"Are we all modern? It appears that being modern is unavoidable, but there are many ways of understanding that condition. Contemporary social theory, desperately seeking to avoid the legacy of Orientalism, often appears to deny the social reality of modernity. By combining empirical case studies of Muslim history with a judicious use of social theory, Professor Jung, in a remarkably honest account of his own journey to the East, opens up an exciting challenge for future research to break out of the legacy of modernization theory without abandoning the idea that we are all modern." (Professor Bryan S. Turner, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and ACU, Melbourne) "This book offers a wider ranging, theoretically nuanced and empirically rich analysis which makes an equally important contribution to social theory and Middle Eastern history. Dietrich Jung aims to re-think the existing understandings of modernity by extending the analysis beyond the Western world. Jung charts the complex and contradictory experiences of the Middle East and how this part of the world shaped, and was also shaped by, the global forces of modernity. His key argument that we are all modern, but in different ways is both persuasive and highly important.

" (Professor Sinisa Malesevic, University College, Dublin).