The Same Old Story:

The continued relevance of the Lewis versus Said Orientalism debates and the need for a new approach to Middle Eastern Studies

Joshua A Earn

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Religion

WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, MA

May 24, 2004

I am truly grateful to everyone who has made my four years at Williams incredible. I want to specifically thank Professors Denise Buell, Michael MacDonald and James

Robson for their help and input on different aspects of this project. Also thanks to the

Religion Majors of 2004 for making sure my third chapter made sense. Thanks to Mom,

Dad, Seth and Katie, without whom I surely would not have finished my thesis.

Most of all, all thanks in the world to Professor Bill Darrow, not just for his help on my thesis, but for his patience, luridness, wisdom and guidance as my professor, advisor and employer over the last four years. I doubt I would have graduated or finished this thesis without his support. And I am certain I would not be who I am if I had not worked with him.

Introduction

On September 25" 2003, Edward Said, a professor of English and Comparative

Literature at Columbia University passed away from cancer at the age of 67. Born in

Palestine he moved to the United States at young age and became one of the most prominent pro-Palestinian voices in North America. His involvement in Middle East discourse was not limited to Palestine. He was also immensely concerned with the manner in which the Western media, Western scholars, Western politicians and everyone else in the West understood the entire Arab world. He is perhaps best known for his 1978 book Orientalism in which he challenged the West's entire understanding of the Arab

Muslim world.

Exactly a year before Said's death, Bernard Lewis was likely workmg on his

September 27th,2002 Wall Street Journal article entitled Time for Toppling, which called for the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq (Lewis 2002, A14). Lewis, the Cleveland Introduction Page 2

E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus at Princeton University was born in England in 1916 and moved to the United States in 1974. Edward Said, unquestionably, disagreed with Lewis's Wall Street Journal editorial, but that was not even close to the first time the men would have disagreed. The rift between these two scholars dated back almost thirty years.

In an article in The New York Times in 1976 Edward Said reviewed The

Cambridge History of Islam saying that "not only does [it] radically misconceive and misrepresent Islam as a religion; it also has no corporate idea of itself as a history. Of few such enormous enterprises can it be true as it is of this one that idea and methodological intelligence are almost entirely absent from it" (Said 1976, BR4). In this scathing review, Said suggested that "perhaps these failings of the 'Cambridge History' can be traced in part to its senior editor's feelings about Islam" (Said 1976, BR4). The editor, of course, was Bernard Lewis and this began a sort of academic struggle that went on for years.

A Showdown in the Wild "West"

Almost exactly a decade later, Said and Lewis faced off in person at the twentieth-anniversary meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America which Said has said was "a bit of mano a mano between the senior British Orientalist and myself." Similarly, Lewis opened the discussion with reference to his colleague who had termed the debate the "shoot-out at the MESA coral." In comparison to their published works of confrontation, the face to face meeting between Said and Lewis was actually introduction Page 3

rather tame. For the most part, the two scholars stuck to their message. Nonetheless the

tension between the two men's standpoint was blatant. (Said and Lewis 2001, 291)

Lewis went first in the debate he claimed focused on a "serious matter which is of

vital concern." Lewis did not see the discussion as a battle of political opinions regarding the problems in the Middle East in which one of the scholars would be seen as correct. In

a rare bit of modesty Lewis admitted "I think we all know that nothing which we say or do here this morning is going to have the slightest effect in the Middle East. We can change nothing. We can't even change each other's opinions." Instead, Lewis believed the importance of the discourse that went on came down to the self reflection that needed to take place by scholars of Middle Eastern Studies. Lewis said "what we can and should discuss is ourselves, our own role, our own duty as scholars, our duty toward our discipline, toward our colleagues, toward our students, toward the mcdia and beyond the media, toward the general public." (Said and Lewis 2001,291)

What is this duty? Lewis believes the duty of a scholar requires a certain conduct which includes "such values as civility, trying to maintain a decent level of debate to cool rather than heat passions, to persuade rather than to shout down an opponent." He adds these "are values worth preserving and ones which we as professional scholars in particular owe to the society which employs us." Lewis considers the Middle East an especially difficult discipline in which to carry out this duty due to its complicated relationship with the West. On the one hand, he knows it is obviously "different than a situation which we study a part of our own." However, on the other hand, Lewis claims unlike "India or China" with whom Western connections are relatively new, "the connection between the Western world and the Islamic world go back to the very Introduction Page 4

beginnings of Islam and have been shaped by a whole series of events, particularly by the

see-saw conflict between the two worlds." This combination of difference and

familiarity causes troublesome cultural understanding because we try to understand

others in our own terms; for example we call the Qur'an "the Muslim Bible" and believe

that an important political term such as "revolution" would have the same "resonance in

Islamic society" as it would in Western society. The result of this problematic "situation

is often that we resort on both sides.. .to stereotyped images and explanations." (Said and

Lewis 2001)

These stereotypes are certainly not ideal for Lewis, however he fears the

alternatives that are offered. He recognizes that stereotypes often result from the

scholarly values that he deems essential, but notes "the answer to a stereotype is not, of course, a negative stereotype." Using the example of the stercotype of rampant sexuality going on "inside the harem" Lewis argues "you do not refute the myth of the subjugation of women by insisting that women have rights far beyond those claimed now." I am certain that most would agree that the answer to a stereotype is not a different stereotype; however, one cannot help but feel that Lewis is malung excuses for his own stereotyping without providing an acceptable alternative. (Said and Lewis 2001)

Edward Said did not go so far as to suggest that the answer to a stereotype is in fact an opposing stereotype, however, one of his main points at the MESA conference was that there were at the time six "essential thematic clusters in [the] media coverage of the Middle East." These six thematic clusters portray Middle Eastern Arabs and Muslims as being: supported by the Soviets, zealous fundamentalists, backwards due to their tribal history, hostile to the "civilized and democratic West," anti-Semitic, and from the home Introduction Page 5

of the evil PLO led by Yasir Arafat. Said basically argues that all the major American

news publications and broadcasters, present the Middle East using these stereotypes and

thus, though is it not ideal, some negative stereotypes providing an opposing image,

would be better than the singular vision that Americans receive."

The other central point in Said's discussion is that these media portrayals are a result of the scholars of the Middle East. He lists off a plethora of scholars, whose names

are still at the center of Middle Eastern discourse, such as Lewis, Daniel Pipes and

Norman Podhorentz, who he claims "are responsible for the entire gamut of media representations of the Middle East." He wonders how "these scholars continue to practice their art while remaining hostile or at least antithetical to and substantially reserved, about its central object: the religion and culture of Islam." Said agrees with

Lewis that "the duty of scholars is to act in the interest of truth and justice and fairness and honesty." The problem he has with scholars of the Middle East is that they are not doing that. Instead, he concludes "scholarly expertise on the Middle East has paid a very high price for its entry into the mainstream media and the halls of policy. It has sacrificed information on what goes on in the Middle East.. .almost completely. It has sacrificed understanding and comparison totally." (Said and Lewis 2001)

Overall, both men in the debate made several strong arguments and remained mature and civil. For anyone familiar with the relationship between Said and Lewis, the fact that both men made several strong points in a head to head debate is actually rather surprising. The fact that the debate remained rather friendly is not just surprising, it is

The publications include, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books and many others As the meeting occured long before the rise of CNN, Fox News and other cable news channels, it was quite the indictment of the American Media that Said lists off, CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS as the TV outlets responsible for these images since they were basically the only source for news at the time. Introduction Page 6

astonishing. The most famous interchange between the scholars occurred four years

earlier in the The New York Review of Books and was much less cordial.

Lewis's Fighting

Long after the publication of Said's famous Orientalism, Lewis, who Said

directly attacked several times in the book responded in a scathing article entitled The

Question of Orientalism. Much of Lewis's assault on Orientalism revolves around terminology. He basically argues that Said's argument is absurd and only seems to make

sense because of the numerous instances of misuse, misrepresentation and misunderstanding of words. In the eyes of Lewis, Said's first mistake comes from the use of the term "Orientalist". According to Lewis the term had ceased to be used five years prior to the publication of Orientalism at the Twenty-ninth International Congress of Orientalists. Before Said "polluted [the term] beyond salvation.. .the word had already lost its value and had been in fact abandoned by those who previously bore it." Lewis argues that Orientalists abolished the term because they "were increasingly dissatisfied with a term that indicated neither the discipline in which they were engaged nor the region in which they were concerned." This is a sentiment which makes sense considering the "Orient" included the modem middle-East, North Africa, India, China and everything in between. At the same time scholars from Asian countries favored getting rid of the term due to the "absurdity of applying such a term as Orientalist to an

Indian studying the history and culture of India." In spite of the fact that the term was

"discarded as useless by scholars," Lewis believes Said "retrieved and reconditioned" Introduction Page 7

both Orientalist and Orientalism "for a different purpose, as terms of polemical abuse."

(Lewis 1982)

Lewis's focus on terminology continues with his assertion that "a historian of

Orientalism-that is to say, the work of historians and philologists should at least have

some acquaintance with the history and philology with which they were concerned."

Apparently Said's "ltnowledge of Arabic and Islam shows surprising gaps." Lewis calls it insouciance that "the one Arabic phrase which [Said] quotes is misspelled and mistranslated and several of the few other Arabic words which appear on Mr. Said's pages are similarly misrepresented." The most glaring example of this comes from Said's use of tawhid which Said defines as "God's transcendental unity" even though Lewis claims "in fact it means monotheism, i.e., declaring or professing the unity of God."

(Lewis 1982)

This argument illuminates Lewis's thinking in two very important manners. First of all it clarifies his understanding of methodology. For him philology reigns supreme.

Lewis seems almost nostalgic as he describes the original scholars of the orient who

"were philologists concerned with the recovery, study, publication, and interpretation of texts." Philology carries this importance for Lewis because it is "the first and most essential task that ha[s] to be undertaken before the serious study of such other matters as philosophy, theology, literature, and history [become] possible" Secondly, working off his grounding in philology (and as I move into Said's arguments this will become more clear), Lewis believes the way to understand a culture is to understand language and from there conclusions can be drawn. More specifically he is willing to pin objective linguistic truths on specific words. He argues that there is one obvious and true meaning of the Introduction Page 8 word tawhid, rather than assuming a sort of subjectivity of language. By making this and similar arguments, Lewis makes blanket statements which profess that definitions can be essentialized into a single accepted concrete meaning; thereby closing the door on interpretation and discussion. (Lewis 1982)

Lewis takes issue with many of the words Said uses in discussing the scholars whom he is criticizing and the manner in which they gather knowledge. Lewis argues the

"theme of violent seizure and possession, with sexual overtones recurs at several points in the book." Said presents this theme by using loaded terms such as '"wrench,' 'ransack,' and even 'rape' to describe the knowledge in the West about the East.'' For Lewis, this obviously political and calculated use of terms is almost as despicable as Said's ignorance with respect to the true nature of Middle Eastern studies. Lewis moclts Said as someone who would believe that "scholarship and science are commodities which exist in finite quantities [of which] the West has grabbed an unfair share of these as well as other resources, leaving the East not only impoverished but also unscholarly and an unscientific." Lewis makes what can only be seen as an appeal to those who believe he is anti-Arab by suggesting that Said's argument that the West has ransacked the Itnowledge of the East and "expresses contempt for the modern Arab's scholarly achievement worse than anything that he attributes to his demonic Orientalists." (Lewis 1982)

These last two words seem to point to what is actually going on in this section of his Lewis's essay. Lewis feels that Said is wrongly vilifying Orientalists for several offenses. Lewis paints a picture of a new (for that time) kind of anti-Orientalism and describes Edward Said as its main exponent. For Lewis the anti-Orientalists are epitomized by rhetoric which blames a "Zionist scholarly hegemony in Arabic studies in lntraduction Page 9

the United states" for distorting the truth about Arabs in order to gain power. On another

front, some of the anti-Orientalists are Marxists who believe "there is an Orientalist

conception or line to which all Orientalists adhere." This conception is tied directly to the

Orientalists' status as dominators of Oriental states. This domination that started with the

colonial powers of Great Britain and France ransacking the East for "texts, myths, ideas,

and languages" which according to Said were not actually well used until the Germans figured out how to approach them properly. Lewis describes this sentiment as "not merely false but absurd" and which "reveals a disquieting lack of knowledge of what

scholars do and what scholarship is about." (Lewis 1982)

Lewis's attack on Orientalism does not cease with his extensive criticism of

Said's verbal choices or his resentment of Said's commentary on the role of power in scholarly endeavor. He also argues that in order "to prove [his] point, Mr. Said makes a number of very arbitrary decisions." Basically Lewis believes that Said simply chose the information which proved the point he wanted to make and neglected all the examples which countered his point. The process of selection and omission was exemplified by his

"arbitrary rearrangement of the historical background" in which Lewis claims Said sets

"the rise of Orientalism in the late eighteenth century" (even though several universities, including Cambridge, had positions dedicated to studying Arabic in the early 1600's) and by his "capricious choices of countries, persons, and writings" which are reflected in his disregard of German Orientalists and his neglect of "many leading figures7'among the

Orientalists of France and Britain. Yet Lewis argues that "All of this.. .still does not suffice for Mr. Said to prove his case, and he is obliged to resort to additional devices."

The most important of these were Said's misuse of words but Lewis also criticizes the introduction Page 10

fact that Said ignored scholars not just from other Western European companies such as

Germany, but also the work of scholars of Islamic and Arabic culture in Russia and in the

Arab Muslim world itself. (Lewis 1982)

Finally, mixed in with all the attacks on the unsatisfactory content of Orientalism

are endless direct attacks on Said's character. In an almost childish jab, Lewis seems to imply that Said picks through garbage. With regard to the Orientalist dismissal of the term Orientalist which I discussed earlier, Lewis states "the term Orientalist was thus.. .thrown on the garbage heap of history. But Garbage heaps are not safe places."

The attacks on Said's character do not end there. Lewis suggests that unlike a famous Dr.

Abdel-Malek article which also attacked Orientalists and which was "written with obvious emotion, and is the expression of passionately held convictions," new anti-

Orientalist attacks, such as those of Said do not even "stay with the limits of scholarly debate". In other words, Said's publication was simply a political anger piece with no real academic value. In another shot at Said's academic merit Lewis quips that the omission of Russian scholars from Said's book can "hardly be due to ignorance of Russian" since

"such disabilities have not inhibited Mr. Said's treatment of other topics." In talking about the Russians, Lewis also writes that "Curiously.. .even in their most abusive and contemptuous statements about Islam [they] enjoy total exemption from Mr. Said's stricture." As this article was written at the height of the cold war, it is obviously more than simply a reprimand for poor scholarly methods at stake here. Lewis seems to want to suggest that Said is apologizing for the communists. These potent examples are supplemented with a plethora of terms such as "inadequacies" "ignorance" "reckless Introduction Page 11

accusations" "absurd" and "insouciance" in order to drive home the idea that Said's book

utterly fails at being anything worth reading. (Lewis 1982)

Said's Response

A month and a half later, Edward Said's response immediately attempted to match the defensiveness, haughtiness and bitterness that characterized Lewis's article.

The first paragraph begins with Said listing many of the same terms I mentioned above; terms which he claims represent the "verbosity [that] scarcely conceals both the ideological underpinnings of [Lewis's] position and his extraordinary capacity for getting everything wrong." Like Lewis, Said continues with these kinds of quips and jabs throughout the piece, but he also has several intriguing responses to the points Lewis makes. The first move Said makes is to refute Lewis's idea that "the branch of

Orientalism dealing with Islam and Arabs is a learned discipline that can be compared with classical philology." (Said, Grabar and Lewis 1982)

In this crafty bit of academic repartee, rather than acknowledging Lewis's vision of Qrientalist scholarship as philology in action, Said claims Lewis only likens philology and Orientalism. Lewis opened his piece with a metaphor which suggested that studying the Classics and the Orient are basically the same kind of scholarship, with the only difference being the geographic origins of the texts they are studying. The goal of this metaphor was to show that it is illogical to justify an attack on Orientalists since everyone knows it would be absurd to attack what Classicists are doing. However, Said tales Introduction Page 12

advantage of the fact that Lewis compares Orientalism to classical philology rather than

saying they are the same thing. Lewis does make it clear later, as I mentioned, that he

believes philology is what he is doing, it is not similar to what he is doing. Nonetheless,

Said's explanation of the matter in terms of a comparison allows him to dismiss Lewis as

a second rate scholar, but he agrees with Lewis when it comes to the importance of

philology. Had Said not been able to find, within Lewis's arguments, a way to separate

Orientalists from philology, the burden would have been on him to prove why the

disciplines were different. Instead, he used Lewis's own words to show that not even the

most prominent Orientalist actually believes the two are the same. (Said, Grabar and

Lewis 1982)

With this achieved, Said focuses on using it against Lewis. He dismisses the

alleged link between philology and Orientalism equating it with "comparing Professor

Menachem Milson, Israeli Orientalist and civilian governor of the West bank, with

Wilamowitz" (Said, Grabar and Lewis 1982). This simile not only serves the purpose of

linking Lewis and Orientalists to oppressive Zionists politicians, it also allows Said to mention a philologist of whom it has been said "his greatness stands out against the background of the history of [philology]" (Fraenkel 1948,29). By inserting this allusion,

Said manages to show the utmost respect for philology and its methods, while dismissing the idea that Lewis can be seen as one who practices those methods. The complete

absence of the word "philology" in Lewis's final response to Said, combined with an

almost angry tone, demonstrates the brilliant approach of separating the argument of the usefulness of philology from Lewis himself. It prevented him from appealing to quality

scholarship and instead forced him to make the debate even more personal. Introduction Page 13

With the dismissal of Lewis's philology argument out of the way, Said moves on to respond to Lewis's attacks on both himself and Ovientalisrn. For Said, Lewis's defense of the entire academic discipline of Oriental Studies is problematic on a variety of levels. The main difference between Lewis's particular defense of Orientalism and attack on Said and other scholar's critiques of Said is that "in Lewis's case the defense he offers is an act of breathtakingly bad faith, since.. .more than most Orientalists he had been a passionate political partisan against Arab causes in such places as the US congress, Commentary, and elsewhere." It seems Said would have fewer problems with similar arguments from other scholars who could admit the actions of some Orientalists fit his description, but could prove that they themselves do not fall prey to the Iunds of patterns Said assigns to them. Since Lewis blatantly fits into the criticism Said lays out, his defense ends up being nothing more than "an elaborate confection of ideological half- truths designed to mislead non-specialist readers." (Said, Grabar and Lewis 1982)

Said then goes on to directly respond to several of the arguments Lewis makes.

