. However, Islam is not fully
opposed to relativism. In fact, it may be content with relativism in the context that
all human interpretations of reality contain certain human elements. Obviously
man cannot avoid his prejudices and interests. He also cannot grasp reality in all
its complex multiple aspects. Therefore, relativism is a genuine doctrine since it
emphasizes this fundamental fact. But where it goes wrong is its view that all
truths are relative. In Islam, there are certain truths that are absolute. Islam itself
having its sources in a Being, Who is completely free from human limitations and
handicaps, thus absolute. One cannot bracketed Him with human ideologies whose
relativity is beyond doubt.
Indeed, whether it is relativism or nihilism, the source of all evils lies in the
limitations of man‟s capability and skepticism towards the possibility of
knowledge. Therefore, the most fundamental task for an Islamic intellectual is to
provide knowledge a new basis from a new perspective. It appears that it is only
possible through one way and that is to reconstruct knowledge. By reconstructing
Postmodernism and its Reflection on Understanding Islam
225
knowledge one can restore and rehabilitate man‟s confidence in the truth, in the
objectivity of truth and finally in Islam itself. Moreover, the Quran is not only an
ordinary philosophical book but also is the book of knowledge and spirit, which is
revealed as the Word of God to the prophet for all mankind. So, the language of
the Quran is different from any worldly text. There is far difference between
philosophical interpretation and Quranic interpretation, where the former is
unrestricted and open and the latter is restricted with certain conditions. And Allah
has provided the restrictions which protecting the Quranic language from
becoming distorted. This has been proved that the language of Quran is still
remaining undistorted and intact. Theologically, in Quran Allah Himself proclaim
that He has revealed the Quran and He Himself will protect it. In addition, Allah
also declare in Quran that “Indeed, upon Us is its collection [in your heart] and [to
make possible] its recitation. So when We have recited it [through Gabriel], then
follow its recitation. Then upon Us is its clarification [to you]” (Quran 75:17-19).
Therefore, where Allah Himself takes the responsibility to protect the Quranic
language, and after 1500 years of its revelation the Quran remains the same as
before, this means that there are must be a neutral and permanent Being who
maintains all of these things. In addition, we have to understand Quranic language
through „commonsense reasoning‟ in which some-thing is established through a
simple inference. For example, the existence of God is established simply by
pointing to the extra-ordinary order and arrangement in the cosmos. We can infer
an indivisible Creator from the visible phenomenal world. So the point is that the
new reconstruction of knowledge must be based upon this simple procedure of
reasoning, not upon a mysterious intuitions.
Concluding Remark
Postmodernism dominates all spheres of life in contemporary societies. It marked
as a departure of modernism which affirmed the power of human beings to create,
improve and reshape their environment with the aid of rationality, practical
experimentation, scientific knowledge or technology. But in the long run it
brought immense sufferings to the humanity by the bad impact of two world wars
and colonization. Consequently, there developed a new world-view that reject the
supreme authority of rationalism, realism as well as the dominance of metanarratives and absolute truth, which are the hallmark of postmodernism. This
world-view is penetrating a new dimension to Islam for ensuring it stays relevance
with the changes of time, place and condition. We have to understand Islam with
this new perspective. Although there are some principles and injunctions that are
absolute and not changeable, but a lot of injunctions are historically related and
time bound, thus open to interpretation. We have to understand these time bound
issues with critical approach of postmodern perspectives that respect openness,
plurality of opinions, and alternative views. However, not all aspects of
postmodernism are applicable to Islam since there is an absolute Being who is
ultimate reality and as a Word of that absolute God the Quran is true for Muslims.
It does not mean that as a whole the Quran is not the subject of interpretation, still
there is scope for independent reasoning to understand and interpret the
changeable issues. These interpretations may vary from one to another due to the
differences in understanding, and the diversity of interpretations are accepted until
they do not contradict with the basic faith of Islam.
JPUHS, Vol.31, No.2, July - December, 2018
226
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