Academic Orientalist

An academic scholar whose work in Orientalist fields (study of the Middle East, Asia, and Islam) is critiqued for legitimizing crude Western stereotypes of Eastern peoples rather than correcting them, and for providing intellectual justification for colonial and military interventions against Muslim societies, following the critique developed by Edward Said in Orientalism.

Claims that use this term

• Academic Orientalist expertise legitimizes rather than corrects crude stereotypes
• Academic Orientalist ideas preceded and justified military violence against Muslims.