The West's Modern Encounter with Islam: From Discourse to Reality

Abstract

ical activism has persuaded many observers to adopt a new tack, dis carding the old obsession with studying Islamic traditions, customs, and truth-claims, and shifting scholarly focus to the study of Islamic polit ical, moral, and social order. Second, the value of the use of the discur sive level of reasoning has become one of the main currents of debate in academic circles. How relevant is the study of language, political culture, and religious dogma to the present day polemic between the Muslim and Western worlds? A new trend has emerged: social scien tists tend to attach more importance to the analysis of the sociological, political, and economic realities of Muslim countries than to the discur sive level of reasoning mainly concerned with abstract linguistic, cul tural, and religious concepts. To contextualize this emerging trend and the logic accompanying it, this essay critically analyzes the views of Bernard Lewis, Samuel P. Huntington, John L. Esposito, Graham E. Fuller, Ian O. Lesser, and Fred Halliday. In doing so, this article presents a genuine attempt to convince policymakers of the merits of adopting a practical—rather than an ideological—approach toward addressing the issues facing the Muslim world. These scholars' perspectives, which are indicative of the heightened concern with this subject in the post-Cold War world, present a broad spectrum of views concerning different aspects of the