Review: E. HUSAIN, The House of Islam: A Global History. Bloomsbury Publishing, London 2018. 307 pages and 11 pages of index. ISBN: 9781408872277 (original) (raw)
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Canadian Journal of History, 2013
health sciences, history THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW utpjournals.press/chr Offering a comprehensive analysis on the events that have shaped Canada, CHR publishes articles that examine Canadian history from both a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective.
Part III. Europe and the Muslim World in the Contemporary Period
A History, 2012
The notion of "Europe" clearly existed in the eighteenth century. The term designated a cultural space and a political system, a balance of powers. Following on the terrible cycle of religious wars that ended with the Thirty Years' War, the European crisis of conscience restored the idea of a cultural unity transcending the cleavages among states, each with a single and official religion. The publishing industry, supplanting handwritten letters, created a space for books and newspapers: this was the European space proper, though it expanded to North and South America and to Europe's African and Asian trading posts. The printed word was closely associated with all things European, while the rest of the world was still the realm of the handwritten. The growth of literacy was a tangible reality, though it still affected only fractions of variable size of the populations concerned. Only Japan, having retreated to a voluntary isolation, had literacy rates comparable to those of Europe. Russia, despite questions about its true nature, was already part of Europe, because it had entered the world of the printed word. Its literacy rate was lower than in other places, however, and it was the first to come up with the innovation of remedial instruction. The printed word had been the driving force of European exceptionalism since the late fifteenth century. Behind the appearance of a motionless history, a vast store of knowledge and technologies came to be constituted, giving rise to new modes of organization. The first beneficiary was the European state, whose chief activity was to wage war, which required not only new weapons, new disciplines, and new expertise but also new modes of financing and taxation, that is, new modes of social organization over the medium term. Even in the early eighteenth century, the three great Muslim empires, the Ottoman, the Persian, and the Mogul of India, still seemed to be acting as a counterweight to the European powers and to be keeping them within their borders, as in the previous two centuries. The European discourse on Asian Brought to you by | University of Michigan Authenticated Download Date | 9/8/15 6:19 PM 260 • Chapter 11 despotism was merely a translation of the deterrence effect of the great Muslim powers, and it exaggerated the organizational capacities and wealth of those powers. These gunpowder empires did not allow themselves to be outpaced during the great armaments revolution of the sixteenth century, and, though the Indian Ocean became a new space for exchanges and conflict, the Europeans were able to establish themselves there only on islands or in continental trading posts. From the Gulf of Bengal to the Mediterranean, the firearms were of the same nature as those in Europe (muskets and cannons) and were manufactured under the same system of small-scale production. And yet, even before the true beginning of the industrial revolution, a power shift occurred, in seamanship in the first place, the sector where European technology and science were most advanced. That sector benefited from investments both by the state and by the commercial middle class. For the first time, the outlines of a true research and development strategy existed, with basic and theoretical science becoming a source for practical applications. The impetus came from ever more active transatlantic commerce and long-distance journeys to the Indian Ocean and already to the Pacific. The same was true for overland military arts: the eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of "smart weapons" and the first engineers, even as physical training found its fullest expression in Prussian discipline. By the mid-eighteenth century, the military and maritime branches of European societies, without undergoing any major technological changes-which did not have an impact until after 1840-but thanks to a continuous series of modifications and improvements and the establishment of new disciplinary practices, far outshone the armed forces in other societies. The most glaring example was the Indian subcontinent, where, following the collapse from within of the sultanate of Delhi, the successor states appealed to European mercenaries to serve as officers in their armies, while the rival French and English companies in the Indies raised native armies. It all played out during the Seven Years' War: on June 23, 1756, an army of three thousand men, two-thirds of them sepoys (indigenous soldiers), defeated an army of several tens of thousands belonging to the Nawab of Bengal. That episode in the Franco-English struggle, meant to guarantee security and freedom of action for the British trading post of Calcutta, was the beginning of territorial conquest. By 1764, the East India Company controlled Bengal as a whole, perhaps 40 million inhabitants, that is, four times the total population of Great Britain. Within a few years, it would seize the entire subcontinent. At the other end of the continental Islamic world, the Ottoman Empire, the traditional rear ally of France, launched a catastrophic war against Russia in 1768, to prevent the first partitioning of Poland. The defense line was breached, and a Russian fleet from the Baltic entered the Mediterranean and destroyed the Ottoman Mediterranean fleet near Chios on July 6, 1770. Finally, Russian troops occupied the Ottomans' Muslim vassal state, the Tatar khanate of Crimea. The Russians' financial difficulties and Pugachev's rebellion saved
The Rise of Modern Europe and the Beginning of Modern Studies on Islam
2022
The study of Islam in Europe has changed considerably since the last decades of the twentieth century, on the one hand, because the study of Islam gained popularity and European scholars have broadened this academic domain, and, on the other hand, because European Muslims have now also engaged in an intensive study of Islam to know its foundations as well as of adopting these tenets in their every-day lives in European societies. The European scholars of Islam and the Muslim world received a wake-up call with the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1979. He argued that the academic objectivity claimed by these scholars was false since many were infatuated with preconceived notions of Orientalism about their objects of study. This image was perpetuated by the colonial supremacy of European countries in the Muslim world, and was reinforced by scholars in their academic work, Said claimed. Although Said’s accusations were too broad and not always sufficiently substantiated, they did hit a nerve in the European academic world. This self-reflection, in turn, sometimes swung too far the other way with academics blaming European colonial domination for all kinds of shortcomings in the Muslim world. In addition, the arrival of Muslims in the West brought a new challenge to the European study of Islam. Most conclusively, the Europeanization of Islam had always only seemed to weigh upon the Islamization of Europe.
