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The 'Us' Waves on the Shores of the 'Other'
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Tarek A. Ghanem
Student – Comparative Politics |
13/02/2002
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The
traumatic vacuum of September 11 was substituted, in both the media
and academia, by an abrupt curiosity to learn about Islam. Islam,
the Qur'an, and the Muslim world have acquired a boost in book
selling and academic attention by the world in general and the West
in particular. As knowledge is self-critical by nature, so the new
western, and in specific American, waves of studying Islam have to
be in order to arrive at objective shores.
Echoed
by threat, the American interest in Islam will have to be aware of
some issues to find genuine and satisfying answers in its quest. The
'us' vis-à-vis the 'other' problematique, although a concern
of cultural relativism, will make any study of Islam impartial
unless another scholastic question is addressed: That of Orientalism
(Although Orientalism is not confined to western representation of
Islam, but to the Indies and China as well, it takes a more
antagonistic stance towards Islam). Whether a student or a
scholar is a neo-Orienatlist or a cultural relativist is the first
issue that he or she will have to determine prior to embarking on
the subject; from there their path will choose them.
Although
Orientalism emerged as an academic genre in the 1940s by P.G.
Marshal and M.G. Hodgson, and attracted attention by the works of
A.L.Tibawi, Anwar abdel-Malek, Talal Asad, K.M. Panikkar, Ramila
Thapar, and H. Djait. It was Edward Said's use of the discursive
theory of Michel Foucault in Orientalism that sparked academic and
intellectual havoc. Among the contemporary names in that field are
M.L. Pratt, A. Ahmed, R.W. Southern and R. Young, among others. The
definition and mechanism of Orientalism referred to in this article
is based on Ziauddin Sardar’s work, Orientalism. In his book, he
defines it as:
…the
study of Asian civilizations, identifying, editing, and
interpreting the fundamental texts of these civilizations, and the
transmission of this scholarly tradition from one generation to
another through an established chain of teachers and students. It
was largely focused on Islam; and Islamic studies became a major
branch of Orientalism. Orientalism thus studied Islam and other
civilizations with European ideas of God, man, nature, society
science and history and consistently found non-western culture to
be inferior and backward [p.4]
The
insights that the study of Orientalism bestows is bottomless,
particularly with respect to the fact that the majority of classic
literature that American students encounter is written by European
or American non-Muslims and is not, not to their benefit,
translations of works of prominent Muslim scholars. The perpetuation
of Orientalism extends behind academic and literary realms; it
appears in film, television and fiction. A comprehensive criticism
of the movement, with its origins, history and role cannot be
provided in a few paragraphs. This article is rather a concise look
on the fruits of such an inquiry in relation to studying Islam and
the Quran as an example.
The
study of Orientalism enhances the student's critical abilities by
not giving one text an authoritative hand in presenting its
material. Scholarship is not bias-free; it is overarched with the
undercurrent motifs and interests. As the majority of the work
written on Islam by European scholars was carried out in the shadows
of the Crusades, Enlightenment, and colonialism, the objectivity of
the texts written in these times is questioned as the lion's share
of it was designed to legitimize the ideological superiority of
those movements by presenting the 'other' as backward, chauvinist,
violent, and ignorant.
The
first fruit of studying Orientalism is the fact that it is the
'other' that has to speak for himself. The 'us;' the West or the
students of Islam and the Muslim world, should not act as his
mouthpiece. In that it must be understood that a translated text by
a Muslim scholar is of a far better benefit; it studies Islam by
using its terms, within its paradigm, following its model, and not
by relating Islam as an experience alien to 'us,' different to ours,
and hence inferior.
Studying
the Qur'an, which is the cardinal preference of Islam, cannot be
carried out in the methods of comparative inquiries: The
Judeo-Christian traditions are not the yardstick for analyzing the
Qur'anic scripture, if it does not follow them it is altogether
dismissed. Even the references made to the Qur'an in most studies
are either fragmentary or impartial, or either interested in
'rearranging' it in accordance with the chronology of revelation –
an antagonist idea to the fundamental faith of Islam itself!
In
a recent feature article in Newsweek titled “The Bible and
the Qur'an,” for example, the identity and the message of the
Qur’an was explained by Non-Muslim professors only in relation to
the Biblical text. Only one Muslim scholar was consulted in
tailoring the 'possibility of a moderate interpretation' of the
Qura'n among all the violent overtones and undereducated accounts
about Islam. Parvez Manzoor, a scholar of Islamic philosophy, best
describes it in the following quote:
Indeed,
in all its emotional moorings, the Orientalist method was visibly
vindictive, partisan and squint-eyed… of all the sacred texts of
the world, it singled out the Qur'anic revelation for carrying out
its senseless act of vandalism that shocked even its own
champions. For instance, a scholar like Ignaz Goldziher, hardly to
be accused of pro-Islamic partiality, had to cry out in protest
exclaiming: ‘What would be left of the Gospels if the Qur'anic
methods were applied to them?
There
must always be room for the different experiences and life forces
shaping the social order. The linear progression of European history
is not the only model that every culture and society must follow. It
must be noted that as Western civilization came to zeal of the human
advancement by divorcing religion from the societal edifice, the
'other,' in fact the Muslim World, came to the top of the
civilizational tree hand in hand with religion. Secularization is
not the pre-requisite for development or the parameter of modernity;
there are other possibilities, even ones that challenge modernity
itself.
Once
the 'other' is studied in his own terms, only then can the 'us' come
to terms with him. This wave of studying Islam can be the essence of
a better ground for the West and the East to meet; only it has to
champion some errors of the history of the collision between the
East and the West. By deriving knowledge of Islam as the antithesis,
the darker side, and the mirror image of the Occident and the
‘American way of life,’ the current new wave of studying Islam
is bound to fail. History is now giving literature and scholarship a
new chance for objectivity.
References:
Sardar,
Ziauddin Orientalism (Philadelphia Press, 1999).
Woodward,
Kenneth L. Newsweek 'The Bible and the Qur'an: Searching the holy
Books for Roots of Conflict and Seeds of Reconciliation' February
11, 2001.
Manzoor
Parvez, Method
against Truth: Orientalism and Qur'anic Studies
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