European Orientalism

European Orientalism refers to the Western European scholarly and cultural tradition of studying, representing, and often stereotyping or exoticizing the “Orient” (Middle East, Asia, and North Africa), particularly as critiqued in postcolonial theory. The term is associated with the idea that this body of knowledge was intertwined with and served colonial power, and was later inherited and reworked by American academic institutions (e.g., in area studies) after World War II.

Claims that use this term

• European Orientalism was normalized into a coherent US scholarly consensus
• Quranic exegesis predated European Orientalism by over a millennium
• American empire inherited and reformulated European Orientalism after World War II
• European Orientalism was normalized and domesticated into American area studies