Edward Said

By Dina Rashed, IOL Correspondent

CHICAGO, September 26 (IslamOnline.net) - Prominent scholar Edward Said, a world renowned theorist and thinker died late Wednesday, September 24, in Manhattan, NY after a long battle with Leukemia and pancreatic cancer for almost ten years.

Within the Arab American community and more on the intellectual Muslim American circles, Edward Said symbolized the power of knowledge against material power and oppression. His writings about Imperialism and Orientalism engaged thousands of his readers, not only of Arab or Muslim heritage, but around the world on the real dynamics of power and hegemony.

“I don’t think anyone can fill his shoes, he was unique and brilliant,” said Mary Rose Oakar, President of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee to Islam-online.net in a telephone interview, “He was a strong advocate of the Palestinian and Arab Americans, who was not afraid to express the rights of our people.”

His unmatched ability to articulate issues of concern advocates his cause and encouraged generations of his students to believe in the ability of the oppressed to narrate their own realities and dreams.

“It’s a great loss to people who are lovers of justice, to people who are advocates of human rights,” Rashid Khalidi, Professor of Modern Middle East History at Columbia University said to IOL.

Said was one of the most outspoken figures, if not the most, in the Arab and Muslim American communities about misperception and misrepresentation of the culture and religion. Over the last decades he led fierce battles with mainstream American media because of his views on the Israeli occupation and the demeanization of the Arab/Muslim identity in the West.

“In the 60s and the 70s, when the word Arab or Palestinian was almost a dirty word, close to being a curse, Edward Said was the one on television and print defending this identity,” said Khalidi.

Thousands of Arab Americans are saddened by Said’s death which presents an intellectual vacuum to many of the younger generations. In very few hours, e-mails of mourning kept pouring in from all over the U.S., Canada and Australia and other parts of the world of the many who are connected together via the Internet.

“His passing poses a challenge to the community on how to bring young new scholars of passion and rigor. We are very good at generating people of passion but few are of his rigor,” commented Khalidi.

“We often use the word irreplaceable and much more often we misuse the word in describing people, but Edward Said was truly one of those irreplaceable people,” said Albert Mokhiber, former President of ADC, in a phone interview with IOL.

His Political Activism

The cover of Edward Said's memoir, "Out of Place"

A Christian Arab, Said’s writings on Islam and its image in the West were most intellectually stimulating. He was one of the very early writers to allude to the media’s misrepresentation and creation of an inferior image about Muslims and their culture. His book “Covering Islam” which first came out in 1981 represented one of these early writings. Inspired by coverage of Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, Said investigated how the language help define political reality and is not only confined to its descriptive role.

His perfect command of the language and the fact that he moved early in his life to the U.S., Said’s writings and ideas were most provocative than most of other Arab Americans because he appealed to the American mindset. His intellectual development was just influenced by the Western culture as much as by that of the culture that he was born into.

His advocacy of the Palestinians’ rights and their plight was coupled with a committed conviction to the uselessness of violence and considered human rights in the core of Palestinian-Israeli struggle. His debate of the issue took it to a more universal, humanist level rather than narrow ethno-centered one.

Yet he remained consistent with his principles and what he preached about justice and human rights and was a fierce critic of many injustices and leadership corruption in the Arab countries and mainly in the occupied territories under the limited rule of the Palestinian National Authority in recent years.

On Oslo And Arafat

Toward the end of the 1980s, he was asked to join the Palestinian National Congress by Yasser Arafat, and became a member without specific affiliation to any faction.

Many considered him a pessimist, including Palestinian leaders in the occupied territories, Said’s believe in the 1993 Oslo peace accord diminished but remained committed to importance of peaceful solutions and concrete negotiations, only time proved him right about Oslo.

“This man was well ahead of his time in seeing what was missing in Oslo,” said Khalidi.

The solution that he presented was one state with two people in it, and although admitting that the popular emotions may well be against such a solution in the time being he called for more efforts towards bringing the Palestinian and the Jewish people to accepting their shared faith, along the line of the South Africa example.

In the last few months and with the increasing violence in the occupied territories and Israel and the crumbling down of the latest Roadmap efforts, more analysts were getting to Said’s much earlier conclusion, including Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who mentioned in his writings in August 2003 that one state option is probably the only viable option.

As more of the outcomes of Oslo unfolded, Said became more and more critical of Arafat, his circle of advisors and his policies.  His criticism reached the extent of calling for Arafat’s resignation, whom he considered extremely corrupt and unable of representing the Palestinian dreams or realities inside or outside Palestine. He called for new Palestinian leadership based on genuine grass root movements both nationally and internationally, which then could ensure a true peace process and guarantee rights of the Palestinian people.

Said’s criticism was not welcomed by the PA officials to the extent that Arabic editions of two of his books were banned because they were extremely critical of the Oslo process. Activists living in the occupied territories said that a physical confiscation of the hard copies took place in many of Ramallah’s book stores.

