Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
AIR UNIVERSITY
by
Maj USAF
April 2008
The views expressed in this academic research paper are those of the author(s) and do not reflect
the official policy or position of the U.S. government or the Department of Defense. In
accordance with Air Force Instruction 51-303, it is not copyrighted, but it is the property of the
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Contents
Page
DISCLAIMER………………………………………………….….……......ii
PREFACE………………………………………………………….........…..iv
ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………...vi
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………..1
GENEALOGY OF ORIENTALISM..…………………...……….........…....3
AMERICAN ORIENTALISM..……………….………………………........11
CONCLUSIONS………………………………………….…………....…....27
RECOMMENDATIONS…………………………………………….….......28
ENDNOTES………………………………………………………….….......30
BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………….…..36
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Preface
As a Moroccan officer attending the Air Command and Staff College, I have often had to
deal with situations, texts and views where deep-seated and sometimes horrendous stereotypes
about the Arabs and Muslims were consistently recurrent. While some of these stereotypes are
still enshrouded in a semblance of political correctness, many other biased ideas are taken for
granted as they are openly circulated in respectable media and authoritative academic works.
What struck me is that even at an age where scientific tools and means are available on an
unprecedented scale, gross and sweeping generalizations about the Middle-East--that could be
effectively verified through empirically supported data like surveys, interviews or statistics--
This paper purports to show that the cultural assumptions that underlie such lax intellectual
treatment of the Middle-East are the result of a whole discourse which is currently known in
academic circles as “Orientalism.” This pervasive discourse, also known as the Orientalist
tradition, has formed over the historical period extending from medieval ages to modern times. It
consists of popular attitudes supported by well established scholarship, which command most
aspects of perception and interaction with the Middle-East. The terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001 and the much publicized “Clash of Civilizations” have certainly contributed to the
criminal but overly spectacular actions committed by a small and marginal band of crazed
fanatics in what is called “the capture of big ideas by a tiny minority”1 played a major role in
accentuating the stigma about the “evil Arab” or the “evil Muslim.” These perceptions lie in
contrast to the fact that the vast majority of Arab and Muslim countries count among the
staunchest and most committed allies of the United States. The Clash of Civilization, as it will be
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argued in this work, is an offshoot of Orientalism, which presents the world in Manichean terms
where Middle-Easterners are just overexcited and dehumanized hordes bent on jumping at the
West’s throat at the very first occasion. I truly believe that military officers should have a fair
idea about the debates raging nowadays in American academic circles regarding the issue of
perception and reality in so far as Middle–East Studies are concerned. The publication of Edward
Said’s seminal book Orientalism2 in 1978 has spurred a heated debate in area studies that never
abated. With its critique of Western studies of Oriental cultures, this book has indeed reshaped
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of my thesis advisor, Dr. Edward
Ouelette who gave me the liberty to explore this significant topic and then helped me focus my
thoughts into a cohesive product. He spared no efforts in providing me with his kind and
generous advice, his critical review and valuable suggestions which have been of great help in
accomplishing this work. I want also to express my deepest love and appreciation for my wife
and little daughter, Souad and Marwa, for their unwavering support and patience during my
N.B.: Given the scope of this paper, it is certainly not the place to survey all the vast literature produced
on the Middle-East and Islam since medieval times. It was therefore necessary to rely on authoritative
works by renowned academics who compiled substantial materials to evidence the ways in which Middle-
Easterners and Muslims had been and continue to be portrayed and understood. In this regard, I would
like to name three books in particular: Orientalim,4 American Orientalism: The United States and the
Middle-East since 1945,5 and Contending visions of the Middle-East: The History and Politics of
Orientalism.6
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AU/ACSC/7348/2008-04
Abstract
Orientalism as a scholarly tradition and a mode of thought looms large in the perceptions of
the Middle-East both at the public and official spheres in America. This paper traces the
formation of the Orientalist outlook back to the Middle-Ages. It argues that the Orientalist vision
of the Middle-East has largely informed the interactions between the United-States and the
Middle-East during much of the twentieth century up to the present day. In particular, the
Orientalist expertise provided to civilian and military decision makers, under the guise of Area
Studies, has time and again proven inaccurate or confusing with often disastrous long-term
