John L. Esposito: Esposito, Encyclopedias and Us
It may well be the case that the intellectual level of a particular nation is measured by the number of its thinkers that you can find in an encyclopedia. Unfortunately, there are not so many Indonesian thinkers to be found in encyclopedias even though Indonesia is the largest Islamic country in the world. Now John L. Esposito's Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World has been translated into Bahasa Indonesia and is published by Mizan. We took the opportunity of having a look at Esposito's encyclopedia and also ask why so few of our thinkers have entries named after them.
September 11, 2001
John Esposito is an endless source of energy. It is this energy that makes him productive and to write one book each year. John L. Esposito, Professor of Religion and International Affairs and of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, USA, is a familiar name for Islamic observers everywhere, including Indonesia.
Esposito began writing on Islam consistently since the beginning of the 1980s. This year Mizan published the Indonesian edition
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