The Paradigm of Knowledge of the Modern Islamic Resurgence Abdulkader I. Tayob Political and social explanations for the contemporary Islamic resur- gence abound. Most of these, however, are reductionist in that they do not pay attention to the religious component of a clearly religious phenome- non. Without rejecting its social and political locations, I believe the Islamic resurgence represents a paradigm shift involving a major reinter- pretation of Islamic sources in the modem world. In the modem world, Muslims draw on a treasure of significant insights into the dilemmas and options facing them. The sources of these insights, from Shariati to Bennabi to Khomeini, may vary in many respects and often differ in fundamental fonnulations. In Islamic organizations and movements, however, Muslims draw on this diversity to construct mean- ing in uniquely modem ways. At the level of practice, in contrast to that of the thinkers, a measure of affinity is clearly noticeable in terms of mod- em Islamic thought and practice. I believe that the idea of a paradigm, pro- posed by Kuhn, is a useful and fertile way of coming to understand this common meaning-making exercise. A new paradigm of understanding and living Islam, under the impact of the West, has taken shape over the past two centuries. The West as vil- lain, the implementation of the Shari'ah, the search for Islamic solutions, and the Islamization of the sciences are some of the most important fea- tures of this new paradigm. In this paper, I will explore the basic idea and structure of the modem Islamic paradigm. 1 Knowledge, Power, and Paradigms In his analysis of modem medical, human, and social sciences, Michel Foucault has unmasked the power relations inherent in the formation of Abdulkader I. Tayob is affiliated with the Department of Religious Studies. University of Capetown. Capetown, South Africa. 156 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 12:2 these disicplines. According to him, the attempt of these sciences to under- stand the history, logic, and essence of all phenomena is intrinsically a quest for power. The "recovery" of the world by the method of the mod- em sciences contributes to the discovery of a universal, objective, and rational truth. However, pitted against earlier versions of truth, this new scientific truth commands acquiescence: Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanism and instances which enable one to distin- guish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanc- tioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acqui- sition of truth; the status of those who are charged as saying what counts as true. 2 According to Foucault, the superiority of objective knowledge over irrational, magical, or esoteric insights does not reside in a universal truth witnessed and attested to by all. Rather, this new discipline of knowing conquered by consent, instead of by consensus, and subjugated or reject- ed any alternative claims on truth. 3 This new order took control through its universal aspiration to uncover, dissect, and perceive. Moreover, its impe- rialistic designs were embedded in the very tools exercised. The universal "gaze" of panoptic representation, for example, embodied the attempt to redefine the world from a supposedly more objective vantage point. In contrast, all other perspectives were rendered subjective, parochial, and powerless. 4 While Foucault emphasized the power relations inherent in the forma- tion of authoritative knowledge, Thomas Kuhn identified the basic frame- work of the modem scientific disciplines in his discussion of a "para- digm." According to Kuhn, a paradigm was elaborated in a specific com- munity that embraces certain laws and definitions, exchanges standard examples, and shares common values. 5 For initiates in that group, standard and well-known examples reinforced its paradigm. Differences of opinion and perspective might coexist within a paradigm, even on crucial issues, as long as they are based on the acceptance of shared ground rules within • • 6 a given commumty. The regime of scientific truths has been felt by communities that expe- rienced one form of colonialism or another. Science, civilized values, and the "white man's burden" belittled, dismantled, and destroyed all local forms of knowledge regimes in favor of modernity and its colonial "inter- pretive community." While recognizing this destructive role of scientific truth in the past two to three hundred years in Asia and Africa, I would like to explore the regimes of truths within local communities. In particular, religions and their complex materials provide useful materials in which paradigmatic changes may be investigated. They appear to exhibit the same traits as other knowledge paradigms. Tayob: The Paradigm of Knowledge 157 Patterns of religious knowledge, whether theology, metaphysical wis- dom, or esoteric illumination, can be analyzed as paradigms that exhibit the power to determine, authorize, admit, and exclude. Revolutionary developments in religious ideas within any historical context may accord- ingly be seen as new paradigms in place of the old. Christian theology, in the wake of nineteenth-century historical criticism, underwent precisely such a shift in its paradigm of religious knowledge. Paradigm shifts, more- over, always imply a power differential between the new and the old. Within communities of knowledge that try to embrace simultaneously the old and the new, power relations will necessarily be marked by both cre- ativity and conflict. Scripture-based religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, possess tangible textual origins for the derivation of religious knowledge. 