The Characteristics of Orientalism
Nineteenth-century Orientalist scholars did not necessarily see themselves as agents of empire; they considered themselves, by and large, to be producing disinterested knowledge. Some, however, advised the French government and played an important role in enabling colonization—such as Silvestre de Sacy, an important Orientalist who influenced generations of scholars. Whether consciously or not, Orientalists produced a body of work that aided the project of imperialism. Before we consider some of the assumptions that undergird Orientalism, it is useful to distinguish nineteenth-century colonial rhetoric from its precursors.
Prior to the nineteenth century, European colonialism was explained primarily through the lens of Christianity. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europeans justified their slaughter and exploitation of the “Indians” in the New World through the argument that the Indian “savages” were wild animals, idolaters whom God had ordained to be dominated by Christians.6 They similarly justified their enslavement of Africans through the book of Genesis, arguing that Africans were a cursed people (drawn from the myth of the curse of Ham) whose black skin color marked their curse. The “curse” conveniently meant that even African slaves who converted to Christianity could still be retained as slaves.7
The shift from religious to “scientific” justifications began in the eighteenth century. Enlightenment philosophers divided human beings into various races or “species” with distinct characteristics. Over the course of time, this classificatory system led white Europeans to conclude that they were superior to other “darker, colored peoples,” who were both “ugly” and at best “semi-civilized.”8 This was an important component in the early development of racism as an ideology to justify slavery and conquest.9 Additionally, as chapter 1 explained, the eighteenth century saw the development of notions of European superiority, particularly through the association of the West with democracy and the East with despotism. Yet, as Rodinson argues, “in the eighteenth century, an unconscious sense of Eurocentrism was present but it was guided by the universalist ideology of the Enlightenment and therefore respected non-European civilizations and peoples.”10 By the nineteenth century, however, this Enlightenment universalism was rapidly being replaced by an emphasis on differences between people and civilizations. Europe developed what Etienne Balibar calls an “imperialist superiority complex.”11
This emphasis on differences took ideological form in the body of thought that has come to be known as Orientalism. Orientalism has a few characteristic features. Drawing on the work of Zachary Lockman in Contending Visions of the Middle East, as well as others, I outline four key features of Orientalism. First, it is based on a civilizational view of history—the idea that civilizations come into being, prosper, and then go into decline. Second, because it emerged from philology, the historical and comparative study of language, it assumes that everything one needs to know about a civilization can be found in its texts and languages. Third, Orientalism sees Islam and its classical texts as key to understanding contemporary Muslims and their societies. Fourth, it draws on theories of race and the notion that Muslims are a distinct race.
A widely accepted theory in the nineteenth century was that human society was divided into different and distinct civilizations which existed in isolation from each other, each driven by its own core set of values. This theory held that the West, as a unique civilization with roots in ancient Greece, had certain qualities that differentiated it from all other civilizations. These included “freedom, law, rationality, science, progress, intellectual curiosity, and the spirit of invention, adventure and enterprise.”12 Every other civilization was then defined in relation to this notion of a superior “West.” Predictably, the world of Islam was characterized as premodern, backward, primitive, despotic, static, undemocratic, and rigid.
Closely associated with civilizational theories is the notion that a people can be understood through its languages and key texts. Philologists like Sacy advocated the notion that the study of a society’s written texts could yield insights into the timeless essence of a civilization. Orientalists would therefore learn Arabic, Persian, and Turkish and translate and analyze the texts of the East. Rather than examine the historical context of Muslim societies, philologists simply pursued textual analysis. It is no wonder then, as Rodinson notes, that despite the “tremendous amount of accurate information and precise documentation, which the specialists were able to assemble, the rift between their intellectual efforts and the world of objective reality continued to widen.”13
It followed from this that Islam, as defined by its classical texts, was the key lens through which Muslim-majority societies could be understood. If women were oppressed it was because of the teachings of the Koran; if Muslims supposedly lacked an entrepreneurial spirit it was due to “Islamic tradition”; if modernization was rejected, again the Koran was to blame. In short, a whole host of characteristics associated with the West but allegedly absent from the “Muslim world” could be explained by recourse to religious texts and the mentalities they supposedly created. In this book, the term “Muslim world” has been put in quotation marks precisely to challenge the notion that Islam is the single most important factor in defining the people who live in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere, or that there is a single undifferentiated entity called the “Muslim world.” Instead, I try to show that like elsewhere in the world, religion is one factor among others that impact the lives of people who live in Muslim-majority societies (a term I prefer to “Muslim world”).
In addition to civilizational theories, the Orientalists drew on the theories of race discussed above that placed European Caucasians at the top of a racial hierarchy. As Rodinson explains:
The Oriental may always have been characterized as a savage enemy, but during the Middle Ages, he was at least considered on the same level as his European counterpart. And, to the men of the Enlightenment, the ideologues of the French revolution, the Oriental was, for all his foreignness in appearance and dress, above all a man like anyone else. In the nineteenth century, however, he became something quite separate, sealed off in his own specificity, yet worthy of a kind of grudging admiration. This is the origin of the homo islamicus, a notion widely accepted even today.14
Starting from this idea that Muslims are a race, Orientalists claimed to be able to explain the “Muslim mind” or the “Arab mind.” Because race-based theories assume that the members of a race are all alike, scholars within this tradition could make sweeping generalizations about how Muslims think and behave. Most of all, the “Muslim mind” was disparaged; as the British poet Rudyard Kipling wrote, “You’ll never plumb the Oriental mind. And even if you do, it won’t be worth the toil.”15
It followed from this logic of civilizational and racial superiority that the West had to lead lesser nations and peoples. In the late nineteenth century, when Kipling wrote “The White Man’s Burden,” he was simply reinforcing an idea that was by then widespread. Kipling wrote of the inherent superiority of the West and its “burden” to civilize and tame the peoples of the East. Characterized as “half devil, half child,” the colonized were seen both as evil and barbaric and as childlike and therefore in need of protection. When the poem was originally published, Kipling used the subtitle “The United States and the Philippine Islands” as a way to urge the Americans to take on the same responsibilities as the British.16
And take them on they did. An American journalist writing in 1921 brought together Orientalist assumptions about civilization and race in the following way:
Out of the prehistoric shadows the white races pressed to the front and proved in a myriad of ways their fitness for the hegemony of mankind. Gradually they forged a common civilization; then, when vouchsafed their unique opportunity of oceanic mastery four centuries ago, they spread over the earth, filling its empty spaces with their superior breeds and assuring to themselves an unparalleled paramountcy [sic] of numbers and dominion. . . . At last the planet was integrated under the hegemony of a single race with a common civilization.17
Woodrow Wilson, seen as visionary for championing self-determination, put it as follows:
In order to trace the lineage of the European and American governments which have