Culture of Ambiguity

"Islamic cultures seem to be ideal examples of cultures dominated entirely by religious norms. But in this sense the modern understanding of Islam differs markedly from that of the classical period (i.e., the premodern until well into the nineteenth century). Whereas modern fundamentalist movements aim at the greatest possible legitimization of religious norms throughout the entire society and see this as being the most Islamic structure (and are confirmed in this view by the western public opinion of Islam), a glimpse at premodern Islamic cultural forms offer a much more complex picture. Already the extraction of norms from the authoritative texts reveals itself to be an exacting process of disambiguation that included several subjective processes and rational procedures. The fact that these procedures led to a juxtaposition of competing norms was widely accepted--see the much quoted prophet's hadith "Difference of opinion is a mercy for my community." This kind of tolerance of ambiguity manifests itself not only in Islamic law but also in many other spheres of Islamic scholarship (for example, in Qur'an exegesis and in linguistics), in several literary genres, and also in the men