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Book Cover
Book
Author Lewis, Bernard, 1916-2018, author

Title Islam and the West / Bernard Lewis
Published New York : Oxford University Press, 1993
New York : Oxford University Press, ©1993

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  303.48 Lew/Iat  AVAILABLE
 MELB  303.48 Lew/Iat  AVAILABLE
Description ix, 217 pages ; 25 cm
Contents Europe and Islam --- Legal and historical reflections on the position of Muslim populations under non-Muslim rule --- Translation from Arabic --- The Ottoman obsession --- Gibbon on Muhammad --- The question of Orientalism --- Other people's history --- The return of Islam --- The Shi'a in Islamic history --- Country and freedom --- Religious coexistance and secularism
Summary In Islam and the West, Bernard Lewis brings together in one volume eleven essays that indeed open doors to the innermost domains of Islam. Lewis ranges far and wide in these essays. He includes long pieces, such as his capsule history of the interaction--in war and peace, in commerce and culture--between Europe and its Islamic neighbors, and shorter ones, such as his deft study of the Arabic word watan and what its linguistic history reveals about the introduction of the idea of patriotism from the West. Lewis offers a revealing look at Edward Gibbon's portrait of Muhammad in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unlike previous writers, Gibbon saw the rise of Islam not as something separate and isolated, nor as a regrettable aberration from the onward march of the church, but simply as a part of human history); he offers a devastating critique of Edward Said's controversial book, Orientalism; and he gives an account of the impediments totranslating from classic Arabic to other languages (the old dictionaries, for one, are packed with scribal errors, misreadings, false analogies, and etymological deductions that pay little attention to the evolution of the language). And he concludes with an astute commentary on the Islamic world today, examining revivalism, fundamentalism, the role of the Shi'a, and the larger question of religious co-existence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews. - Publisher description
Analysis Islam History
Islam History
Christianity
Europe
Islam
Middle East
Overseas item
Religions
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 187-200) and index
Subject Christianity and other religions -- Islam.
East and West.
Islam -- Relations -- Christianity.
SUBJECT Europe -- Relations -- Middle East. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008114965
Middle East http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85090501 -- Relations http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh00007590 -- Europe. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85045631
Author Rogers D. Spotswood Collection
LC no. 92026938
ISBN 0195076192
0195090616
9780195076196
9780195090611