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Orientalism,
when defined in simple words, implies the Western attempt to ‘understand’ the
East, particularly the Muslims and their faith, Islam. On a broader scale,
however, it means the knowledge of Eastern languages, Islamic sciences and
literature. For a limited period, especially in its early stages, it reflected
missionary sentiments and zeal but soon it donned the mantle of objectivity and
empiricism with which the West approached the East. After that it became a
movement, an approach, a way of life. All sorts of topics and subjects came
under discussion. Organized efforts were made in Egypt, North Africa and other
regions to revive ancient languages and cultures so that they may pose a
challenge to Islam. Arabic language was considered to be incapable of fulfilling
the needs of modern times and demands were made accordingly to focus on local
dialects and vernaculars. Arabic script was sought to be changed and replaced
with local dialects and vernaculars. Arabic script was sought to be changed and
replaced with the Roman one. The role of alien elements in the development of
Islamic culture and civilization was highlighted and concerted efforts were made
to prove that Islamic culture was an amalgam of absurdities.
For a proper
understanding of orientalism, however, a brief account of the Crusades will be
in order here. The Muslim interaction with Christianity goes back to the early
days of the Prophet (sws). After the early Muslims conquests which brought many
Christians or Christian-dominated territories under the Islamic fold, the two
religions and their followers came in close contact with each other. In fact,
Islam spread in its early stages at the cost of Christianity. The early Islamic
sway on West Asia and North Africa gave a big jolt to the Christendom and
defeated it not only on the battlefield but also on political and economic
fronts. Moreover the Christian world suffered setbacks on the religious front as
well. For a great number of Christians, attracted to and impressed by the simple
and rational Islamic faith, embraced the religion of their conquerors. It is
apparent that the Church was declining fast in the East. In Europe, however, it
was spreading rapidily. Between 500 to 1100 AD. almost the whole of Western
Europe was cajoled or forcibly brought under the Christian fold. The
Christianized or religiously united Europe gave new life to the ailing
Christendom, which manifested itself in the form of violent medieval Crusades.
At that time, the Crusades were viewed as holy wars. But the scholars of the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment have questioned the medieval Christian
interpretation and criticized the Crusades as a mere outburst of medieval
fanaticism and a demonstration of the bigotry of the medieval mind. Some
political and economic historians of modern times have also suggested that the
Crusades were in fact a migratory movement of needy Western nations to the
relatively more prosperous East. The economic historians, on the other hand,
condemn the Crusades as wars of conquest and expansion launched by the
colonialist and imperialist medieval Europe against the Muslims.
But for the
Crusaders who participated in those so-called holy wars, the Crusades were
launched for a holy cause: deliverance of Jerusalem from the Muslim
‘occupation’. The Crusades, probably, had a missionary character as well. It is
well known that the first Crusade was preached and launched by Pope Urban II
which suggests its missionary nature and orientation. In his sermon at Clermont,
the Pope had said that the Eastern Christians were in peril, their churches were
being desecrated and pilgrims visiting Jerusalem were being harassed. After
highlighting the plight of Eastern Christianity, the Pope urged people to rise
up and fight for the deliverance of Jerusalem. He also admonished that no one
should undertake the pilgrimage for any but the most exalted of motives.
Furthermore, in his speech, there were indications about the conversion of
Muslims. The Pope’s statements do show that he had some hope that a successful
Crusade might create opportunities for converting Muslims to Christianity.
The Crusades,
as many writers have suggested, were a misadventure in the sense that they have
left an indelible scar on the relationship between Christians and Muslims.
Moreover, they created the thaw between the two branches of Christianity,
Eastern and Western, which had kept them divided for a long time. The reality is
that the Crusaders were an indiscreet and undisciplined lot who insulted both
the Eastern Christians and the Muslims. They indulged in gruesome massacres and
plundered the cities they conquered.
Now let us
consider why the Crusading movement assumed so much significance in history. The
reason is that it benefited Europe in many ways. The Europeans began to take a
keen interest in Islam and the Muslim world. Moreover, the reverses they
suffered in the battlefield made them realize the great strength of the Islamic
faith and its people. Christians leaders started thinking about the faith,
culture and civilization of their opponents, which broadened their intellectual
horizons. Many missionary-minded authors have argued that through this movement
Western Europe found its soul. There was a great upsurge of the spirit that
awakened the masses and instilled a sense of purpose in them. The fact, however,
is that the Crusaders were a reckless people who behaved arrogantly and
inflicted hair-raising atrocities on the conquered people.
