This collective work dedicated to pluralism and recognition follows the conference co-organized by the International Institute of Islamic Thought and the UNESCO Chair for Comparative Studies of Spiritual Traditions, their Specific Cultures and Interreligious Dialogue, St. Petersburg, which took place in June 2006 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. This collective work, extensive international and interdisciplinary platform, offers a substantive debate on the future of living together with respect for diversity, integrity and the particularity of each culture. We chose the epistemological and philosophical approaches to better understand the relationship between unity, plurality and unification, as well as tolerance and recognition.

 Result of a two-year collaboration between IIIT France and the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Berkeley, United States, this book follows the international congress organised by Ramon Grosfoguel on the 2^ndand 3rd of June 2006 in the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris and titled "New post-911 racial / ethnic configurations: the problem and practical effects of islamophobia". It is a contribution to South-South dialogue between researchers of Muslim and non Muslim cultures, of various ethnic or geopolitical origins like South American, Afro-American, African, South and Central Asian, Arab-European... This book attempts to analyze and understand why these communities have become the main target of the neocolonial oppression, on the pretext of pre-emptive wars against terrorism.

 This book offers a reflection on a fundamental question in the dynamics of renewal and reform in Islamic Thought: the methodology. It addresses the epistemological, rational and emotional foundations of the Muslim thought in its variation and through its evolution, before inviting to a reform of the methodology of Islamic thought. It calls the effort for a more collective research, interdisciplinary and thus productive.

 Given the profound crisis that Muslims currently live, due to the confrontation between heritage of the past and the impacts of the contemporary world, this book advocates the establishment of a new method of scientific definition of the Muslim community, “Umma”. This community, the author invites it to become “charismatic” – such an elite which has a strong power over the others and exercising influence; from the inside, this enlightenment has an effect of unification and consolidation, and from the outside, it has the effect of attraction and polarization.

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