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CounterPunch
November
26, 2002
A Predatory Orientalism
What Went Wrong?
by M. SHAHID ALAM
In an earlier era, before the Zionist movement
descended on the heads of unsuspecting Palestinians, the least
bigoted voices in the field of Oriental studies were often those
of European Jews.
At a time when most Orientalists took
Muhammad for a scheming imposter, equated Islam with fanaticism,
denigrated the Qur'an as a crude and incoherent text, and claimed
that the Arabs were incapable of abstract thought, Jewish scholars
of Islam often took opposite positions. They accepted the sincerity
of Muhammad's mission, described Arabs as "Jews on horseback,"
viewed Islam as an evolving faith that is more democratic than
other religions, and debunked Orientalist claims about an unchanging
Islam and a dynamic West.
Ironically, these pro-Islamic Jews did
not escape the voracious interest of Bernard Lewis, the leader
of the new Zionist Orientalists. In a 1993 essay, he writes that
they "were among the first who attempted to present Islam
to European readers as Muslims themselves see it and to stress,
to recognize, and indeed sometimes to romanticize the merits
and achievements of Muslim civilization in its great days."
It would appear that these Jews were anti-Orientalists long before
Edward Said.
These contrarian positions had their
origin in a variety of motives. Even as the Jews began entering
the European mainstream, starting in the nineteenth century,
they were still outsiders, only recently emerged from the confinement
of ghettos, and it would be scarcely surprising if they were
seeking to maintain their distinctiveness by emphasizing, and
identifying with, the achievements of another Semitic people,
the Arabs. In celebrating Arab civilization, these Jewish scholars
were perhaps sending a non-too-subtle message to Christian Europe
that their civilization was not unique, that Islamic achievements
often excelled theirs, and that Europeans were building upon
the achievements of their adversaries in science and philosophy.
In addition, their discussions of religious and racial tolerance
in Islamic societies, towards Jews in particular, may have offered
hope that this was attainable in Europe too. It may also have
been an invitation to Europeans to incorporate religious and
racial tolerance into their standards of civilizations.
Yet the vigor of this early anti-Orientalism
of Jewish scholars would not last; it would not survive the logic
of the Zionist movement as it sought to create a Jewish state
in Palestine. Such a state could only emerge as the bastard child
of imperialist powers, and it could only come into existence
by displacing the greater part of the Palestinian population,
by incorporating them into an apartheid state, or through some
combination of the two. In addition, once created, Israel could
only survive as a militarist, expansionist, and hegemonic state,
constantly at war with its neighbors.
In other words, once the Zionist project
entered into its implementation phase after 1918, it was inevitable
that the European Jews' attraction for Islam was not going to
endure. In fact, it would be replaced by a bitter contest, one
in which the Jews, as junior partners of the imperialist powers,
would seek to deepen the Orientalist project in the service of
Western power. Bernard Lewis played a leading part in this reorientation.
In the words of Martin Kramer, a Zionist Orientalist himself,
Bernard Lewis "came to personify the post-war shift from
a sympathetic to a critical posture."
Ironically, this shift occurred when
many Orientalists had begun to shed their Christian prejudice
against Islam, and several were making amends for the excesses
of their forebears. Another factor aiding this shift towards
a less polemical Orientalism was the entry of a growing number
of Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, into the field of Middle
Eastern studies. The most visible upshot of these divergent trends
was a polarization of the field of Middle Eastern studies into
two opposing camps.
One camp, consisting mostly of Christians
and Muslims, has labored to bring greater objectivity to their
study of Islam and Islamic societies. They seek to locate their
subjects in the matrix of history, see Islamic societies as adjusting
to the challenges posed by the West, neither innately hostile
to the West and Western values, nor trapped in some unchanging
obscurantist mindset. The second camp, now led mostly by Jews,
has reverted to Orientalism's original mission of subordinating
knowledge to Western power, now filtered through the prism of
Zionist interests. This Zionist Orientalism has assiduously sought
to paint Islam and Islamic societies as innately hostile to the
West, and to modernism, democracy, tolerance, scientific advance,
and women's rights.
This Zionist camp has been led for more
than fifty years by Bernard Lewis, who has enjoyed an intimate
relationship with power that would be the envy of the most distinguished
Orientalists of an earlier generation. He has been strongly supported
by a contingent of able lieutenants, whose ranks have included
the likes of Leonard Binder, Elie Kedourie and David Pryce-Jones.
There are many foot-soldiers too who have provided distinguished
service to this new Orientalism. And no compendium of these foot-soldiers
would be complete without the names of Daniel Pipes, Martin Kramer,
Thomas Friedman, Martin Peretz, Norman Podhoretz, Charles Krauthammer,
William Kristol and Judith Miller.
I try to visualize an encounter between
these new Orientalists and some of their eminent predecessors
like Hienrich Heine, Abraham Geiger, Gustav Weil, Franz Rosenthal,
and the great Ignaz Goldziher. What would these pro-Islamic Jews
have to say to their descendents whose Orientalism denigrates
and demeans the societies they study and who work to incite a
civilizational war between Islam and the West? Would Geiger and
Goldziher embrace Lewis and Kedourie, or would they be repelled
by their new predatory Orientalism?
M. Shahid Alam
teaches economics at Northeastern University. His recent book,
Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave
(2000). He can be reached at: m.alam@neu.edu
Copyright: M. Shahid Alam.
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November 23,
2002
Susan Davis
Now About
That Big Stick
Caoimhe Butterly
I Was
Shot While Escorting Jenin's School Children
Kurt Nimmo
Bush &
the Canadians
Chris Floyd
Rough Beast
Slouching
Francis Boyle
On Behalf
of Iraq's 4.5 Million Children
Dave Marsh
Spirit
in the Light
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Rebirth
of Student Protest in Iran
Mark Hand
Dr. Alterman,
I Presume
Ralph Nader
Back Alley
Loan Sharks
Elaine Cassel
The Shameful
Treatment of John Malvo
Adam Engel
& Ian Harvey
Poets'
Basement
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