An official US expert claimed to diagnose 100 million Arabs from four sources
Evidence
Another illustration dovetails neatly—perhaps too neatly—with Kissinger’s analysis. In its February 1972 issue, the American Journal of Psychiatry printed an essay by Harold W. Glidden, who is identified as a retired member of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, United States Department of State; the essay’s title (“The Arab World”), its tone, and its content argue a highly characteristic Orientalist bent of mind. Thus for his four-page, double-columned psychological portrait of over 100 million people, considered for a period of 1,300 years, Glidden cites exactly four sources for his views: a recent book on Tripoli, one issue of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, the periodical Oriente Moderno, and a book by Majid Khadduri, a well-known Orientalist. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 144
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- SHARE: A striking concrete example — a State Department intelligence officer published a psychological portrait of 100 million people over 1,300 years citing only four sources in a psychiatric journal.
- XREF: This exemplifies how expertise manufactures the ‘Other’ from negligible evidence — a mechanism Islamophobia scholarship extends to contemporary experts on Islam.