The Muslim Reception of European Orientalism: Reversing the Gaze

Edward Said’s 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 Said’s 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.

About the Author

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 Jüdischer Islam: Islam und jüdisch-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 member of the Young Academy of Belgium. Previously, he has worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Leiden (2008–2014) and as an Associate Professor at Utrecht University (2014–2017). 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.