Reply to Shashi Thandra - Reader comments at The New York Sun

Recent Blog Posts

Reader comment on:
The Bertrand Russell of Islam
in response to reader comment: Criticisms

Submitted by georgesdelatour, Dec 23, 2007 18:28

You say, "Producing a false picture is precisely "how" the imperial project was accomplished." I thought it was, rather, because, as Hilaire Belloc put it, "we have got the Maxim gun and they have not". Please explain to me, how does it help an invader to have a false underestimation of those he is invading? In 1941 Hitler believed in a false, Orientalist, picture of Soviet Russia, thinking it far more backward, depleted and "Slavic" than it actually was. The result of his Orientalist fantasy was the Red Army in Berlin. I have just finished reading "The Cross And The Crescent" by Richard Fletcher. Fletcher shows how the relative decline of the Islamic Caliphate and ascendancy of Christian Europe in the late Middle Ages was partly caused by the Islamic world's "Occidentalist" attitude of lofty distain towards Christendom. They couldn't believe that the fragmentary kingdoms of Europe, with their earlier, flawed revelation, could ever outperform the Ummah with their later, superior one. Their distain blinded them to the real advances taking place in Europe. How does the Japanese Meiji Restoration fit into a Said-style Orientalist analysis? Here was an oriental nation suddenly confronted by occidental superiority of the Belloc kind. The Japanese did not respond in Said fashion, by convincing themselves this western superiority was all in the mind, a mere product of foreign black propaganda. They decided the superiority was real, and they better catch up as quickly as possible. Soon it was the European powers who would pay for underestimating the Japanese. The economic rise of South Korea, the Asean economies, and now China and India, has come from these nations all learning, more pacifically, what the Japanese learned previously. This suggests that Said's work probably holds back the economic development of middle eastern nations, and actually helps those who would like to dominate and exploit them. Finally, I find your comment about Iraq incoherent. The American Neo-conservatives believed that Iraqis were just like Americans. Get rid of their dictator, give them a US-style federal constitution, and they'll start behaving just like Americans - that was the Neocon argument. It is those who who oppose the Neocons who usually rely on Orientalist arguments - that middle eastern clan structures and first-cousin marriages make western-style democracy unworkable, that middle eastern cultures are not suited to democracy, that Islam is different, etc.

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.

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,...	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... [MORE]	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: Criticisms

Other reader comments on this article

Comment on The Bertrand Russell of Islam

Reader comment on:
The Bertrand Russell of Islam
in response to reader comment: Criticisms