Ernest Gellner, “Islam” and “Middle Eastern studies” -

Abstract

The thesis takes as its starting point the famous dispute between Edward Said and Ernest Gellner over the former’s postcolonial approach to Islam and Middle Eastern Studies and the alleged ‘Orientalism’ of the latter’s approach. The intellectual history of Gellner’s work on these topics – drawing from an interdisciplinary background and combining philosophy, sociology, and anthropology – is then set out and the merits and drawbacks of Gellner’s ideas, particularly his strong functionalist approach, are analyzed. It is argued that the ‘exceptionalism’ attributed to ‘Islam' by Gellner is more due to political factors than due to the ‘essence’ of the religion than Gellner believed. The later application of Gellner’s 'Muslim Society' thesis to the entire ‘Muslim World’ prevented a satisfying reconciliation of the theory with Gellner’s more celebrated language and ethnicity based nationalism thesis, despite the many similarities between the two theories.