| Clash of Modernities: The Making and Unmaking of the New Jew, Turk, and Arab and the Islamist Challenge Contributor(s): Samman, Khaldoun (Author) |
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ISBN: 1594516987 ISBN-13: 9781594516986 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $35.14 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 2011 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Political Science | Political Ideologies - Nationalism & Patriotism - Political Science | Colonialism & Post-colonialism - Social Science | Islamic Studies |
| Dewey: 320.540 |
| LCCN: 2010016331 |
| Series: Studies in Comparative Social Science |
| Physical Information: 0.56" H x 6.01" W x 8.92" (0.84 lbs) 272 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Middle East - Ethnic Orientation - Arabic - Ethnic Orientation - Jewish |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: To understand the Middle East we must also understand how the West produced a temporal narrative of world history in which westemers placed themselves on top and all others below them. In a landmark reinterpretation of Middle Eastern history, this book shows how Arabs, Muslims, Turks, and Jews absorbed, revised, yet remained loyal to this Western vision. Turkish Kemalism and Israeli Zionism, in their efforts to push their people forward, accepted the narrative almost wholeheartedly, eradicating what they perceived as 'archaic' characteristics of their Jewish and Turkish cultures. Arab nationalists negotiated a more culturally schizophrenic approach to appeasing the colonizer's gaze. But so too, Samman argues, did the Islamists who likewise wanted to improve their societies. But in order to modernize, Islamists prescribed the eradication of Western contamination and reintroduced the prophetic stage that they believe - if the colonizer and their local Arab coconspirators hadn't intervened - would have produced true civilization. Samman's account explains why Islamists broke more radically with the colonizer's insult. For all these nationalists gender would be used as the measuring device of how well they did in relation to the colonizer's gaze. |