Dr Aron Paul, The end of the Orientalists
Humanist and Palestinian scholar the late Edward Said wrote in his essay 'Islam through Western Eyes' that:Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, now for a history lesson ...
"The general basis of Orientalist thought is an imaginative geography dividing the word into two unequal parts, the larger and "different" one called the Orient, the other, also known as our world, called the Occident or the West... only if we get beyond politicised labels like "East" and "West" will we be able to reach the real world at all."
This is the promise of the Arab Revolutions, that in their success they and the revolutions that are yet to come can finally shatter the myth of fundamental cultural difference ... Our hope should be that in its place we can all come to recognise the fundamental similarity of cultures and peoples. That we should all be governed the same way, as equal citizens in democracies, will be the ultimate statement of universal human equality and the end of Orientalism. Once all people have reclaimed their dignity as equal citizens, the imaginative geography of 'East' and 'West' so reinforced by the political divides between the two spheres will finally lose its political meaning, and the humiliation and fear that flows from it will no longer imperil the progress of humanity.
A.J. Caschetta reviews Ibn Warraq's monumental deconstruction of the work of the single individual who was most responsible for the effacing of honest discussion about Islam and jihad from America's universities: Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism:
Bat Ye'or, Europe and the Ambiguities of MulticulturalismIt is now five years after the death of Edward Said, the man who made it cool to hate the West, and the reevaluation of his thought and work is thankfully well underway. Said forged a career out of revisiting the past, "deconstructing" what he found and writing it anew. Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism by Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society, reveals just how massive a fabrication Said's version of history is. The book spells out in great detail Said's deeply flawed writings and his legacy: the modern academic fetish for examining microscopically the flaws and failings (real and imagined) of the West while simultaneously portraying an ever-peaceful East perpetually victimized by the technologically superior but, of course, morally benighted West. This is the fashionable narrative in the humanities departments of virtually every college and university in America, if not in all of Western academia...
The author lays bare Said's methods of obfuscation, which often use nonsensical and impenetrable prose, insinuation, and outright falsification. Said's ad hominem attacks against those who criticized his work are recounted, demonstrating that Said was both a metaphorical as well as a literal stone-thrower. And the growing list of Said's "historical howlers" (obvious inaccuracies and misstatements of fact) unmasks an amateur historian who was either extremely sloppy or just plain dishonest...
Robert Spencer and Bat Ye'or on Edward Said ...... the politization of history initiated by Edward Said has obfuscated the root causes of Islam’s traditional hostility toward Jews and Christians from the seven century onward. Edward Said ... endeavored to destroy the whole scientific accumulation of Orientalist knowledge of Islam and replace it with a culture of Western guilt and inferiority toward Muslims victims. The obliteration of the historical truth that he constantly pursued from 1978 – starting with his book Orientalism – as well as his hostility to Israel, has prevented an understanding and the resolution of problems that today assail Europe and challenge its own survival.
As for the Arab Spring, I'll write more about that insanity later.
File under: doctors without brains, historians without facts, writers with an ethnic bias masquerading as moral superiors, and dialogue of the demented.
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