Islam, Society, and Economic Policy (The Distinguishedl Lecture)

“The contemporary Muslim world is still emerging from the long night of colonial hegemony: a period during which the key institutions of Muslim society were supplanted and substituted, the moral fibre of society was destroyed, and an ‘unrepresentative’ leadership was groomed to power, producing the most serious schism within Muslim society. The Muslim society of today i.l’ not yet a society on its own. It is still under the shadow (~f the Western system and, as such, it is doubtful how ‘representative’ of the Islamic ethos its current behaviour can be.” [Ahmad (1994), p. xiv, emphasis added).