In light of the ongoing public debate that focuses on differences
between Islam and the West, this book suggests a change of perspective.
It departs from the observation that both western Orientalists and
Islamist activists have defined Islam similarly as an all-encompassing
religious, political and social system. In shifting from differences to
similarities, it leaves behind the increasingly circular debate about
the true nature of Islam in which the Muslim religion has been
represented either as intrinsically hostile to or as principally
compatible with modern culture. Instead, it associates the evolution of
a particularly essentialist image of Islam with a complex process of
cross-cutting (self)-interpretations of Muslim and Western societies
within an emerging global public sphere. Putting its focus on the life
and work of a number of paradigmatic individuals, the book investigates
the intellectual encounters and discursive interdependencies among
western and Muslim intellectuals. In a historical genealogy it
deconstructs the essentialist image of Islam in uncovering its
conceptual foundations in the modern transformation of European and
Muslim societies from the nineteenth century onwards. Thereby, the
changing infrastructure of the global public sphere has facilitated the
gradual popularization, trivialization, and dissemination of a
previously elitist discourse on Islam and modernity. In this way, the
idea of Islam as an all-encompassing system has been turned into
accepted knowledge in the Western and Muslim worlds alike.
