Western peoples have long viewed the Muslim world through an “orientalist” filter –imagining a backward, exotic and vaguely sinister “other.” But, until recently, they were seldom preoccupied with what they imagined. There was scholarly interest, of course; and artists and entertainers sometimes employed Muslim themes. But, with the partial exception of the Ottoman Empire, the peoples, cultures and religion of the Muslim world were, for the most part, invisible to the Western eye. Indeed, it was not until the nineteenth century, as the French and British empires expanded into Muslim regions and as advances in transport and communications brought distant parts of the world closer together,...
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