consequences. The on-going war in Iraq is the ultimate illustration of how Orientalist
conventional wisdom had it wrong. The stark discrepancies between expert predictions and
actual developments and the growing insistence on cultural awareness among the US military
seem to underscore the limits of the prevailing Orientalist paradigm of perception. While
Orientalist knowledge should not be rejected wholesale, there is a need to empanel other Middle-
East experts, who are shorn of Orientalist bias, to achieve a balanced assessment of the
developments in this critical region of the world. Likewise, military curricula and recommended
reading lists should include other authoritative materials which present other perspectives on the
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INTRODUCTION
“Orientalism is a style of thought based upon ontological and epistemological distinction made
between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’” Edward Said7
Counterinsurgency experts have somewhat belatedly rediscovered that central to the best
practices in the war against insurgents and terrorists is to win the war of perceptions. The
Population has thus been recognized as an overriding center of gravity of any counterinsurgency
strife. It has become essential to bring it to the point where it perceives the coalition’s forces as
part of the solution and not as part of the problem. This insight has given way to enormous
efforts to heighten military officers’ cultural understanding and cultural awareness.8 However,
few experts, have so far emphasized the fact that achieving full awareness of the adversary’s
culture (and not the adversary culture)9 entails not only a kind of cultural empathy but also by
way of consequence changing one’s own perception of that culture. Thus assuming adequate or
at least accurate cultural awareness means casting aside pre-conceived ideas (or pre-existing
In the on-going war in Iraq, perceptions have proven particularly relevant to the conduct
of military operations. However, because Western perceptions of the Middle-East did not
develop in a vacuum, the ideas so-far dominating Western outlook of this critical region, and
forming the personal repertoire of most Westerners, are predetermined by each individual’s
experience within his/her culture. This experience is mostly shaped by the images, ideas and
impressions retained from exposure to popular culture, media and more or less elaborate
interests. The common denominator between all these individual experiences, as far as the
Middle-East is concerned, is that they are all immersed in a predominant consensus or discourse
about the representation of this critical region of the world. Academia has identified this
prevalent mode of Western representation of the Orient in general and the Middle-East in
particular as Orientalism.
vision that owes a great deal to tumultuous interactions and established intellectual and scholarly
traditions going back as far as the Middle Ages. The reductionism of this vision is particularly
patent when this region is referred to in terms of its prevalent religion: Islam. In the media and
academia, Islam is almost invariably contrasted sharply with the West or Modernity as though it
was “unchanging in essence and totally controlling the mental life and social behavior of all
Muslims everywhere and at all times.”10 Such an essentialist view overlooks the complexities
and diversities of Muslim beliefs and practices, the existence of Muslim secularists and Muslim
agnostics and denies the Muslims any kind of individuality or human experience.11 In short, it is
This paper explores the process of the making of the Middle-East’s image in the West’s
consciousness. It traces the formation of Orientalism from medieval times to the contemporary
era. It demonstrates how antagonistic attitudes evolved from the first crusade through the
enlightenment period leading to the birth of the scholarly discipline “Orientalism” in the
eighteenth century. Scholarly Orientalism would later lend its name to the whole discourse
whereby the Middle-East as part of the Orient is construed, represented and understood in
Western Media and popular culture. A substantial part of the paper focuses on the influence of
demonstrated through historical evidence, has often been pernicious or misleading. American
interactions with the Middle-East have indeed been plagued by deep-seated Orientalist
misgivings resulting in often flawed policies and counterproductive attitudes. Therefore there is a
them with other academic inputs based more on empirical data than on overarching
generalizations.
Thanks to the Orientalist tradition, the Western outlook of the Middle-East continues to
be dominated by enduring legacies from the past.13 Human societies are naturally inclined to
define themselves in relation to the “other”. In ancient times, the Greeks, whose heritage is
claimed by the West, often contrasted themselves with Asians in rather stark and essentialized
terms.14 The purpose was to celebrate and assert their self-perceived uniqueness and
superiority.15 Roman political philosophers would later adopt the East/West polarity developed
by the Greeks, drawing on some of the images of the ancient Greek city-state, to define
themselves as civilized while the whole world around them was invariably barbaric.16 The same
kinds of ideas later permeated influential works of prominent historians like Gibbon (1737-94).
