Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity

Tariq Ramadan attempts to demonstrate that Muslims can respond to the challenges of modernity without betraying their identity. They can approach the modern epoch by adopting a specific social, political, and economic model that is linked to ethical values and spirituality. Rather than a modernism that tends to impose Westernization, it is a modernity that admits to the pluralism of civilizations, religions, and cultures. Tariq Ramadan is a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford and a visiting professor in Identity and Citizenship at Erasmus University. He was named by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred innovators of the twenty-first century.