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community, are almost not ready to accept a representative of another ethnic group.
The spread and popularity of radical Islam contributes to the radicalization of the society. Therefore, it is important to prevent the radicalization of neophytes.
Author of the abstract - N. Ginesina
2017.02.005. RINAT PATEEV. THE CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS OF CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC STUDIES: SEARCHING THE PARADIGM OF ISLAMIC COMMUNITIES TRANSFORMATION // "Islamovedenie", Makhachkala, 2016, V. 7, № 4, P. 110-123.
Keywords: Islamic studies, fundamentalism, modernization, reformation, transformation.
Rinat Pateev,
PhD (Political), Director in the Centre for Research on Islamic studies, Academy of Science, Republic of Tatarstan
In this article the status of Islamic studies is analyzed as a research area. It is pointed out that modern Islamic studies are centered on historiographic agenda and consideration of ideological context of Islam. In the author's opinion, the main problem associated with a concept development of Islamic communities transformation is the absence of the common frameworks for understanding of the Islamic civilization history. And the central problem is an insight of religious and political institutions interaction for transformation in Islamic communities. It is also emphasized the significance of Muslim communities secularization process, which causes composite reaction up to excess radicalism.
Nowadays Islamic studies still have a narrow-subject interpretation, which comes to a complex perception of Islam as an ideological system. Classically Islamic studies as a unique department look smudgy. There is no a significant subject of investigation, which covers all aspects of Muslim communities life and religiously ideological details of Islamic doctrine.
Russian famous expert on Islamic studies S.M. Prozorov supposes that «academic Islamic studies» can be divided in 3 parts: historiographic base baked on original Arabic compositions; conceptual construct of Islam; methodological approach to studying Islam as a self-reliant ideological system. Consequently, the object field of Islamic studies, on the one hand entails source study, on the other one-political science studying ideologies.
While there is no concrete defined particular and methodological frame such academic "liberty" doesn't allow speaking about Islamic studies in Russia as an accomplished science. Modern Islamic studies are an assembly of interdisciplinary research of Islamic religiously-social ideas and distinct Muslim communities sphere of life.
The epoch of religious and sociopolitical movement in Europe started in the middle of XVI century and ended in the beginning of XVII century. This is a period of establishment of nation states system, which definitively formed after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. European communities, experienced series of bloody conflicts, came to an understanding of impossibility to solve sociopolitical problems through the lens of religion.
In scores of Islamic studies works it is said about the necessity to stay from the guidelines of Eurocentrism and the vestiges of colonialism. Attempts to comprehend the East from the perspective of the western academic conception are criticized.
The lack of a single conception for understanding the history of the Islamic civilization aggravates classification of religiously ideological models.
In Soviet Islamic studies a tradition to identify conservative Islamic sects with reformation was set up by a famous orientalist
A.M. Vasiliev. His view permitted Soviet orientalists to speak about reformative role of salafism today. Another orientalist I.L. Alekseev suggests contemplating such typological models in terms of Islamic discourse. According to I.L. Alekseev for understanding the Sunni discourse it is necessary to rely on notions concerned with an Arab term islakh which has an idea of recovery, reformation. First, it is said about transformation and rearrangement, restoring of original version of Islam rather than its reformation along with new realities. Secondly, the author distinguishes discursive and ideological attitude of nationalists to the problem of Muslim communities transformation. It is pointed at an ideological polarization of views, which spawns crisis of political and national identity in Muslim world. Thirdly, reformation is a term combining interaction between society, state and religious institutes that cannot be applied to reformation of salafism.
Oriental tradition focuses on studying languages and original doctrinal sources that in turn causes profound interest for discursive language theories among orientalists. Classical historic development model of the European civilization cannot be placed on processes of transformation in Muslim world. Renaissance in Muslim world started earlier than in Europe, but attention was paid to academic papers rather than art. Renaissance for Islam communities corresponds more to a political activation.
Process of industrialization and renaissance in Muslim communities started later than in Europe and were obvious, but they developed out of step. Justification of it can be found in modern Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The main result of reformation for the West development of Christian communities became division of religion and politics institutes. As concerns sociopolitical transformations in Muslim world this process is not discernible. T. Huff considers that substantial part of Muslim world is experiencing a recurrence to the primordial doctrine rather than reformation. Implementation
of sharia laws, in his opinion, is associated with domination of religious law over divinity. However the many experts in Islamic studies are not in agreement with him, pointing at inseparability of secular and religious in Islam.
Islam as a religious system has an important significance for Islamic ideology, that doesn't prevent many Muslim communities from living under secular laws. Problems of religious legitimization of secularism conception in Islam reduce to atheism, infidelity and immorality.
Islamic states are eligible for their own development path. However rules of their sociopolitical advance don't differ from European and other Eastern non-Islamic communities. As European countries Muslim states experienced establishment of secular state with republican government which succeeded monarchy.
Nowadays widely accepted religious conceptions of political organization lack Muslim community, based on religious principles. That leads to inhomogeneity of Islamic world itself.
Today contemporary nation states and republican government become an integral part of Muslim communities. Even countries of the Persian Gulf don't keep out of such political entity of society. Examples of Saudi Arabia, where there is a prototype of parliament, and Turkey disclose a common vector of sociopolitical development. Unique example the Islamic Republic of Iran not only uses the most accomplished models of republican government but also created religious conceptions legitimizing them. A 40-year history demonstrates resiliency of such a model and readiness for changes.
Nowadays Sunni religious intellectuals couldn't have elaborated general theoretic conceptions with a reliable prospect for realization. The author introduces an expression of a famous orientalist M.T. Stepanyants where the latter compares the Christian and Muslim reformation and states that Muslim reformation wasn't as «explosive» as the Christian one. However the recent events in the Middle East may by their dramatic character surpass the European Reformation.
Today's political engagement of Islamic socioreligious thought, segregation of Muslim community, inner strife and violation give an opportunity to draw parallels with religious reformation of XVI-XVII in Western Europe.
Entering of Western culture, secular political institutes, transformation of socio-economic structure are all challenges for Muslim communities. These processes are inevitable geopolitical ones and are not connected only with religious doctrine.
Examining biographies of Al-Qaeda terrorists and other radicals Saimon Kotty suggests considering jihadism as a subculture of social tension. He also emphasizes that criminal actions and violence are protests against established sociocultural norms in society, vesting in religious forms. It's possible to suppose that contemporary radicalism in Islamic communities is a response of certain groups to overcome controversies of inevitable secularization of social and political space in modern Muslim countries.
Nowadays there is still no common approach in Islamic study community, because of objective and methodological fuzziness.
The core problem of present-day Islamic studies is an absence of conceptional focus on the Islamic civilization development that impedes comprehension of transformation paradigm in Muslim communities. It's necessary to form a generalized paradigm to create not a controversial model of developmental history of the Islamic civilization.
Transformation process in the Muslim East and in Europe can be compared and they are similar to various extents.
Author of the abstract - Yu. Androsova
