Islamization, modernization, and civilizational analysis: Non-essentialist comparative perspectives

Abstract

The first part of the paper considers the potentials of the continuing validity of employing a "civilizational paradigm" in contemporary social sciences and humanities. In the next stage of the paper selected "Western" approaches to civilization are juxtaposed with the perspective proposed by Ibn Khaldūn. The third part discusses methodological and normative implications of recent appeals, verbalized from the essentialized and essentializing perspective of “cultural wars”, to “renew” civilizations undergoing times of crisis or experiencing a "twilight" phase. Such approaches are reconstructed here as constituting a serious danger for any dialogic and peaceful approaches to the problem of the inevitable plurality of civilizations in the context of the emerging postcolonial “geoculture.” The extended conclusion offers a discussion about the relationship between civilization and religion with reference to the idea of "Islamization" of knowledge, as postulated, from both theoretical and programmatic (“effectuating”) points of view.