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 Benedict
Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism has enabled me to understand
the complexity of the interaction between nationalism and religion
in the modern world. In my search to understand the position
of Christianity and Islam in modern industrial societies, I try to
combine the philosophical/theological dimensions of religion with
the social and political. In modern Islamic intellectual
history, it is quite impossible to understand the position of
Islam without having a clear understanding of such terms as
nationalism, secularism, industrialization and modernity.
Modern Islamic ideas and forces have been the product of not just
the past tradition, but the intellectual, social, political, and
economic transformations of the modern world as well. Once
we understand these important facts, we will be able to conduct
interreligious dialogue on the basis of both theology and modern
facts.
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