A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism

by S. Sayyid, Hamid Dabashi (Foreword by), Pnina Werbner (Editor), Richard Werbner (Editor)

Overview

The fear and anxiety aroused by Islamism is not a myth, nor is it simply a consequence of terrorism or fundamentalism.

Writing in 1997, before 9/11 and before the austerity that has bred a new generation of far right groups across Europe and the US, S. Sayyid warned of a spectre haunting Western civilization. This groundbreaking book, banned by the Malaysian government, is both an analysis of the conditions that have made 'Islamic fundamentalism' possible and a provocative account of the ways in which Muslim identities have come to play an increasingly political role throughout the world.

This is a pioneering, provocative and intricately crafted study, which shows the challenge of Islamism is not only geopolitical or even cultural but also epistemological.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783601912
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/15/2015
Series:	Critique Influence Change
Edition description:	New edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

S. Sayyid is a reader in rhetoric at the University of Leeds. He is the founding editor of ReOrient: The Jourbanal of Critical Muslim Studies. His publications include Recalling the Caliphate and the volume (co-edited with AbdoolKarim Vakil) Thinking through Islamophobia.
S. Sayyid is a reader in rhetoric at the University of Leeds. He is the founding editor of ReOrient: The Jourbanal of Critical Muslim Studies. His publications include Recalling the Caliphate and the volume (co-edited with AbdoolKarim Vakil) Thinking through Islamophobia.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Hamid Dabashi
Preface to the critique influence change edition
Acknowledgements
Preface to the second edition

Prologue: The return of the repressed
1. Framin' fundamentalism
2. Thinking Islamism, (re)thinking Islamism
3. Kemalism and politicization of Islam
4. Islam, modernity and the West
5. Islamism and the limits of the invisible empire
Epiloque: Islamism/eurocentrism

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Sayyid's book has considerable intellectual and personal drive, showing how the adoption of a poststructuralist perspective can alter our perception of important matters of cultural politics” —Nations and Nationalism

“If we were to take up the suggestion of Norberto Bobbio that classics are those works able to speak to us in any time and any space, then this book should almost certainly be included in a list of contemporary classics ... Although both Islamists and Orientalists have constructed an opposition between the West and Islam, this myth is convincingly deconstructed by Sayyid's argument” —and the book leaves us with little doubt this dichotomy is a major simplification of the historical processes of the last century.'

“A theoretically sophisticated attempt to read contemporary Muslim political identities as a symptom of Eurocentrism's decline” —Global Society

“A welcome change ... should be of great interest to those who wish to look at the phenomenon of political Islam and the divination of the clash between the West and the rest from a more sophisticated and theoretical angle ... a worthy contribution.” —Impact International

“Sayyid, with this dense and seminal work, has made a welcome attempt to reframe the uses of the term Islam within intellectual discourses without resort to populist terminology. The book is a broad treatment of the state of Islam and its relationship with the West and the West's relationship with the East ... takes a fresh look at how Islam has reached its much-maligned status ... Not only is [Sayyid] polemical, incisive and engaging, he is at times poetical. His use of metaphor and analogy serves to illustrate the complexity of the issues that he is putting across” —Sociology

From the Publisher

“A theoretically sophisticated attempt to read contemporary Muslim political identities as a symptom of Eurocentrism’s decline.

Global Society

“A welcome change . . .  should be of great interest to those who wish to look at the phenomenon of political Islam and the divination of the clash between the West and the rest from a more sophisticated and theoretical angle.

Impact International