"Over the last two decades we have seen a vast number of books published in the West that treat Islamic fundamentalism as a rising threat to the values of secularism and democracy. In the last decade scholars began proclaiming as existent or emerging "clash" between East and West, Islam and Christianity, or in the case of Benjamin R. Barber, "Jihad and McWorld." More recently, some scholars have offered another interpretation. Focusing on the work on contemporary Muslim intellectuals, these scholars have begun to argue that what we are witnessing, in Islamic contexts, is tantamount to a reformation. An Islamic Reformation? attempts to evaluate this claim through the work of emerging and top scholars in the fields of political science, philosophy, anthropology, religion, history, and Middle Eastern studies. The overall goal of this volume is to question the impact of various reformist trends throughout the Middle East."--Jacket.
