Abstract

The author examines critically Haridi’s Das Paradigma der “islamischen Zivilisation”. Oder die Begründung der deutschen Islamwissenschaft durch Carl Heinrich Becker , Würzburg, 2005, rejecting his definition of Becker’s approach as a “philosophy of history with a metaphysical content”. According to Haridi, Becker’s interpretation of Islamic history would be grounded on an essentialist understanding of the East, and on an historical-philosophical, instead of historical-cultural, approach. According to the author, on the contrary, in spite of his concessions to the Orientalistic attitude, Becker’s main historiographical problem was precisely the de-essentialization of Islam