He begins with Lewis's attack on his use of tawhid. Said makes the fair argument that it is a flawed approach to language to reduce a word to a single meaning, a point he claims

Lewis has even made "elsewhere in his polemics." Said shows the definition he used in

Ovientalism was actually footnoted with reference to "Jacques Waardenburg quoting

Massignon's translation of tawhid verbatim." Said is indignant that Lewis missed this reference since he believes "anyone-including Lewis-with any idea at all about

Islam.. .would trust Massignon on the question of tawhid." I agree with Said that language cannot have singular interpretations. I find troubling, however, in this section, as well as the rest of his response, that his intelligent appropriate responses to Lewis's Introduction Page 14

claims are buried within assumptions and personal attacks which serve no purpose other than to continue the immature tone that Lewis set out in his piece. As a precursor to the explanation of his use of Massignon and Waardenburg, Said states that Lewis says his

"lmowledge of Arabic and Islamic shows astonishing gaps" and that this sentiment is an example of Lewis shamelessly exploiting the fact that Said is a Christian Arab. His proof of this is that by writing in The New York Review Lewis "appeals to an audience that is most unlikely to know how deliberately imprecise his points are but is very likely to assume that since Clifford Geertz has them believing [he] is an intemperate left-wing non-Orientalist Christian Palestinian [he] cannot be trusted." The reasons behind Lewis's choice of periodical as an avenue of response to Orientalism certainly are worthy of consideration, but to assume specific opinions and intents based on the publication by

Lewis's Princeton colleague Geertz in a much earlier issue of the New York Review seems to me to verge on paranoia. Said thinks Lewis's alleged allusion to his ethnic background is "not an epistemological issue but a political one." In actuaI fact this is an example of Said making the entire issue political rather than content based; a transgression of which I have clearly shown Lewis is similarly guilty. (Said, Grabar and

Lewis 1982)

In the weakest of his rebuttals Said admits to having "omitted German scholars"

(Said, Grabar and Lewis 1982). He reiterates, however, that since he "was not talking about everything Orientalists did, and since [he] was interested principally in the relationship between Orientalism and the two major imperialist powers in the Orient, the

German school-despite its prodigious output-can be regarded as elaborating and extending" the work of French and British Orientalists (Said, Grabar and Lewis 1982). Introduction Page 15

Rather than providing a clearer explanation for the omission of scholarship from a

country which would normally be considered the "West" Said simply states he "did not

write a biographical dictionary of Orientalists" and thus did not need to include everyone

(Said, Grabar and Lewis 1982). He suggests Lewis and other Orientalists who have

criticized German omission must "produce substantive reasons as to why the Germans

and all the others should be mentioned" (Said, Grabar and Lewis 1982). Lewis seemed to make a fair argument in his original article "that the collections in Germany, Austria, and elsewhere are no less important than those of "imperial Britain and France" (Lewis 1982.

We cannot blame Said for omitting the Germans in his original work. There are a plethora of Orientalists to discuss, and choosing the scholars from the most active imperial powers makes sense as a start. However, he himself suggests that if Lewis "had the intellectual rigor to blame [him] for not discussing Israeli Orientalists, [Lewis] would have made a good point" (Said, Grabar and Lewis 1982). With this assumption Said claims a logical connection between Israeli Orientalists and French and British

Orientalists and thus, his refusal to recognize that the Germans fit into the same group implies that the German school is in some way different. If the German school were the same as the other schools it would not be difficult for Said to discuss them. If it really is different, the burden is on Said to show why one "Western" school would be different than another. By not doing so, he either admits the German school points to a serious flaw in his argument or shows that he is more interested in engaging in personal attacks to suggest that Lewis lacks "intellectual rigor". He quips that, when criticized,

Orientalists can do nothing more than blurt out a "list of names and expressions of outrage" (Said, Grabar and Lewis 1982). Introduction Page 16

Said's defense of the absence of Soviet Orientalists contains a stronger argument.

He argues "if the Soviet Russian Orientalists attacked Islam they also attacked

Christianity, Judaism, as well as all other religions for being opiates of the people. There is a difference between that, however, and invidiously singling out Islam, a practice more common among Western Orientalists." While this line of reasoning does make some sense, the fact that Said defines the "West" sans Russia, must not be overlooked, since such definitions seem antithetical to Said's whole project. In Chapter two I will return to the idea of the "West." However for now I will focus on the intellectual skirmishing between Lewis and Said. The other part of Said's defense of Russian Orientalist omission that must not be overlooked is that he called Lewis on the "red-bating" that occurred in

Lewis's first article. Said has every right to point out such a contemptible and unnecessary bit of writing; however the childish attacks on Lewis that follow are much less comprehensible. Instead of implying communist ties, Said intimates Lewis is an evil

Zionist oppressor. His conclusion compares Lewis with "Rabbi Kahane and Gush

Emunin" the radical, often violent Zionist group, suggesting that Lewis "seems to advocate driving [the almost 2 million Palestinian Arabs] into Arab countries and actually suggests that "Lewis's field of operations is the scholarly equivalent" to Mencahem

Milson's ideas being imposed by "General Sharon's tanks and jets." Said also implies that Lewis's Zionist beliefs go hand- in- hand with being an American political pawn. He cites Lewis's numerous visits to Washington to give testimony which "mixes standard

Cold War bellicosity with fervent recommendations to give Israel more, and still more, arms-presumably so that it may go on improving the lot of Muslims and Arabs who fall within the range of its artillery and airpower." I am not arguing that Said is wrong in Introduction Page 17 saying Lewis is politically active. Also I would agree with Said that since Said's point was to show that Orientalists are more than just scholars "it would be proper.. .to sketch out the reality of [Lewis's personal] position and of his 'scholarly' position." However, the fact that Said puts "scholarly" in sarcastic quotations and then does not himself explicitly acknowledge that all of his statements regarding Israel and the United States are equally politically motivated seems to me to get at the heart of the problems that tarnish this debate. The debate is between two sides: both acutely aware of the flaws of the opposing side and both almost completely oblivious to their own flaws. (Said, Grabar and Lewis 1982)

Lewis Takes Another Shot

Bernard Lewis's final reply to Said demonstrates both these characteristics. He opens the reply to Said's response with the haughty jibe "it is difficult to argue with a scream of rage." He subsequently makes many points similar to those I made above. He defends his participation in Washington D.C., points out that Said mentions Menachem

Milson "no fewer than four times in his 'response"' and accuses Said of responding to criticisms with arguments "the logic and relevance of which are not immediately apparent." As I noted earlier he totally drops any talk of philology and again fails to respond on a substantive level to any of the legitimate criticisms Said has ever put forward. In fact, he spends seventeen of the first eighteen paragraphs of his response simply attacking Said, defending his honor and reiterating petty arguments he has already made. The final paragraph of the entire exchange, however, contains perhaps the wisest comment either scholar makes in the entire interchange (granted Lewis has twice as much Introduction Page 18

space in which to say something intelligent). Lewis, in a final example of not practicing what he preaches writes:

The question under discussion is of profound significance and is part of the larger problem, now receiving some scholarly attention, of the perception of "the Other." This is not limited to contrasting how one society perceives another with how that other society perceives itself. It is also concerned with the mutual perceptions of the two, as well as with parallel problems in that greater part of the world which is neither Western nor Muslim. The tragedy of Mr. Said's Orientalism is that it takes a genuine problem of real importance, and reduces it to the level of political polernic and personal abuse.

The fact of the matter is the question that Lewis describes is not "the question under discussion", it is the question that ought to be under discussion. Similarly the tragedy Lewis describes is indeed a tragedy, However Lewis is no less guilty than Said of being a scholar who "reduces" a question "of profound significance" to the dreadful

"level of political polemic and personal abuse." (Said, Grabar and Lewis 1982)

Setting the Stage

In general my thesis examines different aspects of the current relevance of the debates I have been discussing. At a Canadian-sponsored panel on the future of Middle

East studies after 911 1" Roger Owen, a historian at Harvard "discussed what he called the

"difficult re-emergence" of the Lewis vs. Said dichotomy symbolizing essentialism vs. global perspective." Another panel member wrote "Edward Said won 1CIESA, Bernard

Lewis won Washington" (Anonymous 2003).

Chapter 1 will investigate the manner in which Said's global perspective won over MESA. Using two case studies which illustrate criticism of Said's influence, the chapter will function not only to demonstrate Said's effect on the academy, but will also look at Said's critics to establish that the continued relevance of the Said vs Lewis Introduction Page 19

debates goes hand in hand with the continued impossibility of solving the debate. The

chapter also serves to demonstrate the manner in which the political world seeps into the

academy.

Chapter 2, on the other hand, illustrates the way in which the academic world

influences politics. It will examine the manner in which Lewis's essentialism, and in fact

Lewis himself, "won" Washington. I will look specifically at the way in which Lewis's

views on the Middle East have influenced President Bush's foreign policy, both in the

War on Terror and the War in Iraq.

The above analysis of the original debates, the discussion of the continued

inability for Middle Eastern scholars to agree on anything, and the claim that Lewis's

views play a major role on the world scene all work to set up the final chapter. After

seeking to find what we mean when we talk about "culture," Chapter 3 will consider the various approaches used to attempt to understand Middle Eastern culture. Given the problems with all of the different approaches, I will conclude by proposing solutions for better scholarship and a move towards a possible resolution of the Lewis vs. Said debate. When I first read the Lewis and Said debates, I was surprised and entertained by the nature of the childish banter. I also naively presumed that such personally charged academic debates were a rarity, thinking that this series of interchanges that occurred more than twenty years ago was somewhat of an isolated incident of intellectual jousting.

As it turns out, I was wrong. In his book Clueless in Academe, Gerald Graff considers how problems with the nature of the academy close it off to large percentages of the population. The Orientalism debate suffers from many of the symptoms Graff discusses.

Whether it be the disagreeing on points of semantic picayune, admiring the wonder of philology as the ultimate academic pursuit, or simply the repeated use of unnecessarily long or opaque words, the debates clearly include the jargon, specialized terminology and obscure writing which Graff calls "tip of the institutional iceberg" in terms of academe's problems (Graff 2003, 2). Of greater issue for Graff is the argumentative culture that Edward Said Won MESA Page 21

dominates the academic world. Essentially, he feels that the academy requires its

students to become "aggressive know-it-alls" (Graff 2003, 45). In doing so, this creates a

style of discourse, such as that of Lewis and Said, that prevents outsiders from having any access to the issues. It also abolishes the possibility of productive results of debate between disagreeing academics since they confidently and forcefully speak their point, without ever listening to their colleagues respond.

This chapter will examine the manner in which academic arguments regarding the

Middle East continue to suffer from the same symptoms as the Orientalism debate. In fact twenty years later, it is not just the same issues, but also the same people who are still talked about. I will use two case studies, indicative of the arguments that persist in the area to illustrate the lasting effects Said has had on Middle Eastern scholarship. Both case studies are similar in that they focus on an American Jewish Man and his criticisms of problems he believes to stem from Said's influence on the academy. The first case study I will present focuses on Daniel Pipes and his claim that scholars misrepresent and sugar coat Muslim ideas, ignoring the "truth" in the process. The second study focuses on

Martin Kramer's virulent support for HR 3077, a resolution from Congress he believes is aimed at solving problems of bias instilled in the Academy by Said. Both men hold a Ph.

D. in Middle East related work. Pipes received his degree in History from Harvard.

Kramer's degree is from Princeton in Near Eastern Studies, where he no doubt worked closely with Bernard Lewis. In fact both Pipes and Kramer are also the most recognizable of Lewis's followers. In fact they may be his only recognizable followers. When talking about the lasting impact Lewis has had on the study, almost everyone cites Pipes and

Kramer as examples and often could not name another if asked. Edward Said Won MESA Page 22

Case study #I : Pipes and Jihad

This case study is broken up into three pasts. The first examines Daniel Pipes'

attack the liberal academy's portrayal of the meaning of Jihad, in his article Jihad and the

Professors. In the second section I carry out an in-depth semantic analysis of the word jihad and its appearances in the Qur'an in order to problematize Pipes' reading. In the

third section I will argue that Pipes attack on the professors and my discussion of jihad

with respect to Pipes' argument, exemplify the continued relevance of the Lewis and Said

debate, as well as the affects Said has had on the academy.

Pipes and his attack

Daniel Pipes is the founder of Campus Watch. According to his website Campus-

Watch.org, it is an organization that "critiques Middle East studies in North America with

an aim to improving them. The project addresses five problems: analytical failures, the

mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the

abuse of power over students." The more time one spends surfing www. Campus- watch.org the more it seems clear that Campus Watch's main issue with these five

problems is not that they occur, but that they paint Islam and the Arab world in a manner

opposed to the way Pipes sees them.

This is certainly the case with his article from his Commentary article in which he

argues that "university-based specialists.. .tend to portray the phenomenon of jihad in

a.. .portrait that happens to be false" (Pipes 2002, 18). In his article, Daniel Pipes claims

"it is an intellectual scandal that since September 11, 2001, scholars at American

universities have repeatedly and all but unanimously issued public statements that avoid Edward Said Won MESA Page 23

or whitewash the primary meaning of jihad in Islamic law and Muslim history" (Pipes

2002,211.

Pipes' article is written in direct response to what he sees as the overwhelming

publicly expressed academic opinion that jihad "is something all Americas should

admire." He believes they speak of jihad as an "abstract obligation" that calls on Muslims

to "defend one's faith and community." For these scholars, this can mean aiming to

"create a just society," or it could mean "a struggle to be true to the will of God and not holy war." These professors also write that in a modem world, Jihad could simply mean

"resisting apartheid or working for women's rights." Some of the academics Pipes refers to even go so far as to suggest that jihad is something that should be universalized and that Americans should do so. Bruce Lawrence, a Duke professor of Islamic studies writes, "For us Americans, the greater jihad would mean that we must review U.S. domestic and foreign policies in a world that currently exhibits little signs of promoting justice for all." Pipes seems irritated by the fact that of "the two dozen experts [he] surveyed only four of them admitted that jihad has any military component whatsoever, and even they, with but a single exception, insist that this component is purely defensive in nature."(Pipes 2002, 17-21)

The reason for his irritation is that according to his research, "In the vast majority of pre-modern cases, then, jihad signified one thing only: armed action versus non-

Muslims." Not just armed action, but "the legal, compulsory communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims". According to Pipes, "by winning territory and diminishing the size of areas ruled by non-Muslims, jihad.. .manifests Islam's claim to replace other faiths, and brings about the benefit of a just world order." Finally Pipes Edward Said Won MESA Page 24

claims that while "the conditions under which jihad might be undertaken.. .are matters

that religious scholars have worked out in excruciating detail for centuries.. .about the

basic meaning of jihad-warfare against unbelievers to extend Muslim domains-there

was perfect consensus." Pipes tries to prove this consensus. He cites the 1885 Dictionary

of Islam, which says jihad is "an incumbent religious duty, established in the Qur'an and

in the traditions [hadith]as a divine institution, and enjoined especially for the purpose of

advancing Islam and of repelling evil from Muslims" (Pipes 2002, 19). Such a definition can certainly be interpreted as calling for "killing in the name of Allah." Sources outside the scope of his article can also help to back up Pipes claim. The Encyclopedia of the

Qur'an defines Jihad as "struggle, or striving, but often understood with the Muslim tradition and beyond it as warfare against infidels" (McAuliffe 2001, 35). This does not stray far from what Pipes argues, although it does differ in that it recognizes that struggle or striving are jihad's primary meanings, even though most people think of it as warfare against infidels. The Encyclopedia of the Qur'an's definition does not end with the mention of infidels. It continues: "The term jihad derives from the root j-h-d denoting effort, exhaustion, exertion, strain." Pipes argues that regardless of the linguistic meaning of the term itself, the accepted tradition of the term within the religion equates jihad with violence. He claims the "vast majority of pre-modern cases" of jihad are simply about violence. (Pipes 2002, 17-21)

Jihad in the Qu'ran

In actual fact "there are only ten places in the Qur'an where j-h-d definitely denotes warfare." This flies in the face of Pipes claim that the majority of pre-modern uses equate jihad and violence, since "derivatives of this root occur in forty-one Qur'anic Edward Said Won MESA Page 25

verses" (McAuliffe 2001, 36). The Encyclopedia of the Quu'an recognizes that five of

these clearly mean "to swear the strongest oath" but that still means that less than a third

of j-h-d rooted words in the Qur'an have obvious violent connections " (McAuliffe 2001,

35).

By analyzing examples of both these violent and non-violent contexts, I will

prove that it is impossible to pin a single meaning on jihad. I begin with the clearly war-

related uses of the term. Firestone argues "the Qur'an's message on the topic [of warring]

is actually far from consistent" (Firestone 1999, 47). He discusses the normal

"abrogation" reading of warring in the Qur'an, which argues that through a temporal

analysis of revelations there is a clear development of the Qur'anic stance on warring.

