264 Islam and Modernity
from some of the values that Taylor recalls in his discussion of identity. Dealing
with these different contexts, Franz Fanon helps us navigate the treacherous
waters of identity construction in the colonies. Fanon based his own understand-
ing of the self on the grounds of the Enlightenment tradition, but suggested
some signifi cant ways of thinking about identity in the light of colonialism and
powerlessness. Fanon referred to the double critique in play in the construc-
tion of the identity of the colonised; the fi rst directed at traditional society, and
the second at the coloniser (Bhabha 1986). Fanon (1986: 16) pointed to the
extremely diffi cult project that such an identity construction faced:
The educated Negro, slave of the spontaneous and cosmic Negro myth, feels
at a given stage that his race no longer understands him. Or that he no longer
understands it. Then he congratulates himself on this, and enlarging the differ-
ence, the incomprehension, the disharmony, he fi nds in them the meaning of his
real humanity, or more rarely he wants to belong to his people.Identities in the colonies had to be fashioned out of the critique of both self and
other.^1 Fanon’s insights on identity help us appreciate the identity constructions
of Muslims on the periphery, in contexts of political domination and depriva-
tion. Taylor and Fanon, then, provide a useful foundation for the modern loca-
tion of identity construction, its dialogical production and its engagement in
multiple critiques.
Even though Muslim identities have become prominent since 1967, we have
to begin with the origins of the modern state in various Muslim societies in the
second half of the nineteenth century. Voll provides a useful typology on which
to map the interaction between Muslim and modernity, and the distinctive
‘styles of action’ that were generated. With some variation, this pattern has been
used by many other scholars. In his extensive review of Islamic history, Voll
(1982a: 29–30) identifi ed four ‘styles of action’ in Muslim society: adaptation-
ists, conservationists, fundamentalists and individualists. Voll does not restrict
these styles to the modern period, but applies them to all of Islamic history. In
this chapter, I will focus on their reinvention in the context of the nineteenth
century, when Muslim territories came under the direct control of European
powers. Voll’s adaptationists will be called reformists in this paper, and funda-
mentalists will be called Islamists. Together with traditionalists, they have set the
framework for identities in the modern world.
The three styles of action provide the patterns and the choices on which iden-
tities have been constructed in various sites. They were already clearly articu-
lated before the 1960s and 1970s, when the turn to identities on a global scale
became evident. In this regard, the post-1967 period provided an opportunity
to create the self and the other out of the many possibilities presented by these
early modern styles. Rather than examining reformists, Islamists and tradition-
alists as distinct movements or social groups, I want to suggest that we see their