ABSTRACT

In his epic The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the eighteenth-century British historian Edward Gibbon stated that "history is little more than the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind" and that "wars and the administration of public affairs are the principal subjects of history". Turkey and Iran provide two examples of Islamic countries that increasingly feel the tension between the desire for democracy and the support for Islamist politicians who wish to impose the Islamic law known as the sharia. In his 1997 reflective work On History, Eric Hobsbawm, himself a renowned Marxist historian, argued that, although historians might have their own political identity, they have a responsibility to rise above that when considering the past. In addition, a comparative study of the past, even by examining differences among nations within the West, can provide a sense of the future possibilities for nations and peoples in the present.