They went as far as to attribute the downfall of the Western Roman Empire to the “infection” by
the vices of the East.17 They also excluded Byzantium from Europe’s “Roman heritage” which
The views of the Middle-East as decadent and corrupt are therefore age old. They
precede even the advent of Islam which constituted a watershed in the relationship between the
East and the West. Even before the first encounter between Europeans and Muslims, the
Europeans, who did not really conceive of themselves as European or Western at the time, used
to nurture an idea of mistrust and fear of the new power rising in the Arabian Peninsula. The
sweeping new faith represented a real challenge to the dominant Christendom. “All sort of
bizarre and derogatory myths about the ‘Saracens’ circulated in Europe, among the educated as
well as the masses, reflecting the fear and hostility which Christians felt for the Muslims who
were the new competitors on the world stage.”19 For instance, in AD 786, in a letter recording
synodal decrees, sent by Bishop Georgius of Ostia, England’s papal legate, to Pope Hadrian, the
ninth item reads: “That no ecclesiastic shall dare to consume foodstuffs in secret, unless on
account of very great illness, since it is hypocrisy and a Saracen practice.”20 Thus, three centuries
before the Crusades, at a time when Arabic was not yet studied in Christian Europe, the Qur’an
was not yet translated into Latin and no contact was yet established with the Arabs, Saracen was
through inherited images and stereotypes.23 The era of the crusades has indeed deeply marked
Western perceptions of Islam and the Middle-East. In the eleventh century, new developments in
Anatolia and Mesopotamia accentuated the fear of the rising power of Muslim polities in the
East. However, the threat posed to the Byzantine emperor, who appealed to the pope Urban II for
help was not posed by an homogenous Islam. It was rather emanating from Seljuk Turks who
were carving their own empire in Western Asia, wresting territories from both Muslim and
Christian states alike. The first crusade was sparked only after the Seljuks seized Palestine from
the Egypt-based Fatimids and disrupted Christian pilgrimages to Jerusalem and the Holy land,
which had long been tolerated by successive Muslim rulers.24 Following the launching of the
crusades, Christian figures no less prominent than Peter the Venerable, abbot of the monastery of
Cluny, saw Islam as a Christian Heresy –just like the Arians who rejected the dogma of the Holy
Trinity-25 and argued that it could not be destroyed unless its errors were understood.26 He thus
oversaw the first translation ever of the Qur’an into Latin in 1143.27 Later, Roger Bacon (1214
1320) along with other Church scholars urged the Church to foster the study of Islam and Arabic
in order to arm Christians with the tools they would need to convince Muslims that their faith
was false and Christianity true.28 However, Medieval Christendom studied Islam not only for the
purpose of converting Muslims to Christianity but also “to protect Christians from Muslim
blandishments.”29. To this aim, Christian scholars “created a body of literature concerning the
faith, its prophet and his book, polemic in purpose and often scurrilous in tone, designed to
protect and discourage rather than to inform.”30 Roger Bacon, for instance, endorsed the
assumption of the secret conversion of Avicenna and Averroes, two remarkable Muslim
philosophers, to Christianity and/or their profession of the Muslim faith for fear of persecution.31
For many medieval Europeans, this was “the most plausible way of explaining the genius of
Muslim thinkers and scientists against the backdrop of a religion that the medieval West ignored
abhorred and rejected.”32 The mood was the same whether in Church scholarship, in medieval
lore or in monumental literary work. Thus Saladin, who had exercised a sort of fascination in
medieval Europe and came to be depicted in many popular stories and epic poems as chivalrous,
humane, just and wise, was ultimately included into the “Christian experience”.33 Fantastic
stories circulated that “his mother had actually been a Christian princess and that he had
converted to Christianity on his deathbed.”34 While the Italian poet Dante (1265-1321), in his
Inferno, modeled after a medieval Muslim work,35 placed the prophet Mohammed in one of the
worst circles of hell, subject to endless torment, Saladin was depicted as enjoying a relatively
pleasant afterlife along with Avicenna and Averroes among near-contemporaries and various
non-Christians of antiquity like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.36 The stereotype of Middle-Eastern
irrationality also dates back to medieval times. It was the brain child of the Spanish Ramon Llull
(1232-1316). Following “St Isidore’s schema” which declared the Jews who resisted conversion
irrational, Llull blamed his failures to convert Spain’s Muslims, at the outset of the Inquisition,
on the irrationality of the Saracens.37 This image of the irrational Saracen “would be afterwards
echoed by many other writers, such as the Dominican monk Riccoldo Montecroce and the
Franciscan monk Robert Bacon, and it would indeed become the predominant stereotype in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, only to be transferred onto ‘the Turk’.”38 All these
developments, that brought the Western image of the Middle-East into sharper focus,39 were only
the early beginning of a prolific production which would lead to a sharp dichotomization of
Christianity and Islam and much more later into the twentieth and twenty-first century of the
Enlightenment had been synonymous with the intellectual, philosophical and artistic
awakening of Europe. Great ideas and ideals were shaped during this momentous period of
Western history. However, the humanism and universalism of the Renaissance stopped short of
encompassing the other parts of the world including the Orient in general and the Middle-East in
particular. Many prominent Enlightenment thinkers actually held racist views, some very openly
and overtly.41 The racial comments of thinkers like Kant, Hume and Voltaire are well known.42
For instance, David Hume in his Essays: Moral, Political and Literary states: “There never was
any civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent in
Voltaire, he was an outright anti-Semite: "They are [the Jews], all of them, born with raging
fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair."44
Likewise, the French philosopher showed no lesser restraint in debasing the Muslims and their
faith. His tragedy Mahomet ou le Fanatisme even gained enough prestige to become part of the
as the author of the Anti-Trinitarians Tract, Pope Benedict XIV, the greatest pontiff of the
eighteenth century, unhesitatingly sent him his blessing for the dedication to him of Mahomet ou
le Fanatisme.46 Before him Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), one of the most devout defenders of the
Christian faith in the 17th century, was as harsh and uncompromising as his successors in
condemning Islam and its Prophet in the ‘fifteenth movement’ of his Les Pensées, called Contre
Mahomet.47
The buoying realm of literature and arts became also largely fascinated with the oriental
“Other” and rife with Oriental images. Thus in the words of the late Edward Said, professor of
Between the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century, such major authors as Ariosto, Milton, Marlowe, Tasso,
Shakespeare, Cervantes, and the authors of the Chanson de Roland and the Poema del Cid drew on the Orient’s
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riches for their productions, in ways that sharpened that outlines of imagery, ideas, and figures populating it.