7 Access to these origins provides individuals and social groups with the power to work out authoritative religious knowledge. The historical devel- opment of doctrine and practice within these religious traditions may be viewed as a continuous cycle of reflection between the origins and present situations and circumstances. The present needs to be justified in relation to an ideal past, and the past must be made alive in the present. This cycli- cal relation between past and present constitutes both knowledge and power. For Muslims, the Qur'an as revelation (waby) and the normative biography of the Prophet (szrah) determine the originating past that must be related to the present. As Richard Martin has observed, these features of Islamic tradition provide the fundamental terms in which people "get things done in the social and political contexts of Muslims." 8 By careful selection from these sources, religious actors can formulate a pattern of doctrinal beliefs and ritual practices that serves as a paradigm of religious knowledge. Drawn from a wide and divergent corpus, particular para- digms become empowered as authoritative definitions by religious actors who have access to and control over those sources and their interpretation. A paradigm of religious knowledge, therefore, is not merely knowledge; it is powerful knowledge in Foucault's sense, because it arises out of a "pol- itics of truth." Traditionally, members of the Muslim ulama have claimed the right to define Islam on the basis of their special access to the original sources. This right of definition represented an implicit exclusion of the illiterate and uninitiated form access to the texts that embody Islamic origins. Although many Muslims, in practice, might regard the ulama, shaykhs, and sayyids as invested with charismatic power, the Islamic tradition does not sanction the attribution to an established clerical class. Accordingly, in principle, religious knowledge was available to everyone. Leadership roles were assumed by anyone who could demon- strate expertise in religious knowledge. Even Ayatollah Khomeini, ven- erated as a descendant of the Prophet and the leader of a revolution, had to prove his credentials to the ulama by demonstrating his knowledge of the scriptural tradition. In practice, no doubt, access to Islamic higher 158 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 12:2 education has often been limited to the wealthy and well-placed. 9 In almost all Muslim societies, ulama families have emerged to monopo- lize formal religious education, while the majority have tended to learn just enought to recognize the religious knowledge possessed by their supenors. Nevertheless, contrasting Islamic paradigms between the "orthodox" focus on textual control and the nonscriptural "folk" Islam of peasants, bedouins, and urban masses are visible. While the former is rooted in nor- mative foundation texts, the latter is sustained by the charismatic power (barakah) of the Prophet, his family, and other leaders. Even this "folk" Islam, however, can tum to the scriptural tradition for justification. For example, in response to the eighteenth-century Wahhabi declaration that all forms of "nonscriputralist" Islam had to be eliminated, Tunisian lead- ers of "folk" Islam used scriptural resources to defend their alternative positions on the barakah of the Prophet and his family, the practice of vis- iting the graves of the saints, and the waging of war against Muslims who did not conform to the strict discipline of Islamic law. In this instance, therefore, we find that both scriptural and "nonscriptural" Muslim para- digms of religious knowledge may be empowered through the appropria- tion and interpretation of scripture. 10 As alternative paradigms, the Wahhabi and Tunisian positions exhibited contrasting and competing par- adigms. Beginning with the early days of Islam, legal, mystical, or philo- sophical schools generated competing versions of Islamic religious knowledge that were embedded in power relations. In nineteenth-centu- ry Qajar Iran, the mystical and philosophical approaches to Islam oper- ated on the margins of the dominant Shari'ah vision that had been estab- lished at the center of society .11 While different paradigms often came into conflict, attempts at synthesis, as found in the work of Junayd (d. 910), Ghazzali (d. 1111), and lbn Rushd (d. 1189) bear testimony to the possibility of achieving intellectual reconciliation among contrasting legal, mystical, and philosophical positions. 