The Rumi Forum presented "Did Islam Miss Out on Modernity?" with Dr. Karim Douglas Crow.

Conventional wisdom asserts that if Muslims had followed the rationalist lead of Ibn Rushd or Ibn Khaldun, not the mystic mode of thought advanced by Ghazālī, they would not have fallen into a dead end of superstitious religiosity which led them to lag behind Europe in terms of scientific–technological rationalism. We also frequently hear that ‘Arabic-Islamic philosophy’ failed to achieve normative validity within Islamic civilization – thereby Islam missed out on its possible Renaissance and retreated into medieval obscurity [e.g. Hans Küng]. (The only exception was the special privileging of philosophic activity linked with trans-rational metaphysics cultivated in Iranian culture; yet this also is being dismissed as a non-normative deviation from ‘authentic’ Arab Islam that privileges Sharī‘ah discourse.) These deflections allegedly brought about Islam’s marginalization, eclipsed by 18th century Enlightenment modernity. Muslims thus failed to ‘modernize’ by developing a technological mastery of natural forces and industry through cultivating independent reason and ‘science’.

Professor Crow pinpoints the fallacy of this widespread misconception arising from a misunderstanding of the unfolding and centrality of Islamic Rationality in religious & intellectual disciplines. He raises significant civilizational issues over its Eurocentric assumptions, as well as cultural and intellectual dilemmas of contemporary Muslims.

Dr. Karim Douglas Crow, Principal Research Fellow at the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies–Malaysia where he performs policy-oriented research into history of ideas, inter-faith issues, and intra-Muslim dynamics. His competence includes civilizational implications of globalizing trends within Muslim societies and their reciprocal relation with Euro-American cultures. He earned his Doctorate cum laude from The Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University, Montreal. For over fifteen years in North America (1981–1997) he taught Arabic Language & Literature and Islamic disciplines at: Columbia University, New York University, Fordham University, The University of Virginia, and University of Maryland. He served in Malaysia as Professor of Islamic Thought at the International Institute of Islamic Thought & Civilisation (1999–2005); and in Singapore at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (2006–2008).

Moderator:

Prof. Clare Wilde is a Professorial Lecturer at Georgetown's Department of Theology, where she has taught since 2005. She earned her Licentiate in Arabic and Islamic Studies from PISAI (Pontifical Institute for the Study of Arabic and Islam) in Rome in 1998, and is writing her dissertation (The Qur'an in Early Christian Arabic Texts) under the directorship of Sidney Griffith at The Catholic University of America. From 2000-2006, she served as editorial assistant for Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, and has published articles on the intersection of Islam and Syriac and Arabic Christianity.