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Reader comment on:
The Bertrand Russell of Islam
in response to reader comment: Said's Successful Sabotage

Submitted by Suzanne Oliver, Dec 18, 2007 10:57

In my own work I both critique and make use of Said and his thoughts about colonialism.

I cheer at the idea that his work has lead to a rethinking of easy critiques of Islam and that his work is widely read throughout the world.

I am happy to read a thorough critique of Said - it brought me to this website. This is not one of them.

Using Western celebrations/appropriations of the Other do nothing at all, however, to answer to the engine of Orientalist thought: essentialism.

There is no fixable, knowable East but the work of Orientalism was the work of making a fixed and definable other against which to define the self. This process is of course enduring. It is of course significant: It is evident in the critique Warraq himself constructs. Five hundred years of "thought" and deployment of that thought as rationale for genocide and destruction of peoples and cultures continue to re-entrench it.

The real critique of Said lies elsewhere in far more fraught waters than are touched on by arguments which merely reproduce centuries old relations of power. To be brave is not to stand up for the logic of the West as against the East but to begin to rethink any such simplistic division at all. The contexts of these critiques cannot be reduced to a process of "victimization" and conquerer - yet another binary. The East Warraq constructs is once again bounded by the West and not contextualized and read through the historical processes that still shape, as Fanon wrote about the veil in Algeria, the Islam that the West and Mr. Warraq are so eager to criticize.

Postcolonialism is a failure insofar that anything was "post"-ed at all. The process itself is evident here in this critique and not behind anything at all. At no point has my work in these studies been a movement away from critique of Islam or any of the West's Others. Understanding power means moving with it from specific context to specific context and not placing essentialist, colonial limits upon analysis.

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Other reader comments on this article

Comment	By	Date
Let me respond first by noting that Said's influential book is indeed deeply flawed, and in Terry Eagleton's apt phrasing,... [MORE]	Shashi Thandra	Dec 19, 2007 02:50
To quote: "...question of how one avoids ethnocentrism without also collapsing into a toothless cultural relativism that remains mute to... [MORE]	Jerzy Kaltenberg	Dec 22, 2007 05:14
To argue against you, Mr. Kaltenberg, I hope you won't mind that I quote you quoting me. "...The argument... [MORE]	Shashi Thandra	Dec 22, 2007 14:48
heheh -- first you admit that Said is deeply flawed. But then you claim that post-colonial theory which was invented... [MORE]	Mohsen	Dec 22, 2007 22:59
How is thinking about violence, both epistemic and bodily, a utopian project? And what is the teleology of this project,... [MORE]	Shashi Thandra	Dec 23, 2007 13:48
You say, "Producing a false picture is precisely "how" the imperial project was accomplished." I thought it was, rather, because,... [MORE]	georgesdelatour	Dec 23, 2007 18:28
There are several important arguments you bring forward and I would like to address them in the order you make... [MORE]	Shashi Thandra	Dec 24, 2007 18:59
There are several important arguments you bring forward and I would like to address them in the order you make... [MORE]	Shashi Thandra	Dec 24, 2007 22:17
personally i've always had difficulty with the distinction, east and west. where does west become east exactly? when did this... [MORE]	rob windsor	Dec 18, 2007 18:30
Minor quibble, but please note that Asoka was not a Mughal emperor. I doubt if Warraq could have made such... [MORE]	omar ali	Dec 18, 2007 14:41
The review does not say that Ashoka was a Mughal emperor. Strictly speaking he was not Indian. He was Mauryan. [MORE]	Jim Bonner	Dec 18, 2007 23:13
""'Orientalism,'" Mr. Warraq writes, "taught an entire generation of Arabs the art of self-pity … encouraged the Islamic fundamentalist generation... [MORE]	Michael Manion	Dec 18, 2007 12:17
If you knew anything about the Islamic 'Bertrand Russel' by the name of Ibn Warraq, he traces Muslim self-defeatism and... [MORE]	Hamid	Dec 21, 2007 08:31
Edward Said's comments of course need critiques, so I enjoyed reading this article. Leaving aside my personal opinions, which were... [MORE]	Luther Obrock	Dec 18, 2007 11:06
I congratulate Mr Weiss for bringing Mr Warraq's writing to our atention. It would have been stunning if Mr Warraq... [MORE]	Anthony Steyning	Dec 18, 2007 09:24
The mention of Ashoka as a Mughal emperor gave me a small heart attack. He was a Mauryan emperor, who... [MORE]	Arun Vasudev	Dec 18, 2007 08:32
Mr. Warraq is correct in many ways. He reveals the truth that Edward Said was an intellectually dishonest analyst of... [MORE]	Roberta E. Dzubow	Dec 13, 2007 13:10
In my own work I both critique and make use of Said and his thoughts about colonialism. I cheer at the...	Suzanne Oliver	Dec 18, 2007 10:57
Aren't there non-Western, that is, Asian, victims of Islam? How are Muslims who convert to other religions treated by the... [MORE]	Tony	Feb 18, 2008 19:12
Nicely written article by someone who knows something (Weiss) reviewing a book by one of the bravest intellectuals alive (Ibn... [MORE]	mhw	Dec 13, 2007 08:52
Not accurate or focused! More later. [MORE]	Allen Tobias	Dec 12, 2007 21:41

Reader comment on:The Bertrand Russell of Islamin response to reader comment: Said's Successful Sabotage

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Reader comment on:
The Bertrand Russell of Islam
in response to reader comment: Said's Successful Sabotage