12 However, the paradigms produced by philosophers or mystics did not always achieve general recognition, and paradigms of religious knowledge, in general, have continued to be contested. 13 The impact of modernization has engendered both creativity and con- flict in the formation of religious knowledge. The political power of European colonialism and the hegemony of European science created a crisis in the Muslim world. Traditional elites in Muslim society, who had access to and control over the means of producing religious knowledge, were challenged by the emergence of new elites who derived their power from a direct or indirect involvement with the West. In this conflict between tradition and modernity, however, even members of the new elite turned to the originating textual sources of the tradition in their quest for legitimation. By reappropriating and reinterpreting those sources, they sought a religious authenticity that was based upon a new understanding Tayob: The Paradigm of Knowledge 159 of Islam in the modem world. They developed what I prefer to call a mod- em Islamic paradigm, which I will now outline. The Modern Islamic Paradigm This paradigm has drawn on three centuries of encounter between the Islamic and the western worlds. In the eighteenth century, Sufi orders launched social and political resistance movements to colonial powers. In religious terms, they emphasized the importance of hadith, Islamic polit- ical mobilization, and a spirituality rooted in the personality of the Prophet. 14 When this resistance collapsed, it was followed by an Islamic reformism that sought to reeducate Muslim intellectuals and demanded political representation from Muslim monarchs. Many reformists later joined the nationalists who inherited the reigns of power in the new nation-states. As these new nation-states could not realize the people's aspirations, an Islamic ideology formulated mainly by Egypt's Muslim Brothers and Pakistan's Jamaat-i Islami became the Islamic answer to modem worldviews. The themes and structures of the modem Islamic paradigm constitute the shared meanings of a discursive universe. Although its images and forms have distinctive patterns in regional contexts, the commonalities are unmistakable. Indeed, Gellner likened standard Muslim beliefs and prac- tices to a deck of cards dealt out differently in various Muslim societies. 15 In the modem period, I believe, a corresponding deck makes up the mod- em Islamic paradigm. As John Esposito has observed, Islamic discourse has moved from the periphery to the mainstream of the Muslim world. 16 Numerous Muslim regimes have adopted the Islamic idiom as a social and political discourse. In spite of the failure of the specific political programs advocated by such organizations as the Muslim Brothers and the Jamaat-i Islami, the ideolo- gy of Islamic resurgence, with its promise of an Islamic society and an Islamic state, has captured the imagination of a wide range of social groups in the Muslim world. The writings of the Muslim Brother's Sayyid Qu.tb and the Jamaat-i Islami's Abu al A'la al Mawdudi captured the basic elements of the Islamic paradigm in the twentieth century. Their teachings were reflect- ed and nuanced by others, among them Algeria's Malik Bennabi (d. 1976) and Iran's Ali Shariati (d. 1977). The modem Islamic paradigm is elastic and malleable enough to embrace both the conservatism of Mawdudi and the radicalism of Egyptian extremist groups. In other words, divergent and individual groups use the ideas to construct their discourses. All major ideologues of the new paradigm have had some kind of direct exposure to the West. The images of Shariati at the Sorbonne study- ing for a doctorate in sociology and of Qu.tb as literary critic are linked inextricably with the production of the modem Islamic paradigm. Prominent western converts to Islam have added ingenious dimensions to 160 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 12:2 the paradigm by bringing their own understanding of the West and its pos- sibilities and limitations. 17 The paradigm is appropriated by an increasing number of modern and educated Muslims. In Iran, for example, Khomeini's popularity among the mullahs and the masses was matched by Shariati's appeal among the educated youth. 