The writings of Mircea Eliade between the confusing past and the position on Islam

Abstract

The writings of the Romanian historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, are spread on the shelves of libraries around the world and in the reference lists of researchers and students. They are a series of writings that seem to respond to the void recorded in the field of knowledge of religions through the comparative method, which requires careful knowledge of the details of the components of more than one religion. Some researchers insist on the need to review the credibility of The originality of the information provided by Mircea Eliade and the extent to which people of religions agree with what he writes as information and what he concludes as reflections and interpretations.

In the personal and academic journey of Mircea Eliade’s life, there are shadow areas that were sometimes crossed, shortening critical periods of them, which will push researchers, especially at the end of the seventies of the last century, to dig into the Romanian archives in particular and bring the results of the research to light regarding what indicates his ties to an extremist racist nationalist movement. In Romania and his relations also with movements of the same intellectual and ideological identity in Europe, especially Portugal and Spain.

Within the framework of the trends of that trend, Islam was considered an explicit enemy represented in practice by the Ottoman Empire, which - according to their belief - threatened Europe’s religious identity and intellectual characteristics, and Romania was an impenetrable barrier that stopped this enemy?? !!.

The project of tracing every mention of Islam and Muslims in the writings of Mircea Eliade requires examining his heritage in all its artistic and academic forms and in all the languages in which he wrote. If this is difficult, it is possible to at least trace what he wrote in two of his books: A History of Beliefs and a Dictionary of Religions.