The Crusading
movement, nevertheless, acquired a momentum of its own. Even when the ‘religious
idealism’ evaporated, political leaders still thought that there were advantages
in using the conception of the Crusades. So powerful was this conception that no
one dared to challenge it and even today, as Professor William Montgomery Watt
has said: ‘in western Europe, with a metaphorical interpretation, it still has
some vestigial influences’.
A negative
aspect of the Crusading movement was that the Crusaders, unscrupulous and
ignorant as many of them were, took with them false notions about Muslims and
Islam and spread them all over Europe. Such distorted images of Islam and its
people have dominated European thinking since the twelfth century and even today
some of those wrong notions persist.
A positive
outcome of the Crusades, however, was that they awakened Muslims from their deep
slumber. As a result Muslims became united to a great extent, sidelined the
hypocrites and launched a counter offensive, under the leadership of Salāh al-Dīn
Ayyūbī. The Ottoman caliphs carried on Ayyūbī’s mission. In fact, the
counter-offensive launched by the Ottomans kept over Eastern Christendom sent a
shock wave of disillusionment right across the European continent. It is for
this reason that many Christian writers have described the Crusades as a
misadventure.
After the
failure of the Crusading movement, Christendom, particularly some far-sighted
leaders and intellectuals, began to deliberate on why the Crusades failed. The
motive behind this soul-searching was not to merely find out the causes of the
failure but also to devise a new strategy to counter and check the advance of
the Ottomans and their faith, Islam, in Europe. They discovered that ignorance
was the main cause of their decline. As a result they decided to acquire
knowledge from all sources including the Muslims. So during the Renaissance ie.,
between 13th to 16th centuries European scholars and intellectuals concentrated
on reviving their literature, art, culture, and other academic disciplines. This
intellectual awakening also made them rethink about the Muslims and their faith,
Islam. As a result, many people, scholars as well as lay men, embarked upon
acquiring knowledge from Muslim institutions and individuals in Spain and the
Fertile Crescent. Travelers wrote travelogues and scholars produced academic
works and thus began the tradition of studying the East, which is known as
Orientalism.
It will be in
order here to elaborate the Western and Muslim conceptions of knowledge, for
their respective approaches to it have left an indelible mark on their attitude,
character and thinking. In Islam the purpose of knowledge is wisdom, the
acquisition of intellectual capabilities to lead a life that ensures success,
falāh, in this world and the next. The European conception of knowledge, which
developed during and after the Renaissance, especially during the colonial era,
is that it is the obverse side of power. Scientific knowledge gives man power
over nature, but knowledge of a people, history, culture, civilization and
literature, in so far as they deepen one’s understanding of human nature,
enables one to dominate them. Thus the conception of knowledge as a source of
power has an important influence on the European attitude, especially when they
study a religion or the secular history of other peoples.
If the modern
European has to engage in war against some Asian country, he would like to know
a lot about its past, for he considers that such knowledge will enable him to
better forecast the reaction of his enemy to various situations. Likewise,
religion too, as professor W.M. Watt says: ‘is an element in knowledge.
Sometimes the Christian missionary takes to strategic thinking of a military
type, and considers that knowledge of other religions will assist him toward his
goal of making converts’.
As it has been
stated earlier, the Crusades (starting towards the end of eleventh century and
continuing to the fifteenth) provided a unique opportunity for elaborate
interaction between Muslims and Christians. There took place a kind of cultural
inter-penetration which paved the way for direct contact between the Arabs and
the Europeans. Moreover, the Crusades created a broad spiritual awakening in
Europe which gave Western Christendom a new awareness of its own identity.
W.M. Watt, in
fact, underestimated the significance of the Crusades when he says that they
were, for Muslims, merely a frontier incident or the continuation of the kind of
fighting that had been going on in Syria or Palestine.
Both Muslims and Christians understood Crusades to be more than mere warfare.
Christian scholars specially drew a lesson from it when they saw that it was
difficult to defeat Muslims in the battlefield, hence they should be outwitted
intellectually. The contact that had been established between western Christians
and Muslims was a new experience. Christian scholars took this opportunity to
provide their fellows with more information about Islam, often concocted or
distorted, to enable them to believe in their own superiority. There are still,
admittedly, some vestigial traces of this medieval image of Islam in
contemporary Western European thinking.
Church leaders
told the Crusaders that the Arabs were an inferior race who worshipped Muhammad
(sws) and took delight in persecuting Christians, which made Christendom hostile
towards Muslims. Their assumption
that they belonged to a superior race gave rise to racism and created a false
feeling of ‘us and them’, ‘we the civilized’ and ‘they the barbarians’. Oriental
inferiority they took for granted both, socially and intellectually. During the
colonial period, European racism was at its peak, which prompted them to wrongly
embark upon a civilizing mission. Missionary activities were, thus started to
remove their religious backwardness while the imperial rulers were supposed to
remove their political backwardness. They thought, ‘by adopting Christianity and
by accepting the Christian rule as a permanent phenomenon the Orientials would
become civilised’.
