The Islamic world increasingly learns about itself through Western-produced images

Evidence

For the first time in history (for the first time, that is, on such a scale) the Islamic world may be said to be learning about itself by means of images, histories, and information manufactured in the West. This was dramatically in evidence during the Gulf War when CNN was watched by most Arabs (including, it is rumored, Saddam Hussein) as the principal source on the war. If one adds to this the fact that students and scholars in the Islamic world are still dependent upon American and European libraries and institutions of learning for what now passes as Middle East studies (consider that not one really complete and central library of Arabic material exists anywhere in the entire Islamic world), the fact that English is a world language in a way that Arabic, Persian, and Turkish are not, and the fact that for its elite much of the Islamic, economically oil-based world is now producing a managerial class of natives who are indebted for their economies, their defense establishments, and many of their political opportunities to the worldwide consumer-market system dominated by the West — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 191

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: ‘self-knowledge outsourced’ — how a whole civilization’s self-image is supplied by outsiders; could map onto any periphery-center knowledge relationship.

Related

• Western ideological camps all reduce Islam to a scapegoat (similarity 0.82)
• Understanding Islam’s coverage requires demystifying the power-knowledge link (similarity 0.82)
• Media Islam images derive from geopolitical experts, not academic scholarship (similarity 0.82)
• Westerners encounter Islam only through pre-framed political and media channels. (similarity 0.82)
• Knowledge of other cultures is judged by the needs of the producing society. (similarity 0.81)
• Every portrayal of Islam is an act of willed interpretation, not a description. (similarity 0.80)
• Western scholarship on Islam grew from positions of colonial dominance. (similarity 0.79)
• The Islamic world’s salience as Western challenger is powered by rentier oil economies. (similarity 0.79)
• The West defined itself as the mirror image of the Muslim Orient (similarity 0.79)
• Islamic history resists any single coherent characterization (similarity 0.78)