Orientalist scholars impose external analytical categories that Muslims themselves would not recognize

Evidence

Any clarity about what Islam is in Gibb’s thought ought to be found within these metaphysical constraints, and indeed his two important works of the forties, Modern Trends in Islam and Mohammedanism: An Historical Survey, flesh out matters considerably. In both books Gibb is at great pains to discuss the present crisis in Islam, opposing its inherent, essential being to modern attempts at modifying it. I have already mentioned Gibb’s hostility to modernizing currents in Islam and his stubborn commitment to Islamic orthodoxy. Now it is time to mention Gibb’s preference for the word Mohammedanism over Islam (since he says that Islam is really based upon an idea of apostolic succession culminating in Mohammed) and his assertion that the Islamic master science is law, which early on replaced theology. The curious thing about these statements is that they are assertions made about Islam, not on the basis of evidence internal to Islam, but rather on the basis of a logic deliberately outside Islam. No Muslim would call himself a Mohammedan, nor so far as is known would he necessarily feel the importance of law over theology. But what Gibb does is to situate himself as a scholar within contradictions he himself discerns, at that point in “Islam” where “there is a certain unexpressed dislocation between the formal outward process and the inner realities.” — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 716

Categorization

• XREF: The Orientalist claim of privileged access to the truth of Islam it cannot express connects forward to the classical argument that self-description is always already framed by power’s categories — resonates with how Islamophobia discourse later polices who may speak for Muslims.
• DEFINE: Defines the Orientalist intellectual move: situating oneself at the point of a self-discerned ‘dislocation’ between outward process and inner reality to claim authority over the object.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 716