Decontextualized polemic becomes misread as straightforward history

Evidence

His short book, Orientalism, was published in 1999.31 The influence of Said’s earlier book is pervasive, though Sardar has added some digressions on cultural studies, as well some factual errors that are entirely original to him. … He claims that the ‘foundation of Orientalism was laid by John of Damascus’ and adds that his book became ‘the classical source of all Christian writings on Islam’. But John wrote in Greek and most of those Christians who wrote about Islam in the following centuries knew no Greek. Sardar has Pope Urban preach the First Crusade at Clermont in 1096. The correct date is 1095. Writing about the Crusades, he claims that ‘Jerusalem itself did not fall back into Muslim hands until 1244’. Actually Saladin occupied it in 1187. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 594 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In short, and unlike the philosophico-juridical discourse organized around the problem of sovereignty and the law, the discourse that deciphers war’s permanent presence within society is essentially a historico-political discourse, a discourse in which truth functions as a weapon to be used for a partisan victory, a discourse that 1s darkly critical and at the same time intensely mythical. — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 285 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Anti-Orientalist polemicists made basic historical and source-language errors — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists…, 594; Political discourse dissolves complexity into myth and suppresses causal understanding; War-deciphering discourse is historico-political, critical and mythical rather than juridical — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 285 (+4 more)

Related

• Anti-Orientalist polemicists made basic historical and source-language errors (similarity 0.90)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Orientalist polemicists made basic historical and source-language errors #corroborates (0.75) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 594
• Political discourse dissolves complexity into myth and suppresses causal understanding #corroborates (0.75)
• War-deciphering discourse is historico-political, critical and mythical rather than juridical #contradicts (0.72) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 285