18 The paradigm, however, enjoys its widest appeal among educated youths, especially those in the science facul- ties. Since the new Islamic paradigm is constructed at the intersection of the modern West and traditional Islam, it is most appealing to stu- dents who straddle these two worlds. Such support, especially in the science and technology faculties, is not surprising, for the most potent symbol of the West is technological advancement, with which science students come into direct contact. As a reaction to this challenge, the paradigm is born. The paradigm is not appropriated by illiterate workers and peasants, for it rests on the twin legacies of Islam and modernity, both of which are logocentric discourses. The resultant discourse is also logocentric and thereby marginalizes such people. At the same time, the Islamic par- adigm is not built on western philosophical foundations or the rational disciplines of Islam. For many students of science, contact with the Islamic legacy is tenuous. Similarly, they had only the most popular notions of modem philosophy and scientific methods. A free and random selection from both, however, ensures that the resources of the new par- adigm appeared to be almost inexhaustible. A key feature of the modem Islamic paradigm is its exclusive focus on the Prophet's life. This may sound like a standard feature of basic belief. The paradigm, however, focuses on the central importance of the sociopolitical dimensions of the Prophetic ideal. In this image, the politi- cal and social transformations brought about by the Prophet in seventh- century Arabia should be emulated in our own time and the political and social ideals of Islam ought to precede the purely religious dimensions emphasized by the Muslim legal and mystical scholars. Before the Prophet could be a source of ritual guidance or a model for the spiritual quest, he ought first to be an example of statesmanship and revolutionary leadership. A little reflection on the access to the Prophet in Islamic legal thought, moreover, shows that the modem paradigm has a particular view of the foundations of Islam. Abduh's promotion of talfiq in Islamic law, which was adopted by contemporary Islamists, did not lend itself to idealizing a particular Islamic legal school and its eminent jurists of the ninth and tenth centuries. As an approach that favored choosing from an array of juridical opinions, talfiq promoted ideals and ideal personalities that had appeared in earlier Islamic histor/ 9 In principle, later political and scholarly enter- prises are relegated to a lower status by modem Muslim thinkers, where- as they were the chief mediators of the Prophet for Islamic legal thought in the premodem period. Tayob: The Paradigm of Knowledge 161 The Companions shared the Prophet's eminence in the mythical ideal. This was the first Qur'anic generation, as Qu.tb called it, which brought about total Islamic change. This aspect of the paradigm, howev- er, did not overlook the quandaries of early Islamic history. For Maw- dudi, the second half of 'Uthman ibn 'Affan's reign marred the history of the rightly guided caliphate, whereas Shariati saw this ruler's entire reign as anathema to the ideal Islamic polity. True to Shi'i understanding, Shariati presented 'Uthman as someone who frustrated, more than any- body else, the true and legitimate rule of 'Ah ibn Ab1 Talib as successor to the Prophet. Hence, when Shariati deliberated on the ideal history of Islam, he dealt mainly with Ah's five-year rule. 20 In general the first Qur'anic generation, in terms of the new paradigm, included selective aspects of early Islamic history. While twentieth-century ideologues rejected Islamic reformism's overt attempt to match Islam with progress and development, they borrowed freely from 'Abduh and Khan to espouse Islam's inherent this-worldly and positive contribution. For example, echoing Islamic reformists, Islamic ide- ologues rejected the institution of slavery and extolled Islam's contribution to the upliftment of women. Although slavery and its institutions occupied an important part in Islamic texts, they were rejected, in general, by Islamists as inhuman and degrading. Moreover, the conservative and tradi- tional roles and positions of women in society espoused by Islamists was defended because of their alleged social benefit and not simply because of their conformity to textual evidence. 21 The need to search for ideals in the past was justified by the per- ception that the Muslim world had lost its place in world history. The modern paradigm contrasts the ideal with this present malaise in a growing and elaborate map of crises facing Muslims. Bennabi posited a view of history moving from the spiritual (prophetic) to the rational (' Abbasid) and the instinctive (post-' Abbasid) and saw the last element as a negative and irrational abyss from which Muslim society ought to be rescued. Shariati asserted that the malaise of Muslims was due to their existing in the grip of political oppression, economic exploitation, and religious hypocrisy. Mawdiich, on the other hand, attributed the Islamic world's decline to the accession to power of the tribalistic Umayyad dynasty. In general, ideologues emphasized the need to diag- nose the problems facing Muslims. 