But it could also rise from their understanding and perception of many Muslim countries around the world that still live in scarcity, poverty, and unemployment.
Those questions could rise from their lack of knowledge about dogma, history, and sociology of Muslims. Because, in my mind, during their trip in Indonesia, they must have seen many actualization of modernity in the largest Muslim country in the world, from democracy, freedom of press, human rights, gender equality, capitalist economic system, sky scrapers, massive malls, et cetera. I don’t know exactly why did questions about Islam, modernity, work ethics and economic and business growth rise back. Still related to that matter, they also asked a question whether Islam and Indonesian Muslims were adaptive and supportive to economic and business growth in the globalization era. On that context, I was taken by surprise when around 15 professors majoring economic and business from Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA, in an exclusive discussion on last March in Jakarta, questioned about the relationship between Islam and modernity. But, when development spin continued rapidly, discussion and debates about them receded and even almost vanished from academic and public sphere. The beginning relationship between Islam and modernity is a classic discourse. Warm controversy between these two entities reached its peak on 1970’s. Indonesia was one of the implicated countries in the middle of economic, social and culture modernization process.