ENGLISH-INTRODUCTION TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF ISLAM (A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ORIENTALIST APPROACH AND WESTERN SUPREMACY)

Abstract

Orientalism is an idea originated in the west to define east and its forms of arts. It gained its strength from the Industrial west, which provided for necessary tangible and intangible investment necessary in furtherance of the idea from defining Europeans for not only east but also all non-Europeans. The paper elaborates the nature of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI1) in the light of orientalism and explains how the west used it to create western supremacy. The paper also considers different aspects of the EI1 to establish why and how it was an essential book for the western scholarship tilted towards Islam and how and why it was painted with objective and biased approach.