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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Islamic Civilization And (Western) Modernity, Peter O'Brien
Islamic Civilization And (Western) Modernity, Peter O'Brien
Political Science Faculty Research
Much historiography of the last three decades has undermined the sway of Eurocentrism. Though unabashedly Eurocentric histories still become bestsellers,1 revisionists have shown that the ideas and developments that spawned modernity hardly sprang sui generis from European soil. In their historic re-awakening starting at the end of the Middle Ages that ushered in the Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, Europeans borrowed and augmented a vast array of ideas, institutions, and practices particularly from Islamic, but also Indian and Chinese, civilization.2
This article contends that such revisionism, itself now putative, does not probe searchingly enough the inter-civilizational encounter …
Islam Vs. Liberalism In Europe, Peter O'Brien
Islam Vs. Liberalism In Europe, Peter O'Brien
Political Science Faculty Research
In the West, Muslims are regarded with anxiety, mistrust, and fear. Many of us choose not to travel to Muslim countries for fear of becoming victims of terrorism. Most westerners worry about the Muslims' firm grip on the spigot of the world's oil reserves. And in 1991 we convinced ourselves that Saddam Hussein represented a threat on par with Hitler.1
But Muslims cannot really scare us. After all, it took but a few weeks to vanquish fully the "Butcher of Baghdad," who had up until that time the world's fourth largest army. We united in a stalwart international coalition …