Insight Turkey
Insight Turkey
Challenging ideas
On Turkish politics and International affairs

Author

Robert W. Hefner

Robert W. Hefner
Muslim Modernities: Expressions of the Civil Imagination
April 1, 2010
It is a truism of contemporary social thought that modernity is not singular in its trajectories, but multiple. One especially significant element in the “multiple modernities” perspective concerns religion. Whereas two generations ago, most scholars assumed that modernization brought about the gradual privatization and decline of religion, it is now recognized that religion’s development in modern societies can be highly varied. Western Europe may be a deeply secular place, but the United States is not. The revitalization of religion seen in Muslim, Hindu, and southern Christian lands, then, represents not an “anti-modern” reaction, but one more illustration of the multiple pathways to the modern.

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