This book studies the complex relationship of religion to modernity and argues that modernity should be understood as the consequence, not the cause, of the new intellectual landscape of the 19th century. Shows how the adoption of historicism in the 19th century engendered Islamic modernism as a theological reform movement.
This book is principally a study of the complex relationship of religion to modernity. Monica M. Ringer argues that modernity should be understood as the consequence, not the cause, of the new intellectual landscape of the 19th century. Using the lens of Islamic modernism she uncovers the underlying epistemology and methodology of historicism that penetrated the Middle East and South Asia in this period, both forcing and enabling a recalibration of the definition, nature, function and place of religion. She shows that Muslim Modernists, like their counterparts in other religious traditions, engaged in a sophisticated project of theological reform designed to marry their twin commitments to religion and to modernity. They were in conversation not only with European scholarship and Catholic modernism, but more importantly, with their own complex Islamic traditions.
In Pious Citizens, Ringer tells the story of a major intellectual revolution in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century India and Iran, one that radically transformed the role of religion in society. At this time, key theological debates revolved around Zoroastrianism’s capacity to generate “progress” and “civilization.” Armed with both the destructive and creative capacities of historicism, reformers reevaluated their own religious tradition, molding Zoroastrian belief and practice according to contemporary ideas of rational religion and its potential to create pious citizens. Ringer demonstrates how rational and enlightened religion, characterized by social responsibility and the interiorization of piety, was understood as essential for the development of modern individuals, citizens, new public space, national identity, and secularism. She argues persuasively that reformers believed not only that social reform must be accompanied by religious reform but that it was in fact a product of religious reform. Pious Citizens offers new insights into the theological premises behind the promotion of secularism, the privatization of religion, and the development of new national identities. Ringer’s work also explores growing connections between the Iranian and Indian Zoroastrian communities and the revival of the ancient Persian past.
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