The Orientalist blindness
The Orientalists who emphasized the contradiction between Arab and Islamic culture and democracy are afraid to admit their failure.
By Mohanad MustafaFor years, intellectuals, mostly Arabs, have been confronted by the stereotypical, even racist, approach found in much of Western Orientalism, including that in Israel. Under this approach, there is a contradiction between Arab and Muslim culture on the one hand, and democracy, equality and social justice on the other. Based on this contradiction, this form of Orientalism rejects any hope of democratization in the Arab world and justifies the prevalent tyranny. The Israeli propaganda machine is often proud of being the sole "island of democracy" in a sea of Arab despotism.
According to this simplistic notion, limited to a dichotomy and tainted by the crude sense of supremacy in which this Orientalism is imprisoned, Arab society is conflicted between the forces of undemocratic political Islam and those of oppressive, despotic regimes. Terms such as democracy and social justice cannot exist in Arab society because of the cultural obstacle that exists.
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Children posing for photographs in front of the Egyptian Museum near Tahrir Square in Cairo, February 12, 2011. |
| Photo by: AP |
This failure in understanding also has applied to political Islam's contribution to democratization in the Arab world. In most cases, political Islamic movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, have been perceived as seeking to impose a strict theocratic political order. Apparently the security-minded and racist perspective that characterizes Israeli and Western Orientalism prevents these observers from understanding the process of deep change that these movements have undergone. They also fail to perceive the various approaches to the state, democracy, society and the West - even within the Muslim Brotherhood. The comparison of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood to the Iranian Revolution is one bit of proof of this distorted perspective.
The increased significance of young people in Middle East politics is not new. Early last century, young Arabs played a key role in shaping the elites and the worldview of Arab societies. Arab modernization, both on a national and religious level, was led by middle-class young people and was interrupted externally by Western colonial powers and domestically by Arab forces. This was followed by the rise of authoritarian regimes, most of them pro-Western.
The revolution of young Arabs in Tunisia and Egypt is not a revolution of the poor, or of young people who are simply seeking jobs. It's a revolution of educated young people, some of them middle class, who support values of democracy and equality. Wael Ghonim, for example, one of the young Egyptians who organized demonstrations using the Internet, comes from a wealthy Egyptian family.
The young Egyptians at Tahrir Square must serve as a model for all forces of democracy around the world. The people who have always preached democracy are now afraid to admit their ethical failure, and the Orientalists who emphasized the contradiction between Arab and Islamic culture and democracy are afraid to admit their failure.
At Tahrir Square, the young are already setting up the country they aspired to achieve through the most peaceful, effective and democratic revolution in the past century. In this square, decisions are reached equally by men and women, Muslims and Christians, poor and rich. All they aspire to do is to transform Tahrir Sqare into the new democratic Egypt. They are liberating themselves and their society and are leaving behind the Orientalists bound by a concept of the past.
The writer is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Haifa.
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This article is awash with wishful thinking ,without connection to what Orientalists may have saior written. To the extent that the people in muslim countries do awaken to the very idea of democracy as a way of life it is not thanks to their cultural and religious heritage but by rejecting it as the yoke it is and has been from its incept. Even at the peak of its intellectual and cultural greatness , the achievements in the Islamic shere were reached in opposition and often tacit rejection of its teachings and its spirit . Chew this now.
What is meant by 'democracy' in the West is not some eternal and universal human verity -- but a rather a particular set of institutions that arose in the United States and Western Europe. They obviously reflect and respond to the particular cultures they arose out of. Why should Muslims be limited to a choice between utterly corrupt, amoral tyranny and the particular set of institutions that the West adheres to at the moment? One suspects that if this was the thirteenth century, we would all be assuring the Muslims that what they needed was feudalism as practiced in France. After all, no doubt self-evidently right to the Frenchmen of the time. Why cannot Muslims find their own system? Indeed, although the experiment failed, Iran was rather interesting in this regard.
You can always find plenty of loud mouthed people willing to say silly things about strange foreigners. 1- Arab non-democracies is, at it's heart, an observation. It's too widespread to be coincidental. Making this observation doesn't make one bigoted. Form many, a likely explanation is momentum. It's hard to form an Arab democracy because there aren't any arab democracies. 2- Theocracy as ideology is definitely more common (currently) in muslim societies. I find it hard to believe that theocracy isn't a barrier to democracy for many reasons. Maybe it isn't, but it I doubt it. Egypt (or Tunisia) aren't Democracies yet. Let's not get too far ahead.
