This book follows the third congress of researchers on Islam organized by IIIT France at UNESCO in June 2004. Initially, this book wanted to bring together researchers from different disciplines of social sciences and Islamic religious or heritage sciences in order to to propose a new and more complex approach: a "crossed look" of the Islamic fact on modernity and of modernity on Islam.

The texts presented here attempt to answer questions about the contribution of Islamic thought to the critique of modernity, and vice versa, and about the need to engage more in the debate on modernity between Muslim and non-Muslim scholars.

The proposed articles relate to theoretical aspects; methodology or practices classified according to the themes of the congress.

We hope to have contributed to dispassion and above all to go beyond the essentialist aspect of the problem in order to modestly refound the debates on the "thinking" of modernity and Islam.

Through this collective work, three major themes are addressed:

• Multiculturalism, globalization and universal values.
• Identity in question: Conformism or humanism?
• "Islam" and "West": Construction of the image.