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Orientalist scholars of Islam
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This is a sub-article to Orientalism and Non-Muslim Islamic scholars.
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The Orientalist view of Islam is first attempts of the Europe to understand Islam. Some Orientalists became knowledgeble in Islamic Studies to the extent they became Islamic scholars. For a list of them, see List of Islamic scholars.
Some Orientalists praised the religious tolerance of Islamic countries in contrast with the Christian West, or the status of scholarship in Mandarin China. With the translation of the Avesta by Abraham Anquetil-Duperron and the discovery of the Indo-European languages by William Jones complex connections between the early history of Eastern and Western cultures emerged. However, these developments occurred in the context of rivalry between France and Britain for control of India, and were associated with attempts to understand colonised cultures in order more effectively to control them. Liberal economists such as James Mill denigrated Eastern countries on the grounds that their civilizations were static and corrupt[citation needed]. Even Karl Marx characterised the "Asiatic mode of production" as unchanging. Christian evangelists sought to denigrate Eastern religious traditions as superstitions (see Juggernaut).