This article sets up mistaken assumptions about democracy in Arab countries. Modern democracy isn't only 'majority rule'. Democracy MUST INCLUDE 'minority rights'. The problem with this piece is that there is no expression for the protection and EQUAL RIGHTS of the minorities. Thus the M. Brotherhood CANNOT be considered a democratic movement UNLESS and UNTIL the leadership ends anti Jewish prejudice and belligerance and becomes a proponent for EQUALITY for all people of all faiths, and not only Muslims. Speak up on this point, M. Mustafa!
in the meanwhile, nothing has happened in egypt except the removal of a dictator and his replacement by the military. democracy means the establishment of democratic institutions - a free press, real political parties, non profit organizations and etc. then, it means holding *repeated* free and fair elections. so far, there is no evidence that any of this will come to pass in egypt.
I agree with you that a basic tenant of Israeli strategy is to focus on the other ills in the region away from occupation .But in a larger scheme of things , our ills are more basic with democracy Asa goal .As the world moves in different speeds and plains, the ultimate glue in any country beyond the collective identity is economic interdependency with each political unit.The economy has to have the linkages and be taxed based in a vigorous way, otherwise, the calls for democracy and deeper human rights will remain idle rather than a practical reality . What amuse me the most is that many even left wing westren intellectuals and of course many Arabs seem to think that there Is quick conversion to modernism via some sort of elections.Well, we witnessed the Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq, the net result, the new dully elected Iraqi government hired more than a million people mainly in security, which will gaurantee that the Iraqi economy will remain backwards for years if not decades to come..Be careful for what you wish for.
Mohanad Mustafa has every right to making a sweeping condemnation of a vast area of study but if he wants to do so wouldn't be helpful if he gave us at least one or two examples of the narrow-minded bigotry that he associates with "oriental ism"? In fact he is tilting at straw men and I would really expect something better of a PhD student in political science. "Orientalist" become a term of abuse under the influence of Edward Said's book "Orientalism". However, that book was very far from establishing the case that it sought to make. Said did not have the knowledge required to do that and as Robert Irving demonstrated at length in his book For Lust of Knowing he distorted and twisted the limited material at his disposal to force it to give the conclusions he wanted. Most scholars in the field reject the ideas that Said, and, it would seem, Mohanad Mustafa, impute to them. I think MM should go back to the drawing board. The people he is criticising are hack journalists not Orientalists. What would he say, I wonder, about the solid work of Maxine Rondinson or Fred Halliday?
What has happened in the Arab world has happened in Latin America. Does anyone remember Theodore Roosevelt from their readings of history. He impose order in Latin America under the slogan of talking softly and carrying a big stick. Under that framework the US supported a litany of dictators that Haaretz will not print. It was often said by Latin Americanists that those countries were not ready for democracy. Most of them are now imperfect democracies, but so are the US and Israel for that matter. The US consistently backed tyrants in Latin America. These were useful puppets who could establish dynasties, like the Somozas in Nicaragua, or be very short lived, (usually because they opposed the US), like Noriega in Panama, or reaped too much havoc on the lives of their people for domestic (US) consumption, like Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and Batista in Cuba. In the latter case the US could no longer provide enough support to our allies-to-our-shame that they could continue to successfully suppress popular uprisings, much as just happened in Egypt. Nothing decent will be created by Western nations suppressing the will of the people of the Arab nations through deliberations. I wish the arrogant apologists of western orientalism including most of these talk-backers would stop engaging in magical thinking that allows them to support suppressing movement toward democracy that doesn't result immediately in a finished stable and fully western-style democracy. The Arab nations have much to work out. Only they can work it out. And it's their human right to work it out taking the time it takes to do that.
... Israel. Until it changes Orientalists will be right.
appears to be rooted in the oligarchy. In order to be really free, it will be necessary to shake off the burka of Islam entirely. I will believe it when I see it.