22 The perception of successive crises facing Muslims is illustrated clearly by contemporary history. Islamic resurgent ideologues, however, claimed a diagnosis for this decline and thereby gained a vantage point in understanding the root problems of Muslim society. Most of the problems facing Muslims are attributed to an external enemy. The modern understanding of Islamic history projects a historical and cosmic confrontation between Islam and jahiTtyah, the Islamic term for pre-Islamic Arabia's ignorance of divine revelation. In contemporary times, the West is the chief manifestation of Jabiliyah. The term refers to 162 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences l:l:l. disbelief in general and to the rejection of Islamic ideology in particular. Even Muslims who serve the national and socialist goals of the nation- state are considered to be part of jahiliyah. The demonization of the West does not pardon entirely those Muslims who are responsible for the Muslim world's decline. In some trends of Islamic thought, the West is still the arch-villain. In addition, however, Muslims are "colonizable,'' "lax," or devoid of true Islamic consciousness. In this manner, the West and its Muslim admirers are regarded as obstacles to the realization of Islamic ideals. 23 The modem Islamic paradigm is rooted in the modem world. From the point of view of modernity, it may often seem like holding on tena- ciously to the past. But from the point of view of traditional Islam, it is unmistakably modem. Muslim ideologues, who are not uneasy in this position, are suitably placed to appropriate the technologies and images of the West to the advantage of the new Islamic paradigm. A distinction is made between western technology and its social institutions. The for- mer is accepted, especially for its use in education and public announce- ments.24 Unlike the traditional domain of the oral khutabah and lesson, which were the prime organs of communcation, the Islamic resurgence exploits newsletters, magazines, booklets, brochures, and pamphlets. While the print media has the potential for a wider audience, its effective range is limited by the rate of literacy in particular countries. The Islamic resurgence does not avoid the use of personal oral communication and eagerly adopted developments in audio and visual technology. This par- ticular approach was exemplified in the Iranian revolution when Khomeini's tape-recorded sermons and statements provided an effective means of communication. 25 The modem Islamic paradigm, however, does not only enjoy access to western technology but is prone to draw on the features of western social development. For example, the Jamaat-i Islami's argument against liberal measures favoring the emancipation of women drew on the worst scenarios of abused women and prostitution in the West. 26 This critique was used to bolster Islamic arguments for traditional fam- ily values. In a more sophisticated manner, the Islamization of the social sciences uses the critique of Habermas and Foucault to under- mine the hegemony of western knowledge. It deftly avoided the possi- bility that Islamic knowledge is also prone to legitimate the status quo or to at least represent particular relations in Muslim society. 21 In short, from social institutions to knowledge formations, the Islamic paradigm fashions freely an ideal world between the selectively appraised deca- dence of the modem world and the carefully chosen ideals of an origi- nal Islamic society. In Muslim society, the modem Islamic paradigm spurns the religious forms and patterns that do not conform to its ideal. Continuing the tradi- tion of Islamic reformism, it is at best uneasy with the contemporary prevalence of magic and superstition, which are attributed to a degenerate Tayob: The Paradigm of Knowledge 163 Sufism's penetration of local cultures and customs and the subsequent con- tamination of Islam.28 According to the Islamic resurgence, Muslim soci- ety ought to be purged of these local cultures and replaced with the pure ideals of the prophetic community. In the process of rejecting all local religious resources and accretions, premodern Sufism's ontological hierarchy of sayyids, sharifs, and qu,tbs is rejected. An individual's special connection with prophetic and saintly lineages is regarded as an historical accident. Some thinkers of the Islamic resurgence tried to justify the presence of angels in the Qur'an as electromagnetic waves or methane gas. 29 Unlike traditional Islam, elabo- rate accounts of the afterlife that normally accord spirits and angels important roles are conspicuously absent from its discourse . .1° More recent formulations insist on belief in miracles and angels and reject earlier reformist and westernizing interpretations. At the same time, however, they espouse a stark historical drama of life in which miracles and barakah have little place. In principle, the modem Islamic paradigm's ontology consists of two modes of reality: the Creator (the ultimate and transcendent God) and created reality .31 This kind of dualism left no space for either human or spirit hierarchies. The modem obliteration of angels, holy men, and miracles is a key feature of the new Islamic paradigm's