ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of the book. Particularly it follows the Iranian Revolution, both in the Western media and among Western academics and public personalities, about the political resurgence of Islam. In a large number of instances Western reactions both amongst the general public and the intelligentsia tended to demonstrate the strong hold among Westerners of the traditional Orientalist perception of Islam and of Muslims which Edward Said has rightly castigated in his brilliant study Orientalism. The chapter explores a sympathetic analysis of the current ferment in many parts of the Muslim world, tends to downgrade and underplay the divergence in the social, economic and political contexts among the various regions which constitute the world of Islam. A monolithic perception of Islam primarily as a cultural phenomenon which has ingrained in it certain traits of ferocity and expansion on the one, and backwardness and petrifaction on the other.