The translation of the Thousand and One Nights in 1704 would further stimulate a
fascination with the exotic lands of the Orient and grip Western popular imagination.49 It would
also have a lasting effect on the perceptions of almost every Westerner visiting the Muslim world
from that date until this.50 The letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) wife of
Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1717-18 provide an illustration of the disconnect
between Oriental fantasies and historical realities. After befriending members of the Ottoman
elite and the female members of their households (upper Middle-class women) she wrote: “I
think I never saw a country where women may enjoy so much liberty, and free from all reproach
as in Turkey.”51 She did not miss the opportunity to deride European accounts of the Ottoman
society: “they never fail giving you an account of the women, which’tis certain they never saw,
and talking very wisely of the men, into whose company they were never admitted.”52 It was the
beginning of the process of ‘Orientalizing the Orient’.53 The same notion of Orientalization is
nowadays used by some Western intellectuals, such as German social scientist Volker Heins, to
describe the process whereby the European Union is trying to forge its identity in contrast with
European colonial enterprise. With the flourishing of academic disciplines addressing the Orient,
the term Orientalism actually entered French, English and other European languages as the
special name for the scholarly field which focused on the Orient.56 As a scholarly discipline, it
tended to produce knowledge that was often used to justify and further the exertion of European
power over the Orient.57 The Middle-East was therefore studied under the postulate that it was a
stagnant, exhausted, and defective region in need of European influence and civilization.58 It was
all in keeping with the “White Man’s Burden” and “mission civilisatrice”. The increasing
institutionalization of scholarship in the field over the course of the nineteenth century led to an
incestuous relationship between intellectual circles and power. Thus, French scholar Sylvester de
Sacy, known as the father of modern Orientalism, advised the French government on Islam and
the Orient and translated into Arabic the proclamation which that government issued when it
invaded Algeria in 1830.59 Later in the century, the prominent Dutch Orientalist scholar Snouck
Hurgronje (1857-1936) who studied mystical tendencies in Islam, helped the Dutch government
formulate and implement policy toward the Muslim population of its colonies in Indonesia.
Russian Orientalists for their parts, helped the Tsarist government formulate policies designed to
“pacify, control and assimilate the empire’s Muslim subjects.”60 As for the British officials, they
embraced Orientalism as “a self-serving view of Asians, Africans and Arabs as decadent, alien,
and inferior” to rationalize their imperial ambitions.61 The same rationale would later be used to
deny British Oriental subjects the right to self-determination enshrined in the Atlantic Charter.
