This study which deals with the outlines of the interwoven history of Islam and
the West aims to tend towards the world of meanings which is built through
the concept of “me’’, the perception of “the other’’, concept of time and
place, symbolic language and images as well as social, political and military
relationships. The book embraces an interdisciplinary approach, which
extends from history to philosophy, from theology to art, to be able to reveal
the meanings that the history of the socities of Islam and the West which is
in interaction and interpenetrated express today and yesterday. While every
claim of “me’’ includes the existence of “the other’’, every emphasis of “the
other’’ requires the construction of a concept of “me’’. But unlike modern
dichotomies, there is no need to generate eternal and limitless enemies by
absolutizing this distinction. The judgements given through “the other’’ is, at
the same time, the mirror of the descriptions related to “me’’ and “us’’. This
book aims to follow the projections of me-other dialectic in the background
while analysing the Islam and West relationships. “What İbrahim Kalın has
written since the fast spread of Islam about Europe and Islam relationship and especially Muslim Turkish people’s position
against Europe is quite interesting. The book has a wide source information. This book is a study in which Anglo-saxon and
French literature translations made from other languages used widely as well as the sources related to the Ottoman period
and modern Turkey in Western languages. It is a thick book which examines every thesis in detail and knows how to present
it by arraying them carefully. It is a five-hundred-page book yet it can be read with interest and without getting tired.’’ ---İlber
Ortaylı, Historian writer