Dr. Salman Sayyid

Mirror, Mirror: Western democrats, oriental despots?

Tuesday, October, 4th, 2005, 6 pm
The Boardroom
University of Westminster
309 Regent Street,
London W1B 2UW
( Map )

 

In a recent publication Dr. Sayyid remarks that 'those who seek in 'Democracy' hope for a more just world, need to let go of 'Democracy' as signifier of the West, and dare to imagine a world in which various societies and histories can produce notions of good governance which are commensurate with the fundamental pluralism of this planet.' 

 

Synopsis from Dr. Sayyid's book: A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism

This is a brilliant and provocative re-evaluation of political Islam. Theoretically innovative, the book shows how Islamism can only be understood in the context of its relation with Eurocentrism. Using a neopragmatist approach inspired by Richard Rorty, and drawing on political and cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall, Agnes Heller and J.F. Lyotard, the book disrupts the conventional accounts of modernity and postmodernity and presents a radical new reading of Islamism as a response to the de-centring of the West.

Breaking with the Arab-centrism of Islamic studies, Bobby Sayyid provides a critical analysis of Kemalism as dominant postcolonial ideology in the Muslim world, an ideology based on a Weberian understanding of the relationship between modernization and the West. Using the metaphor of Kemalism to narrate the political order in the postcolonial world, the author examines the rise of Islamism in the context of the postmodern critique of modernity.

The book provides a much-needed conceptual narrative for an understanding of `political' Islam and its relationship to decolonization and the passing of the Age of Europe. It is also an accessible introductory guide to the resurgence of Islamism, and poststructuralist political theory.

`Sayyid's book has considerable intellectual and personal drive, showing how the adoption of a poststructuralist perspective can alter our perception of important matters of cultural politics' - Nations and Nationalism

`A theoretically sophisticated attempt to read contemporary Muslim political identities as a symptom of Eurocentrism's decline' - Global Society

`A welcome change... should be of great interest to those who wish to look at the phenomenon of political Islam and the divination of the clash between the West and the rest from a more sophisticated and theoretical angle... a worthy contribution.' - Impact International

`Sayyid, with this dense and seminal work, has made a welcome attempt to reframe the uses of the term Islam within intellectual discourses without resort to populist terminology. The book is a broad treatment of the state of Islam and its relationship with the West and the West's relationship with the East... takes a fresh look at how Islam has reached its much-maligned status... Not only is [Sayyid] polemical, incisive and engaging, he is at times poetical. His use of metaphor and analogy serves to illustrate the complexity of the issues that he is putting across' - Sociology

 

Biography:

Dr. S. Sayyid teaches at the University of Leeds in the UK and is the author of A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and Emergence of Islamism.

Recent articles

From the BBC:

Crusades and Jihads in Postcolonial Times. (Read it Here)

From OpenDemocracy.net:

9/11: What should we do now? (Read it Here)

A war against politics? (Read it Here)

Other articles can be found on the Muslim Studies Network's website.