Book Review: Challenging the New Orientalism by Shahid Alam

Posted on 31 October 2008. Tags: Add new tag, Challengin Orientalism, Edward Said, Oreintalism

In this open hunting season on Islam this book is a breath of fresh air. Intellectual dishonesty, and Western mendacity has been brilliantly defined by Dr. Edward Said as “Orientalism” in his prolifically written book of the same title. The Native Americans said it best “White man speaks with forked tongue“. The same can be said for many writing about Islam.

There are the books written by Muslims awakening from the yolk of colonialism, rhetorical books written by Muslim authors full of venom and feelings of deprivation, who explain away all Muslim faults by blaming all problems on others. Then there are books written by Muslim, the Westernized Muslim apologist intellectuals who blame everything on Muslims themselves. The other types of books on Muslims and Islam are written by the “Orientalists” amongst us, Western authors who have for decades defined the “Orient”, it’s geography, it’s nomenclature (Occident and Orient, Middle East, Far East, South Asia etc.).Once in a while there comes an author, who can go to the root causes of issues and really describe tissues and come up with visions. Orientalism takes a deadly turn again!

Out of the various strategies employed by the Modern Orientalists is to exaggerate the problem, scare the people, list unrelated points, and join the dots in a manner that it serves their purpose of creates a rationale for their thesis or action items. Dr. Edward Said on Orientalism.

Orientalist Neocon thinking: Justifying war & murder.Dr. Edward Said was one such author. Much maligned in the press, he has been called many names, however his name stands out as one of the foremost writers who has changed many lives and he has surely transfigured the landscape of American literature and Columbia, where he was a profession. One thing that his “Orientalist” detractors could not do was to ignore him or his thinking. This is what Dr. Edward Said says about he Orientalism: …………

“It is not Islam’s so-called resistance to modernity or science or for that matter hostility to the West that can be attributed to the decline of Islamicate societies. Rather, it is the economic, political, social and technological factors that caused the peripheral countries to fall behind.“

In a discussion that is remarkable in its intelligence and complexity, the author presents a collection of essays [1] that cover Islamic history, global economics, Orientalist ‘dogma’, anti-imperialist activism, wars and human rights. Without an iota of doubt, it is a work of considerable intellectual substance, with Alam responding to many an unanswered question, although the content is somewhat ambitious. At a time when the world is apparently losing the war against terrorism, as some would claim, what the author has to say is important. It is an extremely sensitive topic, and anyone writing on it is treading on thin ice, but Alam does so dexterously. In reading this book, one is convinced that it has been written by someone with a fine philosophical intellect, steeped in the wisdom of both the East and the West, or as he would prefer, the Centre and the Periphery.

There is an abundance of literature and material by those who adhere to the ‘War against Islam’ while the voice of those who belong to the opposite camp is mute at best. By virtue of this fact alone, the book is seminal and sui generis, one of its kind. However, to fully do justice to his point of view and school of thought, a book of 250 pages is far from adequate.

In the first of the three sections of the book, the author discusses the New Orientalism, which he states has become a political phenomenon. This school of thought sees an unchanging, totalitarian Islam constantly opposing an enlightened and democratic West. He tears apart the arguments of influential protagonists of the New Orientalism, such as Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, and how they distort reality. Alam attempts to explain why so many Jewish scholars and columnists in recent decades have taken culturalist positions on the history and conflicts of the Middle East, attributing the historical difficulties of the region to its religious and cultural heritage. In dissecting every aspect of Huntington’s thesis, the author’s counter arguments are solid, what with his profound knowledge of Islamic and world history. “Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on the ‘War Against Islam’ ” :: Book Review :: by Nina Gera (Friday, October 31, 2008)

THE APOCALYPTICAL VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF AMERICA IS BASED UPON AN EXAGGERATED VISION OF THREATS: Samuel Huntington is one of the Orientalists that many care to talk about to in this book. Some claim that Samuel Huntington has been misunderstood and his questions about one possible future of mankind has been hijacked by the vested interests, to scare the world into finding an excuse for Islam Bashing. Some claim that Mr. Huntington was himself surprised by the amount of controversy created by his article published in the Foreign Affairs journal in the summer of 1993 called “Clash of Civilizations?” He says. Given the interest in, misrepresentation of, and controversy over the article, it seemed desirable for me to explore further the issues it raised. One constructive way of posing a question is to state an hypothesis. The article, which had a generally ignored question mark in its title, was an effort to do that. This book is intended to provide a fuller, deeper, and more thoroughly documented answer to the question.

