ZusammenfassungObwohl Edward Saids Einfluss auf die Nahoststudien, und darüber hinaus auf die Sozial-, Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften, aus vielen Perspektiven als glänzender Triumph oder als Tragödie betrachtet worden ist, stellen nur wenige die erstaunliche Reichweite und Durschlagskraft seines Werks Orientalismus in der akademischen Welt in Frage. Ich möchte hier die Rolle Saids sowie die durch seine Arbeiten beförderte postkoloniale Lehrmeinung untersuchen, mithin auch die Art und Weise, wie der Westen bisher mit dem geistigen Krieg umgeht, den triumphalistische MuslimeEine Bemerkung zum Triumphalismus. (...) Das ist eine ungebräuchliche Bezeichnung derjenigen, die glauben, ihre Gruppe sei allen anderen überlegen und solle zum Beweis ihrer Überlegenheit über diese herrschen: „Wir haben recht, unser Glaube ist wahr, weil wir über euch triumphieren werden.“ In Bezug auf den Islam ist damit eine Form der Religiosität gemeint, die glaubt, es sei ihre Bestimmung, die ganze Welt Allahs Willen zu unterwerfen; die Welt sei geteilt in den Dar al-Harb und den Dar al-Islam und dieser solle jenen ersetzen; im Idealfall stellten die Muslime die Ungläubigen vor die Wahl zwischen Konversion, Tod und Unterordnung. Moderne Demokratien, die auf der Trennung von Kirche und Staat beruhen, erfordern eine offizielle Absage an triumphalistische Religiosität. mit dem erklärten Ziel führen, demokratischen Verfassungen den Dar al-Islam zu oktroyieren. (shrink)

The essays in this book challenge prevailing views on the way in which apocalyptic concerns contributed to larger processes of social change at the first millennium. Several basic questions unify the essays: What chronological and theological assumptions underlay apocalyptic and millennial speculations around the Year 1000? How broadly disseminated were those speculations? Can we speak of a mentality of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties on the eve of the millennium? If so, how did authorities respond to or even contribute to the (...) formation of this mentality? What were the social ramifications of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties, and of any efforts to suppress or redirect the more radical impulses that bred them? How did contemporaries conceptualize and then historicize the passing of the millennial date of 1000? Including the work of British, French, German, Dutch, and American scholars, this book will be the definitive resource on this fascinating topic, and should at the same time provoke new interest in, and debate on, the nature and causes of social change in early medieval Europe. (shrink)

The essays in this book challenge prevailing views on the way in which apocalyptic concerns contributed to larger processes of social change at the first millennium. Several basic questions unify the essays: What chronological and theological assumptions underlay apocalyptic and millennial speculations around the Year 1000? How broadly disseminated were those speculations? Can we speak of a mentality of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties on the eve of the millennium? If so, how did authorities respond to or even contribute to the (...) formation of this mentality? What were the social ramifications of apocalyptic hopes and anxieties, and of any efforts to suppress or redirect the more radical impulses that bred them? How did contemporaries conceptualize and then historicize the passing of the millennial date of 1000? Including the work of British, French, German, Dutch, and American scholars, this book will be the definitive resource on this fascinating topic, and should at the same time provoke new interest in and debate on the nature and causes of social change in early medieval Europe. (shrink)

In 1901 George Lincoln Burr published an article in the American Historical Review in which he summarized for American historians a new consensus among their European colleagues: the arrival of the year 1000 had not provoked any apocalyptic expectations. This position completely reversed the previous view championed in the mid-nineteenth century by historians like Jules Michelet, who had drawn a dramatic picture of mass apocalyptic expectations climaxing in the year 1000. Despite extensive advances in scholarship since 1900, medieval historians continue (...) to accept and repeat this revisionist position, a position that is methodologically jejune and that almost completely ignores the social dynamics of millennial beliefs. This paper proposes to reconsider the issue from the perspective of the more sophisticated understanding of the phenomenon made possible by two generations of millennial scholarship. (shrink)