Islam, Cultural Hybridity and Cosmopolitanism: New Muslim Intellectuals on Globalization

Abstract

This essay explores those Muslim discourses on the phenomenon of globalization which distinguish themselves by not succumbing to the antagonism guiding Huntington's 'clash of civilization' thesis (1996) or Benjamin Barber's account of 'Jihad vs. McWorld' (1995), either through the 'blind imitation'(taqlid) characterising the unquestioned preservation of the classical Islamic heritage by traditionalist Muslims or through the atavistic return to the supposed pristine Islam of the 'Pious Ancestors' (salaf) of revivalist (fundamentalist) respondents. Combining an intimate familiarity with the heritage of Muslim civilization with a solid knowledge of recent achievements of the Western academe in the human sciences, the 'new Muslim intellectuals' disseminating these alternative discourses exhibit a cultural hybridity which enables them to develop a cosmopolitan attitude and competence necessary to transform binary positions into a new synthesis. To illustrate that this new Muslim intellectualism is itself a global phenomenon, the present essay traces these qualities in the work of scholars and thinkers from various parts of the Muslim world, with particular focus on Indonesia.