Professor Lewis Strikes Back

Bernard Lewis, Edward Said, and why “Orientalism” is Bulls—t.
Part 5: Back to the Pilot.
By Michael Isenberg.

I began this series on Orientalism with the feud between Bernard Lewis and Edward Said. I’ve now come full circle and will wrap it up in the same vein.

Orientalism was a 1978 book by Professor Said, in which he argues that most Western scholarship on the Middle East is tainted: racist and in the service of the Armies of Imperialism. Among Western scholars, he singled out Mr. Lewis in particular. In a book chock full of attacks on the works of Orientalists, and even occasional praise for them, the attack on Lewis stands out as an attack on him personally, and an unusually bitter and abusive one at that:

Lewis is an interesting case to examine further because of his standing in the political world of the Anglo-American Middle Eastern Establishment is that of the learned Orientalist, and everything he writes is steeped in the “authority” of the field. Yet for at least a decade and a half his work in the main has been aggressively ideological, despite his various attempts at subtlety and irony. I mention his recent writing as a perfect exemplification [of an] Establishment Orientalist [whose work] purports to be objective, liberal scholarship, but is, in reality, very close to being propaganda against his subject material.

And,

One would find this kind of procedure objectionable as political propaganda—which is what it is, of course—were it not accompanied by sermons on the objectivity, the fairness, the impartiality of a real historian, the implication always being that Muslims and Arabs cannot be objective but that Orientalists like Lewis writing about Muslims and Arabs are, by definition, by training, by the mere fact of their Westernness. This is the culmination of Orientalism.

And again,

To look for a conscious, fair, and explicit judgment by Lewis of the Islam he has treated as he has treated it is to look in vain.

What are these "aggressively ideological" works of Professor Lewis? This "political propaganda?" Professor Said objects to a series of articles, which I wrote about previously, in which Lewis argues that despite the apparent victory of secular, nationalist dictators in the Middle East, Islamic movements were a rising force, and “Though they have all, so far, been defeated, they have not yet spoken their last word.” In Orientalism, Said dismisses that as “a project to debunk, to whittle down, and to discredit the Arabs and Islam,” and “a charge intended by Lewis to explain to his latest public why it is that the Muslims (or Arabs) still will not settle down and accept Israeli hegemony over the Near East.” The role of Islam in the Arab world was certainly a topic over which reasonable people could disagree without either of them being guilty of trying to "discredit the Arabs." In any case, only a year after Orientalism was published, events in Iran would prove—in a tragic and spectacular fashion—that is was Lewis who was right.

Professor Said’s claim, that what this is really about is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, tells us more about Said than about Lewis. As I noted in Part 1, Said concedes in his Introduction that the subject was personal, “not for me an exclusively academic matter.” Nowhere does he let his personal feelings get in the way of his scholarly objectivity more than when it comes to the Jewish State. While he maintains a certain amount of academic detachment through most of the book, the final chapter, covering modern scholars, is entirely distorted by his partisanship as a Palestinian. Bernard Lewis is pro-Zionist and therefore must be at the receiving end of ad hominem attacks. But Louis Massignon, who viewed Zionism as “bourgeois colonialism,” possesses “sheer genius” and “overwhelming intelligence.” Said is even willing to give him a pass for equating the East with the ancient and the West with the modern, usually one of Said's top complaints against Orientalists.

Lewis calls Said out on this. In a rebuttal, published in The New York Review of Books, “the culmination of Orientalism” argues that what really bothers Said and other critics about so called-Orientalists is not their view of history, but rather their view of current events:

“Orientalism” has been emptied of its previous content and given an entirely new one—that of unsympathetic or hostile treatment of Oriental peoples. For that matter, even the terms “unsympathetic” and “hostile” have been redefined to mean not supportive of currently fashionable creeds or causes.

Or as we would put it today, the real sin of “Orientalists” is that they aren’t politically correct.

As for his overall assessment of the Orientalism hypothesis, Mr. Lewis sums it up in one word: “Absurd.” He points out that everything that Professor Said had to say about Western scholars of the Middle East could equally apply to scholars of Ancient Greece, until “the very name of classicist must be transformed into a term of abuse.” As ludicrous as that may seem, “if for classicist we substitute ‘Orientalist,’ with the appropriate accompanying changes, this amusing fantasy becomes an alarming reality.”

Or as we would put it today, “Orientalism” is bulls—t.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Photo Credit(s): Haaretz, Bio.com

Mideast Week in Review

by Michael Isenberg.

Baghdadi alive?

Iraqi Kurds overwhelmingly vote for secession.

Saudi women to be permitted to drive.

Palestinian gunman murders three.

Egypt arrests seven for displaying rainbow flag.

All kneel before Faisal, King of Saudi Arabia, and his little friend Yoda.

