Islams and Modernities

In the dominant imagination of the West, the image of Islam, nourished by stereotypes from medieval orientalism, has replaced communism, which was once perceived as a threat to Western civilization. The concept of "Islam", which is shaped around sectarian conflicts, prayer images, scenes of underdevelopment and deep irrationalism in Western representations, radically alienates a religion that has a history of hundreds of years and has taken very different forms in very different societies, by turning it into a monolithic "culture". This marginalization invites racism at one end, and cultural relativism that fetishizes difference at the other end. We see that there is a close relationship between the West's other and the "authentic Islam" of the Islamists, and that they constantly feed each other. This book, with its title alone, represents an effort to dismantle, bring back to history and contextualize the category of "Islam", which is the work of complicity between these three seemingly adversaries - xenophobia, exoticism, Islamism.

Islams and Modernities also reveal, one by one, the Western romantic notions underlying the "authenticity" claims of fundamentalists who claim to have identified the "essence" of Islam and call for a return to this essence. Aziz al-Azmeh, who pronounces "Islams" against the dark image of Islam that television news, "Middle East experts" and those whose economies collapse when they cannot find an enemy to point their weapons at, impress in our minds every day, is a daring voice against the orientalist and culturalist discourse of the West and the fundamentalist discourse of Islamists. .



Number of Pages: 278

Year of Printing: 2003


Language: Turkish
Publisher: Iletisim Publishing

Number of Pages: 278

First Printing Year: 2003

Language Turkish