W.M. Watt has
explained the same point though in a subdued language and in a different manner.
He writes: ‘European civilization (and Christendom) has behaved as if it was the
only section of mankind that mattered. In the nineteenth century, European
culture was the civilization, and as Europe expanded technologically and
politically, other parts of the world became ‘civilized’. World history was the
history of expansion of ‘civilization’, and that is, in effect, of Europe; and
the history of the great civilizations of the world before their contact with
Europe was virtually neglected’.
Now it would be
proper to mainly focus on Orientalism. Here the world is perceived to be in two
blocs; orient and occident. Orient stands for the East; the countries lying east
of the Mediterranean are usually described as the Orient.
Occident, on the other hand, means the West; the countries of Western Europe, or
of Europe and America both. Orientialism, as is evident, is derived from the
‘Orient’ and it came to be used with all its connotations towards the end of the
eighteenth century. Now Orientalism signifies eastern characteristics, life
style, values, knowledge, literature, art and culture. It further denotes
learning or knowledge of the languages, religions and cultures of the East. The
person well versed in all these is regarded as ‘Orientalist’.
There is a vast
abundance of travel literature, which reflects the image of Oriental people as
it was perceived by the Western travelers. Many times the travelers viewed the
things or narrated the events in such a way as to support their pre-conceived
notions. In the nineteenth century, in fact, deliberate and concerted efforts
were made by the British travelers to justify Britain’s imperialist designs on
the Orient as well as to popularize the idea that the British were capable of
managing the affairs of alien nations including the Arabs.
The travelers
usually saw Arabs as inferior or portrayed them as a people who badly needed the
caring attention of the West. ‘The Oriental’, according to Gertrude Bell, an
English traveler, ‘is like a very old child. He is unacquainted with many
branches of knowledge, which we have come to regard as of elementary necessity,
frequently, but not always, his mind is a little preoccupied with the need of
acquiring them, and he concerns himself scarcely with what we call practical
utility. He is not practical, in our conception of the word, any more than a
child is practical’.
The nineteenth
century European, particularly British, travelers were influenced especially by
the twin ideologies of imperialism. They looked down upon the Oriental races,
branded them as uncivilized who, in their opinion, deserved to be overpowered,
subjugated and managed by the superior and civilized races of Europe. It is
probably because of this that Benjamin Disraeli was prompted to say that ‘the
East is a career’.
From what has
been stated above it is obvious that the Western intellectuals, writers,
travelers and politicians have been in the habit of discoursing upon Oriental
people, their religions, civilizations and history. By and large, their attitude
has been ethnocentric or Eurocentric. Consequently ‘they regard’, writes Dr
Ishtiyaque Danish, ‘their civilization as normative. They further believe that
their Eurocentric standards – religious and cultural – are not only a fitting
scale to judge other people but also universally applicable. Obsessed with their
erroneous attitude they have always failed to fully understand ‘other people’ in
an objective manner. With regard to Islam the question is not that they failed
to grasp its real meaning and message but that they intentionally and impudently
tried to disguise and distort its true image’.
Europe, in
fact, thinks that the Orient is one of its many inventions. On Europe’s
imagination, the Orient is always a place of romance, strange things and
remarkable experiences. ‘Orientalism’, says Edward W. Said, ‘can be discussed
and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient – dealing
with it by making statements about it, describing it, by teaching it, settling
it, ruling over it, is short, Orientalism is a Western style for dominating,
restructuring and having over the Orient’.
Europe seems to have arrogated to itself the right to articulate the Orient.
‘The West’, as E.W. Said puts it, ‘is the actor, the Orient a passive reactor.
The West is the spectator, the judge and jury of every facet of Oriental
behavior’.
In his article,
‘Historical Perspective of the Orientalists Perception of Islam’, Khawaja Ahmad
Farooqui recapitulates almost the same point in a slightly different way. He
asserts that the Orient is the creation of Western imagination in which there is
sheer romance, heightened sexuality, plenty of luxury, hunger and mercilessness.
In its view the Qur’ān is not important but the ‘Thousand and One Nights’ is.
Orient is made out to be a part of Western material culture. Strange people are
living in it ie nomads, barbarians and nudes. The wealth of the Orient is
immense. Without its raw products the ‘industries of the West cannot run. Europe
has created it socially, politically and militarily. About it they have written
books enough to make a library’.
