Western study of Islamic texts long ignored living Muslims and their culture

Evidence

Clergymen in Oxbridge colleges and rural rectories who interested themselves in Arabic texts for scholarly and theological reasons were not at all interested in real live Arabs, but only wanted to know more about the manner of life of Abraham and Moses, to identify the flora and fauna of the Bible and map out the topography of ancient Palestine. Princes, diplomats, soldiers and merchants, however, had a more immediate interest in the Turks and the Ottoman Turkish empire. Until the late seventeenth century the West’s interest in the Turks was mostly driven by fear. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 191

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Orientalism/decolonizing-knowledge theme already developed elsewhere in this book. — connects to: Even sympathetic European scholarship ignored Islam’s living devotional spirituality

Related

• Even sympathetic European scholarship ignored Islam’s living devotional spirituality (similarity 0.90)
• Ottoman advances drove European study of Islam through fear (similarity 0.84)
• Islam has remained a dominant force in Middle Eastern life (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Western writers recognized little spiritual life in Islam. (similarity 0.82)
• Arab and Islamic studies resisted the 1960s scholarly revolutions that revised other area studies (similarity 0.82)
• Western scholarship on Islam grew from positions of colonial dominance. (similarity 0.81)
• Eighteenth-century scholars studied Arabic to illuminate the Bible (similarity 0.80)
• European study of Arabic declined as hopes of finding scientific value in it faded (similarity 0.80)
• Academic Islamic studies began only with eighteenth-century Orientalism (similarity 0.80)
• European study of Islam originated in fear, not curiosity. (similarity 0.80)
• Arabic scientific writings served as medieval European textbooks for centuries. (similarity 0.80)
• Pre-modern Muslim scholars regarded Western history as lacking value and purpose (similarity 0.80)
• The Encyclopaedia of Islam asked European questions, not Muslim ones, about Islam (similarity 0.79)
• Western scholars of Arabic long studied the classical language over living dialects (similarity 0.79)
• Western ideological camps all reduce Islam to a scapegoat (similarity 0.79)