The prolific Dr. Said has done phenomenal work on Orientalism.

Orientalism is not a mere political subject matter or field that is reflected passively by culture, scholarship, or institutions; nor is it a large and diffuse collection of texts about the Orient; nor is it representative and expressive of some nefarious “Western” plot to hold down the “Oriental” world. It is rather a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological historical and philological texts, it is an elaboration not only of the basic geographical distinction (the word is made up of unequal halves, Orient and Occident) but also a whole series of ‘interests’ which by such means as scholarly discovery, phological reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociological description, it not only creates but also maintains; it is rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate, what is manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world it is above all, a discourse lat is my no means in direct, corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but rather is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with power political as with political (as in colonial or imperial establishment), power intellectual (as with reigning sciences like comparative linguistics or anatomy or any of the modern policy sciences), power cultural (as with orthodoxies and canons of taste, texts, values), power moral (as with ideas about what ‘we’ do and what ‘they’ cannot do or understand as ‘we’ do). Edward Said

Prophet Muhammad’s covenant with Christians is a document that is secured in Mount Sinai, but also in the hearts of Muslims. Jesus through Muslim eyes gives another view of the Muslims. Muhammad in the Christian Context. This Rupee News exclusive discusses the rise of Islam in Europe.

The Islamic world as an integral part of the Periphery was caught between neoliberal economics neocolonial politics. It is not Islam’s so-called resistance to modernity or science or for that matter hostility to the West that can be attributed to the decline of Islamicate societies. Rather, it is the economic, political, social and technological factors that caused the peripheral countries to fall behind.

Alam questions why the Huntington discourse has dominated political discourse in the West despite its weak theoretical foundations and numerous ‘flaws’. As he aptly puts it, our acceptance of theories, even those bordering on the ridiculous, depend on how well they serve our interests, both at the individual and collective level. He rings the alarm by stating that if the Huntington thesis prevails, the twenty-first century will return the West and Islamdom to the twelfth century when wars were fought in the name of religion. Only this time it will be far worse.

In the following section, the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, political trends of the day, and the fallacies propagated by the media on the conflict are presented. He leaves no stone unturned in discussing and supporting the Palestinian cause. According to the author, the discovery of oil in the Middle East has led to a renewal of interest in the region with constant interventions that have caused incessant instability. Israel is assisted by a powerful lobby in Washington, which exercises strong influence over American foreign policy. Instead of seeking to restructure the region by itself, Israeli interests appear to be amply served by Americans taking the lead. In talking about the “Israelisation of the United States” the author states that the world’s only superpower, commanding one-fifth of the world’s output, and almost one-half its military expenditure has entered Iraq in order to effect regime change. “Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on the ‘War Against Islam’ ” :: Book Review :: by Nina Gera (Friday, October 31, 2008)

The entire Crusades were based on similar thinking “the hordes are coming, we need to destroy them”. Richard Fletcher in his new book “The Cross and the Crescent” lists narrations by authors that go back centuries. Ammianus Marcelellinus, last of the Latin historians of antiquity, writing towards the end of the fourth century, is representative. He considers the Arabs a destructive people, who would swoop down like birds of prey to seize whatever they could find

Words are important. The good words spoken by Martin Luther about Islam are not mentioned by Islamphobes. The West should change the approach towards Muslims. Pakistan is pivotal. Karen Armstrong. Islamic positive influences on Europe (http://rupeenews.com/2008/05/15/how-inventions-by-muslims-transformed-the-planet/) are ignored and when mentioned are listed as Arab or Turk. http://rupeenews.com/2008/05/29/confluence-of-civilizations-muslim-darwin-to-islamic-newton/

The final section of the book, ‘The War Against Global Terrorism’ addresses September 11 and its aftermath. Alam is of the view that contrary to what is claimed, it was not the ideological tendencies of Islamic societies to murder that led up to this event. Rather it was a result of the political-economic interactions between the West and the Periphery in general and Islamicate societies in particular. In the course of the book, he talks about the question of identity in imperial USA and what it feels like being a Muslim in the age of war and terror. The book is an antidote to the New Orientalism, and although thorough in no uncertain terms, makes at times for arid and pedantic reading. Its value and usefulness lies mainly in that the author dispels many a myth about the state of things in the world today. “Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on the ‘War Against Islam’ ” :: Book Review :: by Nina Gera (Friday, October 31, 2008)

Note:

[1]. “Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on the ‘War Against Islam’”
by M. Shahid Alam

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1889999458/mmn-20/