Approaching Modern Muslim Thought

Abstract

The intellectual history of the modernizing Islamic world remains relatively isolated from research in related fields, and from theoretical debates elsewhere. In consequence, it remains dominated by modernization-theoretical, nationalist, and secularist assumptions, whether in the guise of liberal or of Marxist-inspired approaches. Alternatively, a genealogical perspective is outlined, which places the rise of the secular nation state in a broader perspective of changing ways of governing, taking neither Western economic or cultural dominance as all-determining, nor individual agency as given. Rather, it systematically focuses on changing relations of power as constitutive of new states, new actors, and new forms of knowledge.