Edward Said claims that the western conception of the east is negative. He tends to say that western scholars on the east, whom he calls ‘Orientalists’ are creating, rather than observing the east. Said accuses Western scholars of stereotyping the Orient. Said further accuses Western scholars of representing exceptional occurrences as mainstream behavior. Moreover, He claims that much of the produced scholarship was in fact meant to justify and prolong hierarchical relations between East and West. To prove his position, he enumerates an endless list of movies, artworks, and scholarship that all confirm our stereotypes of the Orient.[2]
On the other hand, Robert Irwin writes that Edward Said’s book is “a work of malignant charlatanry.” Robert Irwin claims that what Edward Said writes is simply untrue and a denial of hundreds of years of scholarship. He says, “The Arabs and Turks were not regarded as barbarians, nor were they consciously regarded as non-European.” To answer Said, Irwin comes up with his examples where he points out western scholars who were seeing the orient positively like Guillaume Postel. He further gives the example of Saladin, saying that he was taken up to heroic status in the west. He adds up, Many Orientalists were in fact anti-establishment and that there was no reason to assume they were politically interested rather than scientific. His accusal, Edward Said simply leaves out many sources that do not fit with his thesis. He puts the case that The Germans were the leading Orientalists of the 19th and 20th century and there is no reason to assume they had imperialist motives. Irwin’s final strike: Said claims that Europeans were biased towards the Orient, long before Europeans would consider themselves or the Orient as existing, coherent entities.[3]
If we give a scholarly overlook, we can suppose that Dr. Irwin’s claim can be defended because, there were western scholars who are, nowadays called ‘Arabists’ such as Adelard of Bath, Daniel of Morley and others[1]. We can easily see that the Royal Society of England was always enthusiastic about oriental (literally, Muslim) writings.[1] Furthermore, there is evidence that Europeans such as Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus and others were called ‘Sorcerers’ ‘Necromancers’ etc[1]. So one may suppose that the occident had problems with knowledge, not with non-European scholars.
But actually, this conjecture would be wrong and Robert Irwin’s viewpoint cannot be defended. Because scholars such as Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus and others, who took knowledge from Muslim Spain were called ‘Andalusians’. So even here we can see the ‘Orientalism’. They took knowledge from the west, but from eastern people, so they were ridiculed. Therefore, Mr. Irwin’s claim using a few positive personalities doesn’t make sense. Making the point of Saladin doesn’t mean anything as well because Prophet Muhammad was made the ‘Anti-Christ’ in the west.[2]
In front of Edward Said’s numerous examples, Robert Irwin just has a handful. Mr. Irwin, though gives counter examples, fails to prove Edward Said’s points wrong. Actually, even up to this day we see western stereotypes towards the Orient. So Robert Irwin’s claims, in the end, prove nothing except that ‘Orientalism’ cannot be refuted.
References:
- Salah Zaimeche, The Impact of Islamic Science and Learning on England
- Edward Said, Orientalism (Penguin Books India, 1994)
- Robert Irwin, Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents (Overlook Press, 2006)
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