Khaldoun Samman

Invisibilizing Palestinians

Khaldoun Samman — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 11:09:46 PST

Die eurozentrissche Sozialtheorie „kaputtdenken

Khaldoun Samman — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 11:00:00 PST

“The Temporal Template of Tourism: A Comparative Analysis of Epcot Center (Orlando, Florida) and Wadi Rum (Jordan)”

Khaldoun Samman — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 10:39:32 PST

“Towards a Non-Essentialist Pedagogy of ‘Islam’”

Khaldoun Samman — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 21:15:27 PST

“Assimilating to Power in Two Different World-Systems: An Analysis of Paul and Herzl”

Khaldoun Samman — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 21:10:54 PST

“The Social Origins of Universalistic Monotheism: A Comparative Analysis of Paul and Muhammad”

Khaldoun Samman — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 21:05:05 PST

“Islam and the Modern Orientalist World-System”

Khaldoun Samman — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 21:00:44 PST

The Clash of Modernities: The Islamist Challenge to Jewish, Turkish, and Arab Nationalists

Khaldoun Samman — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 20:45:32 PST

Professor Samman’s latest book, Clash of Modernities: The Islamist Challenge to Jewish, Turkish and Arab Nationalism was released in December 2010. Samman challenges Eurocentric theorists who peddle the clash of civilization thesis by demonstrating that what in fact is clashing are not civilizational differences but rather a number of modernist discourses that are all trapped in a discursive tradition that has its origins in colonial modernity. This book argues that to understand the Middle East we must also understand how the West produced a temporal narrative of world history in which westerners placed themselves on top and all others below them. To illustrate this provocative argument, the author provides a comparative analysis of how the West produced a temporal narrative of world history in which it placed itself on top and all Others below and how the colonizer’s judgment of the Middle East and its people—in which the Arab, Muslim, Turk, and Jew were seen as “behind” European and Western civilization—was both strategically revised and problematically reproduced by Turkish Kemalism, Israeli Zionism, Arab nationalism, and Islamism. For all these nationalists gender would be used as the measuring device of how well they did in relation to the colonizer's gaze. He takes us on a journey from Orlando Florida to the Middle East to locate the effects the colonizer’s discourse of progress had on the multiple identities of the Middle East.

Zionism and the Nationalization of Jerusalem

Khaldoun Samman — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 20:39:29 PST

Islam and the Modern Orientalist World-System

Khaldoun Samman et al. — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:07:32 PDT

The Convergence of World Historical Social Science

Khaldoun Samman — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:21:23 PDT

Cities of God and Nationalism: Mecca, Jerusalem, and Rome as Contested Sacred World Cities

Khaldoun Samman — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:10:19 PDT

Far from spawning an age of tolerance, modernity has created the social basis of division and exclusion. This book elaborates this provocative claim as it explores the rich but divided histories of three cities located at the crossroads of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Many observers presume that violence is built into these sacred cities because their citizens cling to religious or cultural ideals of some archaic age; only when this history is overcome can citizens enter a new age of brotherhood. Samman persuades us to refocus our attention on modernity, which has instilled troubling dilemmas from the outside. He shows how these sacred places long ago entered the modern world where global political and economic forces exacerbate nationalism and regional divisions. If we are to resolve deep conflicts we must re-imagine the institutional basis on which modernity, rather than religion, is built.