Round-table: What Is Happening in the Islamic World? An Attempt at a Conceptualization

Abstract

The round-table addressed the question of research methodologies for those trends now observable in the Islamic world, as well as conceptual approaches for understanding current developments there. Such frameworks as Islamic reformation, a neo-modern age, and the search for a political Islamic identity were proposed. Participants did not agree about the relationship between Islamic fundamentalism and modernity. Some of them considered fundamentalism as potentially a modernist movement, and others saw it only as antimodernist and archaic. In this respect, the question of balance between declared goals and real impact on social development was raised, in other words, can those groups that call for a return to the past in reality facilitate movement forward? Much attention was paid to terminology. There was also an active discussion on the issue of language for scientific analysis and the language of self-presentation of different Islamic movements, and whether they should be interconnected or could be fully autonomous.