Islam
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Traditionally, historical scholars have viewed the transmutation of cultures from East to West as one that was based on tradition versus rationality. When William McNeill wrote The Rise of the West in the 1960s, Marshall G. S. Hodgson responded with a three-volume work The Venture of Islam, generally considered the definitive history of Islam by academicians. In this work, Hodgson argues that pre-modern Europe and Islamic civilizations were much more rationality oriented than they are generally viewed. In Chapter Seven, Hodgson argues that the best way to understand the Islamic civilization of the time is to compare it with its Occidental counterpart. By comparing the institutions of these two cultures, Hodgson insists that Islamic history served as a counterpart to European history. The author also argues that Islamic culture may have been one of customs, but minds were attracted to new ideas. Furthermore, because of modern global realities and the increasing need to appreciate, tolerate, and understand other cultures and religious belief systems, Hodgson makes another argument that is even more relative now than when the work was crafted. He argues that Islamic social institutions demonstrated a much higher level of sophistication than did those of Occidental culture. The author highlights the social system and rule of law as prime examples of this superiority and advanced social stru
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ble for this kind of social structure with a lack of measures for “taming the social reality” nevertheless experienced greater mobility and personal liberties than its Occidental counterpart of the same era (Hodgson 351).
Another point Hodgson supports well is the greater success of Islamic religion in not diluting authority due to an autonomous structure of authorities like that of the Occidentals. As he states “Among the Occidentals, the devolution of authority to a multiplicity of autonomous offices had threatened to wipe out that very distinction between private and public which had been inherited in earlier times” (Hodgson 347). This is what happened, he notes, despite efforts by legal authorities at the time to have such a great impact in a new setting. Yet, in the Muslim culture, Hodgson admits that where the Occidental culture took the public-private in social activity to an extreme the Islamic culture largely denied it. Yet, even though historians and a majority of Westerners take a superior view to Middle Eastern cultures based on their alleged lack of sophistication, Hodgson points out the system of “responsibility” in Islamic culture which not only sounds more evolved than the Occidental cultures of the time but
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Approximate Word count = 1514
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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