British leaders then went as far as to brand such claims as “a typical example of loose
thinking.”62 Several nineteenth century Orientalist scholars were Christian missionaries. Sir
William Muir (1819-1905), for instance, was an active missionary who wrote several generally
considered biased books on Islam, which continue to be used as references to this very day.63 As
a result of these interested studies of Muslim lands, the Muslim in the Middle-East was made
into what Maxime Rodinson calls the “homo islamicus” that is a distinct type of human being,
ontologically different from Western man.64 The essential characteristics of the “homo
islamicus” could be identified by “the use of philological methods to study key texts” (like the
Quran) which were regarded as embodying the core principles of Islamic civilization.65 One of
the most prominent Orientalists of the 19th Century was Ignaz (Yitzhaq Yehuda) Goldziher
(1850 –1921). His writings which sought to “debunk” both the Qur’an and the Islamic Tradition,
have created “a kind of scholarly orthodoxy which has retained its power until our own times.”66
However, the same Goldziher wonders: “What would be left of the Gospels if the Qur’anic
Ernest Renan who in an 1883 Sorbonne lecture declared: “The Muslim has the most profound
disdain for instruction, for science, for everything that constitutes the European spirit.” Even
when science, culture and philosophy flourished under Islam, Renan argued that the “caliphs
who were patronizing this cultural and intellectual efflorescence could hardly be called Muslims,
and though the civilization used the Arabic language, it was not really Arab, it was essentially
Greek and Persian.”68 Such ideas would be still be found in the twentieth-Century, as renowned
scholars like Albert Howe Lybyer and Sir Hamilton Gibb explained the decline of the Ottoman
Empire as the result of the replacement of the Ottoman civil and military elite almost entirely
composed of born Christians with born Muslims i.e. because “the Empire became Muslim and
Semitic in character.”69 All these ideas fit into a long tradition of belittling and minimizing the
role and contribution of Islam to World Civilization. German philosopher Friedrich Hegel (1770
1831), and after him Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), used the paradigm of the rise and fall of
civilizations, initially developed by the North African Ibn Khaldoun (1332 – 1406),70 to reduce
the role of Islam to the minor role of preserving and handing on to Europe the heritage of Greek
The nineteenth century also witnessed a dramatic fascination with the Orient in literary
and artistic circles to such extents that the famous French writer Victor Hugo wrote in 1820: “In
the century of Louis XIV one was Hellenist; today one is an Orientalist…the Orient has become
for the intellect as well as for the imagination a sort of general preoccupation…”72 Again, like
their enlightenment forbears, European writers, poets, and painters produced works drawing
heavily on the prevailing imagery and themes depicting Middle-Easterners as violent, lusty and
sexually perverse. The works of painters like Delacroix, Jean-Leon Gerome and many others73
created a new tableau genre called the “Oriental”, rife with phantasmagoric harems,74 which
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“carried representation into visual expression and a life of its own.”75 Such high culture works
which form part of the West’s cultural heritage continue to haunt Western collective imagination
AMERICAN ORIENTALISM
“American Orientalism is a tendency to underestimate the peoples of the region [the Middle-
East]and to overestimate America’s ability to make a bad situation better.” Douglas Little (2002)76
culture designed for mass consumption. Since the eighteenth century, American collective
imagination was already permeated with representations of Middle-Eastern peoples that were
conveyed either through European literary works or the accounts of American missionaries,
merchants, and archeologists.78 Three decades of sporadic maritime warfare with the Barbary
pirates helped spread Orientalist images to the public at large79 about the Arabs as “exotic,
fanatical, and congenitally predisposed towards autocracy.”80 This was done through captivity
narratives such as Caleb Bingham’s Slave in Barbary and plays like Susanna’s Rowson’s Slaves
in Algiers.81
Mark Twain, one of the most popular American writers, did not derogate to the rule. The
author’s rendition of his journey to the Middle-East, The Innocent Abroad, was replete with
To see a camel train laden with the spices of Arabia and the rare fabrics of Persia come marching through the
narrow alleys of the bazaar …is a genuine revelation of the Orient. The picture lacks nothing. It casts you back
at once into your forgotten boyhood, and again you dream over the wonders of the Arabian Nights; again your
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companions are princes, your lord is the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, and your servants are terrific giants and
genii that come with smoke and lightning and thunder, and go as a storm goes when they depart!82
Twain’s account of his passage to the Middle-East seethed with his biases towards the
Arabs and Muslims and translated his difficulty to transcend deep-ingrained ideas. He viewed
Middle-Easterners through the lenses of stereotypes that portrayed them as backward, servile,
and untrustworthy. When faced with realities that cannot be contorted to fit his basic premises,
he solves the paradox in a quite dismissive way: “The Arabs are too high-priced in Egypt, they
put on airs unbecoming such savages.”83 Mark Twain’s remarks are strikingly in line with the
The conquest of Algeria is an important and fortunate fact of the progress of civilization …All these nations of
free Barbarians look very proud, noble, and glorious at a distance, but only come near them and you will find
that they, as well as the more civilized nations are ruled by the lust of gain, and only employ ruder and more
cruel means.84
The influential popular magazine, the National Geographic, established in 1888, used to
