This paper traces the evolution of perspectives on Islam from the classical islamology of French scholars to the more politically engaged views that have emerged in Anglo-American scholarship, by reference to developments in the Mediterranean. The image of a “fatalistic and reactionary religion” kept alive by ideologists of “civilising colonisation”, along with that of a “spirituality which has proved able to hold out against an excessively materialistic modernity” championed by fascinated Orientalists, have given way to a vision of an Islam that is both threatening and obscurantist, which results from that particular essence that distinguishes it from other religions, and especially from Christianity and Judaism. In contrast to these approaches that stigmatise Islam and Muslims, there have been some who have leapt to the defence of political Islam, seeing it merely as a legitimate form of resistance against the hegemony of Western powers and against the corrupt dictatorships maintained by these same powers. The paper then poses the question: How can we deny the essentialism and absolute relativism common to both Islamist and islamophobic discourse without also falling into the trap of the ethnocentricity and pseudo-universalism that are its consequences? It suggests that some resolutions can be found in the works of Olivier Carre. The paper then suggests that the separation of church and state, of politics and religion, was not necessarily inherent in Christianity and that those who adopt an essentialist view of Islam are equally liable to adopt an implicitly essentialist and ahistorical view of Christianity, bypassing the long and painful process of secularization in the west. It concludes by showing that from within political Islam there are many voices condemning these over-simplified oppositions and demanding modernity, democracy, human rights, and even secularism.
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