Bruce Lawrence, Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies at the Duke University, delivering a lecture on ‘Rethinking Islam within modernity’ | P Ravikumar/Express
Source: Indian Express.
If modernism meant a framework where existence of religions was accepted, Islam was completely compatible with it, an expert in the field of Islamic studies said on Tuesday. Delivering a lecture on ‘Rethinking Islam within modernity’ at the University of Madras, Bruce Lawrence, Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies at the Duke University, said it was essential that a differentiation was made between the terms “modernity” and “modernism.”
He said if the concept of modernism was one that gave space to religious beliefs, Islam was compatible with such a framework. But, when modernism is interpreted as something that was based on the rejection of religion itself, that might not be acceptable to Islam, he pointed out.
The professor said works of scholars such as Abul Kalam Azad in the Indian post-Independence period had indicated how the concept of democracy could easily co-exist with Islam.
Lawrence said the position of women in the holy text of the Muslims is often cited as an issue when dismissing Islam as archaic. However, much of the interpretation of passages in the holy book, that somewhat indicated a superior position for men, was superficial. “They have to be seen within the context of the time of the Prophet. Men in those times were expected to take the lead in the political sphere. The passages indicate this and not a sort of natural superiority,” he observed.
In this regard, he pointed out that parda or the veil too was a misunderstood issue, and it was largely a symbol of modesty rather than a tool of suppression.
Biography from Wikipedia
Bruce B. Lawrence (at Duke since 1971) is the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of Religion at Duke University.
A graduate of Fay School and Princeton University, with a Master of Divinity from Episcopal Divinity School (Cambridge), he earned his doctorate at Yale University in History of Religions. There he was trained to engage West Asia (aka the Middle East) and South Asia, with particular reference to the cultures and languages, the history and religious practices marked as Muslim. But he also concerns himself with the non-Muslim religious traditions of Asia, especially Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, at the same time that he pursues the turbulent reconnections of Europe to Asia forged in colonial, then post-colonial encounters.
His early books explored the intellectual and social history of Asian Muslims. Shahrastani on the Indian Religions (1976) was followed by Notes from a Distant Flute (1978), The Rose and the Rock (1979) and Ibn Khaldun and Islamic Ideology (1984). Since the mid-1980s, he has been concerned with the interplay between religion and ideology. The test case of fundamentalism became the topic of his award-winning monograph, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt against the Modern Age (1989/1995). A parallel but more limited enquiry informed his latest monograph, Shattering the Myth: Islam beyond Violence (1998/2000). It is the thorny issue of religious pluralism and diasporic communities that guide his monograph on Asian religions in America (Columbia University Press, November 2002). New Faiths/Old Fears concerns Asian religionsin America, especially since 1965; it examines the challenge of their spiritual practices to North American norms and values. He has also written three collaborative works with colleagues from the Triangle area. The first, Beyond Turk and Hindu: Contesting Islamicate India, was edited with Professor David Gilmartin of North Carolina State University, and published by University Press of Florida in December 2000 (with an Indian edition in September 2002). The other was co-written with Professor Carl Ernst of the University of North Carolina. Sufi Martyrs to Love: The Chishti Brotherhood in South Asia and Beyond, was published from Palgrave Press, also in November 2002. Most recently, with his Duke colleague and spouse, dr. miriam cooke of Asian and African Languages and Literatures, he has co-edited Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop, published in March 2005 from UNC Press in a series that he also co-edits, with Professor Ernst, on Islamic civilization and Muslim Networks.
Quoting Deccan Herald
Seeking to dispel misconceptions about “purdah” (veil to conceal women from public view), noted Islamic scholar and researcher in comparative religions from the US, Prof Bruce B Lawrence, on Tuesday said this practice among Muslim women was more “a matter of choice.”
The “first interpretation most people give to purdah is that it means modesty,” Prof Lawrence, Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies, Duke University, USA, and currently adjunct professor at Istanbul’s Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakif University, told a big gathering at the Madras University, where students asked him several questions on Islam’s approach to social and other issues in a modern world.
While the Quran did outline the roles of men and women in the public domain, there was no implication in the holy book “that forever” men were superior to women, Prof Lawrence explained at the interaction set up by the US Consulate in Chennai in conjunction with the South Indian Educational Trust (SIET), now headed by Moosa Raaza, the former chief secretary of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Quran also details how “men also have to be modest,” said Prof Lawrence, who had earlier spent two years at the Aligarh Muslim University in India, to study the finer aspects of Islam. Referring to how women were “projected in the Quran”, the scholar said, “there is no single way of interpreting this issue; Purdah is a matter of choice and this is one answer,” he emphasised, thus indicating that there was no necessity to give it an ultra-conservative hue.
Significantly, Shanna Dietz Surendra, Cultural Affairs Officer at the US Consulate in Chennai, introducing Prof Lawrence as one of the “deep” Islamic scholars of our times having earned a PhD from the Yale University in the History of Religions: Islam and Hinduism, said the views he would be sharing at this meeting “are his own and he does not speak on behalf of the US government.” Prof Lawrence, who broadly dwelt with the difficulties in the several translations, particularly English translations of the original Quran in Arabic, was all praise for India’s freedom fighter, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who not only spoke of the “spiritual notion of Islam”, but also was more modern than many others by demonstrating that “Islam is compatible with democracy”.
As a “model in politics” though, Islam has been “more misused”, Prof Lawrence said to related queries from the audience.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/313373/purdah-more-matter-choice-us.html