ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to reconstruct how Weber analysed Islam and the social impact of Islam. It requires an interpretation effort, but it is worth doing since Weber’s argument about Islam recurs with many scholars. Weber’s short analysis of Islam and the Arab civilisation contains many of the typical elements of the occidental view of Muslims, called “orientalism” by Said (1979, 1993), albeit the importance of Weber’s view of Islam as a “religion of warriors” has been entirely missed among the scholars speaking of orientalism as the “beam in the Western eye” upon Moslems.
