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Early Orientalism - Imagined Islam and the Notion of Sublime Power (Paperback)
Loot Price: R1,120
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Early Orientalism - Imagined Islam and the Notion of Sublime Power (Paperback)
Series: Routledge Islamic Studies Series
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The history of western notions about Islam is of obvious scholarly
as well as popular interest today. This book investigates Christian
images of the Muslim Middle East, focusing on the period from the
Renaissance to the Enlightenment, when the nature of divine as well
as human power was under particularly intense debate in the West.
Ivan Kalmar explores how the controversial notion of submission to
ultimate authority has in the western world been discussed with
reference to Islam's alleged recommendation to obey,
unquestioningly, a merciless Allah in heaven and a despotic
government on earth. He discusses how Abrahamic faiths -
Christianity and Judaism as much as Islam - demand devotion to a
sublime power, with the faith that this power loves and cares for
us, a concept that brings with it the fear that, on the contrary,
this power only toys with us for its own enjoyment. For such a
power, Kalmar borrows Slavoj Zizek's term "obscene father". He
discusses how this describes exactly the western image of the
Oriental despot - Allah in heaven, and the various sultans, emirs
and ayatollahs on earth - and how these despotic personalities of
imagined Muslim society function as a projection, from the West on
to the Muslim Orient, of an existential anxiety about sublime
power. Making accessible academic debates on the history of
Christian perceptions of Islam and on Islam and the West, this book
is an important addition to the existing literature in the areas of
Islamic studies, religious history and philosophy.
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