Muslim Intellectuals, Institutions and the Post-Colonial Predicament

Abstract

queathed by the British and some nationalist writers. The categories used to define them have been questioned but not changed. There is still talk of a 'Muslim mind', a 'Muslim outlook', and an inclination to construct a 'Muslim identity' around Islam. A sense of Otherness is conveyed in such images. Muslims are made to appear different in the print media, in some literary works, and in the world of cinema. In this respect, there is often a striking convergence be tween the secular and the communal perspectives. It is also assumed that orthodoxy represents true Islam and the interests of its adherents; and that liberal and modernist cur rents are secondary or peripheral to the more dominant separatist, communal and neo-fundamentalist paradigms. It is time to under line, along with the dominant orthodox paradigms, the heterodox trends which contest the definition of Muslim identity in purely religious terms; and to refute the popular notion that Islamic values and symbols provide a key to the understanding of the 'Muslim world view'