egalitarianism. The paradigm presents Islam as the perfect system for social and indi- vidual existence. Perfection in this regard is often perceived as the ratio- nal foundation of Muslim belief and practice. Both the unity of God and the organization of the day into worship slots, for example, are manifes- tations of Islam's rationality. Moreover, it is believed that Islam is a total and natural system for human existence and that it represents the highest ethical and moral manifestation of human civilization as regards the pro- motion of freedom, human dignity, and justice. The human being is inclined by its very nature to conform to the system enunciated and illus- trated by the Prophet. Islam's various components interact perfectly with each other and could not act in isolation. For example, theft was a moral, social, and criminal act that could only be addressed through the integra- tion and simultaneous operation of the moral (Friday lecture of admon- ishment), social (public punishment), and criminal (amputating the right hand) systems. Even in such controversial areas as slavery and the status of women, modem writers insisted that the total Islamic solution offered the best humanly possible answer. 32 Unlike nineteenth-century reform- ism, there was no overt attempt to show that the ideals of western civi- lization were matched by Islamic culture. Inspired by the strong sense of independence sweeping Africa and Asia, the Islamic ideology often claimed superiority over the West. The continuing predicament of black Americans as freed slaves in North America was cited as an example that could be used to incriminate the West. In contrast, it was argued that slav- ery in Muslim societies led to societies wherein slave scholars and dynas- ties flourished. 164 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 12:2 The paradigm aimed to promote a "conscientized" individual imbued with a new vision and ready to change the course of history. The goal of Islamic resurgence training was first and foremost a psychological atti- tude. Shariati called for new intellectuals (roshanfikr) who would take over the leadership of Muslim society. Qu.tb and Sa1d Hawwa awaited the true and believing commando (katihah). Bennabi offered a new conscious- ness of civilization and culture (ba4iirah and thaqafah) to inspire new intellectuals. Like Shariati, Bennabi used western notions to identify the role of Islam and Muslims in the modem world. All of these individuals, nevertheless, were committed to developing new visionaries and new intellectuals. 11 This new paradigm sought to redefine and reformulate the meaning and significance of institutional structures in society, including the mosque, the home, and the bazaar, all of which were subject to a policy of refonn based on the ideal history projected onto the first Islamic commu- nity. In addition, new institutions (schools, welfare organizations, and clinics) were added to the traditional. Since the modem paradigm was located firmly among educated groups, its major activity was not the com- munal prayer or the collective dhikr but the study circle, discussion forum, seminar, and conference. These new meetings confirmed the salvific nature of the modem Islamic paradigm in a degenerate and decadent world. The traditional activities were convenient recruiting grounds for the new paradigm, or, once they had been reclaimed and redefined, symbols of its authenticity and legitimacy. While the modem Islamic paradigm's appeal is strongest among uni- versity students, it also has the potential to become the dominant para- digm-the "orthodoxy"-in Islamic communities. Student organizations did not always popularize the new understanding of Islam, but there were broader historical conditions that facilitated its understanding, such as the global village tendency of the modem world, which ensured that an increasing number of people would be affected by what Lawrence called the great western transformation. As western norms and values in every- day life affected more and more people in the Muslim world, very few Muslims remained unaffected.14 Consequently, independent enclaves of traditional Islamic patterns could only survive as curiosities, for continual contact between the West and Islam resulted in the spread of the modem Islamic paradigm. Within Islamic societies, moreover, traditional educational institu- tions are finding themselves in possession of texts and interpretations that are alien to an increasingly large numbers of Muslims. From Morocco to the Philippines, Islamic institutions face an uncertain future as they lose their vitality and continue to nurture Islamic disciplines as icons of the past. Egypt's al Azhar University has had to accommodate the demands of successive Egyptian governments, while Deobandi institutions in India and Pakistan hold on dearly to an Islamic legacy in an ever-shrinking world. 