Since the time of the Crusades, Europeans have viewed Muslim culture and religion through the unique distorting lens of Orientalism, coloring all aspects of their perception and generating a curious blend of fascination and distrust. Maxime Rodinson presents the classic account of this relationship, in a history that is balanced and concise yet full of insight.
For centuries the Islamic world has, by turns, been both reviled and admired in the West. Since the time of the Crusades, Europeans have viewed Muslim culture and religion through the unique distorting lens of Orientalism, colouring all aspects of their perception and generating a curious blend of fascination and distrust. Historian, sociologist and Middle East specialist Maxime Rodinson presents an account of this relationship, in a history that is balanced and concise yet insightful.
In response to the events of 9/11, the Bush administration launched a "war on terror" ushering in an era of anti-Muslim racism, or Islamophobia. However, 9/11 alone did not create Islamophobia. This book examines the current backlash within the context of Islamophobia's origins, in the historic relationship between East and West. Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of media studies and Middle East studies at Rutgers University and the author of Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization and the UPS Strike. Kumar has contributed to numerous outlets including the BBC, USA Today, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment is a collection of essays which deal with the influence of Ibn Tufayl, a 12th-century Arab philosopher from Spain, on major European thinkers. His philosophical novel, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, could be considered one of the most important books that heralded the Scientific Revolution. Its thoughts are found in different variations and to different degrees in the books of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Kant. But if Ibn Tufayl's fundamental values, such as equality, freedom and toleration, which the thinkers of the European Enlightenment had adopted as theirs, paved the way to the French Revolution, they certainly marked the end of the age of reason in southern Spain and the rest of the Islamic world. Ibn Tufayl's philosophy was appropriated, subverted, or reinvented for many centuries. But the memory of the man who wrote such an influential book was buried in the dust of history. The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment reexamines Ibn Tufayl's momentous book and its continued influence over contemporary philosophy. This intriguing book will appeal to those interested in comparative literature and religion.
A critical analysis of the idea of Europe and the limits and possibilities of a European identity in the broader perspective of history. This book argues that the crucial issue is the articulation of a new identity that is based on post-national citizenship rather than ambivalent notions of unity.
An excellent exploration of Islam in Western Europe has developed from early immigration and settlement to the point where a native generation is developing ways of being European and Muslim. England is given special attention as a case study, but as the discussion moves into the present and the future, reference is made to all of western Europe. Factors in this process not only arise from the Muslim communities themselves but also from the inherited structures of European society and state. Although the issues are complex and tense, the author is generally optimistic about the outcome.
Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe considers the various attitudes of European religious and secular writers towards Islam during the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. Examining works from England, France, Italy, the Holy Lands, and Spain, the essays in this volume explore the reactions of Westerners to the culture and religion of Islam. Many of the works studied reveal the hostility toward Islam of Europeans and the creation of negative stereotypes of Muslims by Western writers. These essays also reveal attempts at accommodation and understanding that stand in contrast to the prevailing hostility that existed then and, in some ways, exists still today.
Suspicions about the integration of Islam into European cultures have been steadily on the rise, and dramatically so since 9/11. One reason lies in the visibility of anti-Western Islamic discourses of salafi origin, which have monopolized the debate on the "true" Islam, not only among Muslims but also in the eyes of the general population across Europe; these discourses combined with Islamophobic discourses reinforce the so-called incompatibility between the West and Islam. This book breaks away from this clash between Islam and the West, by arguing that European Islam is possible. It analyzes the contribution that European Islam has made to the formation of an innovative Islamic theology that is deeply ethicist and modern, and it clarifies how this constructed European Islamic theology is able to contribute to the various debates that are related to secular-liberal democracies of Western Europe. Part I introduces four major projects that defend the idea of European Islam from different disciplines and perspectives: politics, political theology, jurisprudence and philosophy. Part II uses the frameworks from three major philosophers and scholars to approach the idea of European Islam in the context of secular-liberal societies: British scholar George Hourani, Moroccan philosopher Taha Abderrahmane and the American philosopher John Rawls. The book shows that the ongoing efforts of European Muslim thinkers to revisit the concept of citizenship and political community can be seen as a new kind of political theology, in opposition to radical forms of Islamic thinking in some Muslim-majority countries. Opening a new path for examining Islamic thought "in and of" Europe, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Islam in the West and Political Theology.
There has been an explosion of research into the experiences of British Muslims, but what has been conspicuous by its absence is a proper historical treatment of the phenomenon. This book aims to address this issue.
