Orientalism’s two-century failure stems from neglecting individual ethical formation.

Evidence

It is neither reductionism nor an overstatement to say that at the source of the failure lies a deep disconnection with the central importance of individual ethical formation, one that Foucault has famously declared to be an art that is now “obscure,” having “faded” in the landscapes of modernity. There is no route to understanding the Quran’s role in constitutional organization and its centrality in the answer to skepticism outside this ethical formation, for it is this very formation that provides the foundation of critique for assailing the dominance and performativity of modernity’s discursive formations. Which is also to say that this understanding is not to be conducted on behalf of the Orient or its Muslims, but rather for the sake of the Orientalist himself. If anything, she, like all her colleagues in other disciplines, needs it more than anyone else. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 517

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for an essay: the thesis that the West needs Islamic ethical formation more than the Orient does — reversing the classical Orientalist pupil-teacher relationship.