Twentieth-century intellectuals attributed laziness, mysticism, and statelessness to Orientals en masse

Evidence

First of all, look at the facts of the case. Western nations as soon as they emerge into history show the beginnings of those capacities for self-government … having merits of their own… . You may look through the whole history of the Orientals in what is called, broadly speaking, the East, and you never find traces of self-government. All their great centuries—and they have been very great—have been passed under despotisms, under absolute governments. All their great contributions to civilization—and they have been great—have been made under that form of government. Conqueror has succeeded conqueror; one domination has followed another; but never in all the revolutions of fate and fortune have you seen one of those nations of its own motivation establish what we, from a Western point of view, call self-government. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 202 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

As Hussain states, this process established ‘an absolute and systematic difference between the West … and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped and inferior’. More worrying for him though, and in offering some explanation of what was to follow, Hussain explains that what emerged was a notion and preconception of the Orient that was ‘uniform and incapable of defining itself … either to be feared … or to be controlled’. — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 188 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Even modernists drawn to Eastern wisdom retained Orientalist mistrust; Orientalism fixed the Orient as uniform, undeveloped, and incapable of self-definition — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 188; Orientalist writings assumed the Orient was inferior and childlike — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 206 (+3 more)

Related

• Balfour denied Orientals any history of self-government (similarity 0.88)
• Colonial discourse recasts Western self-government as a capacity Orientals lack (similarity 0.87)
• Orientalism fixes the Orient as passive reactor to the West’s self-assigned agency (similarity 0.87)
• Latent Orientalism denies the Orient any possibility of development or transformation (similarity 0.86)
• Balfour claimed Orientals never developed capacities for self-government (similarity 0.86)
• Even sympathetic Orientalists denied the Orient modernity by casting it as ancient and Semitic. (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism fixed the Orient as uniform, undeveloped, and incapable of self-definition (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalism defines the Orient as innately resistant to change and modernity (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalist science and personal utterance alike erase the modern Orient’s human reality (similarity 0.86)
• The Orientals-cannot-self-govern claim runs from Oriental despotism through modernization theory (similarity 0.85)
• The idea that Eastern peoples cannot self-govern developed in the Enlightenment and persisted. (similarity 0.85)
• European representation of the Orient outweighs actual Oriental lived experience (similarity 0.85)
• Shared intellectual authority over the Orient unified otherwise divergent national Orientalisms (similarity 0.85)
• Orientalist doctrine attributes untruthfulness to a racialized Oriental mind (similarity 0.85)
• Essentialist Orientalist vision erases historical development in favor of unchanging geographic types. (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Even modernists drawn to Eastern wisdom retained Orientalist mistrust #expands (0.85)
• Balfour denied Orientals any capacity for self-government in 1910 #exemplifies (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 202
• Orientalism fixed the Orient as uniform, undeveloped, and incapable of self-definition #expands (0.82) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 188
• Orientalist writings assumed the Orient was inferior and childlike #expands (0.82) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 206
• Orientalist doctrine attributes untruthfulness to a racialized Oriental mind #expands (0.78)