11 Tayob: The Paradigm of Knowledge 165 The Islamic resurgence, moreover, has come of age and has estab- lished its own educational institutions. Though earlier attempts to reform al Azhar in the nineteenth century were unsuccessful, and 'Abduh's attempts to reform it were singularly rejected, in 1962 Saudi Arabia estab- lished an Islamic university with Mawdua1 as one of its founding mem- bers.36 Other Islamic universities have taken educational reform one step further by pointing out the integration of the Islamic and the modem. Newly founded international Islamic universities in Africa and Asia espouse some form of integration of modem and traditional Islamic disci- plines. The International Islamic Univeristy of Malaysia, for example, pro- claims that it will cater for students from any part of the world who wish to pursue a university education in Humanities, Science, and Technology, viewed from an Islamic perspective and fundamentally related to Islamic values and principles. This integration has been formulated as the Islamization of Knowl- edge by such scholars such as al Attas, Nasr, 37 and al Faruq1 (d. 1986). It was the last-mentioned who proposed a whole program for universities from within the International Institute of Islamic Thought.18 The Islami- zation of knowledge is the intellectual counterpart of the political project of the Islamic resurgence and represents the clarion call to subject all mod- em sciences to Islamic values and principles. In the context of the thesis of this paper, Islamic educational reform, up to and including the Islamization of knowledge, was the educational institutionalization of the new paradigm and contributed to its promotion among Muslims. The global village of world communities, the weakness of traditional institutions, and the emergence of modem institutions favored the modem Islamic paradigm's success. Eventually traditional elites, such as Iran's Khomeini and Lebanon's Musa al Sadr, adopted the new Islamic para- digm. 39 In spite of initial hostility, other religious leaders are bound to fol- low sooner or later. Conclusion The production of knowledge, according to Foucault, was simultane- ously the production of power. In the Islamic case, the emergence of a new paradigm based on a reinterpretation of the sources of Islam has empow- ered a new elite in the modem Muslim world. Despite its protagonists' loudly proclaimed divine intervention, the paradigm cannot be extricated from its particular historical location. It began to take shape in the eigh- teenth century, when neo-Sufi orders emerged, and has since matured as the Islamic ideology within Muslim nation-states. The new Islamic paradigm available to the modern intellectual con- sists of fundamental themes, resources, and structures. It posits a belief in 166 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 12:2 an ideal history of the Prophet that focuses, first and foremost, on the sociopolitical transfonnation of society. Islam is an essentially this- worldly system whose various components interact perfectly in the right circumstances. The paradigm identifies a degenerate present, the main causes of which are the West's moral standards, western surrogates in the Muslim world, and Sufism, and seeks to redefine traditional Islamic sym- bols and institutions while introducing such new fonns of religious sig- nificance as the study circle and conference. Even as they differed in emphasis from one context to another, the themes of the paradigm were compelling. The spread of literacy, west- ern domination, and its own institutionalization have promoted the par- adigm. More importantly, as a knowledge claim, it challenged and acquired power over traditional patterns of understanding Islam. In local contexts, the paradigm became a key claim to authority among Muslims as it began to play a greater role in Muslim organizations and institu- tions. By itself this would not be problematic. However, the divine origin of the modem Islamic paradigm is accompanied by a sense of self-right- eousness that mirrors that of positivism and other modern ideologies. It is now a powerful worldview that perceives itself as locked in a pro- found battle with other ideologies, both among Muslims as well as the West. As a paradigm it has the power to legitimate, explore, and exclude. Simply by force of argument, it enables careers, projects, and political campaigns. Endnotes 1. I have relied on several key analyses of the Islamic resurgence for my con- struction of the modern Islamic paradigm. A recent bibliography compiled by Hadad. Voll, and Esposito concurred with the notion of a shared meaning in the Muslim world. Cf. Yvonne Y. Haddad, John 0. Voll, John L. Esposito (eds.), The Contemporary Islamic Revival: A Critical Survey and Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 1991). 2. Michel Foucault. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, trans. and ed. by Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 131. 3. Ibid., 109-33. 4. Ibid., 146-50. 