84 Islam and Modernity
and distinct from the conservative and communitarian Islam of the older gen-
erations, which leans towards traditional ethnic orientations. These modern ori-
entations do not represent a ‘clash of civilisations’ with the West, but constitute
part of the ideological diversity of the West (Roy 2004: 100–200).
Conclusion
The focus of this chapter has been on the modes and mutations of the articu-
lation of Islam as belief, institutions and communities in political processes in
Middle Eastern society. The recurring theme is that of the transformations
of modernity and in particular the emergence of political modernity. We have
seen the various modes in which Islam enters this modernity, mostly as part of
it rather than as a ‘traditional’ reaction. A regular theme is the ‘materiality’ of
religion, not in the common sense of ‘material explanations’ of belief and prac-
tice, but in the sense that these are embedded in social relations and institutions,
intimately involved in power, property and law.
One crucial aspect of modernity is the process of secularisation. We have dis-
tinguished between ‘secularisation’ in the sense of social processes, and ‘secular-
ism’ as an ideology favouring the separation of religion from politics and public
life. The social processes are those of the differentiation of social institutions
and functions from religious institutions and authorities. A prominent example
in both Christianity and Islam is the differentiation of law and its institutions
from the religious sphere. Even when elements of the sharia were incorporated
in modern legal systems, this has occurred within the positive codifi ed law of
the modern state, torn out of its old anchor in madrasas, books of fi qh, Qadi
courts and Mufti authority. The exceptions to this pattern, in Saudi Arabia, and
partly in Iran, appear as tense anomalies. Law becomes subject to state legisla-
tion rather than the exegesis of religious jurists. In the fi eld of education, too, in
most of the countries of the region, religion becomes a specialised subject in an
otherwise secular curriculum. We saw how the political fi eld and its actors were
largely secularised in the course of the twentieth century. These processes are
highly pertinent to modern politics in the region. Much of the Islamic advocacy
consists in the demands for the injection of greater religious content into those
spheres of public life, as well as the moralisation of public space. On the other
side, exemplifi ed by Islamic Iran, the attempt to impose religious strictures on
a secularised society is strongly resisted. In both cases the processes of secu-
larisation are fi rmly embedded in the fabric of modern society, and attempts at
Islamisation are superimposed as a surface spray over this fabric.
Finally, the guiding principle of the discussion is that Middle Eastern socie-
ties do not constitute a kind of Islamic exceptionalism to which the concepts and
arguments of the social sciences do not apply. We have shown throughout that
there are many parallels between European Christianity and Middle Eastern