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Arab Representations of the Occident

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Arab Representations of the Occident Arab Representations of the Occident This book explores Arab responses to Western culture and values as expressed through works of fiction and non-fiction written by Arab authors during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It constitutes an original addition to the perennial East–West debate, and is particularly relevant to the current discussion on Islam and the West. Arab Representations of the Occident might be seen as the reverse study of Edward Said’s famous Orientalism. If Orientalism, according to Said, provided the conceptual framework, the intellectual justification for the appropriation of the Orient through colonialism, ‘Occidentalism’ – if one may use this label to indicate Arab conceptualisations of the West – tells a different story. It is a story, not about the appropriation of the land of the West, but its very soul. And if Orientalism was about the denigration, and the subjugation of the Oriental Other, much of Occidentalism has been about the idealisation of the Western Other, the desire to become the Other, or at least to become like the Other. This book – the first book on the subject in English – explores this process through examining representations of the West, or of the self and other in Arabic fictive and quasi-fictive writing. Rasheed El-Enany, Professor of Modern Arabic literature at the University of Exeter, researches into all genres and aspects of modern Arabic literature: fiction, drama, poetry, as well as literary criticism. He is interested particularly in the study of literature as a system of thought with an attitude towards the philosophical and socio-political issues of human life. He has written extensively on the Arabic language’s leading novelist and Nobel laureate, Naguib Mahfouz. His previous publications include: Naguib Mahfouz: the Pursuit of Meaning (also published by Routledge) and a translation of Mahfouz’s novel, Respected Sir. Culture and Civilization in the Middle East Series Editor: Ian R. Netton University of Leeds This series studies the Middle East through the twin foci of its diverse cultures and civilisations. Comprising original monographs as well as scholarly surveys, it covers topics in the fields of Middle Eastern literature, archaeology, law, history, philosophy, science, folklore, art, architecture and language. While there is a plurality of views, the series presents serious scholarship in a lucid and stimulating fashion. Arab Representations of the Occident East–West encounters in Arabic fiction Rasheed El-Enany First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2006 Rasheed El-Enany All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN10: 0–415–33217–6 ISBN13: 978–0–415–33217–0 Foreign culture is as necessary to the spirit of a nation as is foreign commerce to its industries. (Lebanese/American writer, Ameen Rihani, 1876–1940) We came to Europe To drink of the springs of civilisation; We came looking for a northerly window; We came to breathe in the air; To know the colours of the sky; We came running away from the whips of oppression; We came to Europe To rejoice in the freedom of expression; To wash the dust off our bodies; And to plant trees in the gardens of conscience. (Syrian poet, Nizar Qabbani, 1923–98) Contents Acknowledgements viii List of authors discussed ix Introduction 1 1 The pre-colonial period: enchanted encounters 15 2 The colonial period: encounters under duress 34 3 The postcolonial period (1): proud encounters 87 4 The postcolonial period (2): humbled encounters 113 5 The encounter with America 153 6 The encounter through female eyes 185 Concluding remarks 205 Notes 209 Bibliography 238 Index 247 Acknowledgements The publishers would like to thank the following for permission to reprint their material: Indiana University Press/Research in African Literature for permission to reprint material from ‘The Western encounter in the works of Yusuf Idris’, Research in African Literature, vol. 28, no. 3, 1997, pp. 33–55. Routledge/Taylor and Francis for permission to reprint material from ‘Tawfiq al-Hakim and the West: a new assessment of the relationship’, in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 27, no. 2, November 2000, http://www.tandf.co.uk Al Saqi Books for permission to reprint material from ‘The Promethean Quest in Louis Awad’s Memoirs of an Overseas Student’, in Writing the Self: Autobiographical Writing in Modern Arabic Literature, Saqi Books, London, 1998, pp. 61–71. