Is orientalism dead?

I admit to not having read Edward Said's Orientalism, but from what I gather, his thesis is that any study of eastern cultures by western historians is necessarily tainted by a racist, condescending, colonial perspective that portrays eastern culture in an inherently inferior light. I have always had trouble accepting this thesis (at least, as far as the modern era - examples of it abound from the colonial era, for example pretty much everything written about India during the British Raj).

Any analysis of a foreign culture is necessarily going to happen across a cultural chasm. As such, it is inevitable that elements of that culture under study will be filtered through the observer's own. The whole point of cultural analysis is to try and understand something alien; the human way to do this is to try and relate it to something more familiar. As a result, the culture under study will be bent and folded (and even mutilated, depending on the skill or lack thereof of the observer) to fit into predefined (and alien) categories.

There probably is always some element of condescension involved as well. Cultural superiority is ingrained deeply by force of habit and the comfort of the familiar. How many times have we seen statements about the West from Islamic sources that seek to portray the West as inherently sinful, hedonistic, without morals, etc. ? Perhaps Western analysts have learned to mask or even suppress their condescension better. But is that condescension the core of the analysis or a side effect? Is the value of the analysis totally negated by it?

A modern day westerner writing about the middle east (which, it should be noted, includes we western muslims as much as it does someone like Michael Totten) will not be immune to these foibles. In my opinion, the thesis of orientalism draws a false line between east and west. In that way Edward Said is as guilty of perpetuating the "Clash" as Samuel Huntington (personally, I favor the Gash of Civilizations theory instead). When i think of Oriental I think of the far east (the Chinese civilization and its offshoots). The middle east is the frontier between east and west, but I don't think you can argue (especially with the adoption of western leftist parliaments and political systems) that its wholly distinct. Neither are they distinct in the religious sphere - after all, there are three great Abrahamic faiths, and they are coterminus at Jerusalem.

I think that we cannot expect a non-muslim writing about the middle east to be too sympathetic to our muslim axioms. It's our task to explain why orthodoxy and faith are important, to rescue terms like hijab and jihad from the negative connotation, to take our own pride in our orthopraxy. A non-muslim writing about the middle east will look for what they know - bars, liberalism, hot chicks - whereas we might see something different. That's not orientalism, its simply culture shock.

Overall, orientalism is badly named. It describes a relationship between colonial powers and its colonies more than it does east vs west or Islam vs (anything). I can't help but speculate that Said's motivation was really to try and establish a distinction between east and west as proxies for the palestinians and the israelis. That conflict is all the more tragic when seen as a fraternal one rather than one at the very frontier between two civilizations, alien and opposed. There's no reason however that the rest of us, who are not embroiled in a life or death struggle over holy land, need to be bound by this formulation. I think we as western muslims especially need to reject the concept of orientalism out of hand.

UPDATE: great essay in The Guardian, "Orientalism is not racism". In my opinion the most important part of the argument is as follows:

Today the west is bleakly incurious about the history of Islam, its art, peoples and learning. There's a blank wall of terror. This wall has been strengthened by Said's book because it closes down a crucial way for cultures to encounter one another: it closes down romanticism.

NOTE: Comments closed here - to discuss this essay, please join the discussion at Talk Islam.

defining a muslim Left II: The Gash of Civilizations

I have previously argued that in defining a genuinely Islamic-American political identity, we must identify what exactly our issues are. This news seems relevant in that regard:

Most people in Muslim countries and the West believe divisions between them are worsening, a Gallup poll for the World Economic Forum (WEF) suggests.

The poll also suggested that most Europeans thought more interaction with Islam would be a threat - though most Americans disagreed.
[...]
Describing the position now, majorities on both sides said they did not believe the two sides were getting along.

This belief was strongest in the US, Israel, Denmark - where the publication of cartoons about the Muslim Prophet Muhammad caused worldwide controversy - and among Palestinians.

WEF experts examining the poll data put this down to the effect of the Iraq war and the Middle East conflict.

By contrast, there was a less gloomy response in Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

According to WEF poll, neither the West nor the Muslim world believed the other side respected it.

But while Muslims said they believed their world did respect the West, Western respondents agreed that the West did not respect the Muslim world.

The issue for Muslim Americans is fairly obvious, given that we are highly vested in closing this gap between east and west, because the existence of this "gash" of civilizations serves to strain our own identities. We have family and friends on both sides of the Gash, we have cultural practices and values that span it, and we live in two worlds at once. Hence, a political party or politician that demonstrates an awareness of the Gash, and policies that serve to mend it or bridge it, is one that deserves our support.

It should be noted that neither political party is doing much to mend the Gash at present. The Democrats' seizure of the Dubai Ports World issue was a disgraceful example of latent xenophobia, but had they played it the correct way would have served as a powerful example of an issue which could draw east and west together (on the basis of economic cooperation and mutual gain). However, the Republicans are far worse than this, engaging in a rhetorical war against muslims and engaging in overt religious prejudice by their insistence on the phrase "Islamofascism" :

The pairing of "Islam" and "fascism" has no parallel in characterizations of extremisms tied to other religions, although the defining movements of fascism were linked to Catholicism - indirectly under Benito Mussolini in Italy, explicitly under Francisco Franco in Spain. Protestant and Catholic terrorists in Northern Ireland, both deserving the label "fascist," never had their religions prefixed to that word. Nor have Hindu extremists in India, nor Buddhist extremists in Sri Lanka.

In contrast to the way militant zealotries of other religions have been perceived, there is a broad conviction, especially among many conservative American Christians, that the inner logic of Islam and fascism go together. Political candidates appeal to those Christians by defining the ambition of Islamofascists in language that makes prior threats from, say, Hitler or Stalin seem benign. The point is that there is a deep religious prejudice at work, and when politicians adopt its code, they make it worse.

The use of such rhetoric becomes a feedback loop which drives the GOP further and further into the jafi embrace. There is a real danger that if this continues, the GOP will ultimately become as radicalized as the white supremacist political parties of Europe, except on religious grounds rather than racial. It may be that Democrats are not doing anything to improve the Gash, but the Republicans are actively exacerbating it. The challenge then for the muslim Left is to articulate the concern about the Gash, and present the case for why its existence is not just a threat to our interests but to the nation as a whole.