represent a window on the world for millions of middle-class Americans at a time when
television and movies were either not yet invented or in their infancy. The “bland picturesque
coverage” of the Middle-East, by this magazine, showed the Arabs as exotic Orientals.85 For
instance, its November issue included an article entitled “Sailing with Sinbad’s Sons” whose
description of the sailors of the Bayan, a “Winged Galeon of Araby”, reproduced ‘the classic
Orientalist myth of the primitive but happy native’: “Like monkeys in treetops, Arabs climb a
130-Foot Yard…their pay is a pittance and their food poor, yet they are cheerful.”86
Mass media and movie industry developed throughout the twentieth century to become
the main purveyor of information, images and attitudes about the region to the public at large.87
The “Arab Muslim” progressively became a “figure in American popular culture.”88 In the films
and television, the Arabs have become “the most maligned people on the silver screen” 89 and are
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associated “either with lechery or bloodthirsty dishonesty.”90 The Arab appears as “an oversexed
degenerate, capable of cleverly devious intrigues, but essentially sadistic, treacherous, low.” 91
As early as the twenties, blockbusters such as The Sheikh (1921), The Thief of Baghdad (1924)
and Beau Geste (1939) were pandering to the most common stereotypes about the Arabs. For
instance Valentino’s Sheikh is a depraved Arab chief who is “snarling at the captured Western
hero and the blond girl, both of them steeped in wholesomeness.”92 Later, the Arab oil boycott,
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis –many
Americans think the Iranians are Arabs-93 all conspired to cast the Arab as film villain.94 From
the 1970s on, the Arab took the role of a leering mustachioed oil sheik with stereotypical Semitic
features.95 Some intellectuals saw in this development the smooth “transference of a popular
anti-Semitic animus from a Jewish to an Arab target, since the figure was essentially the same.”96
The themes of denigration and caricaturization97 of the Arabs in recent Hollywood works
are recurrent. The entertainment industry has indeed tended to provide the public with
stereotyped versions of the Islamic, and specifically Arab, connection with terrorism.98 In 1977’s
Black Sunday, the Arabs are depicted as dumb homicidal fanatics. In True Lies, the Arabs are not
only evil but also stupid and ridiculous. In The Father of the Bride II, the Arab is the wife abuser
who wants to buy Steve Martin’s house. In Executive Decision the Arab murders innocent airline
passengers just because it makes him feel good.99 In Cannonball Run II, the Arab is again a lusty
sheikh who rejoices at the sight of the blond girl asking her “Here, my desert blossom. Keep the
change. Have you ever considered joining a harem?”100 Sometimes, willful distortion is at work
to portray Arabs and Muslims in the worst light. A case in point is the award-winning 1996 film
The English Patient, (nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture). One particularly racist and
manipulative sequence will certainly mark the collective imagination for generations. The
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movie’s hero, the spy David Caravaggio has his thumbs cut off by fascist troops. Against all
odds, a veiled Muslim appears, like a deus ex machina, with a knife to perform the gruesome
task in a repugnant, bloody scene, as Caravaggio's tormentor explains that “Muslims understand
this sort of thing.”101 Given the fact that the movie’s cultural background is largely that of
Renaissance Italy, it becomes obvious that the screenplay wishes to associate Muslims with
brutality.102 This becomes all the more evident as the racist scene in the movie had no foundation
whatsoever in Michael Ondaatje's novel upon which the film is based. Instead, in the novel, the
words of Caravaggio read literally: “They found a woman to do it. They thought it was more
trenchant. They brought in one of their nurses. She was an innocent, knew nothing about me, my
Hollywood movies is The Wind and The Lion (several international nominations including two
for Academy Awards.) While the movie claims to be based upon real historical facts, the
Pedecaris incident (1904), the whole screenplay is rife with Orientalist fallacies. The rather
fictional adventure is about an American woman, Eden Perdicaris, and her two children who are
kidnapped by a Muslim Sheikh Moulay Ahmed Raisuli in the North of Morocco. The kidnapping
would, according to the movie, prompt American President Teddy Roosevelt to launch an armed
invasion and rescue mission, which never actually took place.104 The whole movie is replete with
insidious messages as to the cruelty, worthlessness and servility of the North Africans. At one
point, the movie shows an American Marines platoon slaughtering the guards of Tangier’s Pasha
(governor) with no demand that they surrender or any words or bullets from the guards.105
Another instance is when Mrs. Perdicaris, in an exchange with Raisuli, wonders how he can pray
five times a day and still find the time to kidnap women and children and to cut peoples’ heads
14
off all the time.106 However, the real Raisuli in the real Pedecaris incident seized a man, Ilio Pedecaris,
The most subtle way of spreading enduringly harmful stereotypes remains movies and
cartoons designed for children. Besides textbooks and comic strips, these entertainments
constitute children’s first live encounter with “bad Middle-Easterners.” In 1992 Disney Studios
released Aladdin, “an animated love story about two rather westernized Arabs, Aladdin and
princess Jasmin, whose English is flawless. The other inhabitants of the imaginary oriental
sheikhdom which constitutes the story’s settings are frightful thugs sporting turbans, daggers,
and thick accents.”108 More into the bargain, the first song, “Arabian Nights” contains an
opening lyric: “Oh I come from a land, from a far away place, where the caravan camels
roam…where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face, it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.”
