Abstract
The events of the 20th century have totally disturbed the geography of Islam. Decolonization and globalization have been raising new issues in Muslim societies throughout the world. In this essay, we will see how the tension between the search for a Muslim identity on the one side, and the push for modernization on the other side, has encompassed a period that stretches from the beginning of second half of the 20th century to today. We will identify modernization in a broad sense. It can be defined as a process in history during which a society implemented better ways of regulating itself. Here, we will take modernization as an ensemble of historical and material conditions that allow emancipation from the given traditions, doctrines and ideologies and are not problematized by a traditional culture.
The end of the 19th century witnessed the rise of al Nahda, a cultural, political and religious renaissance. It represented an attempt to adapt Islam to the Western concepts of modernity in order to enable Muslim societies to rivalize with the West. And thus the thinkers of al Nahda introduced and incorporated Western concepts to Islamic thought in an attempt to make it more relevant in the context of a modernizing world.
