Islamic Modernities in World Society: The Rise, Spread, and Fragmentation of a Hegemonic Idea
By (Author) Dietrich Jung
Edinburgh University Press
Edinburgh University Press
8th December 2025
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
297.0904
Paperback
336
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
How is one 'authentically' modern Substantively drawing on contemporary social theory, this book investigates the multiplicity of answers that Muslims have given to this question since the end of the nineteenth century. Through six historical and thematic case studies, the chapters examine the historical evolution of multiple modernities within Islam. The book argues that we can observe the rise and spread of a relatively hegemonic idea according to which a relation to Islamic traditions bestows projects of Muslim modernities with cultural authenticity. At the same time, the book provides an interpretation of this specifically Islamic discourse of modernity as an inherent part of global modernity in conceptual terms understood as the emergence of world society.
Dietrich Jung is Professor and Head of the Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies, University of Southern Denmark. He holds a MA in Political Science and Islamic Studies, as well as a Ph.D. from University of Hamburg, Germany. He was a fellow at the University of Victoria, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, the International Islamic University Malaysia, the National University of Singapore, the University of Leipzig and the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich. His most recent books are Muslim History and Social Theory: A Global Sociology of Modernity, Palgrave (2017), Muslim Subjectivities in Global Modernity. Islamic Traditions and the Construction of Modern Muslim Identities, edited with Kirstine Sinclair, Brill (2020) and Der Islam in der Globalen Moderne. Soziologische Theorie und die Vielfalt islamischer Modernitten, Springer (2021).