David Motadel (ed): Islam and the European Empires.pdf
A substantial amount of Muslim writings (as well as Western postcolonial and third-world literature) on the modern history of the so-called Islamic world make a living emphasizing the supposedly crusader-like nature of European colonial rule between the seventeenth and mid-twentieth centuries. While it is certainly true that colonialists were primarily motivated by strategic interests and economic exploitation rather than by altruism and charity, their behaviour in their colonies was anything but inevitably hostile. Pragmatism and accommodation reigned in many places, more often than not combined with condescension and paternalism, which did not, however, preclude periods of suppression and warfare. Islam and the European Empires,
Against All Odds: How to Re-Inscribe Islam into European History
European History Yearbook, 2017
The central place that Muslims and Islam are accorded in the European media and public debates today contrasts with their near-complete absence in parts of European historiography until recently. While right-wing demagogues campaign against refugees, Muslims and the supposed Islamization of Europe, their argument that Islam does not belong to Europe is, at least partially, supported by the rather patchy awareness of a continuous and multi-facetted Islamic history in European societies and, horrible dictu, even in some history departments. Recent research challenges this neglect, tries to overcome the "Othering" of Islam, and demands a new conceptualization of European history that leaves behind the Europe/Islam binary. As the construction of a European identity and a European space is based on "Othering"-a definition of what is not European-, the conscious and visible integration of Muslims into European history poses a systematic challenge to narratives of Europeanization. The article draws attention to the difficulties that spring from this challenge and discusses new approaches in scholarship that try to overcome them.
Epilogue: Islamization of Europe or Europanization of Islam?
Amsterdam University Press eBooks, 2014
What do thirteen centuries of Islam in Europe tell us? Does the story of this interaction consist of a series of episodes and events that we have conveniently thrown together under the title 'Islam in Europe'? Or is it justified to speak of a single experience or narrative that continues through the centuries? And if so, how can we characterize this experience? We have seen in the previous chapters that the European interaction with physical as well as virtual Islam has been very diverse. Muslims have been enemies and allies, foreigners and compatriots, Us and Them. Their civilization has been feared as aggressive and expansionist, but also praised for its religious tolerance and its culture that has produced great and innovative artists, scientists and intellectuals to which Europe is indebted. On the other hand, Europe has consistently upheld the picture of the Muslim Other that embodied everything that the European was not. Still, some patterns do emerge, and here the distinction between physical and virtual Islam is helpful.
A Brief History of Islam in Europe
Amsterdam University Press eBooks, 2014
This book is the result of six years teaching my BA class entitled 'The history of Islam in the West' at Leiden University. I want to thank the students for their active participation and comments, which prompted me every year further to refine my arguments, dig deeper into Europe's rich history with Islam, and to become more critical about contemporary references to 'Islam.' Annefieke Bonants was one of the first students who took that class, and she later became my assistant to do the research for this book. Her meticulous and painstaking work, and not least the friendly patience with which she reacted to the flurry of ideas and orders I hurled at her were indispensable to the finishing of the writing of this book. Anniek Meinders, the publisher of the newly established Leiden University Press, was courageous enough to take on this project that did not fit neatly into an academic category. Finally thanks to the advisory board of Leiden University Press and the three peer reviewers who spent their precious time reading the manuscript and dispensing helpful comments: Prof. M. Schrovers of the History department at Leiden University, Prof. J. Nielsen of the Theology Faculty at the University of Copenhagen, and a third reviewer who preferred to remain anonymous. The Hague, May 2014 * While the etymology of Moors is 'dark people', the name Saracene has been given different origins, ranging from the Arabic 'sharqiyin' ('Easterner') to the Greek 'skene' ('tent dweller') or the Greek 'sara kene', meaning 'empty Sarah', referring to Abraham's wife Sarah who gave birth to Isaac, the founding father of the Israelites, and who was therefore not related-'empty'-to Ishmael, who was fathered by Abraham with his slave woman Hagar, and who is claimed by the Arabs as their founding father. * In the Islamic empire under the Abbasids, on the other hand, it was not uncommon for courts to organize theological debates between representatives of various religions (obviously with the aim of proving the superiority of Islam): see, e.g., Munʾim A. Sirry, 'Early Muslim-Christian dialogue: a closer look at major themes of the theological encounter,'
Islam in Europe : perceptions, misperceptions and coming to terms
1997
Ankara : The Department of International Relations of Bilkent University, 1997.Includes bibliographical references leaves 62-63.The end of the Cold W ar has led to a much larger focus on ethnic and religious differences rather than ideological ones. This new era of international politics has indeed seen a proliferation of clashes between different ethnic and religious groups. It is said that the West is looking for a new enemy and that the most immediate of these is Islam. Islamic fundamentalism and the aggression associated with it is seen as a threat by many in the West. Events related to Islamic fundamentalism are receiving enormous media coverage in the Westem press. The reaction of most Westem countries to such events and Islam in general is negative. The perception of the West in many Muslim countries is also negative. Problems due to modemisation are blamed on the West who is perceived to be trying to undermine Islamic culture and civilisation. Both spheres in fact are having...