orientalism and the middle east.
i gotta admit , I’m interested in the middle east.
i went there a long time ago to find out why they were all so crazy.. but came away with the discovery that I had so much baggage and so a distorted view and very much dis-spelled….. about it and about..heheh. its that kind of a place. the hardest thing to get a good look at is one’s own arrogant self.
everyone knows that the main centres in the fertile crescent were ancient before the romans had even heard of togas. but few people seem to be aware of what that might mean.
the first problem is finding a name to call it.. labelling it is difficult..
‘Islamic world’ neglects so many realitities.. the deep divisions within islam.. the large Christian presence in many countries. the very lack of islam … state of ‘israel’.
‘arab world’ cuts out iran, turkey, Pakistan Afghanistan. central asia... many other ethnic groups such as berbers.. Aramaic/Syriac speakers. and the fact that Arabism is so laid on the foundations of ancient civilizations … not forgetting the Hellenic or Greco-roman world that was the political elite throughout for the 1000 years prior to the prophet Muhammad. Arabic was only ever a vehicle of unity and transmission..
then there is ‘afro-arab states’.. but that is no better really..
‘the orient’ is way dated.
it leaves us with ‘middle-east’.. which is worse than meaningless for anyone other than europeans and americans.. as if it is some backwater that achieved relevance and could be identified in terms of the latter two.
‘middle east’ has caught on also in the middle east I guess largely by virtue of the fact that the muslims are described in the holy quran as a middle nation.. ie. between the extremes. (I forget the verse and sura..)
looks like it is here to stay for a while at least.
the labelling is the first problem but it doesn’t get any easier.
it was the late Palestinian intellectual Edouard Said whose critique of orientalism brought attention to the common western error of oversimplifying the ‘orient’. something like you might call cognitive dissonance.
he argues that western scholarship has been fundamentally politically motivated with a colonial view.. furthermore he argues that European scholarship has developed an orthodoxy.. or authoritarian approach to viewing the middle east.. he basically critiques occidental assumptions about the orient from a to z. he cannot be ignored.
it would seem that the eurocentric characterization of the middle east hasn’t changed. if you want to get a real fix on a place, you basically have to go there with an open mind. I found that to be the way to dump the comic-book nonsense I was fed about it since the cradle. true … it blew my mind.. but for anything worthwhile to be constructed, the junk has to be cleared. hehehe. nothing new. its in one of those zen stories.. you know that!
the middle-east is the most extraordinary, culturally rich and refined place I have ever been—.. it’s the house of islam. dar ul islam. (allah yuzido)
romantic madmen and orientalist lackeys can say what they like.. islam is about your attitude to the truth. either you buy it or not (read the quran before you dismiss it.)
to the good people of the middle east (christian jew and muslim) I say only salaam salaam salaam.
tejas a. fu.
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