The article is available in four languages. This should be a guide to anyone who wants to study religion in general and Islam in particular . 1. “The impossibility of writing the history of a religion as an autonomous entity without considering the economic, social and political dynamics at work. 2. The relative autonomy of religion vis-à-vis social issues. In other words, ideology translates into its own language the contradictions that run through society. 3. There is not one Islam, transcendent, ahistorical, but several very different Islams, transformed by the historical conditions in which they flourished; these Islams are ideologies, it would therefore be methodologically erroneous and politically ineffectual or even dangerous to regard it as the main motor of economic phenomena.” 4. The politicisation of Islam and the development of Islamic fundamentalism are the fateful results of the subjugation of Muslim countries by the capitalist powers of Europe. This subjugation impeded
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51