Global Islam
Global Islam and the Secular Modern World: Transnational Muslim Social Movements and the Movement of Fethullah Gülen, A Comparative Approach Joshua D. Hendrick, PhD Candidate
Worldly systems change according to circumstances and so can be evaluated only according to their times --M. Fethullah Gülen
Toward and Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance
In Islam, the Umma is more than a religious concept; it connotes social solidarity and cultural identification beyond ethnic and regional boundaries. In this way, the Umma (community of believers) serves as the most fundamental of what Şerif Mardin (1989) refers to as “Islamic idioms,” that is, shared paradigmatic concepts that serve the ultimate function of reproducing social structures over time and space. Mardin develops the notion of the Islamic idiom as follows: The Islamic ‘idiom’ is pervasive in the sense that covers all aspects of life and society and that it is shared equally by upper and lower classes…Daily life-strategies are framed by the use of the religious idiom, and the fund of Qur’anic symbols on which it is based has a widespread popular usage…it is because this idiom is shared that there appears something that we could name ‘social legitimation’ in Islamic societies, a legitimation that derives from the widespread use of this idiom (1989: 6-7). In Islam’s formative period, the Umma linked a trans-regional system of Muslim trade and pilgrimage networks. In the contemporary era, these networks are linked to developments in information and communication technologies, which have subsequently provided the structural opportunity spaces for
Muslim social movements (MSMs) to mobilize via a revival of the Umma as a universal Islamic precept228. 228
For a theoretical and empirical exposition on the “network metaphor” used to describe Muslim societies, see Muslim Networks: From Hip Hop to Hajj Cooke and Lawrence eds. (2005).
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Outlining his “clash of civilizations” thesis, Samuel
Worldly systems change according to circumstances and so can be evaluated only according to their times --M. Fethullah Gülen
Toward and Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance
In Islam, the Umma is more than a religious concept; it connotes social solidarity and cultural identification beyond ethnic and regional boundaries. In this way, the Umma (community of believers) serves as the most fundamental of what Şerif Mardin (1989) refers to as “Islamic idioms,” that is, shared paradigmatic concepts that serve the ultimate function of reproducing social structures over time and space. Mardin develops the notion of the Islamic idiom as follows: The Islamic ‘idiom’ is pervasive in the sense that covers all aspects of life and society and that it is shared equally by upper and lower classes…Daily life-strategies are framed by the use of the religious idiom, and the fund of Qur’anic symbols on which it is based has a widespread popular usage…it is because this idiom is shared that there appears something that we could name ‘social legitimation’ in Islamic societies, a legitimation that derives from the widespread use of this idiom (1989: 6-7). In Islam’s formative period, the Umma linked a trans-regional system of Muslim trade and pilgrimage networks. In the contemporary era, these networks are linked to developments in information and communication technologies, which have subsequently provided the structural opportunity spaces for
Muslim social movements (MSMs) to mobilize via a revival of the Umma as a universal Islamic precept228. 228
For a theoretical and empirical exposition on the “network metaphor” used to describe Muslim societies, see Muslim Networks: From Hip Hop to Hajj Cooke and Lawrence eds. (2005).
135
Outlining his “clash of civilizations” thesis, Samuel
References: Nasr, S.V.R. 1997 “Islamic Opposition and Political Process: Lessons from Pakistan” In Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism, or Reform Esposito et al