A Predatory Orientalism: What Went Wrong?
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In an earlier era, before the Zionist movement descended on the heads of unsuspecting Palestinians, the least bigoted voices in the field of Oriental studies were often those of European Jews.
At a time when most Orientalists took Muhammad for a scheming imposter, equated Islam with fanaticism, denigrated the Qur'an as a crude and incoherent text, and claimed that the Arabs were incapable of abstract thought, Jewish scholars of Islam often took opposite positions. They accepted the sincerity of Muhammad's mission, described Arabs as "Jews on horseback," viewed Islam as an evolving faith that is more democratic than other religions, and debunked Orientalist claims about an unchanging Islam and a dynamic West.
Ironically, these pro-Islamic Jews did not escape the voracious interest of Bernard Lewis, the leader of the new Zionist Orientalists. In a 1993 essay, he writes that they "were among the first who attempted to present Islam to European readers as Muslims themselves see it and to stress, to recognize, and indeed sometimes to romanticize the merits and achievements of Muslim civilization in its great days." It would appear that these Jews were anti-Orientalists long before Edward Said.
These contrarian positions had their origin in a variety of motives. Even as the Jews began entering the European mainstream, starting in the nineteenth century, they were still outsiders, only recently emerged from the confinement of ghettos, and it would be scarcely surprising if they were seeking to maintain their distinctiveness by emphasizing, and identifying with, the achievements of another Semitic people, the Arabs. In celebrating Arab civilization, these Jewish scholars were perhaps sending a non-too-subtle message to Christian Europe that their civilization was not unique, that Islamic achievements often excelled theirs, and that Europeans were building upon the achievements of their adversaries in science and philosophy. In addition, their discussions of religious and racial tolerance in Islamic societies, towards Jews in particular, may have offered hope that this was attainable in Europe too. It may also have been an invitation to Europeans to incorporate religious and racial tolerance into their standards of civilizations.
Yet the vigor of this early anti-Orientalism of Jewish scholars would not last; it would not survive the logic of the Zionist movement as it sought to create a Jewish state in Palestine. Such a state could only emerge as the bastard child of imperialist powers, and it could only come into existence by displacing the greater part of the Palestinian population, by incorporating them into an apartheid state, or through some combination of the two. In addition, once created, Israel could only survive as a militarist, expansionist, and hegemonic state, constantly at war with its neighbors.
In other words, once the Zionist project entered into its implementation phase after 1918, it was inevitable that the European Jews' attraction for Islam was not going to endure. In fact, it would be replaced by a bitter contest, one in which the Jews, as junior partners of the imperialist powers, would seek to deepen the Orientalist project in the service of Western power. Bernard Lewis played a leading part in this reorientation. In the words of Martin Kramer, a Zionist Orientalist himself, Bernard Lewis "came to personify the post-war shift from a sympathetic to a critical posture."
Ironically, this shift occurred when many Orientalists had begun to shed their Christian prejudice against Islam, and several were making amends for the excesses of their forebears. Another factor aiding this shift towards a less polemical Orientalism was the entry of a growing number of Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, into the field of Middle Eastern studies. The most visible upshot of these divergent trends was a polarization of the field of Middle Eastern studies into two opposing camps.
One camp, consisting mostly of Christians and Muslims, has labored to bring greater objectivity to their study of Islam and Islamic societies. They seek to locate their subjects in the matrix of history, see Islamic societies as adjusting to the challenges posed by the West, neither innately hostile to the West and Western values, nor trapped in some unchanging obscurantist mindset. The second camp, now led mostly by Jews, has reverted to Orientalism's original mission of subordinating knowledge to Western power, now filtered through the prism of Zionist interests. This Zionist Orientalism has assiduously sought to paint Islam and Islamic societies as innately hostile to the West, and to modernism, democracy, tolerance, scientific advance, and women's rights.
This Zionist camp has been led for more than fifty years by Bernard Lewis, who has enjoyed an intimate relationship with power that would be the envy of the most distinguished Orientalists of an earlier generation. He has been strongly supported by a contingent of able lieutenants, whose ranks have included the likes of Leonard Binder, Elie Kedourie and David Pryce-Jones. There are many foot-soldiers too who have provided distinguished service to this new Orientalism. And no compendium of these foot-soldiers would be complete without the names of Daniel Pipes, Martin Kramer, Thomas Friedman, Martin Peretz, Norman Podhoretz, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol and Judith Miller.
