Even sympathetic Orientalists fixed the Orient in an ancient time rather than coeval modernity

Evidence

Yet the framework in which Massignon’s vision was held also assigned the Islamic Orient to an essentially ancient time and the West to modernity. Like Robertson Smith, Massignon considered the Oriental to be not a modern man but a Semite; this reductive category had a powerful grip on his thought. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 691

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the later critique of ‘denial of coevalness’ (Fabian’s Time and the Other) and to the Islamophobia field’s analysis of how scholarly sympathy can still orientalize.
• DEFINE: Illustrates the key Orientalist mechanism: assigning the Orient to antiquity regardless of the scholar’s good will toward it.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 691