What is modernity?

There is a theory supported by many thinkers of our time — including prominent writer Karen Armstrong — which explains problems that Muslims seem to encounter around the world. In simple terms, the theory states that there is nothing wrong with Islam itself, it is the Muslims, who cannot respond to modernity, are causing many of the problems. In order to examine this proposition, we need to understand what modernity is.

Modern means 'now'. Therefore modernity is a worldview focusing on the 'now', on the latest, on the newest. The opposite of modern, traditional, refers to 'handed down' things as its starting point and modifies them slowly even as it tries to be faithful to the inherited ideas and customs. A modern worldview implicitly assumes the superiority of the latest and newest as liberating and expansive and almost invariably scorns the old-fashioned as constrictive and oppressive.

The main emphasis of modernity in the personal domain is individualism; in the intellectual and religious domain rationalism while in the social and political domain it is democracy. The visible consequences of these can be found in the life-style and attitudes of contemporary people particularly in the Western world. Life-style includes dressing, social interactions, use of appliances for comfort, while attitudes include habits of thinking that determine behaviours.

The virtues and failures of modernity are beginning to come into focus for social scientists, philosophers and theologians in the current post-modern era. We are at a time when sociologists such as Eisenstadt are talking about "multiple modernities" where different cultural and life-style settings can also fulfil the tenets of modernity.

Advances in medicine, science, transportation, telecommunications and political relationships are blended with serious individual, social, ecological and religious problems such as depression, alienation, child and elderly care, crises of religious beliefs, overt paganisation of society^[20] and habitual problems resulting in smoking, drinking and obesity. What has been liberating for some has been or is seen as a tragedy for the other.

[20] According to 2001 Australian census, pagan religions scored the fasted growth rate out of all religions.