I try to visualize an encounter between these new Orientalists and some of their eminent predecessors like Hienrich Heine, Abraham Geiger, Gustav Weil, Franz Rosenthal, and the great Ignaz Goldziher. What would these pro-Islamic Jews have to say to their descendents whose Orientalism denigrates and demeans the societies they study and who work to incite a civilizational war between Islam and the West? Would Geiger and Goldziher embrace Lewis and Kedourie, or would they be repelled by their new predatory Orientalism?
M. Shahid Alam teaches Economics at Northeastern University. His recent book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave (2000). Copyright: M. Shahid Alam.
Topics: Culture, Muslim World, Occupation, Oriental Studies, Zionism
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The way to deal with such things is as an object lesion in how not to act and as a counter example to that which is better. Their lack of original behavior makes them predictable and with a little practice one can be played like a two part harmony on a piano (example and counter example). Why do you think The Creator created the devil? Not only to test but to teach. Who watches the watchers, John?
As Muslims we must train our brains to 1: recognize the tricks of the tempters and 2: use the recognition to teach that which is better. Once we have practiced this we can not only keep ourselves from being caught but can use them to spread understanding. We must make ourselves temptation proof by learning to recognize and meet temptation with that which is better. That should be the initial goal of every Muslim. To protect and serve.
Practice, practice, practice. What you practice you become.
Israel fought Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Palestinian "rebels" to secure its freedom and security. Then usurps land from the Palestinians, Syrians, Jordanians, and Egyptians for its settlements. Hey that sounds familiar too.
The ignorance of the American public is appalling but it is partly the fault of the Muslims, yaa Ikhwan wa Akhawaat, for not going out and giving daw'ah in both word and action - as true Eeman in in the heart, on the tongue, and in the actions of the limbs. We must arm ourselves with knowledge and taqwa, as historically, that has won more converts to Islam than any war.
Jazaakullahu Khair.
We should build interfaith bridges that collectively may bring peace to all of us; all monotheistic religions teach good things because, inherently, they emanate from the source of all goodness. I predict that John will die full of hate and bitterness -an unrepentant Scrooge who is stingy with his feelings (but then again, if he reserves his soft spots for the butchering Zionists, what could be said about these feelings?)
p/s: we use a different weapon ...
Your characterization of Israel as a "bastard child" reveals a lack of serious objective scholarship on your part. This is not language appropriate to mature academic discourse. It is, rather, the language of political propaganda, which is most certainly what your article is.
Statements like "with us or against us", "why do they hate us" and "what went wrong" are symptomatic of a selfish parochialism that dooms us all. We should not view our situation as a clash of civilizations but as cybernetic (self organizational) failures. In that framework we can understand how we got into this mess and more importantly how to get out. The Quranic prescription is symbiosis. It doesn't take advanced mathematics to understand where population pressures, depleted resources and advanced technologies that can be used as weapons will take us otherwise.
The scientific models predict the number of humans to peak between 2030 and 2050 at around 10 to 12 billion after which it will decrease by over 50% by the end of the century. The more detailed the model the closer that decrease gets to 100%. The conditions necessary to create such a reduction will inevitably create social unrest(war). The meek may well inherit the earth but whether it will be able to sustain them is another question entirely. In the western way of war the first casualty is the environment followed quickly by infrastructure. Praise be to God we are taught not to imitate them. Remember we are God's Gardeners.
I'm not at all surprised to see jewish racist and bottom feeder john norman praising and defending this wicked institution with his usual litany of lies and half-truths.
Seems the apple doesnt fall far from the tree.
p/s: "in business, time is monies, monies can be made and lost, we mean business around the clock"
It could be argued that those earlier Jewish Orientalists were at pains to point out Christian Europe's deficencies viv-a-vis the Jews with the hope of securing Jewish equality and that the "Orient" or Islam was a useful tool to use. In the process, and whatever the purpose of their "Orientalism", they deigned to turn a blind eye to Islam's intolerance. That they should have done so after 1860, when Druze and Muslim intolerance turned Lebanon into a living hell for the Christian population, speaks volumes for their manipulation of facts and history.