ISIM Workshop: Muslim Intellectuals and Modern Challenges

Abstract

From 26-28 April 2000, twelve prominent Muslim thinkers from a wide range of regional backgrounds (Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa and the European diaspora) met at an ISIM workshop to discuss some of the major intellectual and political challenges facing the Muslim world at present. Each of them presented a paper on an important aspect of the encounter with modernity, to which he or she had been devoting much thought recently. Several of the papers explicitly addressed the question of compatibility between Islam and modernity (or rather, as several participants emphasized, interpretations of Islam and conceptions of modernity). Some engaged in such sensitive issues as minority rights, women's rights and pluralism and called for the development of a contemporary religious discourse based on rights to balance the traditional emphasis on obligations or contributed to a theory of civil society. Others focused on (reformist revisions of) the relationship between the sacred texts, context and contemporary discourse.