Modern Orientalism secularized inherited Christian structures rather than gaining objective knowledge

Evidence

My thesis is that the essential aspects of modern Orientalist theory and praxis (from which present-day Orientalism derives) can be understood, not as a sudden access of objective knowledge about the Orient, but as a set of structures inherited from the past, secularized, redisposed, and re-formed by such disciplines as philology, which in turn were naturalized, modernized, and laicized substitutes for (or versions of) Christian supernaturalism. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 333

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the load-bearing thesis: Orientalism defined as secularized, laicized versions of Christian supernaturalism — a key concept the reader’s Islamophobia scaffold needs.
• XREF: Connects to Weber’s ‘disenchantment’ and the secularization thesis; also to Foucault’s discourse as the reader is building a genealogy toolkit. — connects to: Enlightenment does not eliminate myth but re-enters it as secularized domination — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 46
• DEEPTHINKING: The core redefinition — that apparently secular philology is really Christian supernaturalism in disguise — is dense enough to sit with. It’s the conceptual engine of the whole book.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 333