Baghdadi alive? The loathsome ISIS cult may be nearly dead, at least in its present form as a territorial state. However its so-called "caliph," Abu Bakr Baghdadi may still be alive. New audio of a man who sounds like Baghdadi has been posted to an ISIS-affiliated website. In it, the speaker mentions recent events such as North Korean saber-rattling and the Battle for Mosul. Although the US Department of Defense is still analyzing the recording for authenticity, it appears that Russian claims of having killed Baghdadi in a May airstrike are greatly exaggerated.

Read more—

'New Baghdadi tape' posted by Islamic State group (BBC)

 

Iraqi Kurds overwhelmingly vote for secession: The Kurdish Autonomous Region held a referendum on Monday on seceding from Iraq and establishing an independent nation. 3.3 million people—73% of the electorate—turned out at the polls. The referendum passed by a whopping 92% of the vote.

The Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East (after Arabs, Persians, and Turks) and the only one out of the four without a state of their own.

The referendum is non-binding and will not lead immediately to independence, but it should give the Kurds considerable leverage to negotiate with Baghdad for their departure.

The bid for Kurdish independence has almost no support among the governments of the world, especially Turkey and Iran, who worry that their own Kurdish populations will get ideas. Other nations, including the United States, oppose Kurdish independence on the grounds that it will be destabilizing. One of the few supporters is Israel, which sees in the Kurdish quest for a homeland a reflection of its own cause.

In a related story, the Turkish and Iraqi armies have begun joint exercises near the Kurdish border.

Read more—

Iraqi Kurds decisively back independence in referendum (BBC)

Kexit? Iraqi Kurdistan referendum explained (BBC)

Now trending: Kurdistan (Michael Isenberg)

 

Saudi women to be permitted to drive: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—notorious for its restrictions on the freedom of women—announced a historic reversal of policy on Tuesday: starting next June, the gentle sex will be allowed to drive.

Around the kingdom, and around the world, women took to social media to celebrate. Many activists tempered their jubilation with caution: women still have a long way to go in the kingdom. In particular, the “guardianship” system still persists. Under this system, women need permission from their male custodians to travel, marry, start businesses, and many other common activities.

Read more—

Saudi Arabia Agrees to Let Women Drive (NYT)

Women to drive in Saudi Arabia: Twitter goes bonkers (Michael Isenberg)

 

Palestinian gunmen murders three: On a sadder note, a Palestinian man, identified as 37-year-old Nimer Jamal, shot and killed two Israeli security guards and a border policeman at the gate of the Har Adar Jewish settlement in the West Bank. The Information Office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party blamed Israel.

Read more—

Palestinian gunman kills three Israelis in West Bank (BBC)

 

Egypt arrests seven for displaying rainbow flag: The government of President Abdel Fattah this week continued to pile up its abysmal human rights record. In the latest incident, seven individuals were arrested for “promoting sexual deviancy” after raising the LGBT rainbow flag at a Cairo concert.

Read more—

Seven arrested in Egypt after raising rainbow flag at concert (BBC)

 

All kneel before Faisal, King of Saudi Arabia, and his little friend Yoda: In an embarrassment to the Ministry of Education, the Saudi government released a textbook that included a photo of King Faisal signing the UN charter in 1945, while seated next to Jedi Master Yoda, of Star Wars fame. Analysts believe the picture has been photoshopped. The BBC reported that education minister Ahmad al-Isa called it an “unintended mistake.” No word yet on how it happened.

Read more—

Saudi textbook features image of Yoda with King Faisal (BBC)

Michael Isenberg writes about the Muslim world, medieval and modern. His forthcoming novel, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092. It depicts the war for the Muslim soul between those who seek to enforce shari’a strictly, persecute Jews and Christians, and stamp out "un-Islamic" science, and those who wink at a few sins, tolerate their non-Muslim neighbors, and write books about science instead of burning them.

Photo credit: BBC/Shaweesh/Gharem Studio

Life in a Hostile Fishbowl

Catch the Jew! by Tuvia Tenenbom.
Book Review by Michael Isenberg.

Tuvia Tenenbom is a genius at getting people to talk to him.

In 2014, he took his ingenuity to Israel, where he engaged Israelis, Palestinians, Europeans, Members of the Knesset (MKs), Jewish fundamentalist con men, humorless lefty journalists, lascivious monks, Tel Aviv prostitutes, and feral cats in conversation. Usually posing as a German reporter, but sometimes an Arab, and now and then a rabbi, Tuvia entices his victims to reveal their inmost thoughts, often with hilarious results, which he collected in his book, Catch the Jew.

The picture on the cover suggests that the title character—the Jew that everyone is trying to catch—is Tuvia himself. An Arab, a Brit, and what appears to be a biker chase him down Keystone Cop-like, no doubt outraged at the ease with which he conned them.

