Introduction: The Formation and Transformations of the Islamic Ecumene (original) (raw)

The particular complexity of the historical study of Islam is nowadays a given for scholars in the broader field. This acknowledgement contrasts sharply with crass generalizations in public and media discourse on Islam, not only in the West. The project underlying this volume, belonging to the Wiley Blackwell History of Religions series, explores the diverse ways through which the undeniably religious dimension that is at the core of Islamic traditions (or simply Islam) innervates a distinctive type of 'civilizing process' in history. This process crystallized in institutional forms at a variety of levels: broadly social, specifically religious, legal, political, cultural, and, transversally, civic. No doubt the scholarly interest in studying this expansive civilizing process has acquired a new boost due to late 20th-century developments associated with what has been roughly called a "re-Islamization process" occurring in the context of the most recent wave of globalization, whose beginnings should be traced back to the 1970s. Debates on globalization did not always take a historical turn, but when they did, the question of earlier globalizing waves-including premodern oneswas bound to be posed, and the exceptional success of the premodern Islamic expansion stood out as a prime example. Correspondingly, the applicability of modern concepts to the macro-civilizational formation created by this process could be considered.

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