This concise overview of the perception of Islam in eight of the most important German thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allows a new and fascinating investigation of how these thinkers, within their own bodies of work, often espoused contradicting ideas about Islam and their nearest Muslim neighbors. Exploring a variety of 'neat compartmentalizations' at work in the representations of Islam, as well as distinct vocabularies employed by these key intellectuals (theological, political, philological, poetic), Ian Almond parses these vocabularies to examine the importance of Islam in the very history of German thought. Almond further demonstrates the ways in which German philosophers such as Hegel, Kant, and Marx repeatedly ignored information about the Muslim world that did not harmonize with the particular landscapes they were trying to paint – a fact which in turn makes us reflect on what it means when a society possesses 'knowledge' of a foreign culture.

The current political standoffs of the 'War on Terror' illustrate that the interaction within and between the so-called Western and Middle Eastern civilizations is constantly in flux. A recurring theme however is how Islam and Muslims signify the 'Enemy' in the Western socio-cultural imagination and have become the 'Other' against which the West identifies itself. In a unique and insightful blend of critical race, feminist and post-colonial theory, Sunera Thobani examines how Islam is foundational to the formation of Western identity at critical points in its history, including the Crusades, the Reconquista and the colonial period. More specifically, she explores how masculinity and femininity are formed at such pivotal junctures and what role feminism has played in the wars against 'radical' Islam. Exposing these symbiotic relationships, Thobani explores how the return of 'religion' is reworking the racial, gender and sexual politics by which Western society defines itself, and more specifically, defines itself against Islam. Contesting Islam, Constructing Race and Sexuality unpacks conventional as well as unconventional orthodoxies to open up new spaces in how we think about sexual and racial identity in the West and the crucial role that Islam has had and continues to have in its development.

Early modern Protestant scholars closely engaged with Islamic thought in more ways than is usually recognized. Among Protestants, Lutheran scholars distinguished themselves as the most invested in the study of Islam and Muslim culture. Mehmet Karabela brings the neglected voices of post-Reformation theologians, primarily German Lutherans, into focus and reveals their rigorous engagement with Islamic thought. Inspired by a global history approach to religious thought, Islamic Thought Through Protestant Eyes offers new sources to broaden the conventional interpretation of the Reformation beyond a solely European Christian phenomenon. Based on previously unstudied dissertations, disputations, and academic works written in Latin in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Karabela analyzes three themes: Islam as theology and religion; Islamic philosophy and liberal arts; and Muslim sects (Sunni and Shi‘a). This book provides analyses and translations of the Latin texts as well as brief biographies of the authors. These texts offer insight into the Protestant perception of Islamic thought for scholars of religious studies and Islamic studies as well as for general readers. Examining the influence of Islamic thought on the construction of the Protestant identity after the Reformation helps us to understand the role of Islam in the evolution of Christianity.

The Yearbook of Muslims in Europe provides an up-to-date account of the situation of Muslims in Europe. Covering 46 countries of Europe in its broader sense, the Yearbook consists of three sections: the first section presents a country-by-country summary of essential data with basic statistics and evaluations of their reliability, surveys of legal status and arrangements, organisations, etc. Data have been brought up to date from the previous volume. The second section contains analysis and research articles on issues and themes of current relevance written by experts in the field. The final section provides reviews of recently published books of significance. The Yearbook is an important source of reference for government and NGO officials, journalists, and policy makers as well as scholars

This book provides insights into some of the social topics related to the homogenization and stereotyping of Muslims. It explores the experiences of Muslims in Western societies, with a particular focus not only on gender, home and belonging, multiculturalism, and ethnicity.