Alas, it is not Tuvia who is their quarry. And it isn’t very funny.

It seems that Israel is infested with representatives of Non-governmental Organizations or NGOs. Mostly funded by Europeans, especially Germans, they give generously to the Palestinians. A visitor to Hebron, for example, will find beautiful, spacious Palestinian homes—each with a plaque crediting the donor—and wretched, cramped Jewish slums.

But home building is just a peripheral undertaking for the NGO folk. Like Myrna Minkoff, crisscrossing the Civil Rights-era South in A Confederacy of Dunces, they are on a fact-finding mission: to “document” Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians. If the Israelis aren’t obliging enough to provide mistreatment, these Social Justice Warriors egg on the Palestinians to provoke some. Also like the hapless Miss Minkoff, they have a tendency to embrace rats, thanks to a myopic belief that the rats are in fact squirrels. They thereby pick up a menagerie of media enablers and self-hating Israelis eager to help them “catch the Jew.”

Some of these crusaders confess—at odds with their organizations’ official policies—that their ultimate objective is the destruction of the Jewish State. Tuvia attributes this desire to plain, old anti-Semitism. “Where else could one practice his or her darkest wish for Judenfrei territories and still be considered liberal?”

The anti-Semitism of NGOs is the main takeaway from the book. But since this blog is about Islam, I want to focus on Tuvia’s experiences with Palestinians. (Yes, I know, not all Palestinians are Muslim. Many are Christians, and Tuvia engaged them too. The short version is they share their Muslim brothers’ attitudes toward Israel).

Tuvia loves the Palestinians. He loves their music. He loves their beautiful hijabs. He loves their cuisine, chock full of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. And he loves them as people, even when he’s certain they have blood on their hands, as is the case with General Jibril Rajoub, the onetime Palestinian spymaster. Tuvia really likes Jibral.

I believe that Tuvia is sincere when he says that he looks at Palestinians as human beings and not as the poster children for a cause. IMHO that’s why they open up to him. They tell him about their lives and their hopes. And they tell him about Israel. In their view, everything bad in the world is Israel’s fault, regardless of logic. Anything bad about Israel they believe without question, no matter how absurd. And sadly, there is no shortage of absurdity:

There’s the taxi driver who claims that two hundred Jewish settlers are in the midst of storming the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. Tuvia searches news outlets for this story. One would think it would be of major international import. It takes two attempts, but he finally discovers it on the Arabic version of al-Jazeera, accompanied by a photo of five—far short of two hundred—“seemingly non-Muslim men” standing peacefully in front of the mosque.

There’s al-Quds University, where a class of two Palestinian students learn—from European teachers—how oppressed they are. The receptionist claims that Jews have taken “many” Palestinian homes in Jerusalem. When pressed, he admits “many” is in fact thirty—over a period of sixty years!

There’s the activist who believes the brown hills of the West Bank used to be green, but then the Jews stole all the water.

There’s the Arab contractor who plants a tree at the home he’s building for his Jewish client. It seems like a touching gesture of friendship from an Arab to a Jew, until he explains that he intends to occupy the house himself as soon as the Jews are driven into the sea.

There’s the Bedouin activist who warns of “creeping apartheid,” even though he lives in mostly Jewish Beer Sheva. He complains that “Bedouins stand no chance of succeeding,” even though he holds a professorship at Ben Gurion University.

There’s the man Tuvia met at Gibril Rajoub’s house who thinks everything would be better if only Rommel had overrun Palestine in 1942. “We would have had all the land since no Jew would have survived.” Another man, a protester on his way to a media-staged anti-Israel demonstration, expresses similar approval for Nazism. Amid the party-like atmosphere of the protest bus, he says, “Hitler should have taught us what to do with the Jews, how to be thorough.” Paradoxically, despite this oft-heard admiration for Nazis, the notion that the Israelis are the new Nazis is also common.

There’s the lady who claims to have pictures on her phone of Israeli soldiers throwing bombs into the bedrooms of Arab children. She was going to show them to Tuvia, but just then her phone broke.

Tuvia’s stories constitute an important source document for anyone who wants to get a feel for life in the hostile fishbowl that is Israel (In fact, I bought a copy for my dad for Father’s Day).

Ultimately, though, Tuvia’s stories are just that. Stories. They give us understanding, but not precision. Entertainment, but not science. Subject to exaggeration, selective editing, and spin. They show us that some Palestinians hate Israel beyond the point of rationality, but don’t show us how widespread that attitude is. I did some research into that, which I share in a follow-on post.

Michael Isenberg writes about the Muslim world, medieval and modern. His forthcoming novel, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092 and depicts the battle for the Muslim soul between those who embrace science and tolerance, and those who would rather throw in their lot with mysticism and persecution.