#Thread, Introduction to 'Venture of Islam'
This era-defining book by the foremost scholar of Islam, Mashall G. Hodgson, Professor at University of Chicago, defines the study and scholarship on Islam in our current age. Hodgson saw this project (or rather this work as the book

was published posthumously from the notes he used to teach his course on Islam and World history for 15 years) as a moral calling. He was a dedicated Quaker and was a firm follower of his faith that he refused to serve in WW2 as a conscientious objector. Maybe it was his faith

which embedded a deep sense of morality in him that he wanted to present Islam as a historical object and experience in all its richness, diversity and contradiction.
This project (and his course) was a corrective to the Orientalist production of Islam (and Muslims) as the

dangerous and inferior Other. Hodgson saw the formation, development and experience of Islam in history as a collective human heritage; and one of the most sophisticated, complicated and nuanced cultural, civilizational and historical endeavor of the whole human history.

The theoretical concepts and terms and tools of analysis he came up with remain the mainstay of intellectual and historical scholarship on Islam. The subtitle of the book 'Conscience and History in World Civilization' says it all that for Hodgson Islam was not something outside

of World history but a crucial and (contrasting the Eurocentric knowledge-production) defining phase in human civilization.
Unfortunately, the work then and even now is ignored. Then the cold war shadowed the scope and achievement of the work (it was published in 1974).

And now in the War on Terror, there's only one version and understanding of Islam that sells and does the work for the global powers, as well as the established discursive authorities on both sides of the divide.
In this day of reductionism, rise of the rightwing fascism,

historical revisionism and uncritical acceptance of Orientalist and colonial knowledge, categories and historical narratives we need the vision, commitment and moral calling of Hodgson more than ever. Alas, he died very young (for some reason all brilliant scholars do). But he

has left us his life work to build upon and reclaim ourselves, our past and our history from the violence of the modern day historical amnesia and alienation. -end-