On the occasion of the fifteenth century of the hijra, many scholarly publications will deal with various aspects of Islamic history, among which is the contribution of the Arabo-Muslim culture to Western civilisation. Philosophical and scientific contributions have already been discussed many times. The legacy of Islam in the field of international law has, however, not yet been studied at length.

Some strides have been taken to improve the status of women in Islam, but the weight of conservatism is still very strong. How strong it is may be gauged from the following illustration. In the introduction to his book published in 1926 describing the rise of trade unionism, Shaikh Tāhir al-Haddād, a pioneer of the trade union movement in Tunisia, interprets history in a fashion that comes very close to Marxism, although he rejects Marxist atheism and materialism. No opposition came to this work from the pen of an 'alim. But three years later, when he published Our Woman in the Sharî'a and in Society, arguing that the social status of woman in Muslim society was actually inferior to what Islamic teaching granted them and pleading for improvement in the social and legal positions of women, he was severely attacked by the conservatives, lost his job, and died a few years later, a forlorn man.

Le grand commentaire du Coran de l'Imam Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī pose un problème. Dans la notice que Ibn Abī Usybi'a (m. en 1270 A.D.) consacre à un personnage qui mourut Grand Qādī de Damas en 637/1239–40 et qui se nommait Shams al-Dīn Ahmad b. al-Khalīl b. Sa'āda al-Khuwayyī al-Shāfi'i, on lit que, parmi les oeuvres de ce dernier, figure un complement du “Commentaire du fils du Prédicateur de Rayy”. Il s'agit ici du grand commentaire de Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī dont le père était bien connu sous ce titre, ses dons de prédicateur (khatīb) l'ayant rendu célèbre en son temps.

“Religion is poetry plus, not science minus” is a bon mot that I find not only charming but perceptive. Taking a cue from that way of putting things, let me develop a suggestion that an accurate historical awareness will add to, not subtract from, our understanding of in this case scripture. At one time, the historical or historicist interpretation of religious matters was seen as subtracting; as leaving something out. It was called “reductionist”; and was contrasted with theological, or with phenomenological or other, assessments. I will contend, rather, that a true historical view enhances, rather than reduces, our apprehension of humanity's spiritual life. I hope to show how this is so.

A la fin du XIVe siè de l'Hé il est opportun de dire un mot de la position de l'Islam vis-à-vis de l 'évolution. On croit àtort qu'il est une religion immobile et qu'il est essentienllement conservateur, Au contraire dans sa longue histoire, il a passé par des périodes où son mouvement était éclatant. Certes y-a-til dans son enseignement des étéments immobiles, mais il y en d'autres qui sont assez mobiles et vivants. C'est sur cette distinction que nous voulons nous arrêter un peu.

Two frameworks of interpretation of history and society have long struggled with each other in the West and in the Islamic world: one is the modernization theory of the American type, aligned at times with the older orientalism, the other is some form of political economy. In the 1970s, the theory of political economy made a belated arrival in American intellectual life and still has scarcely the prestige it has in France, Germany, Italy, or the Islamic countries.

In discussing the intellectual and religious history of the modern Muslim world, the attention of both Western and Middle Eastern scholars has hitherto focused on those who were, directly or indirectly, heavily influenced by Western thought and practices. For Egypt, the center of Arab intellectual life, we have studies of at-Tahtawi, Abduh, Rida, Mustafa Kamil, Lutfi as-Sayyid, and those close to them; for Turkey studies of the Young Ottomans, the Young Turks, Zia Gökalp, and those influenced by Ataturk's Turkish nationalism; and for Iran of Malkum Khan, Afghani, various Babis, Al-e Ahmad, Shariati, and other Western-influenced thinkers. Naturally, there are large differences in the thought of those qualified here as Western-influenced; even the most traditional aiim usually reflects Western influence in a mediated way. The point is, however, that there has been little analysis of thinkers and leaders who appear to be primarily traditional, whether they be ulama educated entirely in madrasas and carrying out primarily traditional functions, or heads of Sufi orders operating mainly within their own traditions. This concentration by Western and Middle Eastern intellectuals on leaders who were able to a large degree secularized and Westernized has been based on certain generally unspoken assumptions about progress and development. The assumptions are that progress and development include Westernized, secularized educational systems and an increasingly Western lifestyle with a decreased role for both ulama and Sufis, whom it is not particularly important for one concentrating on trends with a viable future to study or understand. Even those who did study “traditionalist” movements such as the Egyptian Muslim Brethren tended to see them as a trend with no future.