In world history perceived by the West, not only the Arab muslim but Persia, India, and even East Asia are completely left out or depreciated. It is because they believed that they led the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment through the rediscovery of Hellenism and Hebraism, and that they accomplished the development both in science and in industry. This became established as the logic of Orientalism.
And Islam, which was on the actual decline, did not bring forth a refutation in regards to this, precipitating itself in general after the 17<SUP>th</SUP> century. Their religion also degenerated into bureaucratic structures, so the liberal and independent thought based on reason was no longer made possible. People could no longer taste the spiritual achievement from the religion deprived of self-regulation. Without losing this opportunity, the West brought with them a secular and humanistic view of the world: ‘modernity.’ The Islamic world helplessly became the slave of this ‘modernity’.
The Islamic world groped for reformation by the mid 18th century. The Islamic movement of restoration refers to the exclusive fundamentalism, which calls for getting back to the original fundamentals. Secular modernism is comprised of the ones who cry out for following the West outspokenly by asserting that the West is right. Religion is to evolve in tandem with human communities. The problem, however, is that Muslims insist on Islamic absolutism. Mixed modernism shows a rather flexible stance; whereas Islam is right, the West is partly right as well. It cried out for the Islamic countries’ solidarity.
Based on reason and scientific technology, it also strived for political revitalization by introducing constitutionalism. However, it was not linked to the individualism. Religion and nationalism did not pair off. Moreover, it was devoid of the concept that could divide the world into two: secular realm and religious realm. Liberalism creating an air of Enlightenment movement did not develop all of a sudden. There existed neither the democratic revolution, the scientific revolution, nor the industrial revolution.
Orientalists concentrated on why the conditions of modernity could not develop in the Islamic society, whereas the modernization theoreticians concentrated on how to furnish the Islamic society with the conditions of modernity. Islamic modernization is not to be made possible by the orientalists’ diagnoses. What is needed here is the prescription written by the modernization theoreticians.