5. Kuhn, in fact, derived his model for scientific revolutions from observing the development of new ideas in the social sciences and humanities. Since then, his insights into the nature of scientific developments have been used to describe shifts in a variety of social sciences. Cf. Jack Hexter, Doing History (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971); Stanley J. Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1989); Bruce B. Lawrence, "Religion, Ideology and Revolution: The Problematical Case of Post-1979 Iran," in The Terrible Meek: Essays on Religion and Revolution, ed. by Lonnie D. Kliever (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1987); Dale F. Eickelman, Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a Twentieth Century Noble (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). 6. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d enlarged ed. "Post- script" (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970), 182-92. iayoo: 111c: raramgm u1 .l\..11uw 11::ugc: lU/ 7. Bryan S. Turner, "Origins and Traditions in Islam and Christianity," Religion 6, no. 1 (Spring 1976): 13-30. 8. Richard C. Martin. "Islamic Textuality in Light of Post-structuralist Criticism," in A Way Prepared: Essays on Islamic Culture in Honour of Richard Bayly Winder, ed. by Farhad Kazemi and R. D. McChesney (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 128. 9. R. Stephen Humphreys, Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry, Studies in Middle Eastern History, no. 9 (Minneapolis: Bibliotech Islamica, 1988), 173. 10. A.H. Green, "A Tunisian Reply to a Wahhabi Proclamation: Texts and Contexts," in Quest of an Islamic Humanism: Arabic and Islamic S1udies in Memory of Mohamed al- Nowaihi, ed. by A.H. Green (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 1984), 155-77; Eickelman, Knowledge and Power, 19. 11. Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1974), 1:362-64; Mango! Bayat-Philip, "The Iranian Revolution of 1978-79: Fundamentalist or Modern?" The Middle East Journal 37, no. 1 (1983): 31-32. 12. Junayd, al Ghazan, and Ibn Rushd were leading scholars living in different epochs in Islamic history who tried to synthesize the mystical, legal, and philosophical visions of Islam. 13. Fazlur Rahman, Prophecy in Islam: Philosophy and Orthodoxy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, Midway Reprint, 1958), 92-105; Hodgson, Venture, 1:422-25. 14. John Obert Voll, Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982), 44-49, 87-147. 15. Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society: Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 100. 16. John L. Esposito, "Trailblazers of the Islamic Resurgence," in The Contemporary Islamic Revival, ed. by Haddad, Voll, and Esposito (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), 44. 17. Martin E. Marty and Scott R. Appleby, "Conclusion: An Interim Report on a Hypothetical Family," in Fundamentalism Observed, ed. by Martin E. Marty and Scott R. Appleby (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991), 825; Tomas Gerholm, "Three European Intellectuals as Converts to Islam: Cultural Mediators or Social Critics," in The New Islamic Presence in Western Europe, ed. by Tomas Gerholm and Yngve Lithman (London: Mansell, 1990), 275-77. 18. Mumtaz Ahmad, "Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia: The Jamaat-i Islami and the Tablighi Jamaat," Fundamentalism Observed, 461; Said Amir Arjomand, "Social Change and Movements of Revitalization in Contemporary Iran," in New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change, ed. by James A. Beckford (Paris: UNESCO, 1986), 87. 19. The very popular and modern compendium of Sayyid Sabiq, Fiqh al Sunnah, 2d ed., 3 vols. (Beirut: Dar al Fikr, 1980), illustrates the approach of the Islamic resurgence to the Shari'ah. Sabiq chose freely among the various interpretations of the prophetic practice. Moreover, where there was no clear prophetic basis for a particular practice, he simply cited the various schools' points of view and often left the reader to choose the correct prac- tice in a classic promotion of talfiq. 20. Ali Shariati, Hajj, 2d ed., ed. and trans. by Ali A Behzadni, M. D. Denny, and Najla Denny (Houston: Free Islamic Literatures, Inc., 1978), 131; Sayyid Qu.tb, Milestones (Ma'r Social Order in Modern Egypt: A Biography of Muhammad Husayn Haykal (Albany: State Univeristy of New York, 1983), 18; Rahman, Islam and Modernity. 37. Admittedly, Nasr's call for a sacred science is different from that of al Faroq-1. Both, however. appeal to young Muslims seeking authenticity and relevance in the modern world. Cf. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Need for a Sacred Science (Surrey, UK: Curzon Press, 1993 ). 38. The International Institute of Islamic Thought. lslamiyat al Ma'rifah (Herndon. YA: IIIT, 1986), 171-76; Haddad, "Revivalist Literature,'' 12. 39. For a classic case of the paradigm adopted by a cleric, see Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1986) on the life and career of MO~a al Sadr in Lebanon.