In 2002, Said took his ideas to the Palestinian reality and encouraged the formation of a grass root movement dedicated to principles of democracy and respect of human rights in the Palestinian society. His efforts led to the Palestinian National Initiative, known in Arabic as AlMubadara. His ideas constitute the core ideology for the founding members.

The Famous Stone

In July 2000, following the Israeli forces pull out from Southern Lebanon, Said paid visit to the region, on the border fence he picked a pebble and threw it in the direction of the other side, at what seemed to be a Israeli guard post. To many Palestinians this very famous picture of him throwing the pebble symbolized support to continuing struggle towards freedom. But the pro-Israeli activists especially in the U.S. took advantage and opened doors of fire on the Columbia professor calling on the University to chastise him in severe measures. They claimed that his gesture was an encouraging symbol of violent attack against the Israelis.

Said’s comment was that it was a "symbolic gesture of joy" that Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon had ended.

But the University officials did not respond to this pressure.

Artistic Side

His political activism is probably more publicized especially in the Middle East, where he is known for his political views and theories. What is not fully acknowledged is the artistic side of Said. He was an accomplished pianist, who became the music critic of the Nation for years.  He was also involved in other forms of the word written or spoken, namely poetry and novel.

As Mokhiber called him a Renaissance Man, Said’s appreciation of the arts reflected on his views regarding issues at large. “He always educated, he never gave pure rhetoric, there was always a sense of direction to what he say,” Mokhiber added

“He loved music, literature, arts and tied all to the cause of human dignity, he was not a narrow person,” said Khalidi of Said, “He was a humanist who never believed in violence.”

He had a very committed loyal relationship with his students in different generations, which in return took him to a plateau that probably none of the contemporary thinkers in the West reached. 

His ideas reached people of different generations, old and young, inside and outside the Palestinian territories.

“He was my hero,” said Oakar, who was not even a student of his, but a devout follower of his ideas.

The Electronic Intifadah, an Internet news network concerned with the Israeli occupation and monitoring of the U.S. media towards the Middle East conflicts, provides another news and analysis alternative outside the mainstream American discourse, has been heavily influenced by Said.

Initiated in 2001, EI founders were very influenced by Said’s ideas especially what he called the ability to narrate Palestinians’ own reality as based on their experience and not based on what is permitted for them to say, the idea was published in an article titled “Permission to Narrate” in the mid 1980s.

No Blind Loyalty

Ali Alarabi, national Director of United Arab American League, an emerging young organization based in Chicago, believes that what Said presented to the Arab American mind was much more influential in developing the Palestinian consciousness as it is now.

To him, many of his generations can relate to Said’s ideas more than what Arafat claims to represent in terms of Palestinian struggles and aspirations. Said presented a discourse base on knowledge, and then knowledge became the power in a long fight towards human dignity and freedom.

“He taught by eloquent example that being faithful to a cause did not require blind loyalty to leaders or symbols, but rather necessitated self-criticism and debate,” wrote the founders of EI in tribute to Said.

Many community leaders remember him for his gentle kind nature as much as for his ideas.

“He never denied us not only his thought but also his time, even in the last month as ill as he was he came to the ADC Banquet last June,” said Mokhiber

“He was not an elitist, despite what he wrote, his many travels and company to the highest of society, he remained humble and accessible,” Mokhiber added.

About Edward Said:

Said was born in Jerusalem, Palestine  on Nov. 1, 1935, then moved with the family to Egypt in 1947 after the United Nations divided Jerusalem into Jewish and Arab halves. At the age of 12, Edward went to the American School in Cairo, then to the elite Victoria College, where his classmates included the then future King Hussein of Jordan and the actor Omar Sharif, reported the New York Times.

He moved then to the U.S. when he was sixteen, finishing his undergraduate Bachelor degree from Princeton in 1957 and later finished Harvard graduate school, where he earned his Masters degree and Ph.D. in Comparative literature in 1960 and 1964. He was an educator by profession and passion, teaching in many of the Ivy League schools but was a faculty at the famous Columbia University in New York, where he became a university professor, the highest academic position at Columbia since 1992.

His Columbia University biography notes that Said received honorary doctorates from Bir Zeit, Chicago, Michigan, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jami'a Malleyeh, Toronto, Guelph, Edinburgh, Haverford, Warwick, Exeter, National University of Ireland and American University in Cairo. He twice received Columbia's Trilling Award and the Wellek Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association, and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of King's College, Cambridge, and an Honorary Fellow of the Middle East Studies Association. In 1999 he was President of Modern Languages Association.

Survived by

Said is survived by his wife, Mariam Cortas; a son, Wadie; and a daughter, Najla. “Mariam was his real soul mate,” said Mokhiber. She served on the national board of the ADC during Mokhiber’s presidency. “she was an activist herself and an intellect,” he added.

A memorial service is expected to take place on Monday in Riverside Church in New York city.