Machine summary:
Understanding the difficulties raised by the identification of the West with modernity involves a broader analysis within the framework of world history and global historical perspectives.
it becomes essential to reexamine a number of the frequently-used great concepts of macrohistory and then restate the basic world historical narrative to provide a new framework for viewing Islam and the West.
Civilization as a Concept A globally oriented world historical perspective is important for understanding the dynamics of relations between Islam and the West and the issue of the relationship between the West and modernity.
" Most studies of world history, and of Islam and the West in particular, assume the subject involves relationships between two "civilizations," which are separate and unitary entities with life-histories, morphologies, pathologies, and that can be identified clearly.
Civilizations involve large concentrations of people organized in cities, intensified production that creates a surplus that makes the emergence of a real division of labor and a hierarchical ordering of power and authority possible, and some form of permanent record-keeping and communication defined as writing.
Clearly, many of the most significant developments in the emergence of modernity occurred in western European societies, although even in the origins of the Industrial Revolution, global rather than simply local forces were crucial.
Modernity, like civilization, is a phase of world history that represents a relatively specific lifestyle and mode of sociopolitical and cultural institutionalization.
Instead, this analysis suggests that "Islam" and "The West" are two different and competing but historically and conceptually related repertoires of concepts, images, and worldviews, or possibly discourse-based world systems.