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Reader comment on:
The Bertrand Russell of Islam
in response to reader comment: Reply to Shashi Thandra

Submitted by Shashi Thandra, Dec 24, 2007 22:17

There are several important arguments you bring forward and I would like to address them in the order you make them.

First, the Maxim gun. You are absolutely right to state that there is no obvious military advantage to producing a "false" image of one's enemy. Indeed, as you note, such misunderstandings have created protracted conflicts, including those you mention. However, my use of the phrase "false picture" was provisional and merely took on the terms Mr. Warraq used. That is, the "false" picture is not merely distortion for the sake of making those producing it feel better, i.e. more civilized, about themselves, although that is one entailment. More important for me, and for Said, is that the proliferation of Orientalist discourses helped *dehumanize* the Arab world so that doing violence to the people is not doing violence to human beings as such. They are flattened to targets, obstacles preventing the spread of rational civilization proper. This is not a direct military advantage, one that helps strategize the battlefield. Dehumanization, rather, is how one gets to the battlefield in the first place and I just described one path to get there. The "false" picture is, rather, something akin to an 'ethical' advantage––ethics is not the appropriate word but it is the only one that comes to mind at the moment––one that oddly allows for the eschewing of ethics altogether. That is, if the enemy we are fighting is not human but more like a plague, a virus that produces barbarism, then it is our duty to fight such a force. We, in turn, are allowed to use any means necessary to fulfill this duty.

Although I allude to mass bombings and atomic weapons in my last clause, it is very important to remember this (ill)logic is not the sole property of the 'West'. Indeed, the Rwandan genocide and its use of machetes to cut down the Tutsi "cockroaches" is a tragic reminder that dehumanization and its consequences are not so easily isolatable.

More soon.

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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...	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

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Reader comment on:
The Bertrand Russell of Islam
in response to reader comment: Reply to Shashi Thandra