Susannah Heschel - The Muslim Reception of European Orientalism: Reversing the Gaze

Edward Saids Orientalism, now more than fifty years old, has to be one of the most frequently cited books among academics in a wide range of disciplines, and the most frequently assigned book to undergraduates at colleges.

Among the common questions raised in response to Saids book: Did scholars in Western Europe provide crucial support to the imperialist, colonialist activities of European regimes? Are their writings on Islam laden with denigrating, eroticized, distorting biases that have left an indelible impact on Western society? What is the Orientalism invented by Europe and what is its impact today?

However, one question has been less raised (or less has been done about the question): How were the Orientalist writings of European scholars of Islam received among their Muslim contemporaries? An international team of contributors rectify this oversight in this volume.

Susannah Heschel is the Eli Black Professor and Chair of the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, and Jdischer Islam: Islam und jdisch-deutsche Selbstbestimmung. She has held research grants from the Carnegie Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Umar Ryad is a Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Leuven and a Member of the Young Academy of Belgium. Previously, he has worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Leiden (20082014) and as an Associate Professor at Utrecht University (20142017). He is currently leading a European Research Council (ERC) project which focuses on the History of Muslims in Interwar Europe. His current research also includes the dynamics of the networks of pan-Islamist movements, Muslim polemics on Christianity, and transnational Islam in the modern world.

35 Censuses and Census Takers

A Global History

Gunnar Thorvaldsen

36 America and the Postwar World: Remaking International Society, 19451956

David Mayers

37 Transnational Encounters between Germany and East Asia since 1900

Joanne Miyang Cho

38 The Institution of International Order

From the League of Nations to the United Nations

Edited by Simon Jackson and Alanna OMalley

39 The Limits of Westernization

American and East Asian Intellectuals Create Modernity, 18601960

Jon Thares Davidann

40 Liberalism in Pre-revolutionary Russia

State, Nation, Empire

Susanna Rabow-Edling

41 Informal Alliance

The Bilderberg Group and Transatlantic Relations during the Cold War, 19521968

Thomas W. Gijswijt

42 The Muslim Reception of European Orientalism

Reversing the Gaze

Edited by Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/history/series/MODHIST

First published 2019

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Heschel, Susannah, editor. | Ryad, Umar, editor.

Title: The Muslim reception of European orientalism: reversing the gaze / edited by Susannah Heschel and Umar Ryad.

Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge studies in modern history; 42 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018040940 (print) | LCCN 2018046284 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Orientalism. | Middle EastStudy and teachingEurope. | IslamStudy and teachingEurope. | East and West.

Classification: LCC DS61.85 (ebook) | LCC DS61.85 .M873 2019 (print) | DDC 303.48/2405dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018040940

ISBN: 978-1-138-23203-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-31377-1 (ebk)

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We would like to thank the contributors to this volume for their original research and excellent articles. This collection developed out of a small conference held at Dartmouth College in November 2016 under the auspices of the Jewish Studies Program. It was one of a series of conferences that began in 2007 with a grant from the Ford Foundation to Susannah Heschel to explore common problems facing scholars in the fields of Islamic Studies and Jewish Studies. Susannah would like to express her gratitude for that funding to Constance Buchanan and the late Alison Bernstein, whose enthusiasm and support stimulated new avenues of research for the many participants in the eight conferences that followed.

In addition, Susannah would like to express her gratitude to the Carnegie Foundation for the Scholars Grant in Islamic Studies that made possible two years of sabbatical to begin researching the history of Jewish scholarship on Islam, and to Jonathan Wilson, director of the Center for the Humanities at Tufts University, who generously provided an office and a warm welcome during that sabbatical.

Susannah also thanks the Rektor, Luca Giuliani, and members of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin for the yearlong fellowship in 20112012 that made possible many wonderful engagements with the remarkable community of European scholars, many of whom were part of the extraordinary community around Georges Khalil, director of the EUME (Europe in the Middle East) program affiliated with the Wissenschaftskolleg.

Finally, Susannah thanks the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for the fellowship she received in 2013 to research the history of Jewish scholarship on Islam.

The generous deans and wonderful colleagues and students at Dartmouth College have been sources of great intellectual stimulation. In particular, Susannah thanks Veronika Fuechtner, Irene Kacandes, Tarek el-Ariss, Zahra Ayubi, Klaus Milich, Jonathan Smolin, Ezzedine Fishere, Barbara Kreiger, Randall Balmer, and Robert Baum.

Umar Ryad would like to express his gratitude to the European Research Council (ERC) for funding the Starting Grant project Neither visitors, nor colonial victims: Muslims in Interwar Europe and European Trans-cultural History (NEITHER NOR, Utrecht University (20142017) and KU Leuven (20172019); ID: 336608; Funded under: FP7-IDEAS-ERC ). Umar would also like to express his thanks to the team members of the ERC project, Soumia Hida-Middelburg, Sophie Spaan, Hussam Raafat, Mehdi Sajid, Tolga Teker, and Andrei Tirtan for their great work to achieve the targets of the project in both Utrecht and Leuven.