Centuries of Orientalist scholarship have functioned as domination and violence

Evidence

The study of Islam (as of any Other), insofar as it has been conducted up to this point, has in effect resulted in domination and violence, notwithstanding the various contributions of individual scholars. In harnessing the Islamic and other “Oriental” heritages for self-constructive techniques and projects, the new approach will simultaneously convert failed intentions into effective, if not performative, discourse. This would be introspective Orientalism, a scholarly approach whose goal is reconstructing the self first, thereby changing its relationship to itself and then to the Other. This approach involves understanding the ways in which Oriental cultures of premodernity—in their organicist view of the world and their reflective ways of living in it—can provide heuristic sources for articulating new ways of thinking the world and of living in it. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 483

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Said’s Orientalism and to postcolonial critiques of knowledge-as-power in other curated texts. — connects to: Centuries of Christian violence served protecting power and privilege — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 447; American Orientalism justifies therapeutic violence against Arabs as civilizing mission — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 235; Neocons deliberately leveraged academic Orientalist authority to sanction their wars
• SEED: Possible essay: rethinking area studies as self-construction rather than extraction of the Other.