This development reflects the situations at the time specific Surahs were revealed to the

prophet. The first stage, which can be found in Surahs that were revealed "in Mecca

when [Muhammad] was weak and his followers few," encourages "nonconfrontation."

Firestone uses Surah 15:94-95 as an example of this stance. In this Surah, Allah

encourages his followers to "proclaim what [they] are commanded and turn away from

the polytheists" because Allah's "support to [them] against the scoffers will be

sufficient." Such Surahs were abrogated by Surahs like Surah 2:190 which orders a jihad for Muslims to "fight in the path of God those who fight you but do not transgress

limits, for God does not love transgressors." It is argued that this Surah replaced the

doctrine of nonconfrontation with the idea that it is acceptable to fight those who attack.

In the abrogation reading of warring, the third stage within the Qur'an included

permission to initiate conflict in some cases. The final stage of the abrogation theory,

which reflects Pipes' ideas, claims the "Unconditional Command to fight all Edward Said Won MESA Page 26 unbelievers." Interestingly, this final stage is proved with verses such as 9:29 which commands to "fight those who do not believe in God or the Last Day, and who do not forbid what has been forbidden by God and His Messenger." This verse is particularly interesting because jihad is not mentioned. Nor is jihad mentioned in the other examples

Firestone gives for this fourth stage (2:4 and 95). I believe this shows that Pipes is wrong to devote so much of his essay on what he views as the misunderstood definition of jihad. He would have been better off to focus on general ideas, since there seems to be some evidence that embedded within the religion, there is a requirement to kill non-

Muslims. Even doing this he would have missed many of the important variations on warring that appear in the Qur'an. (Firestone 1999)

Firestone presents this entire line of abrogation thinlung in his book but feels

"the fact is.. .conflicting Qur'anic verses cannot prove an evolution of the concept or sanction for religious authorized warring in Islam from a non-aggressive to a militant stance. To suggest that they do is nothing more than an interpretation applied to the

obvious disparity [in the Qur'an] " (Firestone 1999, 64). He offers a new reading of warring in the Qur'an which replaces the four stages of warring with four categories of

Surahs that denote different types of allowable warring. The four categories, as he presents them are:

1. Verses expressing nonmilitant means of propagating or defending the faith 2. Verses expressing restrictions fighting 3. Verses expressing conflict between God's command and the reaction of Muhammad's followers 4. Verses strongly advocating war for God's Religion " (Firestone 1999, 69).

He feels these categories more successfully capture the "evolution of ideological war in the religious civilization of Islam" (Firestone 1999, 91). According to Firestone, the changes in views on war were "not smooth but, rather, tumultuous as the old and new Edward Said Won MESA Page 27

system collided and clashed." For my purposes, I want to focus on the way verses with j-

h-d words fit into his new reading. Not surprisingly, for the first category Firestone does not use any examples which contain the word jihad. This could suggest that jihad, when used in the context of defending the faith, entails violent action. On the other hand, in the other three categories many of the examples do not contain any mention of jihad and thus again we see that jihad can by no means be taken as the word that represents all violent

Islamic action.

Each of the other three categories contains a verse which includes a word with j- h-d as the root. Firestone again uses Surah 2: 190, which encouraged jihad in the path of

God against attackers, but without transgressing limits. This time he shows that there are verses that place restrictions on fighting. The nature of the restrictions (or the "limits" not to be transgressed) are a little less clear. Firestone suggests the commentators believe the "verse retains pre-Islamic views of warring" (Firestone 1999,74). These views prevent men from lulling women, children or civilians and also from fighting in sacred places, except for defensive purposes. This reading makes sense, but at the same time, we must remember it is still "a reading" and thus does not offer an authoritative decision on the rules that Allah intended Muslims to follow. Regardless of the interpretation, the verse itself makes it clear that Pipes' understanding of the term as a mandate for aggression and violence does not concur with some of the term's Qur'anic appearances.

We also find jihad in one of the examples that expresses a reaction of the Muslims that differed from Allah's commands. Surah 4: 195 states "those of the believers who stay at home while suffering form no injury are not equal to those who ljihad] for the cause of

Allah." The "conflict with Allah" by his followers stems from the fact that the verses Edward Said Won MESA Page 28

recognize that even those who do not jihad are "promised good" but those who do jihad

are given "a great reward." In other words, God prefers those who jihad, but those who

choose not to are still considered to be good Muslims. Contrary to what many would

have us believe, jihad can be portrayed as a choice. God may encourage violent action

against non-Muslims, but he does not require it.

Finally, jihad can be used as evidence that the Qur'an strongly advocates "war for

God's religion." Surah 66:9 says "0 prophet, Ijihad] with the unbelievers and the

hypocrites, and deal harshly with them. Their refuge shall be Hell, and what an evil

resort." Relatively self-explanatory, this verse offers a perfect example of jihad used in

the Qur'an in the exact way that Pipes explains it: an order to kill those who do not

believe in Allah. In this way, we see there is very real legitimacy in suggesting that jihad

can entail violence against non-Muslims. Overall, the important point to understand must

be that even in regard to violent Qur'anic uses of jihad there is no single obvious

definition that we can synthesize into the kind of definition Pipes argues for; a point made clear both by the presence and absence of the word jihad in Firestone's examples.

The other important point to remember is that there are many uses of jihad that have nothing to do with war against the infidels, or even violence in general. Surah 29:8 uses the term strictly in the sense of struggle. It says Allah has "commanded man to be kind to his parents" however Allah goes on to relieve Muslims of the responsibility to

"obey them" if parents "j-h-d (strive or struggle) with you to associate with Me that of which you have no lcnowledge." The Encyclopedia of the Quv'an points out that here "j- h-d is applied to an impious struggle" (McAuliffe 2001, 37). This is surprising, but even more surprising is the idea upon which the verse is based. It suggests that good Muslim Edward Said Won MESA Page 29 children would have Muslim parents who have been led astray, and that in this relationship the group who has a jihad would be the un-Islamic parents and their desire to change ideas. This not only suggests an impious struggle, but also a non-violent struggle against good Muslims. Basically, it suggests the complete opposite of anything that

Pipes has argued.

Jihad is also often used in the context of testing Muslim's dedication to Allah"

(McAuliffe 2001, 37). This can mean warring in the name of God, but it can entail other actions as well. Surah 22:78 tells Muslims to "[Jihad] for Allah as you ought to [Jihad]."

The struggle that is entailed here is not a violent struggle but rather a struggle to do everything they can to fulfill the religious expectations Allah has placed upon them.

Surah 49: 15 identifies true believers to be those who jihad in the name of Allah and

"were not in doubt" with regards to the truth of "Allah and His Messenger." The

Encyclopedia of the Qur'an suggests this "apparently refers not to warriors but to those who perform the divine ordinances" (McAuliffe 2001, 38). Some interpreters, writing long after the revelation, argue that these verses also related to warfare, but there is no way to prove either reading. We can only subjectively choose which reading we believe.

Considerins Said's Impact and Orientalism

Just through his choice of topic Daniel Pipes begins to illustrate Edward

Said's influence on modem Middle Eastern scholars. It is a testament to Said that there are significant examples, by noteworthy professors no less, of arguments by academics in the public sphere that express respect for Muslim concepts and offer multiple interpretations of Muslim culture. While Pipes scoffs this off as "the impulses of Edward Said Won MESA Page 30

political correctness" I would assume that Said would feel he had achieved some of his

goals if political correctness in Middle Eastern studies has truly become an impulse.

My case study also demonstrates the continued relevance of the Said and Lewis

debate. By continued relevance I mean, for the most part, the continued existence of the

issues the men debated in the 1980's. Pipes' methods suffer from the close mindedness

Said saw in the Orientalists' approach. Pipes uses examples that support his case. To see

what the public is told [Pipes] looked at op-ed pieces, quotations in newspaper articles,

and interviews on television rather than articles in learned journals.'' Besides selectively choosing academics in order to see what "the professors" have been telling the public,

Pipes ignores any published work and instead chooses op-ed pieces, which by their very nature tend to take more extreme positions, as well as quotations in newspapers and interviews on television, which are undoubtedly edited to present a more controversial viewpoint. By making all of these problematic choices Pipes ignores works like

Firestone's book, which offer more balanced views and understandings of jihad. Herein lies another symbol of the debates' timelessness. The concept of a balanced view of jihad is markedly absent from Pipes' angry rant at academia. My discussion of the many meanings of jihad in the Qur9anproves that it is wrong for Pipes to argue for a sole definition of the term. At the same time, it also clearly indicates that jihad can have the exact violent meaning Pipes argues for. In this way, the case study is indicative of one final problem brought up in the Said and Lewis debates. The example of Pipes article pits his essentializing interpretation of jihad against a use so vague that it is of no use to us. Having been written in 2002, the article proves that continued for an approach to

Middle Eastern studies that blends the positives aspects of Lewis and Said. Edward Said Won MESA Page 3 1

This case study employs the current debate over Congresses International Studies in Higher Education Act (HR3077) as another example of the way Said continues to influence Middle Eastern studies. After introducing Martin Kramer, I will briefly summarize the issues at stake in the HR 3077 debate and then look at Kramer's direct attacks on it to demonstrate how the nature of Kramer7sattacks illustrates Said's clout in

Middle Eastern Studies.

Kramer

Martin Kramer was born in Washington D.C. in 1954. He went to Princeton for his undergraduate and Masters and PhD degrees in Near Eastern Studies (he also received a

Master's degree from Columbia). He is presently at the Tel Aviv University's Moshe

Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. He is also an editor for Middle

East Quarterly and has been a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Both organizations self identify as conservative.

I am not sure that it is possible to research Martin Kramer without coming across his belief that Edward Said has indeed not only won MESA, but ruined it. His book,

Ivory Towers on Sand: The failure ofMiddle Eastern Studies in America, dedicates several chapters to this idea, his website provides links to reinforce this idea, and his publications in journals and newspapers, as well as his public appearances continue the same argument. In other words, he is quite devoted to deriding Middle Eastern scholarship for modeling itself on Said's ideas. Kramer makes very few points about

Said that Lewis did not make. In fact much of Kramer's chapter "Said's Splash," which, according to his website martinkramer.org does "a damaging assessment of the book's Edward Said Won MESA Page 32

impact on Middle Eastern studies" is basically a personal attack on Said. The main

difference between Kramer's writings on the subject and Lewis's is that Kramer makes

the point to defend pre-Said American approaches to Middle Eastern scholarship, a point

Kramer claims Lewis skips over because he had only recently emigrated from England

when he wrote his review in the New York Review of Books (It should be noted that

Lewis had in fact arrived in Princeton 8 years before his article) (Kramer 2001, 36). In

general Kramer seems to feel that Said fostered a reticence among Middle Eastern

scholars to criticize anything about Islam or the region. Much to Kramers's chagrin,

MESA scholars over the past twenty years have been spending their time studying and

applauding Muslim social movements working for reform, people Kramer calls "Muslim

Martin Luthers" instead of doing any critical study of Islamism, terrorism and other

subject that affect the United States (Kramer 2001, 56). His criticism bore little meaning

until 911 1.

H.R. 3077

As a result of the attacks of September 1lth, Congress felt more money needed to be spent on "foreign language fluency and knowledge of world regions" (Gitlin 2004). In light of the nature of the attacks, such a wish seems rational; especially considering the number of students taking Arabic classes in US universities makes up less than one percent of the total number of people enrolled in foreign language classes (Gitlin 2004).

Nonetheless a great debate broke out regarding one specific section of the bill. HR 3077 calls for "the creation of an advisory board to gather information on international programs that accept federal funds and to ensure that funded activities 'reflect diverse perspectives and the full range of views on world regions, foreign languages, and Edward Said Won MESA Page 33

international affairs"' (Gitlin 2004). It should be mentioned that many Middle Eastern

studies program have long received government funding. The issue at hand is not one of

subtle government pressure exerted though funding decisions, but rather a concern over

the direct participation by politicians in evaluating the success and efficiency of the

program. Members of the advisory board will include representatives of the federal

education secretary, representatives chosen by the majority and minority leaders of the

house and senate, and representatives of "federal agencies that have national security

responsibilities" (Gitlin 2004).

The worry of having homeland security representatives and nominees of Senate

and Congress leaders deciding "good scholarship" stems from a concern that partisan

interests will be able to cut funding to programs where they do not like what is being

taught or provide funding to programs that agree with what they are saying. This is

especially worrisome given the continuation of popular post 911 1 trend by politicians and journalists of calling people "Anti-American" or "liberal" (an apparently damning term that must possess the same connotation that "Communist" had during the Cold War).

These concerns seem valid especially given the fact that partisan name calling has already taken place on both sides of the debate. Those who oppose having political watchdogs for Middle Eastern studies feel the resolution reeks of "McCarthyism" and liken the advisory board to Orwell's "Big Brother." On the side supporting H.R. 3077,

Daniel Pipes entered into the fray, calling Rashid Khalidi, a professor at Columbia who opposed the War in Iraq and who no doubt has reservations about the resolution a "liberal extremist." Also, while it is not exactly name calling, Kramer essentially portrays those who oppose the resolution as lazy anti-American liberal professors whose main concern Edward Said Won MESA Page 34

with the bill is that they will have actually have to do work, as opposed to falsely

glorifying liberal Muslims, in their cushy jobs now that they are being held accountable

(Kramer 2003).

Aside from hurling insults back and forth, it seems the main point in favor of the

resolution is the fact that MESA scholars, even after 911 1 were hardly focusing on

terrorism. Neither the 2002 nor 2003 MESA convention featured even a single paper on

the topic of terrorism. Lisa Anderson, the president of MESA, puts forward a rather

convincing defense on this matter suggesting that scholarship that is done on terrorism

tends to be awful since "research on terrorists, like research on the underground economy

is patently dangerous" (Gitlin 2004). Such arguments continue to be unacceptable to

Martin Kramer. He is unconvinced that MESA scholars have put thought into their

choice not to study certain things and are simply prone to laziness and useless liberal

academic discussion. He thus offers the advice to Middle Eastern scholars: "Get ofSthe

,federal dole. Float undisturbed in your post-Orientalist bubble while more practical

people use the resources to build credible alternatives" (Kramer 2003). Besides being

incredibly insulting on numerous levels, Kramer's advice slips in yet another point

arguing Said's lasting influence by suggesting the fall of Orientalism was the turning

point for Middle Eastern scholarship. Admirably, on the other side of the debate Lisa

Anderson does not claim everything the scholars do is perfect. In an exceedingly rare

(for such debates anyway) acknowledgement of mistakes Anderson admits that here she

and her colleagues have been reticent to speak negatively about Muslim states, out of fear

that they will not receive visas for study. She recognizes this needs to change, and sees it

as a positive if H.R. 3077 does this, but at the same time she is wary of the affects it will Edward Said Won MESA Page 35 have on rights and liberties, and the image of American Middle Eastern scholars when they are abroad.

I chose to look at the HR 3077 debate for a number of reasons. It clearly demonstrates the lasting affects Said has had on the academic world. The need by the main supporters of the bill to insult him in every article they write demonstrates how much of a scholarly icon he has become. With regards to Said's affects on MESA, some of the articles attacking H.R. 3077, for example a National Review article by Stanly

Kurtz, point to some of Said's more controversial quotes as well as Said's unanimous selection for a major MESA award as evidence of the problems with those who oppose the bill. In other words, the debate demonstrates Said winning NlESA because one of the arguments calling for better supervision of Middle Eastern studies is that we must watch out precisely because Said won MESA. The debate also exemplifies Said's influence on

MESA by focusing on the wariness of many scholars of the Middle East to speak negatively about "the other." While I am sure Said and his followers would resent the idea their scholarship lacks validity, I am also quite certain Said would be proud that his work continues to force scholars to second guess themselves before they make negative or essentalizing comments about Islam.

Perhaps even more importantly, I chose to loolc at the debate because it illustrates how little has changed since the early 1980's. The debate over H.R. 3077 is nothing more than the next round of Lewis v. Said. It has all the personal attacks, polemical positions and, with the exception of a few statements by Lisa Anderson, total refusal by everyone involved to give in or compromise on any points of contention. In the next chapter will consider the timelessness of the Orientalism debate in a different way, by Edward Said Won MESA Page 36 looking at how Bernard Lewis continues to involve himself in politics just as Said claimed.

As a final note, I do recognize that both of the case studies I chose to exemplify

Said's influence on the academy by examining incidents that revolved around attacking

Said. Part of the reason for this is it would be uninteresting to prove Said's impact purely based on testimonials by his followers. Also both studies contain strong examples of the continuation of the issues that stem from the Orientalism debates. There is one other reason for my choice in case studies. Writers like Pipes and Kramer, who have so much invested in making their point, rarely waste time discrediting unimportant thinkers. The fact that Said's name and ideas consistently come under attack in these studies, is as strong an indicator as any that Said's legacy remains strong. The previous chapter offered a number of examples that illustrate the manner in which Said won MESA. Obviously not every scholai- of Islam subscribes to his canon, but his ideas have paved the way for many, such as those whom Daniel Pipes criticizes in his article Jihad and the Puofessors, to become a new kind of Middle Eastern scholar.

These new scholars agree with Said that classic Orientalists had a very concrete and essentialized view of the Middle East. For them, "Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction between "the Orient" and "the

Occident"" (Said 1994, 2). Orientalists not only claim a difference between the two, but also believe that the fundamental levels of their very existences are manifestly opposed.

Said saw the general basis of Orientalist thought as "an imaginative yet drastically polarized geography dividing the world into unequal parts, the larger, "different" one called the Orient, the other.. .called the Occident or the West" (Said 1994,4). Built into

Said's view is a criticism of the unequal relationship inherent in Orientalist thought, Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 38

which either suggests that the West dominates the Orient, that the West is better than the

Orient, or both. Said and the "new" scholars find value in Muslim society and recognize

the multiplicity that exists within the Muslim culture.

