The Orientalist’s scholarly work is essentially an act of interpretation from outside, not participation

Evidence

The relation between Orientalist and Orient was essentially hermeneutical: standing before a distant, barely intelligible civilization or cultural monument, the Orientalist scholar reduced the obscurity by translating, sympathetically portraying, inwardly grasping the hard-to-reach object. Yet the Orientalist remained outside the Orient, which, however much it was made to appear intelligible, remained beyond the Occident. This cultural, temporal, and geographical distance was expressed in metaphors of depth, secrecy, and sexual promise: phrases like “the veils of an Eastern bride” or “the inscrutable Orient” passed into the common language. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 558

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘hermeneutical’ relation of the Orientalist to the Orient — translating and interpreting from a position of permanent exteriority.
• XREF: This is the core Orientalism concept that later Islamophobia literature builds on; the ‘veils of an Eastern bride’ and ‘inscrutable Orient’ figures connect directly to analyses of veiling and the feminized/exoticized Muslim Other.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 558