ISLAMS AND MODERNITIES

The author aligns himself with an anti-essentialist stance, meaning that he rejects the idea that Islam is a fixed body of beliefs or practices. He attacks both fundamentalists and Orientalists for promoting such a misleading view of Islam. Instead, he sees Islam as a living, changing, and constantly reinterpreted body of ideas. He is also skeptical of those who rely on arguments about culture and ethnicity, as if these are fixed categories. Political Islam, which has little to do with traditional models, is linked to the growth of petrodollars in the 1970s. Azmeh relentlessly picks apart conventional wisdom, challenging common cliches, and warning against the careless use of analytical categories.