Report：UTCP Lecture on Understanding Islam #2 "The creation of the Islamic world" and after
The vice-leader Masashi Haneda was invited to give a lecture on November 22nd. Based on materials from his book The Creation of the Islamic World (2005), Haneda was questioning the framework of understanding Islam through the notions of “secularization” and “world history” in search of new possibilities to narrate history as “world history of coexistence”.
After pointing out the historical construction of the “Islamic World”, Haneda criticized the present situation, especially in Japan, where a biased cognition of Islam has been formed in the discursive space (through the history textbooks and the newspapers). The notion of “Islamic World”, without overtly questioning its reality, creates the impression that some “substance” corresponding to such a name geographically and culturally exists and oriented the framework of our cognition. Haneda revealed the double-bind behind the uncritical use of this ambiguous notion in terms of the emphasis on the specificity of Islam and the substantiation as a unit of historical narration and analyzed both through the notions of “secularization” and “world history”. (Mineki Oguchi; Excerpted translation: Dennitza Gabrakova)