AVANT-GARDE VIEWS OF HUSEIN DOZO AND HIS DEBATES WITH CONVENTIONAL ULAMAH

Abstract

The relationship between tradition and modernism is the most important question that Muslim scholars ever faced. Muslim modernism should be understood as a response to the encounter of the lethargic Dar ul-Islam (World of Islam) with the powerful Western world. Bosnian Muslims represent the special case in this regard. Intellectuals were polarized between those who wanted to freeze the present situation and modernists, who were clear that remaining introvert is conceptually untenable and, as such, a clear sign of intellectual inferiority. Husein Dozo is the most prominent representative of the Muslim modernism movement in the latter half of the 20th century. He is a distant echo of the modernistic currents in the Muslim world. He intensely fought against obsolete approach to Islam, according to him, the main cause of the poor situation of Muslims. He made efforts to modernize Muslim institutions and to give them new form, adequate to the present. The conservative Ulamah was deaf to these and ther reform-minded attitudes, being strongly against his opinions, claiming they destroy the authentic pureness of Islam. This work is an attempt to reconstruct the main themes and characters of this debate.