From orientalism to islamic studies

Religion and Education

Volumn 25, Issue 1-2, 1998, Pages 20-29

  Al Faruqi, Maysam ^a  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84946203893     PISSN: 15507394     EISSN: 19498381     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/15507394.1998.11000875     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. The author wishes to express her gratitude to Frederick J. Ruf and John J. Donohue s. j. for their suggestions and comments.
2. See, e.g. the works of G. van der Leeuw and Chantepie de la Saussaye.
3. Cited in an article Poll finds America ‘as Churched as Ever’ in the Washington Post, May 31 1997.
4. There are some journals devoted to new religious movements but they do not consider themselves investigating “Christian” theology.
5. Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge, New York: Pantheon Books, 1972 and Discipline and Punish, New York:Vintage Books. 1979.
6. Claude Levi-Strauss, Le Regard Eloigne, Paris:Plon, 1983;.
7. Race et Histoire, Paris: Ed. Gonthier, UNESCO, 1961;.
8. Culture et nature in Commentaire, no. 15, Automne, 1981;.
9. Antbropologie Structurale, Paris: Plon, 1958.
10. Norman Daniel (Islam and The West, Edimburgh:University Press, I960) and Louis Gardet in most of his works already warn of the biases of the discipline. See also.
11. Anouar Abdel-Malek, “L’Orientalisme encrise” in Diogenes no 44,1964, pp. 130-140.
12. A L. Tibawi “English speaking Orientalists” in The Muslim World, LIII:3& 4,1963.
13. Edward Said, Orientalism, New York:Vintage Books, 1979.
14. See also Orientalism, Islam and Islamists, edited by Husain, Olson and Qureshi, Vermont:Amana Books, 1984.
15. Orientalists themselves do not agree with the criticism, but they are fast becoming the minority in the field. There have been some replies to this concerted criticism-notably that of Bernard Lewis in Islam and the West, Oxford: University Press, 1993-1 would note that in that book, the response of Mr. Lewis (who compares Orientalism with Greek classical studies when cleariy the latter is claimed as part and parcel of Western civilization and if anything, would be a realm for apologetics rather than attacks) tends to focus on the suspicions of the “anti-Orientalists” rather than the subject matter of these suspicions. The anti-Orientalists’ views can be dismissal because, we are told, they attribute nefarious motives to “Christian,” “Jewish,” “Zionist” authors-which, we are to understand, amounts to some form of anti-semitic unobjective attitude that can lie simply overlooked. As to the content of their criticism, it has been avoided. Said is attacked for his omissions or (slight) inaccuracies in reporting historical (acts when the whole subject of Said’s book is about the nature of the Orientalist discourse rather than about historical factsand that of course is what should be responded to. In a grand and typical way, lewis concludes that “[t]he most rigorous and penetrating critique of Orientalist, as of any other, scholarship has always been and will remain that of their fellow scholars” (p. 118), again showing that the Orientalist discourse amounts ultimately to only a discourse. There is gende irony in the fact that die tremendous self-cridcism and the epistemological works on the genesis of knowledge and its relativisation which have pervaded and tnuis-fonned every Western field of knowledge in die second part of this centuryincluding philosophyhas yet to reach Orientalism; it remains, it would seem, die last bastion of the 19th century firm belief in the absolute objectivity and scholarship of Western thought to the exclusion of all other cultures.
16. Carra de Vaux in Questions Diplomaliques et Coloniales. May 15 1901, p. 579. Quoted and translated by the late Marwan Buheiry in Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 1& 2, Spring 1982.
17. Von Grunebaum, Modem Islam, New York :Vintage Books, 1964.
18. p.8.
19. Brian Turner, “Orientalism and the Problem of Civil Society in Islam” in Orientalism, Islam andIslamicists, Modem Islam., p. 26.
20. Brian Turner, “Orientalism and the Problem of Civil Society in Islam”, p. 40.
21. The interest in Orientalism started in the realm of philology. As to their premises and methods, one may be referred to the scathing critique of their work in Orientalism by Edward Said, “Orientalism and the Problem of Civil Society in Islam”.
22. See, on the criticism of this and other such views, Isma’il R. alFaruqi, “Misconceptions of the Nature of the Work of Art in Islam” in Islam and the Modem Age. vol. 1, no. 1, May 1970.
23. Michael Cook, Muhammad, “Misconceptions of the Nature of the Work of Art in Islam” Oxford: University Press, 1983, pp.88-89.
24. See Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, Mark Achbared., New York:Black Rose Books, 1994.
25. Brian Turner, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 25.
26. W.M. Watt, Islamic Political Thought. Edimburgh: University Press, 1968, p.10.
27. Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Seen Through Arab Eves, New York:Shocken, 1984.