Conclusion: World Society and the Islamic Discourse of Modernity

Abstract

The conclusion starts with a brief summary of the theoretical argument of the book on the connection between Muslim history and global modernity. The book presents something like a first draft of a sociology of global modernity. The conclusion then discusses this preliminary approach to a global sociology of modernity with respect to an understanding of world society as a horizon of global comparison and with reference to the historiographic debate about the concept of global history. Finally, the chapter gives a tentative answer to the question of how the specific discourse of an Islamic modernity has assumed the status of a relative hegemony in contemporary Muslim thought.