Imposing Western political categories distorts understanding of Middle Eastern loyalties

Evidence

To many Americans it must have seemed incongruous, if not uncongenial, that their government should support a king against an elected parliament, but the out­ ward forms of Middle Eastern political life should not mislead us into equating them with their Western originals. In the Middle Eastern poker game there is nothing inconsistent in a good republican’s playing a hand of three kings—and hoping that no one else will play the aces. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1194 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Following from the above, it is possible to suggest that in distinct contrast to European social scientists (e.g., Nielsen and Kepel), Middle East studies failed to respond to the challenge of political Islam in the 1990s. At one level this is due to the nature of the analytical paradigm that has prevailed within Middle East studies. This was a paradigm which was inherited from Ottoman scholarship and, although it gave analytical primacy to ethnicity, it failed to grasp the complex nature and context within which ethnicities emerge as exemplifications of sociopolitical collectivities at particular historical conjunctures. Thus, although the “cultural and ethnic account” of sociopolitical dynamics has prevailed for decades in Middle East studies, it is an account which differs significantly from the more recent “cultural turn” in Western social sciences. As race and ethnicity moved from the margins of academic discourse to become central in contemporary social research, current scholarship also highlighted the different ways in which the politics of difference and identity formation are socially constructed, mediated, and politicized within modernity … The recent “cultural turn” in social and human sciences, therefore, has also implicitly challenged conventional Western social science and especially the modernization paradigm, which sees modernity as inherently antithetical and inimical to communal and collective identities. In this respect the salience of ethnicity as an organizing principle for political action within modernity has gained academic credibility. Most conventional Middle East scholarship (e.g., Gellner), on the other hand, is still primarily concerned with the salience of traditional ethnoreligious identities and primordial loyalties … With the revival and global spread of political Islam, these Middle East scholars have reaffirmed the essentialist and primordial nature of ethnoreligious identities. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3528 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Arabs hold deeper Arab identification than democratic or global-citizen identity even when outwardly Westernized — Youssef Cherif, Neo-pan-Arabism: a renewed contract of…, 60; Middle Eastern political forms should not be equated with Western originals — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1194; Western impact caused Middle East political formlessness and instability — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 1193 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Imposing Western political categories on Muslim politics produces systematic misreading. #corroborates (1.00)
• Middle Eastern political forms should not be equated with Western originals #corroborates (0.95) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1194
• Middle East studies lagged Western social science in theorizing ethnicity and political Islam #complicates (0.70) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3528