The main goal of this chapter is to investigate how the "old" Orientalist view,

championed by Bernard Lewis, managed to "win Washington." After a brief summary of

Lewis's background, I will begin by tracing the etymology of the term "The West", in order to better understand the implications of a worldview that separates East and West.

The historical usages of these terms will help to illustrate how the idea of "East and

West" evolved into a theory known as the "clash of civilizations." Following a critical analysis of this late 20" century theory, I will establish how and why the terrorist attacks of September 2001 caused both the press and the government to sign on to this "clash of civilization" hypothesis. Since the government needed experts to craft policy around this new framework, Bernard Lewis was able to play a major role in shaping government policy.

I believe that it is critical and useful that we how and understand the nature of

Lewis's participation in the United States administration. I will argue that based on what we know of Al-Qaeda, an American foreign policy that is informed by an Orientalist worliew could have enormous implications. The Iraq War is another example of how

Lewis's ideas heavily influence the government's actions. In fact, after analyzing some of Lewis's work, and loolung at President Bush's own words, I will show how the use of

Lewis's ideas by the government indicates that religion has played a much larger role in the Iraq war than many people would be comfortable believing. 1 conclude this chapter by asking whether Lewis's writings, and his role in politics, actually leave Lewis guilty Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 39

of the exact transgressions that he so heartily denied in his interactions and confrontations

with Edward Said. If this is true and Lewis really has influenced policy, then Said's

criticism of Lewis's scholarly approach becomes far more significant.

Bernard Lewis's vigorous defense of the discipline of Orientalism in the New

Yovk Review of Books leaves little doubt of his background in the old school of Middle

Eastern studies. A brief examination of his background is helpful to fill in the picture of a scholar who was truly educated in the British academic tradition.

Bernard Lewis, born in London, England in 1916, received his BA with first class honors in history twenty years later from the University of London where he was educated primarily at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). After spending a year at the University of Paris, where he was granted a Dipl8me des ~tudesStmitiques, he returned to the University of London and completed his Ph.D. in just two years

(Bosworth 1989, xi). While completing his doctoral work, Lewis was appointed Assistant

Lecturer, and later promoted to Lecturer in 1940. Although he states he was simply

"otherwise engaged" from 1940 to 1945, it is clear that he gained significant kcnowledge of the Middle East during this period when he traveled to the region while working for the British Army, while also attached to the Department of the Foreign Office who

"called on his already considerable linguistic ability and powers of analysis" (Bosworth

1989, xi). After the war, Lewis returned to SOAS as an academic and rose quickly to become a professor "at the exceptionally early age of thirty-three" (Bosworth 1989, xi).

An early Orientalist academic prodigy, Lewis spent the next thirty years teaching his Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 40 view of Orientalism to university students. He moved to Princeton in 1974 and served as the Cleveland E. Dodge professor of Near Eastern Studies until his retirement in 1986.

Lewis's title as a professor of "Near Eastern" studies, and his background in general, makes it clear that central to Lewis's school of thought is a sharp distinction between

East and West. Before examining the political impact of Lewis's work, it is important to firmly grasp Lewis's position, by first understanding the origin of the idea "East" and

"West".

The West is Best

The concept of the "West" has a long history. The Oxford English Dictionary on- line(0ED) traces uses of the term from as far back as 1205 A.C.E, when it was used to describe "the western part of the world.. .Europe as distinguished from Asia." At the time, conceiving of Europe as the West made perfect sense, since it was before North

America was discovered and before the earth was found to be round; Western Europe was as far west as the world went, while Asia was the easternmost point. While our knowledge of geography expanded, the use of the term "west" to describe everything opposed to Asia, remained.

William H. McNeill's The Rise of the West, traces the "history of the human community" from homo sapiens and "the breakthrough to civilization in Mesopotamia'' through to the rise of civilization in the Middle East, India, Greece, and China and then to the rise of Europe culminating in "the rise of the West" in the late 19" and early 2oth centuries (McNeill 1963, vii-xiv). For McNeill, the permanent collapse in the mid-19~" century of the traditional order of each of the major Asian civilizations (Chinese, Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 41

Japanese, Indian and Ottoman) paved the way for the "Western Explosion". (McNeill

1963,726) This onset of western dominance, according to McNeill, was marked by four

central characteristics: territorial expansion, industrialism, the democratic revolution, and

artistic and intellectual aspects.

Territorial expansion allowed western nations to not only spread their values, but

also gave them control of areas from Africa to the Arctic; providing access to a enormous

range of natural resources that had never before been simultaneously available to a

singular people (McNeill 1963, 730-1). Industrialism, and the technology, wealth and

reorganization of society that went with it, gave the western nations a huge advantage

since even by 1917 industrialism had barely spread beyond Western Europe and the

northeastern United States (McNeill 1963,744). The "Democratic Revolution" also

brought major changes to Western society, though at times not as successfully as early

revolutionaries might have hoped (McNeill 1963,744). Besides the obvious advantages brought on by the adoption of ideas such as liberty, equality, and fraternity, European

land and property rights were transformed to allow peasants to be "propertied citizens

(McNeill 1963, 746). The state of city life also transformed totally "with the suppression of guilds and other ancient legal corporations and monopolies" (McNeill 1963,746).

Finally, new artistic and intellectual aspects of the West led to major advantages on the world stage in multitudes of different areas. At the center of the importance of the new aspects was their success "in questioning assumptions hitherto unquestioned, and questing after new certainties only to discover fresh working hypotheses" (McNeill 1963,

752-3). In doing so, "Europeans weakened or destroyed many of the old coherences which had organized and guided their art and thought for centuries or millennia" Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 42

(McNeill 1963,753). This revolution led to the work of men such as Darwin, Einstein

and Max Planck, and facilitated a greater understanding of the natural world.

McNeill's book exhibits the kind of Western viewpoint with which Said takes issue. McNeill calls his book "a shorthand description of the upshot of the history of the human community to date" (McNeill 1963, 807). After tracing the line of history from the beginning through to the rise of the West, he predicts the eventual establishment of a single cosmopolitan world state, that will "surely bear a Western imprint" (McNeill 1963,

806). Moreover, McNeill claims in its "initial stages, any world state will be an empire of the West" since even "non Western" powers that could possibly take control of the state would have to rely on the Western ideal of "industrialism, science, and the public palliation of power through advocacy of one or other of the democratic political faiths"

(McNeill 1963, 806-7).

It should be noted that McNeill's book was begun in 1954, but was not finished until 1962, at the height of the Cold War (McNeill 1963, vii). He traces human development up to 1950, but suggests its "virtues as a cutoff point are merely arithmetical.. .Historians may well prefer 1945...when seeking to divide twentieth- century world history into meaningful periods" (McNeill 1963,730)." This point has significance for the term "West", since according to the OED it was not until 1946, after

World War 11, that "West" became a capitalized word used to describe "the non-

Communist states of Europe and America."

That is not to say that the "West" was solely meant as the opposite of the Soviet

Union. Plenty of examples, including McNeill's, show that the West was pitted against a large group of cultures and nations. Barbara Ward, in her book The Interplay of East and Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 43

West,juxtaposes the West not only with the Soviets, but also with the Chinese and the

Indians. Similarly, Ben~aminNetanyahu edited a book in 1986 titled Terrorism: How the

West Can Win, which placed the West not against the Soviets but against terrorism. In addition, Philip Hitti, and of course Bernard Lewis, wrote books pitting Islam against the

West. It is important to recognize that although these books portrayed very different regions of the world, the "East" continued to contain all areas not designated as "West", while the West was defined simply as all liberal democratic states. These divisions also happened to fall, for the most part, along lines of Cold War allegiances, which meant that the end of the Cold War brought with it significant changes to our conception of the terms East and West.

The Clash of Civilizations

It is no surprise that terms within international relations changed dramatically at the beginning of the final decade of the twentieth century and the close of the Cold War.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in sight, Bernard Lewis wrote an article in the Atlantic

Monthly entitled The Roots of Muslim Rage. Writing about the Islamic world, Lewis wrote "It should by now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of the issues and policies and the governments that pursue them.

This is no less than a clash of civilizations.. ." (Lewis 1990). This term, "clash of civilization" turned out to be far more meaningful than Lewis could have predicted.

Samuel Huntington, a professor of political science at Harvard, took Lewis's phrase and turned it into a hypothesis regarding the future of International Relations. Rather than simply placing the East and West in dualistic conflict, the clash of civilization hypothesis Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 44

that Huntington adapted, predicts that "the fundamental source of conflict in this new

world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic" (Rashid and Huntington

1997, I)." Instead "the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of

conflict will be cultural.. .Conflict between civilizations will be the latest phase in the

evolution of conflict in the modern world" (Rashid and Huntington 1997, 1). Based on the post World War I1 definition of East and West that grouped the West as all democratic states, this new outlook allowed the idea of the West to remain intact even with the rise of democracy in other parts of the world. It suggests real differences between the "seven or eight major" distinct civilizations of the world, which "include

Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization" (Rashid and Huntington 1997,4).

Huntington offers six reasons behind his theory of the clash of civilization

(Rashid and Huntington 1997,4-6). First, he suggests that there are fundamental differences between the civilizations and while this need not necessarily lead to conflict, history has shown that "differences among civilizations have generated the most prolonged and the most violent conflicts". Second, Huntington also sees that technology and globalization have made the world "a smaller place." This shrinking of the world causes more awareness of cultural variation which "invigorates differences and animosities". Third, "the process of economic modernization" has led to a rise of fundamentalist religions by separating people from their local identities or from the identities they formerly drew from forms of outdated labor (for example the family farmer, or the dress maker) and have turned to fundamental forms of religion to fill the void. Fourth, the omnipresence of "the West" around the world leads to "the growth of Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 45 civilization-consciousness". Fifth, Huntington believes cultural differences are more intrinsic than other differences and thus makes it nearly impossible to reach any compromise during times of conflict. Finally, economic regionalism increases awareness of cultural differences by grouping similar nations in blocs that are differentiated from other blocs with opposing values.

Criticizing the Clash

All of Huntington's factors contribute to the potential for "intercivilizational issues" (Huntington 1996, 183). Or so the early parts of the theory would have us believe. Huntington actually feels that the "dominant division is between 'the West and the rest"' (Huntington 1996, 183). Furthermore, he believes that the "most intense conflicts" exist between Muslim and Asian societies on one hand, and the West on the other (Huntington 1996, 183). Perhaps this new "clash of civilization" thesis is actually not so new at all. In one sentence Huntington reverts to classic Orientalist thinking, pairing off "Muslim and Asian societies," which is clearly a disguise for the term "the

Orient", against this great, though sometimes "arrogant" power called "the West".

There are numerous critics, with Edward Said unsurprisingly among them, who make a similar argument that the clash of civilization is nothing more than a new label for an old concept. Knowing what we do about Said's thoughts on Lewis, it may be enough to quote his declaration that "it is absolutely imperative to stress that, like Bernard Lewis,

Samuel Huntington does not write a neutral, descriptive, and objective prose but is himself a polemicist whose rhetoric not only depends heavily on prior arguments about a war of all against all but in effect perpetuates it" (Said 2003, 71). Said's understanding of Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 46

these "prior arguments" harkens back to the great Orientalist debates of the 1980's. He

accuses Huntington's essay of appealing to policy makers by "cutting through a lot of

unnecessary detail, of masses of scholarship and huge amounts of experience, boiling

them down to a couple of catchy, easy-to-quote-and-remember ideas, which are then passed off as pragmatic, practical, sensible, and clear" (Said 2003, 72). In other words, like the Orientalists, Said argues that Huntington essentializes and diminishes Muslim culture to a singular dangerous backward entity.

William McNeill was also not satisfied with Huntington's thesis. In a 1997 review of The Clash of Civilizations, more than thirty years after publishing The Rise of the

West, McNeill expresses similar concerns to those of Said. He respects Huntington's apparent rejection early in the book of "moral imperialism" but worries that

"Huntington's recipe for adjusting relations between large blocs of nations somewhat loosely defined by the word 'civilization'. . . [is] no great improvement on moral crusading" (McNeill 1997). In what can perhaps be interpreted as a sign of McNeill's acquired wisdom, he points out that "Huntington is right inasmuch as human beings are indeed shaped by culture.. .but civilizations are themselves diverse, with innumerable internal fissures and resulting frictions" (McNeill 1997). The main point of McNeill's review returns to his own conclusions in The Rise of the West. He agrees with

Huntington regarding the idea "that the commitments to particular patterns of civilization and particular religious identities are rapidly gaining importance in international affairs"

(McNeill 1997). He disagrees, however, with Huntington's conclusion. Rather than a clash, McNeill believes "increasing connections among civilizations simultaneously sustain a contrary trend toward global cosmopolitanism.. . [which] offers the best hope Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 47 for the future and is therefore very much worth fostering" (McNeill 1997). Where

Huntington sees conflict, McNeill sees the potential for a unifying, and potentially stabilizing world state.

Embracing the Clas

It is impossible to read McNeill's review in the context of today's world issues and not long for his global optimism. Sadly, in an expression that has become cliche:

911 1 changed everything. It particularly changed the way the world viewed the Clash of

Civilization thesis, since instead of being dismissed as too pessimistic, it is now used as an explanation for rise of terrorism. Just as Lewis and Huntington had predicted, the most dangerous of the seven other civilizations which Huntington lists, Islam, did indeed launch an attack on Western civilization. People as prominent as Salman Rushdie and

Fuad Ajami, who had earlier criticized Huntington's work, "begrudgingly adopted his paradigm" (Abrahamian 2003, 534). The Clash of Civilization quickly became the scope through which much of America viewed the conflict.

Ervand Abrahamian's article The US media, Huntington and September 11 nicely illustrates the way in which the media has explained the 911 1 crises in terms of Samuel

Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations". From the beginning of the article, it is clear that

Abrahamian dislikes Huntington's thesis. He compares the spread of Huntington's book in the US to the spread of the anti-Semitic The Protocols of Zion in the Middle East. Of course, Abrahamian's biases must be considered when reading his argument that attempts to explain the reasons and motivations behind the rise of Huntington's thesis. For my Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 48 purposes however, the important aspect of the article is not the accusations regarding intent, but rather the demonstrated prevalence of Huntington in the media after 9/11.

Abrahamian shows that The New York Times, US News and World Report, the Atlantic

Monthly, Foreign Afairs and the Economist all featured articles exalting Huntington's thesis as the explanation for the attacks (Abrahamian 2003, 529). Such articles created a paradigm of public discourse in which the dominant understanding of the issue revolved not around political or economic differences, but around cultural differences. It is within this paradigm that Bernard Lewis, the creator of the term clash of civilization and the renowned Middle East expert, "won" Washington.

Mr. Lewis goes to Washington

It was not just in the media that Huntington and Lewis's ideas received attention.

After 9/11, there is evidence that powerful men in the US administration, all the way up to the President himself, turned to Lewis. Paul Wolfowitz, the Under Secretary of

Defense, and the man many people credit with forcing the issue of the Iraq war, has only the highest praise for Lewis and his expertise. According to the Truman News on-line

Speaking through a video feed at a March, 2002 international conference at the Truman

Research Institute for the advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,

Wolfowitz paid tribute to Lewis saying,

Bernard Lewis has brilliantly placed the relationships and the issues of the Middle East into their larger context, with truly objective, original-and always independent-thought. Bernard has taught [us] how to understand the complex and important history of the Middle East and use it to guide us to where we will go next to build a better world for generations to come. Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 49

Vice President Dick Cheney is also reported to have taken the advice of Lewis. A

Newsweelc article reports that while being protected after 911 1, "the vice president was

busy educating himself." He brought in Lewis, the renowned Middle-East scholar to help

him to understand the Arabs of the Middle East. Former Bush staffer David Frum, the

man who is infamously responsible for coining the term "axis of eviln2also details the

importance Lewis played in the administration. He points out that one of Bush's top

advisors, Karl Rove, was drawn to the explanation for the motivations behind the terrorist

attacks "given by the eminent academic Bernard Lewis" (Frum 2003, 170). Rove liked

Lewis's ideas so much that he invited Bernard Lewis to the White House in November to

explain his views (Frum 2003, 171). Finally, Frum notes that President Bush "had been very impressed by Bernard Lewis's argument that the economic and social backwardness against which Muslirns raged could be traced to the Muslim world's failure to tap the potential of all its people to meet the needs of all its people" (Frum 2003,225). In fact,

Bush was so impressed with Lewis, that days after Lewis's visit to the White House,

Frum "noticed a marked-up copy of one of Bernard Lewis's articles in the clutch of papers the president held in his hand" (Frum 2003, 175).

Converging view points: Orientalism and Occidentalism

Clearly, Bernard Lewis did in fact win Washington, but the question is what this has actually meant for policy? It seems likely that the acceptance of Lewis's viewpoint by the administration has had major consequences for the war between the United States and Osama Bin Laden and the rest of al-Qaeda. Interestingly, Bin Laden's world view

It was actually "axis of hatred" when he wrote it (Frum 2003,238) Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 50

does not appear to differ widely from traditional Orientalist scholars. Ian Buruma and

Avishai Margalit have coined the term "Occidentalism" to describe the ideology of the

West's enemies. In their recent book describing this ideology, they write "the view of the

West in Occidentalism is like the worst aspects of its counterpart Orientalism, which

strips its human targets of their humanity" (Buruma and Margalit 2004, 10). They continue, arguing that Occidentalism "simply turns the Orientalist view upside down"

(Buruma and Margalit 2004, 10).

