Reformists’ family discourse responded to novel social conditions, not nostalgia.

Evidence

So if Muhammad Abduh regards the family as the basic unit of society, it is not because he invokes a nostalgic past but because something new is now emerging in the changing social structure. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1113

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does this same logic apply to the ‘status of women’ framings later associated with Islamic modernism — i.e. are piety movements also responding to new structures rather than invoking the past?