Research output
Complete citation
Poljarevic, Emin. Review of The Politics of Writing Islam: Voicing Difference, by Mahmut Mutman. Religious Studies Review 42, no. 2 (2016): 128. https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.12482.
Status
Published (2016)
Publication type
Scholarly book review
Overview
This review examines Mahmut Mutman’s account of how Islam is written, represented, and made available to modern forms of knowledge. The book treats writing not as a neutral description of Islam but as a field in which difference, authority, and political judgement are produced. The review considers Mutman’s engagement with Orientalism, secular criticism, and the conceptual languages through which Islam becomes an object of scholarly and public discourse. It highlights the value of examining representation as an active intellectual practice while asking whether the book’s theoretical vocabulary sufficiently clarifies the historical and institutional settings in which such representations operate. The review contributes to debates on Islam, modernity, and knowledge by showing how apparently descriptive accounts may reproduce the power relations they seek to criticise.
Research question or central concern
How successfully does Mutman explain the relationship between writing, representation, and the production of Islam as an object of modern knowledge?
Main argument, approach, and contribution
The review evaluates the book through conceptual analysis, recognising its critique of representational authority while asking for greater historical and institutional specification. Its contribution is to connect debates on writing Islam to questions of power, difference, and scholarly method.
Keywords
Islam; representation; Orientalism; secular criticism; difference; knowledge; discourse; modernity
Emin Poljarević 