Halliday, Fred. "Orientalism' and Its Critics." British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.20, No.2 (1993): 145-163.

Halliday, Fred. "Orientalism' and Its Critics." British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.20, No.2 (1993): 145-163.

• By the 1960s, there was a wealth of scholarship, particularly by Maxime Rodinson, critiquing the way in which the West discussed and conceptualized the Middle East, in ways that can be called 'orientalism', although that term was not used. Edward Said's 1978 book 'Orientalism' marked a shift because these earlier scholars used Marxist material analyses, whereas Edward Said examined the issue using literary criticism (148).
• Edward Said's work particularly uses the work of Michel Foucault, seeking to relate the discourses by which the Middle East is discussed to larger power relations. In this view, the way in which the Middle East is discussed and studied is a result of Europe's oppression and domination of the region and also perpetuates that domination (149).
• The two sides of the debate over Orientalism as a valid critique of Middle Eastern studies -- the 'traditionalists' and the 'Saidists' -- continue to fight, although Edward Said's perspective seems to be winning out. The Islamic Revolution in Iran gave credence to traditionalist arguments about Islam's potential for political action, while Said's perspective has benefitted from the general growth of postmodernism in academia (149).
• The works of both sides of the Orientalist debates are flawed because they both fail to answer substantive questions about the behavior of Middle Eastern societies and politics. They have been consumed in discussions of how these societies and cultures are written about and have neglected the actual study of Middle Eastern politics (149-150, 160, 162).
• This mistake is rooted in the methodology of both the postmodernist and traditionalist approaches to studying the Middle East, as both groups of scholars focus on discourses and ideology as the primary focus of politics. The traditionalists assume certain identities are salient and ascribe decisions to organic and unchanging cultures, while Saidists assume that changes in discourses will result in changes to the broader political and social order (150).
• The traditionalist perspective is that language and culture are important windows into politics and society and that study of these languages is the first step to studying a region. It also assumes that Islam is an explanatory factor that motivates actions and has an essential meaning outside of societal interpretations. Society and politics are explained by reference to the essential impact of Islam and Arab culture on the human mind. Importantly, these are essential elements of society that are resistant to change or cannot be changed (151-152).
• The influence of language is extremely important to traditionalist and Orientalists, because they imply that the original meanings of certain words, particularly Arabic words with religious connotations, influence how they are interpreted in modern politics and society (152).
• This approach is particularly stupid since it ignores that words change in meaning over time, often complete discarding their original meanings. This is even true for some originally religious terms. This means that the entomological roots of words do not necessarily have an influence on contemporary society and politics (153-154).
• Similarly, knowledge of Arabic does not give someone an insight into the contemporary or historical culture and politics of the Arab world. This is demonstrated by the disagreement and ignorance of native speakers of any language (154-155).
• This approach implies that, since politics derives from Islam and the Arab language, common political and social conditions must exist in these countries. This reduces Muslim countries to a monolith (152-153).
• The author objects to this interpretation, contending that Muslim societies differed tremendously in ways that demands an explanation outside of reduction to 'Islamic values' and that many conditions blamed on Islam or Arab culture, such as dictatorship, intolerance, or tribalism, exist in many non-Islamic societies and must, therefore, have other explanations (156-157, 162).
• The fact that the Middle East and the issues which affect its politics and society are not unique is good because it means that it can be studied just like any other region in the world, by the same standards, and in comparison to other parts of the world (162-163).
• Much Orientalist work implies that conditions in the Middle East are unique or exceptional because of Islam and Arab language and culture. The author disagrees with this view and finds that the political salience of language and religion are just as strong elsewhere in the world and among non-Muslim states in the Middle East (153).
• Orientalists automatically assume that the claims of Islamists that Islam constitutes an essential ideology that encompasses society, politics, and personal morality are true. The author views this assumption as incorrect and believes that the claims of Islamists should be more closely critiqued and that a plurality of interpretations of Islam be recognized, as well as that interpretations of Islam have changed over time, as have Muslim societies (155-156).
• Part of this is recognizing how modern many concepts and principles in Islamism and Middle Eastern politics are. This is clearly demonstrated in the writings of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who uses novel political and religious concepts often invented by himself (157).
• The case of Ayatollah Khomeini's writings also demonstrates the necessity of connecting politics and society in the Middle East to other concurrent social and political trends rather than assuming all explanatory variables are self-contained within Islam or Arab or Persian culture (157).
• Edward Said's definition of 'Orientalism' is open to interpretation and frequently carries little meaning because of its vagueness. It also implies that European domination of Arabs is somehow special, whereas similar epistemological conditions are found is nearly all discourses by a dominant people about a subject people (158).
• Another issue of Dr. Said's thesis is that it assumes that because observation and studies are conducted through an Orientalist lens, they are automatically wrong. This ignores that many great inventions, including many innovations in social sciences, are correct despite being produced by Europeans and for the purpose of dominating non-Europeans (159-160).
• In fact, much of the information produced about the Middle East is correct because it was advantageous to colonizers to have detailed and correct information about the areas and peoples they were subjugating. While Dr. Said's critiques may be wholly valid for fictional literature, many works of social science, especially for colonial government, can still be viewed as a valuable source of information (160).
• Dr. Said's work also does not provide a way to seek truth about the Middle East and instead many Saidists have been willing to accept equally fraudulent and false claims about Middle Eastern society and politics on equally shallow methodological basis in the name of anti-imperialism (160-161).
• Similarly, the idea of Orientalism too often assumes that the West is a monolithic entity with set desires, ideologies, and perceptions. This also leads to the rejection of certain concepts and invention because they are Western, instead of judging them on their merits (161).