Islamic Variety in the Civilizational Process

This paper does not focus on a comprehensive general plan for the new civilizational path of Muslims (the positive approach), nor does it focus on delineating differences and demarcations of the Islamic civilization from the secular civilizational model in today’s West (the negative approach). It focuses, instead, on “unity and plurality” as the main issue in the philosophy of Islam, on the one hand, and the central challenge of the modern civilization, on the other. A focus on this common issue—that is, the necessity of unity within the plural civilization and their accommodation into modernity and tradition—can be a starting point in an account of the Islamic civilizational model in the contemporary period. My civilizational proposal in this paper is to distinguish divine pluralities from ordinary and mundane pluralities. In this outlook, the civilizational tawḥīd (or monotheism) is not a negation of all kinds of pluralities; rather it is an accumulation of divine and human pluralities, without which general ways will not be there, and without divine general ways, no civilizational path will be there in the Muslim community.