Many of the publications attributed to Osama Bin Laden pit the Muslim world

against the Judeo-Christians. In his Declaration of War Against the Americans

Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places, Bin Laden declares "the people of Islam

[have] suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-

Crusaders alliance and their collaborators.. That statement, as well as countless other similar statements from al-Qaeda, embody the manner in which Bin Laden and

Occidentalists can be said to be "upside down" Orientalists. There is the obvious clash of civilizations between Islam and the religions of the West, but there is also a condemnation of the inequality of power exemplified by the "Zionist-Crusaders" who have dominated and mistreated Muslims. In typical Orientalist fashion, we can find examples of Bin Laden and al-Qaeda essentializing the groups that they pit against each other. This is exemplified in Bin Laden's own identity as a Salafi, which believes in one true interpretation of Islam. "The goal of the Salafi movement is to eradicate ["un-

Islamic deviations that threaten the purity of' Islam] by returning to the pure form of

Islam practiced by the Prophet and his companions" (Wilctorowicz 2001,20). The proper way to do this is to base "all decisions and actions in life.. .upon direct evidence from the Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 51

sources of the religion: the Qur'an and the Sunnah" (Wiktorowicz 2001, 20). Finally, Bin

Laden also groups all of the "Zionist-Crusaders," holding them all responsible for all

injustice done to Muslims in states such as Somalia, Pakistan, Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya

and many others. In a somewhat ingenious argument (considering Bin Laden's disdain

for the Western Liberal Democracy) in his Letter to America he argues that all Americans

are responsible for what has been done to Muslims because "the American people have

the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if

they want." Since all Americans and the rest of the Zionist-Crusaders are equally

responsible and approving of Muslim mistreatment, it is the duty of all Muslims to fight

against them.

With this in mind, the fact that a man with traditional Orientalist views also has

the ear of the White House becomes critically important. Bin Laden sees the world as a battle between Islam and the West with the United States as the model of the West, and

attempts to draw support for Islam in this battle. Nothing can make his viewpoint more legitimate than the agreement of the official governing body of the United States. People around the world will start to be convinced that this is a problem of the West versus

Islam, or Occident versus Orient, if the people who Bin Laden believes are attacking his civilization are celebrating the genius of the "clash of civilization" thesis and approaching the Muslim world as a flawed civilization that needs to be cured with Western ideals. Bin

Laden's actions strengthen the Western belief in the existence of overarching problems within Islam, which causes "the West" to respond to the Muslim world in such a way that adds even more credence to Bin Laden's arguments about the West dominating Islam.

When Bin Landen responds in turn, the vicious cycle continues. Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 52

ernard Lewis and the

Knowing Lewis's influence in Washington, we can look at his work to understand not only the issues that come up in dealing with bin Laden, but also some of the thinking behind Operation Iraqi Freedom. In a February 1993 essay in the Atlantic Monthly, entitled Islam and Liberal Democracy, Lewis detailed his thinking on the way the West dealt historically (within the 2othcentury) with Middle Eastern governments. He argues

"there are two temptations to which Western governments have all too often succumbed, with damaging results. They might be called the temptation of the right and the temptation of the left" (Lewis 1993). He suggests that there has been a right wing approach and a left-wing approach to international relations. He responds negatively to the realism of the right, but obviously hates the ignorance of the left even more. First, he blames the right for their "realist" temptation "to accept, and even to embrace, the most odious of dictatorships as long as they are acquiescent in our own requirements, and as long as their policies seem to accord with the protection of our national interest" (Lewis

1993). While some may view this as being in US state interest, Lewis argues "a comfortable association with tyrants and dictators can only discourage and demoralize the democratic opposition in these countries (Lewis 1993). Of course, just as many of his

White House associates would certainly do, Lewis is quick to point out "the more insidious temptation, that of the left, is to press Muslim regimes for concessions on human rights and related matters" (Lewis 1993). He speaks spitefully of this position, because "the brunt of such well-intentioned intervention falls on the more moderate autocracies, which are often in the process of reforming themselves in a manner and at a pace determined by their own conditions" (Lewis 1993). Outside pressure on such Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 53

countries can hinder the development of less autocratic movements by forcing too much

change too quickly. Also, even if it does succeed in aiding human rights, it can counter

the forces of reformation by allowing the ruling autocrats to prove they are authentic

leaders. Endangering the progress being made in the more moderate countries is not the

only problem. By being willing to negotiate with the more extreme autocrats, the left

ends up in the same position as the right: legitimizing horrible leaders. What makes it

especially "insidious" though, is that "since ruthless dictatorships are impervious to such

pressures," unlike the right, the left might even do this when it is neither in American

interest nor benefiting "human rights and related matters" (Lewis 1993).

If the choice is between embracing dictators and allowing the existence of the

dictator but pressuring them on "human rights and related matters" it seems more

insidious to just let them have free reign. This is precisely why Lewis is sure to speak

negatively of the right's temptation as well. He does not sign on to either approach.

Instead, not surprisingly he advocates active regime change. He writes:

"In.. .Iraq.. .where the regime [is] strongly anti-American, there are democratic

oppositions capable of taking over and forming governments. We in what we like to call the free world could do much to help them, and have done little" (Lewis 2003, 164). The title of his September 27, 2002 article, Time for Toppling, explains what kind of help we need to give. That is not say that Lewis thinks it is a simple solution. He recognizes the challenges involved in regime change. He acknowledges "The overthrow of a regime must inevitably raise questions, concerning first what will follow and then what impact this will have in neighboring countries" (Lewis 2002, A. 14). However, for Lewis the

alternatives were far too risky. Presumably makmg reference to the usual discussions Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 54

regarding Iraq- that is discussions ofweapons of mass destruction, human rights

violations, and the impossibility of Saddam Hussein falling from power on his own-

Lewis cautions that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers

of inaction are greater than those of action" (Lewis 2002, A.14).

Since Bush is listens to what Lewis has to say and has virtually promised an Iraqi democracy, the final question we need to ask of Lewis is what does he say about Islam and democracy? Lewis does not offer an encouraging prognosis for Islam and

Democracy in the Arab world. "All in all" Lewis summarizes, at the end of Islam and

Libeval Dernocvacy, "considering the difficulties that Middle Eastern countries have inherited and the problems that they confront, the prospects for Middle Eastern democracy are not good" (Lewis 1993). Much of this, according to Lewis, is due to Islam itself. The most obvious problem is fundamentalism. "No one, least of all the Islamic fundamentalists themselves, will dispute that their creed and political program are not compatible with liberal democracy" (Lewis 1993). Lewis explains in a different article that "by liberal democracy he mean[s] primarily the general method of choosing or removing governments that developed in England and then spread among English- speaking peoples and beyond" (Lewis 1996). This is certainly not a definition which reflects a great deal of liberalism. At the same time, Lewis makes it clear in other sections of his writing that he believes there are a few other essential aspects of democracy are contrary to the principles of all Muslims, not just fundamentalists. We claims,

"Traditional Islam has no doctrine of human rights" (Lewis 1993). In fact, he goes so far as to argue that "the very notion of [human rights] might seem an impiety [since] only

God has rights-humans have duties" (Lewis 1993). Lewis identifies other problems as Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 55 well. Though things are changing slightly, women have a different status then men in

Muslim societies and are often "precluded from contributing to the development of their society" (Lewis 1993)." Another problem comes from the fact that "for believing

Muslims, legitimate authority comes from God alone, and the ruler drives his power not from the people, nor yet from his ancestors but from God and the holy law" (Lewis

1993). In other words, as soon as there is a leader making decisions, he takes on some sort of higher position because he is in some way doing God's work. It would be very difficult to have a normal democratic vote in which the incumbent was recognized to be endorsed by God and the challenger was not. Other problems of Islam and democracy include the lack of "any procedure for choosing representatives" and the absence of the idea of "the legal person-that is to say a corporate entity that for legal purposes is treated as an individual, able to own, buy or sell property, enter into contracts and obligations, and appear as either plaintiff or defendant in both civil and criminal proceedings" (Lewis 1993).

The Speech of Destiny

All of that being said, it is easy to look at much of President Bush's public message over the past year and a half with regards to the War on Iraq and argue that Bush actually opposed Lewis. In his speech to the National Endowment for Democvacy Bush makes certain statements that appear to be in direct response to scholars like Lewis. He condemns the "skeptics of democracy [who] assert that traditions of Islam are inhospitable to the representative government" (Bush, 2003). He points out that "more than half of all the Muslims in the world live in freedom under democratically constituted Bernard Lewis Won Washingmn Page 56

governments" (Bush, 2003). I would argue we must pay special attention to the rhetorical details of Bush's speeches. I believe Bush's kind praise for Islam is nothing more than an example of a politician paying lip-service to the masses. At the heart of his speech seems to be the idea that Islam needs to disappear. He suggests that we must be

"patient and understanding" (Bush, 2003) as Middle Eastern countries develop democracy. However, he immediately follows that sentiment with the "essential principles common to every successful society in every culture" (Bush, 2003). The problem with these principles is that they contain within them ideas that for many

Muslims would not be Islamic. A society based on Islam may not "recognize the rights of women" as Lewis shows.' It may not "guarantee religious liberty," since Islam is the true faith, and while it respects the "people of the book" it has no patience for non- monotheistic religions. Furthermore it may not even "allow room", in our view, "for healthy civic institutions-for political parties and labor unions and independent newspapers and broadcast media" if they do not fit Muslim expectations of morality.

Lewis makes the incompatibility between these essential principles and Islam clear in his writings and likely did so for the President as well. Thus if Bush sets out principles that are absolutely necessary for the beginning of democracy, and he obviously believes they are not Islamic, then hidden in his speech is a desire for a non-Muslim

Middle Easten. One might expect this to mean Bush is advocating a secular state, however, I would argue that he might be promoting more of a Christian Middle East than a secular one. A close reading of Bush's speech suggests that he views democratization as a Christian endeavor. He calls the development of democracy "a journey" which as

3 Daniel Pipes made the similar argument in a televised appearance on PBS. (Pipes, Daniel "Debate: Islam and Democracy by Daniel Pipes" PBS "WideAngle" July 15,2003 from http://www.meforum.org/article/pipes/ 1167) Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 57

Michael MacDonald has said, seems to be a strong allusion to a sort of biblical quest (M

MacDonald, pers.comm.). The President makes other points which suggest that God has a personal involvement in the spreading of freedom. Speaking of the challenges that

America faces in spreading freedom he says "Our Nation is strong; we're strong of heart.

And we're not alone" (Bush, 2003). We might want to understand "we're not alone" as referring to US allies. However, he probably would have mentioned at least Great Britain if that was who he really meant. Besides in the grand scheme of things, Great Britain and

Poland and a few much less important can hardly be seen as creating a multilateral force.

By making "And we're not alone" its own sentence, Bush leaves the door open for an alternative reading. It may suggest that God will be helping the United States spread freedom. This reading is strengthened two sentences later when Bush claims that "the author of freedom is not indifferent to the fate of freedom" (Bush, 2003). The author of freedom must be God, and Bush suggests here then that God is on his side. The reference to God I find most strilung is Bush's claim that "The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country" (Bush, 2003). Max Weber, the famed sociologist writes "now it is unmistakable that even in the German word Beruf, and perhaps still more clearly in the English calling, a religious conception, that of a task set by God, is at least suggested" (Weber 2001, 39). Clearly the President believes that God has given the task of spreading freedom in the world to the United States. If God is on the American's side this suggests that making Iraq secular will not be enough. If God is on the side of Americans then he is not on the side of Iraqis and if they want to have God on their side they will need to find him through a different religion. Based on Bush's Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 58

publicized religious beliefs and support for faith-based initiatives, I think it is clear that

this religion is Christianity.

ibly unlikely couple: ar

Am I saying the war on Iraq was a religious war? In his book Holy Terrors Bruce

Lincoln comments on the role religion has played in the American public sphere since

911 1. Lincoln argues that a "symmetric dualism" exists between the rhetoric of Bush and

Bin Laden. He suggests both men support their own positions by articulating a

"maximalist construction" of religion. By this he means, a view of religion as being a dominant force in the decision making process and in the morality behind actions. Like I did earlier, Lincoln goes through a speech by President Bush finding details that suggest religious motivations behind supposedly secular decisions.

Many Americans on all sides of the political spectrum are certain to take offense to the idea that the war was fought on religious grounds. Pro-war conservatives surely feel that the war was fought not to spread the Christian message but instead to increase national security, spread democratic values and free an enslaved people. On the other side, a significant percentage of those who opposed the war undoubtedly believe the war was about economics, oil, Haliburton and a Bush family vendetta. None the less, I believe there are strong examples that show a fear of Islam playing a key role in Iraq policy.

This was made clear in mid-February when US Administrator Paul Bremmer said he

"would not sign an interim constitution which made Islam the guiding legal principle

(Maddox 2004)." Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 59

Essential Lewis

I believe we can return to Bernard Lewis's writings to find not only this concern about an Islam based democracy, but also the idea that Christianity and democratization are intrinsically related. Lewis argues that to solve the problem of clergy having too much power "it may be that Muslims.. .will consider a Christian remedy, that is to say, the separation of religion and state" (Lewis 1996). In several of the articles I mentioned earlier Lewis also suggest the need for the Muslim World to adopt some "Western" or

"Christian" practices in order to have a free society. (Lewis 1993 and 1996).

The fact that Lewis both uses and groups the terms "Western" and "Christian" ties into the beginning of this chapter as well as the beginning of this entire project.

Lewis clearly subscribes to the notion of the "West and the Rest "that was prevalent in the Cold War and equally present in the rhetoric of the Clash of Civilizations. In other words, Lewis perpetrates the exact transgressions essentialism and cultural condescension of which Edward Said accused him for more than a quarter of a century. Lewis speaks of

"the struggle between these rival systems (Christianity and Islam) [which] has now lasted fourteen centuries" (Lewis 1990). He even seems to claim that the Orientalist view point itself stems from Islam. He writes, "In the Classical Islamic view, to which many

Muslims are beginning to return, the world and all manlund are divided into two: the

House of Islam, where the Muslim law and faith prevail, and the rest, which it is the duty of Muslims ultimately to bring to Islam" (Lewis 1990). Not only does he talk of this sort of clash of civilizations, he also depicts Islam, as Said has said in "essentialized descriptions" (Said 1994, 315) that promote a singular understanding of the people and the religion. He tries not to, and early in his article The Roots of Muslim Rage, Lewis, Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 60

certainly aware of the accusations Said has made about him in the past asserts "we should

not exaggerate the dimensions of the problem [of Western hate]. The Muslim world is far

from unanimous in its rejection of the West, nor have the Muslim regions of the Third

World been the most passionate and the most extreme in their hostility" (Lewis 1990).

However this seems to be where Lewis's awareness of Muslim diversity ends. After that

initial disclaimer, he stops recognizing the diversity of the people and often refers to "the

Muslim" as a single all-encompassing personality. He claims "the Muslim has suffered

successive stages of defeat" (Lewis 1990). Later he writes "at first, the Muslim response

to Western civilization was one of admiration and emulation" (Lewis 1990). There is a

certain pretentious air about his work, as he both assumes to know what "the Muslim"

thinks and that the real problem in this "clash of civilizations" is a sort of Islamic inferiority complex arguing "one also sometime gets the impression that the offense of imperialism is not the domination of one people over another but rather the allocation of roles in this relationship. What is truly evil and unacceptable is the domination of infidels over true believers" (Lewis 1990). The pretension and condescension to end with this move to essentialism. Even when Lewis speaks positively of Islam itself, he seems to be damming with faint praise, as he says "it has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives" (Lewis 1990). This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the people in the Muslim world.

Conclusions

I find it rather unfortunate that a scholar of the Islam and a man who has considerable influence on the most powerful person in the world can have nothing better Bernard Lewis Won Washington Page 61 to say about a great religion than suggesting that it makes pathetic people feel better

about themselves. This is undoubtedly a symptom of the dominant "western" point of view which I have repeatedly brought up since my introduction. In the two previous chapters the problems entailed in the "essentializing versus globalizing" conflict of Lewis and Said seemed troublesome, but of only varying degrees of importance when it comes to finding some sort of solution. On a theoretical level, in post-modem discourse, problems with analysis and study of culture do not seem to hurt anyone and can easily be seen as uppity chatter for the liberal academy. When these theoretical issues begin to have practical implications in the education of our children and the public media sphere, concern that we are getting it right certainly grows, but there is certainly not a feeling of urgency since in the end we hope (perhaps naively) that we can trust the population enough to think critically and fairly about all that they learn and read. As soon as we realize though, that these issues are applicable not just to minor domestic issues but to major policy decisions in international relations that affect the lives of thousands if not millions we realize two things. First, we cannot separate theory from practice. And second, some attempt to improve the situation is necessary. My conclusion will. attempt to bring my project together in such a way that allows me to recommend new ways to of dealing with what is clearly a very old problem. All of the scholars I have discussed in this project, whether it is Bernard Lewis,

Edward Said, or Daniel Pipes, face the same fundamental problem: Is it possible to understand and define Middle Eastern culture? In light of the current world situation this age old question bears particular significance. It also begs several further questions. If there is a Middle Eastern culture, how do we understand a person from the Middle East who does not fit into the assigned cultural description? On the other hand, if there is no such a thing as "culture," how can we explain examples of observed trends and facts among specific groups of people? It seems difficult to prove that there is no such thing as a Muslim Culture, when significant percentages of Muslims around the world, regardless Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 63

of nationality, rally around support for Palestine or pray five times a day. I do not propose

to offer definitive solutions to these issues which theorists have struggled with for

centuries. The goal of this chapter is to offer an approach to cultural analysis that reduces the problems faced by Middle Eastern scholars, and allows their work to be more effective and useful as tools for understanding the culture of the region.

