Taming Time: The Possibility of History and Politics in Islam

Abstract

The emergence of genuine history and politics in Western thought required a solution for the problem of secular stability. This article traces the process of grappling with the ‘succession of particulars in time,’ of investing change with a principle in order to make sense of it. It argues that, while this process went hand in hand with the eviction of religion and the consolidation of the antagonism between the religious and the secular, such antagonism was softened in Islam because of the attenuation of messianism and dogmatism which allowed temporal and otherworldly categories to coexist. It argues further that Paleo-Islam provided the conditions for the possibility of ‘robust politics’ and ‘history itself’ without having recourse to the upheavals of enlightenment and modernity.