Authority, Community & Identity Articles

Contending Complexities

Series:

Last spring, when Scott Appleby phoned me about the launch of Contending Modernities, I was immediately intrigued. I have worked for many years in various forums of Muslim-Christian relations so I knew that Scott was proposing a project of significant scope and consequence. I am grateful to the University of Notre Dame for undertaking this initiative and hope that I can offer a few words that may prove helpful as the project progresses.

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Islam and Modernity


As the world becomes increasingly interconnected through technological advances, we are now beginning to appreciate the differing experiences of the world’s many cultures in their encounters with the complex of institutions and ideas that we identify as modernity. In particular, we have the new concept of “alternative modernities,” a term which goes a long way in representing the diversity of the world in encountering new realities.

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Another Modernity: Thanksgiving among Haitian Catholics


It is appropriate that Anne Barnard’s New York Times piece on Haitian Catholicism appeared on Thanksgiving, for one of the strongest themes of the Haitian Catholic Charismatic movement is gratitude. During nearly two years of fieldwork I conducted among Haitian Catholics, I was also struck by how often they thanked God for such blessings as food (however meager), life (however difficult) and faith (however severely challenged).

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Does Islam Need to Be “Modernized”?


I don’t know how many times I have heard Christians—Catholics included, strangely—say, “What Islam needs is a Reformation.” The normally sensible Cardinal Danneels of Brussels even went so far as to say that what Islam needs is to go through its French Revolution—which makes one want to ask when the Catholic Church was ever in favor of the Reformation or the French Revolution?

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