Sympathetic Orientalists distort Eastern thought by forcing it into Western frames

Evidence

But not all Orientalist misrepresentations are negative. Some Orientalists, out of “sympathy for Eastern conceptions,” endeavor “at all costs” to make these conceptions “fit into the frames of Western thought,” with equally harmful results, “disfiguring them altogether” and demonstrating yet again how little they understand these civilizations and their repertoire of thought. In this case, it is not just a matter of not being able to “see,” a case of epistemic blindness generated by the overwhelming power of the cultural formations that the West has produced, and that have swept the “official” bulk of Orientalism, but rather one of “exactly seeing what is not there.” — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 317

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the critique of ‘nice’ colonialist translation in comparative religion and translation studies (e.g., Lefevere’s ‘domestication’).