Anti-colonial movements disproved the mosque-state-fusion Orientalist stereotype

Evidence

Beginning in the twenties, and from one end of the Third World to the other, the response to empire and imperialism has been dialectical. By the time of the Bandung Conference in 1955 the entire Orient had gained its political independence from the Western empires and confronted a new configuration of imperial powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Unable to recognize “its” Orient in the new Third World, Orientalism now faced a challenging and politically armed Orient. Two alternatives opened before Orientalism. One was to carry on as if nothing had happened. The second was to adapt the old ways to the new. But to the Orientalist, who believes the Orient never changes, the new is simply the old betrayed by new, misunderstanding dis-Orientals (we can permit ourselves the neologism). — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 293 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The easy alliances demonstrated in these three books between racism, neo-liberalism, the American politics of empire and Israeli politics of occupation reveal the tie that binds them: a wilful inattention to history. In culture-clash explanations, if fundamentalism has arisen in Muslim parts of the world, it is because that is how they are. We cannot begin to consider, as Yegenoglu does of veiling in Colonial Fantasies, how colonial policies in Algeria, for example, so denigrated everything Islamic that anti-colonial movements won popular support by proposing a return to Islamic tradition, a tradition understood largely as the opposite of the foreigners. Within the Manichean world created by colonialism, women’s bodies remained the terrain on which men sought to articulate their desires and fears. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 242 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The Central Islamic lands are defined as excluding North Africa and Andalusia, and their history is an orderly march from the past till modern times. In volume 1, therefore, Islam is a geographical designation applied chronologically and selectively as it suits the experts. But nowhere in the chapters on classical Islam is there an adequate preparation for the disappointments in store for us when we come to “recent times,” as they are called. The chapter on the modern Arab lands is written without the slightest understanding of the revolutionary developments in the area. The author takes a schoolmarmish, openly reactionary attitude towards the Arabs (“it must be said that during this period the educated and uneducated youth of the Arab countries, with their enthusiasm and idealism, became a fertile soil for political exploitation and, at times, perhaps without realizing it, the tools of unscrupulous extremists and agitators”127), tempered by occasional praise of Lebanese nationalism (although we are never told that the appeal of fascism to a small number of Arabs during the thirties also infected the Lebanese Maronites, who in 1936 founded the Falanges libanaises as a copy of Mussolini’s Black Shirts). “Unrest and agitation” are ascribed to 1936 without a mention of Zionism, and the very notions of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism are never allowed to violate the serenity of the narrative. As for the chapters on “the political impact of the West” and “economic and social change”—ideas left no more specific than that—they are tacked on as reluctant concessions to Islam as having something to do with “our” world in general. Change is unilaterally equated with modernization, even though it is nowhere made clear why other kinds of change need be so imperiously dismissed. Since it is assumed that Islam’s only worthwhile relations have been with the West, the importance of Bandung or of Africa or of the Third World generally is ignored; this blithe indifference to a good three-quarters of reality somewhat explains the amazingly cheerful statement that “the historical ground has been cleared [by whom, for what, in what way?] for a new relationship between the West and Islam … based on equality and cooperation.” — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 768 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial denigration of Islam drove anti-colonial movements to embrace Islam as resistance — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 242; Anti-colonial cultural criticism predates Orientalism in the colonized world — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 311; Decolonization confronted Orientalism with a politically armed Orient it could not recognize — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 293 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Decolonization confronted Orientalism with a politically armed Orient it could not recognize #corroborates (0.82) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 293
• Colonial denigration of Islam drove anti-colonial movements to embrace Islam as resistance #corroborates (0.78) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 242
• Anti-colonial cultural criticism predates Orientalism in the colonized world #expands (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 311
• Orientalist historiography equates all change with Westernization and erases anti-colonial resistance #corroborates (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 768
• Anti-colonial cultural critique existed for a century before Orientalism yet Said ignored it #expands (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 709