NEGOTIATION OF MODERNITY & TRADITION WITHIN THE MUSLIM WORLD: THE CASE OF THE SUB-CONTINENT

Ejaz Akram

Ejaz Akram is currently in the PhD program
of world politics at the Catholic University of America. He is
concentrating in International Relations and Security Studies. He holds
a Master of Arts in International Affairs from American University. He
is the editor of Islam-on-Line and the Managing Director of American
Journal of Islamic Social Sciences. His publications include
contributions to the Oxford Dictionary of Islam, and numerous articles
such as "A Comparative Analysis of Structures and Functions of
Intelligence Organizations in Israel and India," "Islamic Revivalism in
Pakistan: The Fazalur Rahman and Maulana Maududi Debate," and "Islamic
Activism: Lobbying by the Muslims of
America."

This paper shall deal with three distinct spheres in which this
dialogue is taking place: Intellectual, Strategic and Cultural. Many aspects of
this dialogue are not much of a dialogue as they take place in a coercive
atmosphere of enormous disparity of power, which exists between West and the
Rest. Modernity, modernization, and modernism are some of the phases and
functions of this dialogue. They also constitute as important categories of
analysis that help us understand this dialogue as a process and as
phenomena.

After having laid a conceptual foundation, this paper shall
seek to explain how in the case of India and Pakistan, the first encounters with
the Western (modern) civilization came as a result of direct and repressive
colonial rule. Even after the achievement of independence, its effects had long
lasting cultural, intellectual, and political consequences.

According to many critics, indirect forms of imperialism still
exist. Muslims and non-Muslims of this region alike, continue to battle with
forces outside of their civilizational arena, which pushes these people to
change their ways of life and pull them with attractive alternatives to
re-organization of these societies.

Whereas, the break up of primordial traditions in the
Sub-continent seems almost modern way of life is bound to succumb due to its
internal contradictions and fallacies upon which it rests. Further, 1 shall
offer alternatives to social and political organization for the contemporary
Western Civilization as well as for the non-Western societies.