Revealing Islam’s formative influence on literary Romanticism, this book recounts a lively narrative of religious and aesthetic exchange, mapping the impact of Muslim sources on the West’s most seminal authors. Spanning continents and centuries, the book surveys Islamic receptions that bridge Romantic periods and personalities, unfolding from Europe, to Britain, to America, embracing iconic figures from Goethe, to Byron, to Emerson, as well as authors less widely recognized, such as Joseph Hammer-Purgstall. Broad in historical scope, Islam and Romanticism is also particular in personal detail, exposing Islam’s role as a creative catalyst, but also as a spiritual resource, with the Qur’an and Sufi poetry infusing the literary publications, but also the private lives, of Romantic writers. Highlighting cultural encounter, rather than political exploitation, the book differs from previous treatments by accenting Western receptions that transcend mere “Orientalism”, finding the genesis of a global literary culture first emerging in the Romantics’ early appeal to Islamic traditions.

This collection contains seven chapters that focus on relevant sources introducing the field of intercultural and transcultural studies in the Balkan region, specifically Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as contributions by Bosnian and Herzegovinian scholars from different epochs and nations including medieval, modern and postmodern trends in BH philosophy. Through the entire study of BiH contributions to transcultural philosophy, the author attempts to strengthen the already-existing transcultural processes and centuries-long transcultural exchanges. In these chapters, the author also attempts to further develop and improve efforts in the field of transcultural philosophy and by eo ipso, the navigation of Bosnian and Herzegovinian cultural differences in today’s world.

In 2006 against the background of the increasing problematization of Muslims and Islam in German public debate, the German government established the German Islam Conference. In a post 9/11 world, this was a time period shaped by the global war on terror, changes in the German naturalization law, the proliferation of racism targeting Muslims, and the expansion of security apparatuses. In Governing Muslims and Islam in Contemporary Germany Luis Manuel Hernández Aguilar critically analyzes the institutionalization of the Conference and the different projects this institution has set in motion to govern Islam and Muslims against the looming presence of racial representations of Muslims. The analysis begins with the foundation of the Conference until the end of its second phase in 2014.

A history of Kantian and post-Kantian thought and of a foundational stage of German orientalism. German orientalism has been understood, variously, as a form of latent colonialism, as a quest for academic hegemony in Europe, and as an effort to diagnose and treat the ills of modern Western culture. Nicholas Germana identifiesa different impetus for orientalism in German thought, seeing it as an effort to come to grips with the Other within German society at the turn of the nineteenth century and within the dynamics of subjectivity itself. Drawing largely on work by feminist scholars, the book uncovers an anxiety at the core of Kantian and post-Kantian thought, thus shedding light on its derogation (or elevation) of Oriental cultures. Kant's philosophy of freedom is a construction of modern, Western masculinity. Reason, which alone can make freedom possible, subverts and orders chaotic nature and protects the rational subject from the enervating influences of the senses and the imagination. The feminized, sexually charged Orient is a threat to the historical achievement of Western male rationality. Germana's book emphasizes aesthetics in the German orientalist discourse, a subject that has received little attention todate. In this tradition of German thought, aesthetics became a form of spiritual anthropology, ordering and classifying societies, races, and genders in terms of their ability to master the senses and the imagination, forces thatundermine rational autonomy, the very source of human (i.e., masculine) dignity. Nicholas A. Germana is Professor of History at Keene State College, New Hampshire.

Orientalism, Philology, and the Illegibility of the Modern World examines the philology of orientalism. It discusses how European (and in particular German) orientalism has influenced the modern understanding of how language accesses reality and offers a critical reinterpretation of orientalism, ontology and modernity. This book pushes an innovative focus on the global history of knowledge as entangled between European and non-European cultures. Drawing from formal oriental studies, epigraphy, travel literature, and theology, Henning Trüper explores how the attempt to appropriate the world by attaching language to the notion of a 'real' reference in the world ultimately produced a crisis of meaning. In the process, Trüper convincingly challenges received understandings of the intellectual genealogies of oriental scholarship and its practices. This ground-breaking study is a meaningful contribution to current discourses about philology and significantly adds to our understanding about the relationship between discursive practices, cultural agendas, and political systems. As such, it will be of immense value to scholars researching Europe and the modern world, the history of philology, and those seeking to historicise the prevalent debates in theory.