Introduction

This chapter expands the history and the critique of Orientalism as not only the manufacture of knowledge which “occidental” scholars used in representing the Orient for several ends, which is an isolated western exercise in which Orientals had no place. The study of individual case studies is nevertheless necessary in order to understand the multilayers of the encounter in the global history of knowledge production in the field of humanities. The Jewish version of Islam took shape while Germans were engages in an ongoing discourse labeling Jews “oriental” and denigrating Judaism as unsuitable for German Kultur. The Arab renaissance creates a wide space of intellectual activity and collaboration with European scholars. In response to the popularization of western ideas about Muslim societies as backward and superstitious, which were originally “Orientalist” conclusions and imaginations, Muslim reformers promoted the own reinterpretations of Islam, particularly in the area of education.