Modern Thinking in Islam : A Study of Religion and Ideas in Muslim Thought

Guest editors' introduction. This special issue will begin by asking the question: just how critical is 'Islamic thinking' in the modern period? Which of the host of Muslim intellectuals throughout the period in question can we say have produced works that show ground-breaking progress in thinking about religion and society? Which of them, even in challenging the status quo, have surpassed conventional paradigms of the Islamicate world? This might seem an unfair, even extreme, expectation to be measured against, but it is nevertheless one that we have to be daring enough to assert if we are going to talk about 'originality' and 'creativity' and, even more significantly, 'authenticity' (cf. Varga and Guignon 2020). It is to the standard of authenticity that we must hold any such thinker(s). And so, something needs to be said here with regards to the vigour of modern thinking in Islam in the light of the intellectual history of Islam.