IJIA 10 (1) pp. 269–280 Intellect Limited 2021 International Journal of Islamic Architecture Volume 10 Number 1 www.intellectbooks.com 269 This invitation to write for IJIA arrives at a moment of significant uncertainty, not just around our climate-defined planet’s future, our political and economic futures, but also more immediately around the very viabilities of our daily lives. Coronavirus is reshaping the very fabric of global societies in a way that is expected to have long-lasting effects. But then again, the fact that we have all but forgotten the so-called ‘Spanish Flu’ of 1918, that in one year single- handedly killed more people than the devastation of World War I did, while popular films on the War are still being made, speaks to the cultural amnesia that accompanies traumatic events such as pandemics. When a problem is so gargantuan and so insurmountable – an existential risk, as some say – then it seems to serve us best to simply push it out of consciousness. What can we do about it anyway? Eurocentrism, our response, which is to say both in the west and the non- west, to the deeply embedded global malaise that privilege must necessarily flow to the west, may be a cultural pandemic of the same kind. It is a kind of collective, shared amnesia. What can we really do about it anyway? Beyond setting up a few courses in diversity and ‘global’ topics, it is probably unrealis- tic to try to think about it more broadly, more systemic-ly. Meanwhile, right- wing nationalism of many a colour and hue are regaining traction across the world at a level not seen since the end of World War II, income inequality has reached absurd levels, and the president of the United States feels free to assassinate Iranian leaders at will, and when US Customs agents think noth- ing of dismantling a reliquary musical instrument as valuable as a Stradivarius in search of who knows what – drugs, alcohol, a stowaway devil? At this time, in these circumstances, the editors ask for a piece that interrogates the term ‘Islamic architecture’. They are interested, the invitation letter continues, in © 2021 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/ijia_00045_1 VIKRAMĀDITYA PRAKĀSH University of Washington The ‘Islamic-Modern’ Project in this Age of Uncertainty Keywords global history transversality modernism ‘Islamic’ architecture Paul Klee Louis Kahn