Said was hostile to Arab Christians despite their PLO role.

Evidence

Although Christian Arabs have from the first played a leading role in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Said’s attitude towards Arab Christians was militantly hostile: ‘I think it must also be said that militant minorities in the Middle East have almost always been aggressors against what Hourani called the universality, self-confidence, and sense of responsibility of Sunni – that is, majority Islam.’ On the same page that this quotation occurs, Said managed to conflate the Christian Arab polemicist al-Kindi with the later and much more famous Muslim polymath of the same name. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 550

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: was Said’s hostility to Arab Christians a consistent position or an artifact of Irwin’s framing? Irwin himself flags Dalrymple as a contrasting view.