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book. On the personal level, I would also like to extend my very warm thanks to Mr Paul Auchterlonie, subject librarian at the University of Exeter, for his indefatiguable assistance in this and other projects over the years. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the indirect contribution to this book of the many friends, acquaintances, and nameless fellow humans on both sides of the so-called cultural divide from whom I learnt in the course of living, and contrary to received wisdom, that East is West and West is East and that ever the twain shall be together. Authors discussed Below is a list, for quick reference, of primary authors whose texts are studied in this book. The names are given under the relevant chapter headings in the order in which they occur in the chapters. 1 The pre-colonial period: enchanted encounters 1 cAbd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (1754–1825) 2Niqula al-Turk (1763–1828) 3Rifaca Rafic al-Tahtawi (1801–73) 4Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1804–87) 5 Fransis Marrash (1836–73) 6 cAli Mubarak (1823–93) 7 Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi (1820?–89) 8Muhammad Bayram al-Khamis al-Tunisi (1840–89) 2 The colonial period: encounters under duress 9Muhammad al-Muwaylihi (1858–1930) 10 Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914) 11 Muhammad Husayn Haykal (1888–1956) 12 Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898–1987) 13 Husayn Fawzi (1900–88) 14 Shakib al-Jabiri (b. 1912) 15 TahaHusayn (1889–1973) 16 Ahmad Amin (1886–1954) 17 cAli al-Ducaji (1909–49) 18 YahyaHaqqi (1905–92) 19 Louis (Luwis) cAwad (1915–90) 20 Dhu al-Nun Ayyub (1908–88) 21 Suhayl Idris (b. 1923?) 22 Waguih Ghali (d. 1969) x Authors discussed 3 The postcolonial period (1): proud encounters 23 Yusuf Idris (1927–91) 24 Fathi Ghanim (1924–99) 25 cAbd al-Hamid Juda al-Sahhar (1913–74) 26 Al-Tayyib Salih (b. 1929) 27 cAbd al-Majid’ bin Jallun (1919–81) 4 The postcolonial period (2): humbled encounters 28 Sulayman Fayyad (b. 1929) 29 Suncallah Ibrahim (b. 1937) 30 cAbd al-Hakim Qasim (1935–90) 31 Muhammad Zifzaf (1946–2001) 32 Walid Hajjar (b. 1931) 33 Yasin Rifaciyya (b. 1934) 34 Hanna Minah (b. 1924) 35 Khayri al-Dhahabi (b. 1946) 36 Baha~ Tahir (b. 1935) 37 Ahmad Ibrahim al-Faqih (b. 1942) 38 Muhammad Abi Samra (b. 1953) 39 Fu~ad Yaziji (b. ?) 40 Fu~ad Qindil (1944) 5 The encounter with America 41 Amin al-Rihani (Ameen Rihani) (1876–1940) 42 Mikha~il Nucayma (Mikhail Naimy) (1889–1988) 43 Mahmud Taymur (1894–1973) 44 Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) 45 Philip Hitti (1886–1978) 46 Halim Barakat (b. 1933) 47 Yusuf Idris (1927–91) 48 Suncallah Ibrahim (b. 1937) 49 Radwa cAshur (b. 1946) 50 Laila Abou Saif (b. 1941) 51 Salma al-Haffar al-Kuzbari (b. 1922) 6 The encounter through female eyes 52 Kulit (Collette) Khuri (b. 1936) 53 Ghada al-Samman (b. 1942) 54 Hanan al-Shaykh (b. 1945) 55 Ahdaf Soueif (b. 1950) 56 Leila Aboulela (b. 1964) Introduction One way of looking at my endeavour in this book is to see it, at least in part, as a reverse study of Edward Said’s (1935–2003) Orientalism. I say ‘in part’ because unlike him I limit myself to the Arab parts of the Orient. If Said’s aim was to con- sider Western perceptions of the Orient, mine is to study Arab representations of the West. Said argues that Europe has largely invented the Orient, that since antiq- uity the Orient has been for Europe ‘a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes’; that the Orient provided Europe with its ‘greatest, richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilisations and languages, its cul- tural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other’. The Orient, he maintains, ‘has helped to define Europe as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience’.1 Said refers to Henry Kissinger’s (b. 1923) classification of developing countries as pre-Newtonian cultures, which cannot deal with empirical reality, that is, cultures to which ‘the real world is almost completely internal to the observer...’2 Alfred Lyall (1835–1911), on the other hand, has argued that ‘accu- racy
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