The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism مقاله

In the book under review, Timothy Marr, professor of English in the American Studies Curriculum department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, simultaneously broadens and criticizes Said’s ideas. The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism (a somewhat misleading title for a fascinating book) offers a rich analysis of how Americans appro priated images of Islam, Muslim societies, and the Middle East during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries for various political, social, and cultural – but ultimately American – purposes related to domestic and international issues. Marr advances this thesis by looking at an impressive array of historical sources and documents, as well as secondary literature on various aspects of American history and culture, in which he finds a multitude of references to Islam and Muslims (or Turks, Saracens etc.