But the evil designs of western oligrachy reward Arab leaders like Mubarak to tow the line and keep their people oppressed....This is the corruption and injustice that must be shed today ..Dutch
Revolutions against tyranny that rise up from the street, like the Russian revolution, or the one in Iran, get hijacked more often than not by a cynical yet organized group. There is a danger, which shouldn't be poo-poo'd, that the Muslim Brotherhood will try, as the only organized opposition party, to take advantage of the situation. It is up to the Egyptian people and military to prove the cynics wrong, and establish a true representative government.
Recommended reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ign%C3%A1c_Goldziher There is a difference between knowledge and propaganda. I compliment the hunger for education in Mohanad Mustafa, and urge him to dig deeper into the history of the past. I also recommend him to read the works of Gene Sharp, and not Khalid Rashidi.
Reading ain't shooting.
.. and why not read both?
I hope you're right, but I fear you're not. The revolution hasn't yet succeeded. In effect, we've just witnessed a (quiet) military coup.
It is entirely possible that Egypt will fall back into an authoritarian system. But in the long run, it doesn't really matter. The step has been taken forward, and if necessary, it will be taken again.
Even it there were such thing as "Western Orientalism" espousing a view that "the Arabs" are unable to embrace a system of liberal democracy because of Islam's dominance, one could not prove this view wrong by the recent events in Egypt. The fact is that Orientalists since the 19th century have been arguing all kinds of views regarding various Islamic societies, some going as far as wanting to embrace Islam (Goldziher) while others arguing that only through Pan-Islamism could the Arab would become elevated beyond sectarian divisions that thwart its chances for self government (Vambery). Mr. Mustafa should ponder the fact that he is homogenizing-ahistorically so-the field of Orientalism, thereby recapitulating the same gesture he criticizes in "Western Orientalism."
Never forgett the fact that all those Muslim fractions is a result of Imperialism from old states like England, France and Netherland, of denying the indiginous its rights. It took a very long time for this uprising to manifest it self for its real reason, equality. A thruout corrupt goverment and individual/collectiv rights, from Religion to comers. To westeren world a word long forgotten, a word that has gone in to history. Ofcourse Israel and USA are nervuos, their gripp in the Midle East is slipping, and now their hypocracy is displayd to the hole world. The difference between people is overrated and stigmatized. marginalized and lied about. Thats our greatest enemy, the way to combatt that is by educating oneself. I sinserly hope that the youths recognize this, and makes your own judgments, like the people of Egypt and Tunis. "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." — Mark Twain
Remember. Iran the first few weeks after the Shah fell
Overthrowing a despotic government through popular largely non-violent means is only the first step...maintaining a liberal democracy is something else...before we bash the orientalists...let's see what happens...
Maitaining a 'liberal democracy' is not the Western goal for the ME. What is needed is a Demorcatic Republic in which neither the leberal no conservative side hold the absolute majority. That is the way forward: maintaining a balance between the conservative and liberal factions while taking the heathen superstitions out of the governmental arena.
if israel is a racist country, how come there are arab PhD students in israeli universities?
The show must go on.
Yes, there is a broad cultural gap between the West and the East. Yes, there are massive misunderstandings between the two worlds. Yes, there are collective prejudices between both worlds who are in general right and others who are wrong. Yes, there is a current arm-wrestling which world has it right and which has it wrong. As long as this death embrace is maintained, both worlds in the long run will self-destruct. Even if one world gets to ‘prove’ (for a while) its ‘being right’. We all seem trapped in our self created and painstakingly maintained individual and collective ‘identity’ creations. We are Jewish, or we are Arab, or we are German, or Congolese. Beyond these deep ingrained but factually superficial mental ‘beliefs’, we are all very similar human beings. One may be rich, pale, fat and smart, the other skinny, dark, sick and poor as dirt; they are very, very similar. One day comes when we will see through our own –self-created smallness.. It will be the day we let go of our conscious and subconscious fear that by embracing those we do not know, we will loose something. When we start believe this day can happen, it will happen. When we believe West and East are bound to collide. It will happen too..
Show me Arab democracy? How have the 'orientalists' been proved wrong as a new dictator will take power of egypt as happened in Tunisia?
Egypt didn't just transform overnight into a representative democracy where every single citizen is equal and free. Instead, it just went from tyrannical dictatorship to military junta. A far cry from anything remotely democratic. There's a long ways to go yet before you can wag an accusing finger at anyone for accurately pointing out what has been the sorry state of affairs in the Arab world so far.