Encounter of Islam and Modernism: The Problems of Traditional and Modernist Discourse and an Offer of Midway

Today, an important part of Islamic thought has a problematic attitude regarding modern world on discursive level. Currently, there are two extreme approaches towards modern world in the Islamic world. One part of them rejects the modern world with its all characters completely and wants to return “Golden Age”. Another part argues Islamization of the modern world with its all aspects. Both of these approaches, namely, revolutionism and reformism are having many problems. Firstly, it is impossible to turn back. We live in modern world. But, modern world has come out with some new situations. These new situations are political, economic, technological, etc. Both of these approaches don’t solve these problems. We need a new approach, a third way, towards modern world. In this context, the new approach must be our prophet’s method. While our prophet was spreading out the messages of Allah and he was calling to Islam, he applied three ways to change his society. First of all, he changed some practices entirely. For example, interest abolished and replaced karz-？ hasen, a special interest- free lending system. We can call this application revolutionist. Secondly, he revised some practices, for example polygamy didn’t prohibit, but it limited and based on a legal framework. This applications can called reformist. And thirdly, he didn’t change some practices and allowed to go on them. For example, forbidden moths are protected. In this context, Prophet Mohammad says “Good things in Jahiliyya are good in Islam as well.” We can call conservatism for this application. As a consequence, we can say that Islam is not merely revolutionist or merely reformist. Its position changes according to case. So, he offers a model for us to understand the world we live in. We, as Muslims, can understand modern world and figure out our problem with this triple approach