modernity

On Modernism And Modernity

Modernity is as a matter of fact, by definition, in opposition to any spiritual tradition and especially to the Islamic tradition.

In modernism it was believed that materiality or phenomena was everything there is and that it is superiour to anything else. This philosophy of science is called positivism - it is a rejection of metaphysics, as it holds that the goal of knowledge is simply to describe the phenomena that we experience, which we can observe and measure, without perceiving a deeper meaning and nothing beyond that.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr defines modern as follows:

"When we use the term 'modern', we mean neither contemporary nor up-to-date nor successful in the conquest and domination of the natural world. Rather, for us 'modern' means that which is cut off from the transcendent, from the immutable principles [see metaphysics] which in reality govern all things and which are made known to man through revelation in its most universal sense. Modernism is thus contrasted with tradition (al-din); the latter implies all that which is of Divine Origin along with its manifestations and deployments on the human plane while the former by contrast implies all that is merely human and now ever more increasingly subhuman, and all that is divorced and cut off from the Divine Source."

From Reflections on Islam and Modern Life:

http://www.al-islam.org/al-serat/reflect-nasr.htm