Can Islam and Modernity be Reconciled? (Commentaries) (Report‪)‬

The birth of modernity in northwest Europe is generally dated to the middle of the eighteenth century, although sometimes it is considered to have begun in the seventeenth century with the publication of Rene Descartes's Discourse on the Method in 1637. However, the advent of modernity was not as abrupt as the above may indicate. Rather, it was the outcome of a long process beginning as early as the Renaissance. Nevertheless, intellectual movements of the late seventeenth and early to mid eighteenth centuries known as the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason were the main wellspring of modernity (1) Modernity is an equivocal term, and is often confused or conflated with modernism, or even modernization. In the context of this paper, however "modernity" refers to a philosophical approach to certainty that relies on reason rather than revelation and the legal, political and ethical values emanating from it and the socio-political and economic systems build upon them.