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HOW TO RECOGNIZE A MUSLIM

In making this argument, let me begin with the proposal that the organizing logic of
modernity was Europe—Europe as the center of the West, Europe as the powerful constel-
lation of Western European nation-states materially at work in the world, and ‘‘Europe’’
as an epistemological and ontological ideology intent on universalizing its vision of his-
tory and being. At the heart of postmodernism, then, we might say, lies Europe’s collapse.
So postmodernism marks the failure of Eurocentrism, of Europe as a global principle,
and a new start at re-creating the world—a world, incidentally, in which religion returns
from the margin.

INTERLUDE: THE BEGINNINGS OF POSTMODERNISM

It is a little-known fact that the first book on postmodernism was written from an explicitly

Christian standpoint by one of the more successful American religious educators and cul-

tural critics of the interbellum period. Disturbed by the emptying of religious content from

religious practices and theologies, Bernard Iddings Bell in 1926 publishedPostmodernism

and Other Essays, outlining his vision for a new understanding of Christian religion and its

role in contemporary society. In 1939, he following this up withReligion for Living: A Book

for Postmodernists. The crux of the matter for Bell was to get beyond the recently formu-

lated opposition between fundamentalism and modernism. In practice this meant an accep-

tance of both the historicity of the Bible and the truth of miracles, including Jesus’ divinity.

While Bell was popular on the college lecture circuit and published in such highbrow

national magazines asThe Atlantic Monthly, his argument appears to have had little impact.

Not only does the opposition between fundamentalism and modernity remain a highly popu-

lar one to this day, but Bell’s vision of postmodernity appears to have been unable to make

headway outside the privatized ghetto to which religion had been assigned, or even to have

been picked up within the religious community itself. It was as such too little, too late, too

new... though recent events suggest that, notwithstanding the significant flaws in his

argument, Bell might better be seen as impressively prescient, as one of the first to herald

and enact the ‘‘return of the religious,’’ of a postmodern religiosity beyond territorialism.

Of course, it makes sense that Western Europe should be among the most resistant
to this new phase of history. Even as it attempts practically to realize a new Europe, a new
and closer union of the battered old states, the primary stance is defensive rather than
creative. In facing the present—in politics, education, social welfare, citizenship, and in-
tellectual life—too much of Western Europe is still in flight from its past, from totalitari-
anism, violence, and gross inhumanity, rather than seeking to realize the future. Having
again achieved a level of stability and wealth, it strives to protect what it has, fears what
is different, trills at the slightest perceived threat to its current democracy and economic

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