Orientalist scholarship privileged a monolithic textual Islam over lived human realities

Evidence

Gibb’s master theme, in almost everything he wrote about Islam and the Arabs, was the tension between “Islam” as a transcendent, compelling Oriental fact and the realities of everyday human experience. His investment as a scholar and as a devout Christian was in “Islam,” not so much in the (to him) relatively trivial complications introduced into Islam by nationalism, class struggle, the individualizing experiences of love, anger, or human work. … Like Macdonald, Gibb seems entirely comfortable with the idea of a monolithic East, whose existential circumstances cannot easily be reduced to race or racial theory; in resolutely denying the value of racial generalization Gibb rises above what had been most reprehensible in preceding generations of Orientalists. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 710

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the scaffold for later Islamophobia readings on how the ‘civilizational’ lens flattens internal diversity and politics into a single religious essence. — connects to: Textual Orientalism blames the Quran for every perceived Middle Eastern failing — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 176; Orientalists claimed textual reading revealed the fixed essence of Muslims — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 179; Homogenizing Islam as a monolithic culture anchors all Othering frames (+1 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 710