The first step in finding such an approach must be to come up with a definition of culture and then to think about different ways to evaluate it. Considering my own life experiences as both a cultural insider and outsider, I will argue that culture exists, and that we can achieve some understanding of it. I believe as soon as we ask questions such as "can we understand the Middle East?" or more blatantly "how are 'they7 different than

'us'?" we begin to recognize or create real differences between cultures. The critical question is how can we go about understanding what the real differences are? After trying to develop what we actually mean when we discuss "culture", I will investigate different approaches that seek to gain knowledge of Middle Eastern culture as well as their criticisms. My goal is to demonstrate that all of the current methodologies used to study Middle Eastern culture are in some way flawed. I will propose many of these problems in academic work could be easily solved with a greater awareness of language and the insertion of an autobiographical exegesis explaining where the author is coming from. In conclusion 1 will propose a more substantial change in cultural study, which 1 believe has the potential to address even more of the flaws with current approaches to studying the Middle East.

efining Culture Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 64

We need to start with the basics by examining what we mean when we talk

about culture. Too often thinkers tackle questions concerning the nature and effects of

culture, without even attempting to define the word, and end up lost in semantics and

generalities. Political theorist Bhikhu Parekh provides a useful definition of culture. He uses culture to refer to the system of practices, "which structures and regulates individual

and collective lives" and is shaped by "beliefs or views human beings form about the meaning and significance of human life and activities and relationships" (Parelch 2000,

142). Parelch also suggests "culture is a historically created system of meaning and significance" and that "it is a way of both understanding and organizing human life"

(Parelch 2000, 143). I find this to be a constructive definition of culture because it recognizes the existence of real cultures without rushing into to troublesome concrete conclusions. Parekh's definition does however immediately dismisses any notion that cultures are purely individual. Certainly it allows for the possibility that every person has his or her own culture, but it is inconceivable that any individual in today's world could form a system of practices and beliefs completely autonomously.

Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus exemplifies this impossibility of a completely individually defined culture. He argues "the habitus, a product of history, produces individual and collective practice-more history-in accordance with the schemes generated by history" (Bourdieu 1990, 54). At first glance this definition seems to depend solely on the individual. More than being a product of history, within the individual that habitus is "embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history" (Bourdieu 1990, 56). The habitus essentially forms for an individual without any consciousness of its formation and then produces every action Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 65

with its "infinite yet strictly limited generative capacity.. .for generating products"

(Bourdieu 1990, 55). Every action of an individual depends on his own habitus and every

habitus is different, since "it is impossible for all (or even two) members of the same

class to have the same experience in the same order" and the experiences and the order in

which they happen directly form the habitus (Bourdieu 1990, 60). Even with all of this recognition of individual culture however, Bourdieu recognizes that "it is certain that each member of the same class is more likely than any member of another class to have been confronted with the situations most frequent for members of that class" (Bourdieu

1990, 60). In other words, each person has her own culture, but people who have shared experiences are certain to have cultures far more similar than those with completely different experiences.

While Bourdieu places class at the epicenter of importance in identity formation, we can pull out a larger point from his discussion. Class, like so many other factors- nationality, religion, race etc.-creates an arena of shared experience that forms groups of individuals who have experiences in common.

These shared aspects of culture must not be ignored. Though readers might scoff at the idea that a Canadian could feel out of place in small town Massachusetts, after spending four years as an outsider in another culture, it is clear to me that there are certain values shared by significant percentages of the population. Discussions of the

War in Iraq and its goals of "Iraqi freedom" provide a fine example. Most war hawks I have met were convinced that American democracy would be good for Iraqis. Most of those whom I have heard opposed to the idea of instituting an American style democracy in Iraq question whether it is America's right to impose the system, whether it is worth Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 66 risking American lives to do so, and whether Iraqis are ready and able to exist in such a system. It has been rare for people to question whether a specifically "American" democracy would be good for Iraq, whether it was America's right to impose it, whether it could be done with limited cost to human life, and whether Iraqis were ready for a democracy. Those who fail to ask these questions seem baffled when one suggests that perhaps a socialized system similar to Canada or Sweden would benefit Iraqis most, or that a democracy with a distinctly Muslim character might be ideal for the Iraqi people.

These observations beg several questions.

First of all, I must ask myself whether I can know that observed trends among my

American friends are examples of a shared system of beliefs and practices as opposed to random coincidences. While there is no mathematical formula to explain how many people must share a quality before it becomes a cultural characteristic, it would be naive and dangerous to ignore trends that affect our lives everyday because of a dedication to the idea of individual identity or because of the impossibility of finding any completely universal traits within a culture. In the same vein, we have to consider the consequences of the idea of a group culture for those who would be considered members of a culture but who do not share the traits. Parekh provided us with a base definition of culture, but we need to figure out an approach that allows us to identify not just what culture is, but where it is. One way is to argue for cultural self-definition, in which people become part of whatever culture they choose. At the other extreme, is the idea that individuals are a part of whatever culture others identify them to be part of. There are also theorists who argue that cultural identity is formed through a combination of both individual choice and societal influence. In order to better identify where specific cultures reside, I believe it is Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 67 helpful add to Parekh's definition, the idea that there are distinct cultures among specific groups of people (for example in a specific country, class or race), but not all members of those groups are part of the culture. I would definitely argue there is a distinct American culture and a distinct Muslim culture but not all Americans share the values of American culture, and not all Muslims have the same sets of beliefs regarding ethics and practices.

When making such claims, we must be careful that we do not immediately shift towards the all too common essentializing extreme. The easy and common progression to make, once signing on to the idea that aspects of culture are shared, is to assume "that each human group 'has' some kind of 'culture' and that the boundaries between these groups and the contours of their cultures are specifiable and relatively easy to depict"

(Benhabib 2002,4). In her book The Claims of Culture, Political theorist Seyla Benhabib calls this a "reductionist sociology of culture" and I think there is tendency by many in academia to dismiss it as a thing of the past that no one still seriously considers a real possibility for cultural explanation. In a later section I will show that there are in fact scholars who subscribe to forms of this reductionist sociology. Moreover I am not convinced that cultural essentialism is as clearly problematic for the general public at it is for many academics. One need only look at the continued representation in movies of

Muslims as primarily terrorists in order to see that Middle Eastern culture continues to be essentialized and that significant numbers of people continue to view this as acceptable.

The "reductionist sociology of culture" is actually quite problematic. There are very few cultural characteristics that can be pinpointed in any specific group as being shared by all members. When tallang about specifics, for instance shared values, traditions, tastes or styles, the problem essentialists immediately run into is helplessness Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 68

in explaining dissenting viewpoints. Any examples that are shared by every single

member of a group, for example language or location, are so vaguely defined that they

become meaningless when using culture as a tool for differentiation. Bhikku Parekh

argues that by focusing on these general similarities, and by believing that cultures are

congruent with population groups, cultural essentialists wrongly disassociate other

important influences such as "social and economic factors" from culture (Parekh 2000,

78). The essentializing move ignores just how many factors enter into the creation of

culture. For example, rather than focusing on language or religion, I pointed out earlier that for Bourdieu, class plays the central role in cultural development. For others religion reigns supreme. One final problem with the "reductionist theory" is that it can be very hurtful because in many ways it does not differ greatly from stereotyping. Conflict and rifts can occur when people being to speak of cultures in an absolute manner.

Thus far I have argued that culture as a shared system of beliefs and values exists among distinct groups. I have also described some of the problems with taking the belief that culture exists too far and presuming that cultures are easily understood or that we are guaranteed to understand individuals simply by knowing their culture. Given the sensitivity of the issue we are left with the problem of having to decide who can evaluate culture. Benhabib argues that "from within, a culture need not appear as whole; rather it forms a horizon that recedes each time one approaches it" (Benhabib 2002,5). By suggesting the culture "recedes" Benhabib basically argues for the impossibility of an outsider being able to analyze culture since they cannot actually be inside of it. At the time, if a culture does not "appear as whole" from the inside and is just the sum of its parts than a member of the culture is but one of many parts and would presumably have a Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 69

difficult time identifying group characteristics. As such it seems that the optimal position

from which to examine a culture combines experience as both an insider and an outsider in that specific culture. Earlier, when I expressed my thoughts about American attitudes

with regards to Iraq, I began to wonder whether I, as a Canadian, can make any claims

about American culture. I must admit that I certainly feel that, having now spent

significant amounts of time in both countries, I am in a useful position for understanding how it feels to be part of American culture but also have a better idea of how Americans are perceived than many of my fellow students.

Studying Middle Eastern Culture

Having considered what the "best" position is for examining culture, I will now investigate the practical attempts to understand the culture of the Muslim Middle East which have been made by outsiders, insiders and those in between. Some attempts have tried to essentialize and generalize based on specific experiences or parts of the culture.

Others have tried to understand the area in terms of fundamental theoretical principles.

Below I will examine five approaches to understanding Middle Eastern culture: 1)

Occidentalism and Ideological Approaches, 2) Orientalism, 3) Area Studies, 4)

Postmodernism and 5) Disciplinary Approaches. This investigation will demonstrate that many of the positive aspects of one approach are the problems with others and thus will illustrate the need for an approach that synthesizes all of the others in order take advantage of their strengths while attempting to addresses the roots of their weaknesses. Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 70

Bccidentalism and ideoloqical approaches

The first approach to understanding Middle Eastern culture, which I term the

ideological approach, hardly constitutes "scholarship." Instead, it is a world view, held by

many in the "West" and the Middle East, that focuses on understanding both regions

based on fundamental ideological differences. As such, it complicates the question of

insiderloutsider since by the very nature of the approach all those who espouse its views

must be an insider in one of the cultures and an outsider in the other. The consequences

of the ideological viewpoint vary depending on someone's cultural affinities, but, among

those who espouse this view, we can find a more or less cross-cultural consensus with

regards to the theoretical essentials.

If you have not lived in a cave since September 1lth, 2001, then you have been

exposed to the basics of the ideological approach. In as neutral terms as possible, the basic tenet of the approach is that the West consists of secular democracies while the

Middle East does not have a separation of church and state. This fundamental difference

creates an insurmountable divide between the two regions as they currently stand, setting them apart as two distinct entities and generating conflict between them. This view finds is held by many people around the world. One need only consider the popular country

singer Toby Keith, and his songs Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue and The Taliban

Song or watch news coverage of an anti-American rally in Iran or Palestine, to see how many average citizens perceive a fundamental disconnect between the regions. While the

opinions of the public are worthy of consideration, other groups with far more influence

share the same beliefs. It is among "Orientalists and their colleagues" and among Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 71

"Occidentalists" that the ideological approach wields significant influence on the world

scene.

I use the term "Orientalists and their colleagues" because Orientalists represent

the ideological view perfectly, but by no means are they the only group who expound the

beliefs. Nonetheless, we can turn to Bernard Lewis, renowned Middle East scholar and

defender of Orientalism to gather a better understanding of the view. He writes of "the

struggle between.. .rival systems (Christianity and Islam) [which] have now lasted

fourteen centuries" (Lewis 1990). Lewis also helps to illustrate how the ideas of those

who take the ideological approach to understanding Middle Eastern culture differ on

certain levels. He basically blames Muslims for creating the ideological separation, noting that "In the Classical Islamic view, to which many Muslims are beginning to return, the world and all manlund are divided into two: the House of Islam, where the

Muslim law and faith prevail, and the rest, which it is the duty of Muslims ultimately to bring to Islam" (Lewis 1990). Lewis clearly subscribes to the basic principles of the ideological approach-the separation between Islam and the West-but by pinning the blame on Islam, his personal feelings find their way into his arguments. Lewis's personal spin on the ideological approach comes out further in two articles he authored, both named Islam and Liberal Democracy (one with the sub-title A Historical Overview). In both, he scorns Islam for the obstacles it places in the way of the foundation of liberal democracy and suggests the need for the Muslim World to adopt some "Western" or

"Christian" practices in order to have a free society (Lewis 1993 and 1996).

In a later section, I will discuss the scholarly approach of the Orientalists, as well as its problems. I have chosen to separate the scholarly approach from the ideological Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 72

approach because the latter applies far beyond a few academics. As I made clear in the

previous chapter, there are endless examples of politicians who have expressed views of

the current "War on Terror" as a fight between the free secular liberal democratic

capitalists of the West and the theocratic religious fundamentalists of the Middle East.

While I made the argument that certain players, such as President Bush, couch other

agendas in popular liberal democratic terms, there are significant numbers of politicians

who view the current "war on terror7' as a fight between the free secular liberal

democratic capitalists of the West and the theocratic religious fundamentalists of the

Middle East.

The ideological approach resonates equally among powerful figures outside the

West. In their book Occidentalism Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit use the term

"Occidentalism" to describe the ideological view of the "the West's enemies" which, currently consists mostly of Muslim ~undamentalists~(Buruma and Margalit, 2004). The

Occidentalists take Orientalism and turn it "upside down" (Buruma and Margalit 2004,

10). Rather than essentializing and degrading the Orient, they diminish the West into "a mass of soulless, decadent, money-grubbing, rootless, faithless, unfeeling parasites"

(Buruma and Margalit 2004, 10). The Occidentalists' views contain a slight variation on the idea of a secular West versus a theocratic Muslim world. While the Orientalists and their colleagues see the role of religion in government as pre-modern, the Occidentalists tale pride in the morals and virtues of their religiously oriented societies. If anything, the

Occidentalists want a stronger adherence to religion (defined in their own terms) in

Middle Eastern countries. With regards to the West, Occidentalists decry secularization as evil, immoral and of course Godless. Some Occidentalists go even further. Rather

Though it has often included other non-Western nations, for example Japan in World War 2. Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 73 than seeing the West as Godless, they believe it "worships matter, its religion is materialism" (Buruma and Margalit 2004, 106). Even worse than secular infidels, the

West consists of idolaters, worshiping the false God: Money. In this regard the

Occidentalist's struggle "with the West is not just a political struggle but a cosmic drama" between good and evil (Buruma and Margalit 2004, 107).

Given the prominence of the ideological approach, one wonders whether it has any validity. Are there really ontological differences between the West and the Middle

East? For piece of mind, we almost have to reject the theory, since to accept it is to accept the virtual impossibility of peaceful coexistence. Fortunately, I will show below that we can reject the theory on theoretical basis and need not simply dismiss it on the grounds that the alternative seems frightening. The above discussion of the variations of the ideological approach reveals two slightly different views regarding the differences between the two regions. I call the first view the "liberal" view. The liberal view sees the West as liberal and secular and the Middle East as having failed to make that separation. Below, I will discuss two of the multitudes of theorists who have criticized this view.

Bruce Lincoln and Tala1 Asad, both contemporary thinkers, make arguments to question the secularization thesis. Basically, the secularization thesis argues that the enlightenment brought about a decline of religion in Western public spheres as a response to the "political problems of Western Christian society in early modernity" (Asad 2003,

2). From the beginning of his book Formations of the Secular Asad dismisses the chronology (the idea of secularization as the response to previous conditions) of this thesis, arguing that among academics "if anything is agreed upon, it is that a Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 74

straightforward narrative of progress from the religious to the secular is no longer valid"

(Asad 2003, 1). The rest of Asad's book goes on to pose problems with the fundamental ideas of the secularization thesis. He quotes other theorists "who criticize the modern liberal state for pretending to be secular and rational when in fact it [is] heavily invested in myth and violence" (Asad 2003,56). He then provides his own examples of myth having influence in "secular" states. I find his example of the role Christianity played in

Martin Luther King's civil rights activism to be most compelling. He compares Malcolm

X to King, pointing to King's much greater success in mobilizing a shift in American popular opinion, due to his "appeal to universal brotherhood and human dignity under

God" (Asad 2003, 140-8 and155). Lastly, Asad problematizes concepts most of us consider to be universally accepted, in order to demonstrate the precariousness of secularism as a stand-alone theory. Rarely do we challenge the existence or nature of agency, pain, torture and human rights. In the heart of his book, Asad does exactly that as he points out that none of these concepts are as straightforward as they seem. He demonstrates that agency means nothing without laws that allow agents to understand their own accountability. He suggests that pain is an inherently social phenomenon, in that it does not always happen to individuals, but rather individuals experience pain in relation the outside world. Asad also presents sadomasochism as a complicating factor in the discourse on torture since these sexual practices connect torture with positive feelings. Finally, Asad argues human rights are not concretely defined, they are simply

"floating signifiers that can be attached to and detached from various subjects.. .by the most powerful nation-states" (Asad 2003, 158). Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 75

Asad's point in complicating these "secular" concepts is to demonstrate that none of the concepts stand alone in any worthwhile manner. When all of us take for granted that we are free agents, that torture is bad, that we experience pain as individuals and that everyone has human rights, we ignore the fact that in malung these claims we must appeal to the powerful, outside, mythical forces of secularism. Such forces begin to sound a lot like religion and thus blur the boundary between religion and secular.

Bruce Lincoln complicates the secularization thesis in his analysis of religion after 911 1. In Symmetric Dualisms, the second chapter of his book Holy Terrors, Lincoln focuses on similarities post 911 1 speeches by George Bush and Osama Bin Laden. Much in the same way, I have argued that prominent Americans and Occidentalists take a similar approach to understanding the world; Lincoln sees these similarities as being in direct opposition to the secularization thesis. He believes both Bush and Bin Laden see the world in Manichean terms, as cosmic battles between good and evil. Such a view bears no resemblance to a liberal secular approach, and Lincoln analyzes Bush's words to demonstrate the religious undertones of his speech. Lincoln does this by investigating the religious coding in Bush's October 7, 2001, Address to the Nation. He points to Bush's use of "May God continue to bless America" at the end of his speeches and the several examples of biblical "coding" to illustrate the presence of religion for those who want to see it. By combining this work with discussions of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and their televised post 911 1 blaming of liberals, homosexuals and feminists, Lincoln makes a convincing argument that religion in America, the "epitome" of the liberal secular West, actually plays a central role in politics and in the public sphere. In doing so, Lincoln does Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 76 a fine job exemplifying why defining the Middle East in terms of its religiosity and the

West in terms of its secularism makes very little sense.

