Islam and the end of the journey: How the other became the West

Journeying is defined here as the trajectory of encounter which a culture t races for its own adherents. The traveller marks the trail. This was so for journeying Muslims from the moment they were first carried off on the tida l wave of their ever-expanding culture. The ebb of this culture coincided w ith the rise of the West, of which Muslims knew little because it had had n othing to offer, because it had not even been worth the journey. This was a decisive moment. Islam turned from a world in which the travelling Muslim had always been at home, and yet had experienced unlimited encounters with peoples of many kinds, to a world in which Muslim civilization confronted t he western enemy so directly that there was nothing left but itself and the West. This western world of Islamic perception was thus born from the jour ney's end of Muslims themselves.