Although the most offensive lyrics were removed by Disney Studios from the home video
distributed later, Aladdin revised still reflected the Orientalism deeply embedded in U.S. popular
culture.109 In The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the costumes of the Haradrims, a human race
who allies itself with the enemy, are Middle-Eastern in style. When children are fed this kind of
negative bias against the Middle-East, the subliminal cultural consciousness of whole
generations is enduringly and profoundly impacted. The “normalcy” of such egregious depictions
cogently illustrates what several Western intellectuals qualify at best as acceptable “political
You can hit an Arab free; they are free enemies, free villains where you couldn’t do it to a Jew or you can’t do
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it to a black anymore.
In the media as in the movies, the Arab is “always shown in large numbers, no
individuality, no personal characteristics or experience. Most pictures represent mass rage and
misery or irrational gestures” by blood-thirsty mobs.111 The burning and ransacking of the
15
American Embassy by the Serbs, Orthodox Christians, in Belgrade on February 21, 2008, to
protest against U.S. support for Kosovo's declaration of independence112 is not fundamentally
different from any other politically motivated manifestation of mass anger elsewhere. Moreover,
controversial figures disparaging Arabs or Muslims are given ready access to Media outlets and
disown or denigrate one’s own culture or religion has become in many instances a shortcut to
instant fame and media bestowed glory. A case in point is the self-proclaimed “former
terrorists”113 who instead of being brought to answer for the crimes they claim to have
committed while being terrorists, are regularly invited to denigrate Arabs and Muslims.114
As soon as the colonial venture started to wane in Europe in the aftermaths of World War
II, there was a large exodus of renowned Orientalists to America. This was the case of senior
scholars like Sir Hamilton Gibb who, in the forties, worked closely with the foreign Office in the
United Kingdom. He came to the US to head Harvard’s new Center for Middle-Eastern Studies.
Other prominent Orientalists included the Viennese Gustave von Grunebaum and Historian
Philip Hitti who immigrated to the US to respectively run UCLA’s new center for Near Eastern
Studies and Princeton’s Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures.115 Several other no
less prominent Orientalists such as Bernard Lewis (who also served as an intelligence officer
under colonial Britain)116 would later follow suit leaving their chairs in prestigious European
universities to join American universities and institutes where generous government and private
funding was available on an unprecedented lavish scale. 117 While private funding was provided
by the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford and similar Foundations, government funding was made
available under Title VI of the National Defense Education Act of 1958.118 This measure
16
stemmed from the concerns of post-war American elite circles about the dearth of expertise
necessary to maintain US global power and the need to develop a much larger pool of expertise
on the rest of the world.119 Orientalists, of course, were not alone in area studies. They had, in
fact, to interact with scholars in other humanities and social science disciplines to provide
interdisciplinary expertise and theoretical framework to “explain the character and historical
European tradition of Orientalist scholarship was, “if not taken over, then accommodated,
normalized, domesticated and popularized and fed into the postwar efflorescence of Near Eastern
Already in 1889, Mark Twain construed the US relationship with the Middle-East as “the
America’s image and a profound ambivalence about the peoples to be remade.”123 There are
indeed several instances where decision makers’ judgment was influenced by their prejudices
and the prevalent Orientalist outlook of their society as endorsed by popular culture and
academic circles. Before even the growth of Middle-Eastern Studies from the fifties on,
politicians and officials used to view Middle-Eastern people and their region as exotic. They also
used to rely on the tainted knowledge available to them to reproduce the same kind of bias about
the region in their decisions and statements. For instance, President Theodor Roosevelt who has
never been to the Middle-East124 could state straightaway that: “It is impossible to expect moral,
125
intellectual and material well-being where Mohammedanism is supreme.” President Truman,
17
after a meeting with Abdullah Suleiman, King Ibn Saud’s Minister of Finance, in August 1946,
described his guest as a “real old Biblical Arab.” To the latter’s request for US help on a Saudi
irrigation project, Truman replied: “he should send for a Moses to strike rocks in various places
with his staff and he’d have plenty of water.”126 At a white house dinner in April 1964, President
Lyndon Johnson toasted King Hussein of Jordan for “having brought that ancient land of the
camel, the date, and the palm to the threshold of a bright future.”127 In addition, many historical
examples illustrate the debilitating effect that cultural assumptions have had on diplomatic
relations with the Middle-East128 and how Orientalist bias have loomed large with regard to crisis
management and foreign policy issues in this region. Such shortcomings were not due only to the
cultural baggage of decision makers but also, in a large part, to the Orientalist academic tradition.
