Awesome Belcher

Islam and Western Bias

While I was avoiding studying for finals, I came across a paper I wrote last year in Modern Middle East. I’m not sure how interest anyone but me will think it is, but the ideas, I think, are universally important.

         In his 1962 book The Savage Mind; the brilliant French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss put forth the idea that all men, no matter where they resided on the globe, were fundamentally the same. He contended, for example, that the mind of the Pacific Islander functioned in the same way as the mind of the most erudite European or American. In other words, Strauss believed that the mental capability of humans (or lack thereof) was in no way connected to their race.  Although we may take this idea for granted in the 21^st century, it was not a commonly accepted idea when the Savage Mind was first published in the mid-20^th century. European colonialism had perpetuated the idea that some people groups, most notably Africans and Arabs, were in fact inferior to western Europeans. As colonialism came to a crashing halt after World War II, European and American anthropologists like Strauss began to re-examine this accepted idea. The Savage Mind was the first, but by no means the last work to do so. In his book published more than a decade later, Palestinian Christian Edward Said criticized the idea of Orientalism in his book that he christened with the same name. With Strauss’ work as the catalyst, Said was able to further correct the biased views that the Western world held towards the Middle East.

            Throughout his works, most notably the book Orientalism, Said systematically analyzed and dismantled the Western concept of Orientalism, which he vividly described in this, and other works. In his article Islam Through Western Eyes, which was published in the 1980 edition of The Nation magazine, Said described Orientalism as the idea that “the world is divided into two large sections, one being different, and strange, the orient, and the other being our world.”He took this idea one step further stating in the same article, “Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists” (Said, The National, 1998). Although Said was writing over four decades ago, his analyses of western views on the Middle East remain relevant to this day.  Orientalism, under the guise of various political ideas and ideologies, has subtly crept into the worldview of millions of Americans, and even into the foreign policy of the United States. In many ways, colonialism and the ideals of orientalism have been transferred from European powers, to the United States. While Said focused on the academic theme of misunderstanding on the part of the West, other social theorists, such as CLR James, stressed the economic importance of the Middle East (oil) as the main factor in the perpetuation of Orientalist attitudes among Americans and in American politics (Webb, 2001). Of course, cultural misunderstanding and ignorance, along with economic factors are vital pieces to the puzzle, and can help us understand why these deep-seated ideas exist.

            Although Claude Levi-Strauss, Edward Said, and numerous other anthropologists and social theorists dedicated their life’s work to the correction of Western bias, their success was limited. Whatever initial success Said’s work may have made in correcting Western misconceptions of the Middle East, the events of September 11^th caused a major regression. Suddenly the desire to see the people of the Middle East as foreign, strange, and backward was intensified. The view of Islam as a monolithic body, an idea Said adamantly rejected, became the view of millions of Americans. Criticism of Said’s work also became widespread. Almost immediately after it was published, Said’s book Orientalism came under fire. A main area of contention was Said’s rather relativistic view of reality. Said’s insistence that the Middle East could never fully be understood because of the ultimate relativism of truth did much to undermined the credibility of his thesis in the eyes of many scholars. As author Ibn Warraq pointed out in his book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism,

         In response to critics who over the years have pointed to errors of fact and detail so mountainous as to destroy his thesis, [Said] finally admitted that he had “no interest in, much less capacity for, showing what the true Orient and Islam really are (Warraq, 2007, 16).

In his article Islam Through Western Eyes, Said came out in defense of his book, stating,  

         My book was often interpreted as a defense of the “real” Islam. Whereas what I was trying to show was that any talk about Islam was radically flawed…because it would simply be repeating the errors of Orientalism to claim that the correct view of Islam was X or Y or Z (Said, The National, 1998).

The debate over Said’s accuracy did not stop there. British historian Robert Irwin also criticized Orientalism for historical inaccuracies within Said’s thesis. While Said claimed that Europeans throughout history viewed the Middle East through the lens of racism and imperialism, Irwin pointed out that numerous Western politicians and rulers had stood for and with Middle Eastern nations in their times of struggle. Irwin also pointed to the numerous Europeans who had taken up the Palestinian cause as an example of positive European understanding and involvement in the Middle East (Irwin, 59).

            The debate over how to understand the Middle East is far more complicated than any one scholar, no matter how astute, may be able to explain. In that sense, Edward Said was perhaps correct. As the globe continues to shrink with the advent of new technologies, however, the world of the west and the world of the east will continue to gain a deeper understanding of each other, as well as experience increased conflict brought on by the collision of two very different worlds. Said’s compelling works, while undoubtedly incomplete as he himself admitted, have laid the foundation for the future Claude Levi-Strauss wrote about, a future of understanding among different people groups. A future that sees all peoples, whether American, European, Egyptian, Syrian, or any other nationality, as fundamentally equal beings, with equal capabilities and equal value. Said never idealized this view of the future, but realized the struggle mankind must go through to attain it. He recognized that the powerful legacy of colonialism would not be easily silenced; all people from all nations will have to work together in order to reverse the worldviews colonialism and orientalism have spawned. While all the criticisms of Edward Said and his works are certainly valid, his ultimate thesis still remains as a powerful corrective to Western bias.