Does the Muslim World Exist? A Foray into Global History and Global International Relations

Contributor(s): Professor Cemil Aydin, Professor Menderes Çınar | Muslim-majority societies – similarly to all others - have had a contested relationship with history and continue to grapple with the ideas of ‘Islam’, ‘the Muslim world’ and ‘Islamic civilisation’. It has been argued that the latter are products of global intellectual trends and power relations in the nineteenth century and that their continuing potency derive from their being used by political actors (such as the AKP in Turkey) as ideological tools. The panel will investigate these claims by exploring the historical conditions and inter-connected global power structures which brought the idea of Islam into being. It will also explore the politics surrounding its continuing survival at the current juncture of a global IR which stokes the fires of essentialist collective myths.