Disproving the secularization thesis still leaves the second view of the differences between the two regions as an option. In denying the Western separation of religion and state, Asad and Lincoln open the possibility that it is not the separation of religion and state that differentiates the West from the Middle East, but rather the prominence in both regions of opposing religions. I call those who take this view the "religious ideologues" and they are to be found everywhere. Occidentalists will not be convinced by the dismissal of secularization if they see the West not as godless, but as worshipping the wrong God (whether it be money or the "Christian" God). Westerners, such as the notorious American Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, will be no more persuaded than the

Occidentalists. Boykin's much publicized comments "likened the battle against Islamic militants to a Christian struggle against Satan and said, at evangelical gatherings, that a

uslim militia leader in Somalia worshiped an 'idol ' and not 'a real God"' (Jehl

difficult to argue against Boykin and the Tslamists sincc thcir beliefs are g1-ounded in clai~nsof faith, not rationale. Nonetheless, I think it is helpful to refer to my L, discussion of the idea of dominant cultures. The keepers of the religious ideological view certainly wield a lot of power, both in the West and the Middle East, but retaining influcncc diffcrs from being part of thc dominant culture. To prove that thc difference between the Middle East and the West can be seen as a battle between fztiths, the religious idcologucs would necd to show that the coinrnon fccling among thosc in the

uslirn world and in the West is a feeling of religious superiority. Asad and successfully demonstrate the problems by claiming that rcligion has been relegated to thc Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 77

rivatc sphere, but thcy do nothing to show that thc coexistence of religion and the public

sphere necessitates ideas of religious supremacy. The religious ideologues claim

irreconcilable extreme religious opposition betwccn Christianity and Islam, but speak

from faith, rather than evidence. In this sense, while the ideological approach merits

discussion for its significant intlucncc, its lack of a proven basis sccms to be its most damning failure. It is difficult to take it seriously without having any sort of explarlation for its conclusions. Thc rest of thc approaches I discuss are more scholarly in nature and thus make an effort to back up their claims.

Orientalism

My analysis in the introduction of the interchanges between Edward Said and

Bernard Lewis includes a relatively thorough description of the Orientalist project. To reiterate, and to draw on a perspective other than that of Said and Lewis, Orientalism "is aimed at the study of nonextant civilizations, and even then emphasizes the intellectual history or ideal self-image of such civilizations" (Binder 1976, 9).0rientalism can be understood as "essentially a philological discipline in which knowledge of the language and its history was the primary basis for the hermeneutical explication of texts (Binder

1976, 9). Orientalists aim to gain knowledge of Middle Eastern cultures by drawing contemporary conclusion based on the examination of ancient texts that, when written, were available only to the elite members of society, and often meant to express the ideas and beliefs those same elites wished to be accepted by society. It does not take trained experts to identify the flaws in this method. We can liken the approach to an attempt to Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 78 understand details of contemporary American culture by inferring conclusions based upon the writings of Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams. It seems absurd, but, as

Leonard Binder points out, "Orientalists were all too often content to sum up the meaning of a civilization on the bases of few manuscripts" (Binder 1976, 10). I am not suggesting that understanding historical and influential texts is a useless endeavor. In his book Myths

America Lives By, Richard Hughes successfully demonstrates the profound influence historical myths and narratives, which often stem from foundational texts, have on contemporary American Society. My point is looking solely at texts to understand culture, as opposed to looking at current cultures and considering how texts have affected them, ignores an abundance of other possible influences on culture, from globalization to change in values.

That is not to say that Orientalism has never accomplished anything. Binder also points out "the Orientalists have achieved immense works of scholarship, and their attainments stand like the monuments of the ancients which induce awe in us even though our technology far exceeds theirs" (Binder 1976,9). I find this quote helpful because it pinpoints the true problems with Orientalism, while recognizing the value of the

Orientalist approach. After all, "they have given us the basic outline of Islamic history, religion, and society" (Binder 1976, 9). In contrast to Said's total critique of Orientalism and, in addition to identifying a few positive aspects of Orientalism, Binder's statement takes some of the blame off of Orientalists by recognizing that we have simply evolved beyond the Orientalist project. In other words, for him, the Orientalist approach was not completely wrong. It was simply antiquated in a world where our options for scholarship Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 79 have expanded a great deal. As Binder puts it "at least [Orientalists] could say their conclusions were based on all of the then known evidence" (Binder 1976, 10).

The logical step, once new information and tools were available, was a new kmd of scholarship that reached contemporary conclusions based on current evidence.

Speaking for a group Middle Eastern Scholars, Binder states, "We are all nearly agreed now that we wish to study Islamic civilizations as related to the living societies of the

Middle East today" (Binder 1976, 10). He correctly points out, "this goal leads us beyond the possibilities of Orientalism and must naturally subvert the Orientalists' notion of good scholarship" (Binder 1976, 10). Interestingly this goal does not necessarily fix the main problems Said identifies in Orientalist scholarship. By focusing on the restrictions of the historic conditions of Orientalists as the main issue, Binder ignores its supposed ontological status as a tool to expand and reinforce political hegemonies. He was not alone in this omission. In identifying relatively primitive tools of analysis and an inadequate accessibility to data, as opposed to political motivations, as the limiting factors for Orientalists, the entire academy moved to Area Studies, a different approach to Middle Eastern cultural interpretation with many of the same problems as Orientalism, as well as some new ones.

Area Studies

Area studies was both a step beyond and a push away from Orientalism. Like

Orientalism, area studies programs continued to group the "non-western" world together as an entity to be studied. They were created at the beginning of the Cold War in response to World War I1 by "responsible leaders [who] realized.. .this country lacked an adequate number of specialists trained in the languages and cultures of other parts of the world" Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 80

(Binder 1976, 1). These political roots forced an evolution beyond the reading of foundational texts to the examination of immediate cultural trends and practices as the primary manner of learning about culture. In that this approach led to specialists in very specific locations, area studies represented a push away from the model of Orientalism which treated an entire continent as an almost singular entity.

This move to specialize prompted much of the criticism of area studies. Critics expressed their concerns at both a theoretical and practical level. In practice, the new approach required scholars to become experts on specific areas, yet when Binder wrote his book in 1976, he noted that a massive report on area studies revealed that only about one third of area studies scholars "were fully skilled in at least one Middle Eastern language, and only half that number had high skills in two of the major Middle Eastern languages (i.e., Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew)" (Binder 1976,4). Beside the lack of language slcills, the scholars did not tend to have a great deal of first hand experience in Middle Eastern countries. In fact, the same report revealed "less than one half of all

Middle East area specialists have spent more than two years in the area.. .and less than

20% have resided in more than one country for at least six months" (Binder 1976,4).

Since we cannot be sure of the "best" vantage point from which to understand another culture, the question of how much time is needed to become an expert on an area is a complicated one. It seems to me that a scholar must make a trade off between comparative work and area expertise. By this I mean, that a scholar either needs to spend smaller amounts of time in a number of places or a lot of time in one place. I would suggest, and I will discuss this more fully later, that ideally a scholar will choose the Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 81 comparative approach, but either way, I would argue that if he is to choose the expertise route, he must spend at least two years in his specified area.

Even if all the scholars had spent enough time in their respective areas to be appropriately termed experts, many of those who have criticized area studies on a theoretical level do not believe it would solve the approach's problems. As Professor Bill

Darrow of Williams College points out "the model of area studies in higher education has been under significant critique [and] there have been two dimensions to this critique"

(Darrow 2004). The first blames area studies for "insisting on an exclusive focus on only one part of the world.. . [thereby creating] insularity and discouraging comparative work between regions and a kind of preciousness to knowledge of other cultures" (Darrow

2004). I agree with this criticism but considering the repeated condemnation of

Orientalism for its generalizations and essentializing, we must be wary of condemning an approach for trying to learn as must as possible about a very specific subject.

The second dimension of the critique that Darrow points to comes from the opposite side. Rather than being concerned with the fact that scholars are making generalizations based on specific examples, some critics believe "area studies programs ignore what is generalizable about the human condition and that the post-cold war forces of globalization-multinational corporations, instant bank transfers, interdependent stock markets, the world wide web [etc.]--are themselves the proper objects of study" (Waters

2000, 3). Critics who espouse this view tend "to speak more from particular disciplinary perspectives" (Darrow 2004). In the introduction to Beyond the Area Studies Wars, the editor, Neil L. Waters, writes that "a few who focus on globalization go so far as to assert

Edward Said's Orientalism is the most obvious example of such condemnations, but since its publication in 1978 endless criticism have been made regarding the discipline's tendency for oversimplifying Middle Eastern culture, often in a negative light. Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 82 that study of individual or regional cultures, languages and histories are a needless distraction from the grander task of studying and understanding globalizing.. .forces that subject human in almost every culture to the same stimuli" (Waters 2000, 3). Such critics argue "a proper theoretical understanding of these phenomena.. .can render economic and political choices predictable, whatever the cultural milieu. As I discussed in the "Defining

Culture" section above, I believe there are culturally specific attributes that must be considered when thinking about other cultures, but the point of these critics is well taken; we cannot ignore global forces and influences that do not recognize cultural boundaries.

The Postmodern Critique and the Postmodern Approach

The Critique

The post modem critique applies to both Area Studies and Orientalism. Neil

Waters points to the fact that "postmodernism in the United States.. .appeared first in the field of literary criticism" (Waters 2000,6), As such, it comes as no surprise that as professor of comparative Literature, Edward Said based much of his critique of

Orientalism on the postmodern ideas of Gramsci, Foucault and others (Said 1994, 14). At its roots "postmodernism begins with the premise that virtually all human relationships, even language itself, are inherently hierarchical and therefore act as agents of oppression"

(Waters 2000, 6). According to postmodemists, the ideas of Orientalists and Area Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 83

Studies experts and even the words they choose when writing their publications, create, maintain and reinforce oppressive relationships. For thinkers such as Said and Foucault, the possession of knowledge and the manner in which it is expressed transfers directly into a form of power.

Considering that Area Studies arose out of the political need for policy decisions, we might expect the postmodernists critique to focus on the state, chastising it for creating scholarship in its own power interests. In fact, the postmodemists perceive a more complex relationship between the state and scholars, leading to harsh criticism of the academic experts. Said dismisses the simple explanation that power politics forms scholarship, arguing his "whole point is to say we can better understand the persistence and the durability of saturating hegemonic systems like culture when we realize that their internal constraints upon writers and thinkers were productive, not unilaterally inhibiting"

(Said 1994, 2000). In other words, the postmodern view posits that scholars, having been influenced by states, publish work that not only backs up the state's views, but also produces evidence for furthering or maintaining power over others. Said labels the relationship between the scholars and the states a "dynamic exchange" since it involves actions and reactions for both parties. The state for its part plays in an integral role setting power relationships by establishing the boundaries for discussions and pursuits of knowledge. Foucault writes "each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth: that is the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true" (Foucault

4980, 131). For Foucault the truth is not some objective concept of what really happens, but rather "a thing of this world created by the scholars and the state that "induces regular effects of power" (Foucault 1980, 131). That is not to say that power gained from Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 84

truth takes only the shape of political power. Similarly, non state actors can conceivably

be part of the ''regime of truth" but the strong relationships between Orientalism and

Imperial powers, as well as strong cold war ties of the Area Studies scholars and the

American government, demonstrate the manner in which states have the ability to mold

the idea of the "truth"

The Pos tmodemists Approach

Just as the postmodern critique of Orientalism and Area Studies focused on the

power structures resulting from scholarship, the postmodern academic approach attempts

to understand Middle Eastern culture (and all other cultures for that matter) in terms of

power relationships. In considering culture, Waters claims the postmodemists "tend to

view all structures of human relations as reducible to illegitimate hierarchies for

preserving and enshrining the power of one group over the other" (Waters 2000,6).

Because of this, the post modem approach often explains culture as being defined by

patriarchal gender relations, class disparities and, especially, the result of colonial

actions. Aside from power structures, deconstructionist thinking plays the most central role in postmodernism. It posits that no universal or objective truths exist and that all

expressions of ideas are subjective interpretations that open the door for further

subjective interpretation by others. Foucault's definition of truth, to which I referred

above, nicely illustrates the deconstructionist position in that it acknowledges the

existence of truth, but only as a social construct created by those in positions of power, not as anything cosmically deeper. In the end, the postmodern approach makes any

absolute statements of culture impossible since it argues not only against the existence of Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 85

right answers, but also against the possibility that a statement regarding culture could

ever be anything more that a biased personal interpretation.

Criticizing the Pos tmodernists

Like all approaches to cultural understanding the postmodern approach comes

under fire for several reasons. One of the problems harkens back to Graff's general criticism of the academy. The jargon and complex terminology that Graf feels closes academia off to much of the population, finds its home in postmodern approaches. The work of postmodernists in attempting to "free language from its inherent hierarchical nature" (Waters 2000, 6) contains such overly complex writing it tends to hide, or as the postmodernists would say, obfuscate the issues at hand.

Scholars who come from backgrounds that study the details of specific cultures criticize the postmodern approach for skipping over key cultural details. They argue that

"thoroughgoing, in-depth research on non-Western cultures tends to uncover complex social structures not readily reducible to hierarchies of power" (Waters 2000, 6). So much of postmodernism is about subjectivity, interpretation and skepticism, yet postmodernists tend to see relationships in black and white, consisting simpIy of the oppressed and the oppressors. Such a vision ignores the possibility of dynamic relationships which allow all involved parties to be simultaneous wielders of power and sufferers of subjugation.

Finally, the postmodernist approach to cultural understanding suffers from a built in paradox. Postmodern thought basically suggests that no objective truth exists and thus we cannot actually make definitive claims about culture. The problem with such a statement however is that the claim that we cannot make definitive claims about culture Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 86 requires the strongly definitive claim that there are no universal claims. Thus by its own logic, the approach neither allows for the possibility to make arguments regarding the truth about culture nor for the possibility that we are wrong to make arguments about culture.

Disciplinarv Approaches

The group who advocates a disciplinary approach to Middle Eastern scholarship is by no means uniform. Its members unite in the belief that the best way to study foreign cultures is with a particular methodology. Similarly, those who believe in disciplinary approaches would certainly all agree that the post-modern idea of reducing society and culture to "hierarchies of power" misses essential culture characteristics completely unrelated to power relationships. Group agreement does extend much further. The scholars who comprise this group come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and believe the methodology their individual fields employ to be the preeminent methods for cultural comprehension. Put simply, the members of this group represent the different isolated views of the specific departments at all major western Universities: economics, anthropology, psychology, political science, history, geography, languages, religion and all of the rest.6

Several of the approaches I have already discussed, contain within them specific disciplines. The philological grounding of Orientalists represents the belief of language departments that words and texts alone can tell us all we need to know about a culture.

Language experts might be critical of Orientalists due to the antiquated nature of their

I am certainly not suggesting that every scholar based in a discipline believes only her own discipline to be able to perform sound scholarly work. Instead I am pointing to a portion of the academic community that does tend to express eternal confidence in its own discipline. Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 87

subjects, and might focus on contemporary elements of language to study culture, but

clearly advocates of the linguistic approach must be criticized for neglecting internal

cultural characteristics (everything from systems of governance to architecture), external

forces (interactions with other cultures, imperialism etc.) and of course globalizing forces

that unite us all. Those who express this last criticism of other disciplines as well as Area

Studies are often economists convinced that that focusing on individual cultures or

specific aspects of culture ignores both the fact that all people are rational actors (and can

be thus understood) and that the most influential forces in all people's lives are economic

globalization factors such as "multinational corporations, instant bank transfers [and]

interdependent stock markets" (Waters 2000, 3). Predictably, but no less appropriately,

critics attack economists for explaining actions and beliefs (and thus culture) in terms of

money and utility instead of considering personal and societal influences.

Area Studies and the field of anthropology form the strongest relationship. Citing

the previously mentioned report, Binder shows that of all the anthropologists surveyed,

84.5% of them were identified as "area specialists" (Binder 1976, 6). Through field

work, anthropologists immerse themselves in the foreign cultures. They experience their

subjects firsthand and make claims and draw conclusions based on their experiences. No

one can fault anthropologists for taking the only potentially authentic approach to cultural

study. After considering other approaches and disciplines that do not require any

interaction with the members of a culture, a discipline that suggests that the only way to

understand a culture is to immerse yourself in it seems almost revolutionary.

Nonetheless, anthropology suffers from much of the same, and probably much more criticism than many of the other approaches I have discussed. Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 88

Critics accuse anthropologists of the (apparently common) mistake of focusing on specific details at the expense of understanding more general forces. Though the criticism tends to be slightly subdued in light of the respect one must feel for the anthropologist who works to learn a new language, leaves her home for the good of scholarship and makes the effort to get know the "other." We see this subtle respect in a statement by theorist Jeremy Waldron who writes "To immerse oneself in the traditional practices of, say an aboriginal culture might be a fascinating anthropological experiment, but it involves an artificial dislocation from what actually is going on in the world"

(Waldron 1995, 100).

Anthropologists also come under heavy fire for almost every other criticism that those in other disciplines have received. Critics feel they draw general conclusions from isolated studies. Clifford Geertz, the famed anthropologist, defends the discipline against this claim, arguing that rather than "attempting to substitute parochial understanding for comprehensive ones.. .They are attempting to discover what contributions parochial understanding can make to comprehensive ones, what leads to general, broad-stroke interpretations particular, intimate findings can produce." (Geertz 1968, vii). I find this defense to be satisfactory in that attempting to draw larger conclusions from specific data bares no resemblance to being convinced that isolated cultural behavior can be generalized on a major scale. At the same time, when drawing broad conclusions it is imperative to prove the rationale behind the claims.

