A Decolonial Reading of the Post–Islamization Condition: From the Religious Reform Movement to the Phenomenon of Market Islam

Abstract

This paper offers a critical decolonial reading of the political and cultural transformations of political Islam in the post-Islamization era. It examines the phenomenon of what sociologist of religion Patrick Haenni calls "market Islam". The author traces the epistemological implications of this critique for social science and humanities methodology, demonstrating that this critique reconceptualizes the relationship between Islamic ethics and modern and postmodern ethics (which are strongly linked to "management" values). This relationship involves a unique epistemological position, highlighted by Brayan Turner in his critique of Max Weber's stance on Islamic ethics and the religious reform movement initiated by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh. This stance acknowledges the paramount importance of understanding value, practice, and discourse transformations through understanding the relationship between these transformations and the colonial hegemony imposed by the modern value system. It also necessitates a revision of the implicit notion of of conformity or non-conflict between Islamic and modern ethics, while opposing the orientalist stance that projects its Eurocentric normative judgments to argue the backwardness of Islamic ethics. The paper also investigates the methodological difficulties facing the humanities in the Arab world in overcoming Eurocentric positions. Moreover, it highlights the philosophical challenge related to proposing an Islamic model of ethics in an era characterized by liquidity (a condition described by postmodernism), individualism, and self-realization outside all forms of subjectivation that create rigid boundaries.