Contradictions and Lots of Ambiguity: Two New Perspectives on Premodern (and Postclassical) Islamic Societies

Abstract

For a long time, the Western academic study of Islam could not escape making implicit comparisons between its own religions, culture, and “civilization” and that of Islam. One would think that the events of September 11, 2001, and the polarization that followed—including the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now in Syria—only aggravated that situation. But the opposite is true. Among the generation of scholars of Islam who matured in the West after 9/11 are some who reached a new level in a project that earlier scholars in their field had already demanded: trying to understand Islam on its own terms. The two books reviewed here are thus far the two most outstanding examples of that development. Neither of them ever uses the word “decline.” Unlike Ahmed, who only discusses academic voices, Bauer also deals with popular notions in politics and culture and hence is a much more polemical—and less well-structured and well-argued—engagement with Western views on Islam than Ahmed's. In the end, however, Bauer produces a more convincing approach to Islam in its postclassical period than Ahmed.