Moving beyond the often-dichotomous framing of Islam as inherently at odds with Western secular modernity, Jung suggests a compelling thesis: that modernity is a global, polycentric process, and that Islamic societies are not outliers but integral contributors to the global modern condition. Dietrich Jung’s Islam in Global Modernity: Sociological Theory and the Diversity of Islamic Modernities presents an intellectual attempt to rethink the entangled relationship between Islam and modernity from a sociological perspective. With exceptional depth in classical and contemporary theory, and through careful engagement with Islamic history, Jung constructs a metatheoretical framework, an overarching analytical approach that synthesises and critically engages multiple theoretical traditions to examine the intricate relationship between Islam and global modernity. Through this framework, he effectively repositions Islamic societies as integral actors within the plural and interconnected trajectories of modernity, rather than as peripheral or oppositional to it.
Divided into an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion, the book advances a compelling argument that modernity, while globally dispersed, retains structural unity alongside cultural variation. The introduction clearly articulates the book’s central research question: the longstanding presumption in both Western scholarship and Islamic studies of a binary or inherent tension between Islam and modernity. Jung challenges this presumption by advocating for a plural understanding of both “modernity” and “Islam” and situates his contribution as a corrective to Eurocentric and postcolonial approaches that have either marginalized or overgeneralized Muslim experiences.