Postmodernists attack anthropologists the same way that they attack the

Orientalists and Area Studies scholars. They believe "anthropologists have been complicit in the oppression of third world peoples by imposing an outsider's Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 89

representation of their realities" (Perry 2000, 122). As I discussed earlier, postmodernists

believe that scholars impose ideas and narratives on other cultures in order to maintain

power relationships between states and cultures. The fact that, until not that long ago,

cultural study tended to be solely a "western" phenomenon is indicative of and

contributes to this problem. My earlier discussions of the influence Bernard Lewis has

on the Bush Administration and the clear political motivations belonging to scholars on both sides of the spectrum demonstrate how Orientalism, Area Studies, and most other kinds of scholarship can be explicitly used to benefit state interests. This can be applied

similarly to anthropologists.

In the case of anthropologists, though, there is more at stake than simply state interests. The idea that anthropologists maintain power relationships goes hand in hand with the criticism that "anthropologists have presented their own versions of cultures as authoritative truths" (Perry 2000, 121-2). In other words, rather than producing work that includes any kind of objectivity about the real qualities of a culture, anthropologists publish work that reflects their own ideas. Even Clifford Geertz, an anthropologist who was also criticized by Edward Said, recognizes this fact about the discipline. He writes,

"an anthropologist's work tends, no matter what its ostensible subject, to be but an expression of his research experience, or, more accurately, of what his research experience has done to him" (Geertz 1968, vi). Certainly some anthropologists would disagree and argue they write what they see and do not influence it, but in light of

Geertz's statement, we can say that both anthropologists and their critics seem to agree that all of their work includes subjective influence from the scholars themselves. I believe the roots of this problem are not necessarily purposeful because unlike work done Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 90

in the name of the state, we find it in all scholars' work, regardless of motivation.

Nonetheless it has potential to be a very dangerous problem because we do not have an

adequate process or methodology for identifying the biases of scholars. Attempting to

find such a method will be a major part of worlung towards a stronger approach to

Middle Eastern studies, since it clearly presents itself in all forms of scholarship.

Before I move on though, as this is a project in the field of religion, I should take

a moment to speak about my own discipline. As I said earlier, the goal of this chapter is

to work towards an approach to Middle Eastern studies that draws on the strengths of

other approaches while limiting their weaknesses. As a discipline, I would argue

religion, more than any other, is a step in this direction. Ironically I say this because, of

all the disciplines, it has the least structured methodology. This results, in part, from a

complete lack of consensus regarding the definition of religion. Arguments have been

made claiming everything to be religion; from conventional faiths to political ideologies

to economic systems to sports to hobbies and vocations. In this regard, the scholar of religion cannot ignore internal or external forces. He must look at traditional texts and relate them to today. While at the same time, he must recognize that modem expressions

of religion, even traditional ones may have little to do with foundational texts. He must pay attention to culturally specific political influences and consider globalizing economic factors. He studies from afar through media and second hand sources, and he carries out ethnographic studies from within cultures. The post-modemist in him recognizes that if one type of practice is to be understood as religion, then any self-declared religious action must be respected as such. Conversely, along the lines of the Occidentalists, the religion Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 91

scholar considers the different manners in which religion, however he understands it,

interacts with society in different c~ltures.~

I strongly believe the approach we take is a step in the right direction for

scholarship. I also think it can be problematic in that we employ the positives from other

scholarly practices but also fall prey to all of the other approach's mistakes, while

simultaneously correcting for them. Though with this in mind, I have to admit, I chose to

write this idealized description of the scholar of religion for a very specific reason.

Religion, like all of the other approaches I have discussed, has not yet managed to correct

for the subjective bias of scholarly work. While no doubt you, as an informed reader,

were rolling your eyes as I discussed the glory of the discipline, a reader without prior

knowledge of religion could not separate my personal bias supporting my own discipline

from any sort of legitimate argument that religion is the best discipline, and thus could

not feel comfortable drawing conclusions from my work. Thus the sixty-four thousand

dollar question: is there a possible approach to scholarship that allows us to draw

meaningful conclusions from its work?

Personal Biases

Before we can answer this question we need a better idea of how bias works in

academic scholarship. I believe scholar brings two forms of bias to any cultural analytical work. First, though it can be referred to in several ways, is the bias created by the

scholar's experience. Interpretation always involves a translation into one's own paradigm of thinking. In the case of the scholar, this translation occurs by expressing and

My discussion of religion as a discipline is informed by a brief discussion with Professor Darrow on April 19th Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 92 analyzing what she has seen using her own terms in relation to the culmination of her life experiences. In the process of translation, the scholar's own culture will inevitably seep through. However, the scholar may have no malicious intent and it may not even be clear whether her biases privilege her own culture or the one she is studying. In light of the postmodernist critique, I think we can safely say that work that positions the scholar's culture as better than the studied culture tends to be more problematic. Nonetheless, one can easily imagine studies, by those frustrated with elements of their own culture, which privileges the authenticity of the subject over the scholar's own culture.

The debates between Said and Lewis that I analyzed in the introduction of this project are proof that writings include this hidden autobiographical information. It is impossible to read through their numerous debates without being amused yet dismayed at grown men sinking to ad hominem attacks and childish quips as they criticize each others work. In light of the autobiographical nature of scholarly work I have been discussing, these attacks begin to make more sense. If publications really are more about the writer than the subject one cannot help but focus on the author, as much as if not more than on his information, when evaluating an author's work. In general, while I like the idea of learning about an author by reading his work, I find it highly impractical to read countless academic studies simply to learn about the author. Instead, we need to understand how bias works in scholarship in order to draw meaningful conclusions about its subjects

The choice of analytic lens is the second manner, stemming from the first, in which scholarly work contains the author's bias. Bernard Lewis and other Orientalists believe that cultures can be studied strictly through the close reading, analysis, and interpretation of their foundational texts. I would argue that this belief, regardless of its Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 93

validity, represents specific preconceptions belonging to Lewis that permeates his work.

We cannot be certain of the way in which they are expressed, but a choice to take texts

written by and for the elite members of culture as the only real representation of the

general truths of a culture, might suggest a belief that only high culture in a society is

important. It might also express a bias towards other cultural characteristics by ignoring,

for example, the ability of art and architecture to represent important aspects of a culture.

The analytic lens itself also influences the analysis of the study. Last semester, I participated in a tutorial entitled Haunted: Ghosts in the Study of Religion in which we used ghosts as an analytic lens. We examined, among others, the ghosts of state sponsored terror, the ghosts of the Holocaust and the ghosts of slavery. After considering these projects, I argued that "the use of ghosts automatically assumes moral idealism"

(Earn, 2003). By this I meant that by simply asserting that state sponsored terror, the

Holocaust and American slavery have ghosts we entered our analytic project with ideas of who was wronged and who was guilty of injustices. I no longer believe that the use of ghosts must always entail preconceived notions of good and bad and no space for the in between, but I do believe it often entails some level of this and thus we must recognize the affects of the lens on the way we perceive a specific topic. The lens shapes academic work in other ways. A specific lens may be narrow and ignore broader details. For example it may stop the scholar from seelng information from some sources and not others. Alternatively a wide lens may miss significant and intimate details about a specific topic. The key point to be made is that understanding and being aware of the specificity of the analytical lens is essential as being aware of personal experiences to understanding the role of bias in scholarship. Academic Approaches 60 Middle Eastern Study Page 94

Suggestions For a Better Approach

Given the manner in which bias seems to imbue all works of scholarship, one

might wonder why we even bother to study other cultures. If work cannot be separated

from its author and its lens, why not just stop doing it? It seems clear that stopping is not

a valid option. The War on Tenor and the Iraq War provide immediate examples of

policy decisions that are made with significant claims of culture in mind. Bernard

Lewis's participation in President Bush's foreign policy proves that conclusions about

culture are made and the conclusions can affect hundreds of thousands of lives. As such,

we must do our best to produce work that provides meaningful and useful results. We can never be certain of any cultural fact. And considering I have made the argument that cultures exist but with the possibility of major exceptions, we can never be sure that our meaningful results will end up being correct when we next use them for policy decisions.

However, we can do our best, to solve for as many of the problems with our academic approaches as possible, in order to be in a position to predict how cultures will respond in certain situations. We will not always be right, but the reality of our world is that people are going to be making important decisions regarding other cultures no matter what. It seems the alternative to attempting to make informed predictions is the much less appealing idea of policy decisions that represent gambles on the part of government officials. I would even go so far as to claim that given the potential consequences such decisions have on human life, it is our responsibility as academics to work as hard as we can to make informed predictions. By considering the strengths and criticisms of the approaches I discussed above, while keeping in mind the effects of bias, I believe that we Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 95 can make some changes, both major and minor, in our approach to cultural scholarship to produce information that has the genuine capacity to make accurate predictions.

In order to solve for the main criticisms of ideological approaches, Orientalism,

Area Studies, Postmodernism and disciplinary approaches, we need to find ways to defend conclusions based on contemporary fact. We must recognize cultural specificity while also acknowledging the influence of globalizing forces. In the same vein, we must stay away from making essentializing conclusions without resorting to total cultural relativisms. We must be aware of the role of hierarchical relationships influencing knowledge, as well as the power language choices can wield. And of course, we must be aware of the subjective bias informing all work.

Solving for some these problems should not be too hard. Writing with a heightened sensitivity for language choice would address some of the postmodernists7 language concerns, but more importantly it would be a critical step in finding a midpoint between relativism and essentialism. Publications which focus on the Middle East tend to suffer at the cost of the polemical style in which the authors write. For example more conservative scholars often write with the language and tone that they are totally correct and that only anti-American liberal academics would disagree. Similarly liberal scholars frequently fail to recognize any rational points coming from conservative scholars. There is no need for this on either side. If scholars chose their words more carefully throughout their work they could make perfectly defensible claims without blindly dismissing opposing ideas. Malung language choices that demonstrate a scholar's recognition of the possibility of multiple viewpoints with regards to culture but argues that one viewpoint is the most important to consider at this time, would work to inform others of important Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Rage 96 aspects of another culture without offending anyone or reducing an entire religion to one single belief.

The issue has been raised that a change like this is nothing more than nuance, a detail for which many have little time or patience. To this I respond: it is possible that what I am calling for is nothing more than nuance, and if indeed that is the case, scholars, pundits and policy-makers alike need to find time to address this nuance. In his article defending anthropology, R. J. Perry discusses Renato Rosaldo's criticism of Evan-

Pritchard's work for "spealung interchangeably of the Nuer or of the Nuer man because.. .the culture is conceived as uniform and static" (Perry 2000, 122). Perry dismisses the criticism saying "it is difficult to imagine how anyone who is at all familiar with Evans-Pritchard's career could mistake his general statements for an expression of any underlying assumption that Nuer society was static" (Perry 2000, 122). That someone did make this mistake is precisely my point in arguing for the need for nuance.

If without nuance scholarship sends the wrong message to some, any, or all of its readers, then every effort must be made by the scholar to include exactly what she intends to say.

I would also recommend changes to increase a reader's awareness of the scholar's feelings about her own life experience, as well as the reasons behind the choices she makes with regards to her study. Such knowledge work can only help to provide a picture closer the truth. I think the easiest way to do this would be for all publications to include a short autobiographical exegesis which allows the author to express what he feels he brings to the project, why he chose to take it on, why he chose his method of analysis and what he believes the implications of his tool of analysis to be. This does not seem like a very difficult addition to a project or a revolutionary change in scholarship and yet it Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 97 could provide so much more to the validity of study and research. At the same time, it may not go far enough to inform us about the scholar since there would be further obvious inherent biases in anything a scholar writes about himself. My final and most significant recommendation attempts to do even more to create awareness of the scholar's biases, and also attempts to address the problem of recognizing cultural specificity while acknowledging globalizing forces.

Conclusion

After considering numerous approaches to Middle Eastern studies, I have come up with proposed approach to scholarship which I believe has the potential of finding a middle ground to deal with many of the issues of other approaches. I should be clear that

I do not claim that the program I call Comparative International Studies is our only hope for scholarship that addresses the problems with other approaches. Instead I see it as but one workable alternative that builds slightly on newer International Studies programs to increase possibility of solving for more of the problems with cultural scholarship.

Many schools, including Williams, have established or are working on establishing International Studies programs. Essentially, these programs group together the study of every country that is not "us" under one department heading. My immediate impression of this program was that it was a step backwards towards Area Studies or even Orientalism. Upon more reflection, though, I decided the grouping made a lot of sense. Rather than honoring the socially constructed boundaries of Orientalism, or the

Cold war political boundaries which defined Area studies, International studies programs have put in their scope every culture other than their own. Given the complication of the Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 98 question of the ideal position from which to analyze a culture, it seems logical to place the cultures, in which we have the same cultural position (as outsiders), together and separate them from the one culture where our position varies, that is, our own. I believe this separation also helps to address parts of the power relationship issues of the Said and postmodernists. By excluding only their own culture from their focus of study,

International Studies departments erase some of the inherent predetermined biases other approaches have incurred. Instead of representing specific political motivations, the goal of International Studies seems to be more knowledge oriented in that their point is to learn more about every culture other than their own.

International Studies also stresses a multidisciplinary approach to scholarship.

Just as it challenges old territorial boundaries, it challenges old academic boundaries.

International Studies is not economics, or political science or anthropology or religion; instead it works to provide "a deliberate juxtaposition of the cultural, political, economic and technological dimensions necessary for understanding our world" (Darrow 2004).

Given my earlier discussion of the advantages and problems of disciplinary approaches, taking a multidisciplinary approach represents a major step forward toward finding a middle ground between investigating specific cultural details and recognizing globalizing forces. In fact Bill Darrow, the chair of the new Williams College International Studies program, calls the program "a structured movement between the cultural particulars of individual areas and more general process that are the focus of humanistic and social scientific inquiry" (Darrow 2004).

The one aspect of International Studies of which I am more skeptical, is that while it stresses cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study, it maintains certain areas of expertise Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 99 or focus areas that continue to fall along regional distinctions. This is where the

"Comparative" approach comes in to my proposal. I believe a Comparative International

Studies approach would combine the strengths of International Studies with some improvements on subjectivity issues, in order to create truly useful approach to scholarship.

In general, my call for Comparative International Studies has, at its basis, the idea that we must do more than group "the other" into one department; we need to seriously consider other cultures not in the way they compare to us, but in the way they compare to each other. I believe this has the potential to improve awareness of the subjective aspects of academic work. I envision Comparative International Studies as being a program of comparative cultural ethnography with a multidisciplinary background. What do I mean by this? I believe an ideal approach to cultural study is to send scholars, who have the knowledge of a variety of approaches, to perform anthropological research in a variety of locations. One obvious reason for this is that it seems to be a way to encourage awareness of cultural specificity and globalizing forces. By spending time among several cultures around the world, scholars would no doubt have a better understanding of which observations are culturally specific and which represent more universal trends.

The central reason for this proposal, however, is that I believe it to be one of the best possible ways to create an awareness of the subjectivity involved in cultural study both among scholars and among those using their work. As I mentioned earlier, when work considers only one subject and stands by itself we have no way of knowing which parts represent aspects of observed reality and which parts are simply a function the scholars biases. I would argue that by producing scholarship which analyzes multiple Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 100 groups, academics can help to clarify this distinction in their own work. By spending equal time among several cultures ethnographers can separate the experience of being away from home, and being among a different culture away from specific cultural details so that he does not automatically associate negative or positive feelings with a culture.

Readers of comparative ethnographic publications should be able to make more informed conclusions by examining the scholar's interactions with several cultures. By considering the manner in which scholars treat the similarities and differences among the separate cultures, a reader will be able to see, more vividly, how the scholars' biases are making their way into the text. Combining such studies with an autobiographical exegesis would function to produce work as transparent as I can imagine.

One important caveat of my call for comparative ethnographic study is that it must also all be done with the same analytic lens. Due to the inherent biases in selecting a lens and the lens itself, the only way for comparative study to reveal anything about its producer's subjectivity is to ensure that other variable possibilities for bias remain constant.

I understand the skeptics of my suggested approach. However, I have begun to believe quite strongly, that such a model is workable and less flawed than the current approaches to cultural study I laid out. Practically speaking, it may seem difficult and time consuming to be well enough prepared to become a comparative ethnographer.

However, I am sure it is quite possible. Many PhD programs already require the knowledge of three or four languages. Similarly, if we use two years as a bench mark for the time needed to do field work, a comparative field study of three cultures would not take too much longer than a regular PhD thesis. Academic Approaches to Middle Eastern Study Page 101

Theoretically, one might ask why, based on the several positive aspects of

International Studies, we cannot simply follow its model and then have different regional specialists compare their work in order to acquire multiple views on a culture. The problem I see with that approach is that if we cannot trust a single cultural study done by a single scholar, why would be able to trust a group of single cultural studies? If one differing opinion exists, we cannot discount it on the basis of majority rules, since it is quite possible that common biases among the rest of the scholars caused their work to be similar. That is not to say that I am against scholars comparing their work. I would certainly encourage those who have followed the Comparative International Studies approach to compare their work. It can only help to paint a more complete cultural picture, especially with scholars using different analytic lenses.

In conclusion, I believe I have clearly demonstrated the need for a useful approach to understanding Middle Eastern culture. The political implications and social ramifications of all Middle Eastern scholarship, no matter where it is on the spectrum, are enormous. It is no surprise that the proposed solution, attempts to find a middle ground approach between the essentialism and relativism. More surprising however is my somewhat counterintuitive conclusion: If we really want to better understand the Middle

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