A reference to
Benjamin Disraeli has already been made who regarded the east as a career. The
description applies to a large number of Orientalists who start their ‘career’
as philologists. They hold that languages belong to families: of which the
Indo-European and Semitic languages are two great instances. Thus from the very
outset Orientalism has carried forward two traits: (1) a newly founded
scientific self-consciousness based on the linguistic importance of the Orient
to Europe, and (2) a proclivity to divide, subdivide, re-divide the subject
matter without ever changing its mind about the Orient as being always the same,
‘unchanging, uniform, and radically peculiar object’.
The attitude of
the Orientalists is not confined to the works they have produced but it can also
be seen in the press, which generally reflects the popular mind. They assume
that the Western consumer, thought belonging to the numerical minority, is
entitled either to own or to expand (or both) the majority of the world
resources. Why, because he, unlike the Oriental, is a true human being, a white
middle class Westerner believes it is his human prerogative not only to manage
the non-white world also to own it, just because by definition ‘it’ is not quite
as ‘we’ are. This ‘us’ and ‘them’
syndrome can be seen or felt all across the Western world.
For a number of
reasons, the Orient has always been in the position both of outsider and of
incorporated weak partner for the West. To some extent, the Western scholars
were aware of the contemporary Orientals or Oriental movements of thought and
culture. But these were perceived either as silent shadows to be animated by the
Orientalist, brought into reality by him, objects necessary for his performance
as a learned man or a superior judge. Almost the same point can be seen running
in the remarks of Lord Curzon: ‘East is a University in which the scholar never
takes his degree’. What Curzon
meant was that the East required one’s presence there forever.
Similarly, it
is assumed that, by and large, no Oriental can know himself the way an
Orientalist can. In fact there are four dogmas of Orientalism, which ought to be
understood properly. The first is that there is an absolute and systematic
difference between the West, which is rational, developed, humane, superior, and
the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped and inferior. Another dogma is that
abstraction about the Orient, particularly those based on texts representing a
‘classical’ Oriental ‘civilization’, are always preferable to direct evidence
drawn from modern Oriental realities. A third dogma is that the Orient is
eternal, uniform, and incapable of dealing itself; therefore it is assumed that
a highly generalized and systematic vocabulary for describing the Orient from a
Western standpoint is inevitable and even scientifically ‘objective’. A fourth
dogma is that the Orient is, at bottom, something either to be feared or to be
controlled by pacification, research and development, and outright occupation
whenever possible.
In his
Introduction to the ‘Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam’ (Urdu
translation), New Delhi, 1986, by Muhammad Iqbal (1876-1938), Syed Nazir Niazi
writes that Orientalism is like an intellectual invasion. Through it Europe has
sought to emaciate the heart and mind of the Muslim world, in particular, so
that it becomes indifferent towards and averse to its brilliant past and
hopeless about its future.
Efforts were made to overawe the Muslims intellectually so that they are forced
to took toward the West for inspiration and guidance. The aim was to subject
them to skepticism and paralyze them mentally in order that they could neither
go in the right direction nor would analyze things with a correct and
independent outlook.
Having said
that, we must also note the remarkable attitudinal change, which is now
discernible under the altered circumstances especially since the Industrial
Revolution in Europe. The discovery of petroleum changed the equation and made
the Arab world the gravitational point. Early Islam is no more the thrust of
their research. Instead, the religious movements, social trends and economic
potentialities have become major attractions. Understanding of Islamic faith and
its ideology are still essential but the focus has shifted from older themes to
new ones such as analyzing the conditions of contemporary Muslims, both
externally and internally. The elements of nationalism, which could rip apart
the religious unity of Arabs, are particularly considered and explored. The
attitudinal difference is further marked by their realization that in the modern
age extremism and sheer bigotry would not work. That is why they have developed
a semblance of rationality in their approach.’
The twentieth
century dawned with a host of new trends. Great changes took place on all
levels, political, economic and social. Awakening of colonized nations after a
long slumber, movements of self-determination, scientific developments and
coming together of a variety of cultures and civilizations radically transformed
the nature of problems and issues. On the other hand Orientalism, having reached
its zenith, saw the beginning of its anti-climax. Now, instead of part-time
scholars there have emerged full timers. Departments of Arabic, Islamic studies,
and other allied disciplines have been opened in a number of Western
universities. It is, however, a testimony of their dedication and industrious
efforts. Occasionally, some positive researches were also conducted in which a
great deal of objectivity was observed.
Courtesy: The Hamdard Islamicus, Vol. XXIV, No. 4
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