That tradition was progressively pressed into service in America under the form of policy-
relevant knowledge,129 thanks to prominent scholars like Sir Hamilton Gibb, Bernard Lewis and
others. As such, Orientalist expertise was supposed to provide the intellectual framework which
policymakers could use to make sense of what was happening in the Middle-East and “formulate
policy accordingly.”130
monolithic place inhabited by monolithic people thinking in a monolithic and unchanging way
since the early days of Islam.131 Their analysis is predicated on a number of basic assumptions
grounded mainly in philology, “which frame their understanding of Islam, and inform much of
their works.”132 They believe in a sort of overarching and monolithic great culture. They pretend
to deduce from a selection of classical Islamic texts the key principles which are presumed to
govern the minds of all Muslims everywhere at all time.133 Gibb, for instance, claims that he can
fathom what he calls the “Arab mind” or the “Semitic mind.” Overdoing the psychologists
18
themselves, he states: “upon the Arab mind the impact of artistic speech is immediate; the words,
passing through no filter of logic or reflection which might weaken or deaden their effect, go
straight to the head.”134 Such dispensations made in the ivory towers of universities without any
empirical bearing except medieval texts have had enduringly confounding effects on
policymaking. Whenever Middle-Eastern leaders did not yield to US pressure or concur with its
policies in the region, which is normal since different societies may construe their interests in
different ways, it was always because of fundamental defects in the Middle-Eastern mind or the
For instance, as a nationalist leader, the Iranian Mohammed Mossadegh, under pressure
from the Iranian street, called for legislation forcing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) to
split its profits with Iran fifty-fifty. His claims, put into historical perspective, were in line with
what was happening in other oil producing countries such as Venezuela.136 The reaction of
British and American officials was to simply dismiss him as a “wily Oriental” who “put
Scheharazade in the petroleum business.” His approach to the oil question was dubbed as
British policymakers often referred to Mossaddegh with “gendered language that revealed their
conviction that he was neither manly enough for international politics nor fit to hold the office of
prime minister.”138 They also derided his “fragile” and “emotional” temper which made him an
“irrational and fickle adversary who could not be trusted.”139 Instead of accepting Mossadegh on
his own terms, Western leaders resorted to snap judgments and simplistic stereotypes.140 Turning
a deaf ear on Mossadegh’s initial plea of profit sharing, prompted him as a Prime Minister to
resort to full nationalization of the AIOC. The subsequent overthrow of Iran’s parliamentary
government headed by Mossadegh in 1953 and the West’s unconditional support of the despotic
19
regime of the Shah Pahlavi141 generated widespread anti-Western sentiment among the Iranians.
This helped set the stage for the Shah’s downfall and the coming to power of a stridently anti-
Mossadegh, who merely wanted Iran to have a fair share of its own oil and Ayatollah Khomeini,
who wanted to destroy the ‘Great Satan’ 143 speaks volumes as to how Orientalist prejudices in
the decision making process can have long term disastrous effects.
Likewise, the national aspirations in the Middle-East were usually dismissed in Truman’s
secular nationalism in the 50s and 60s enhanced the stature of leaders like Nasser and helped
destabilize pro-US regimes. Nasser’s nationalism was seen according to a CIA report to “provide
an excuse for a host of deficiencies and inadequacies in Arab society.”145 Subsequently, the
withdrawal of the US promised economic and technical assistance for the construction of the
High Dam at Aswan on the Upper Nile in 1956 and the US refusal to sell weapons and food to
Egypt alienated the Nasser regime who eventually sought assistance and weapons from the
Soviet Union.146 It also prompted Nasser to nationalize the Suez Canal for the financing of the
Aswan dam.147 Such an unforeseen move enabled him to gain more leverage later as he managed
to turn military defeat into political victory in the Suez crisis. The whole episode boosted the
activism of Nasserite radicalism that destabilized the then pro-US governments of Syria,
Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.148 It appears from the examples of Mossadegh and Nasser that
Western leaders tended to judge their Middle-Eastern counterparts according to their “own
Orientalist standards of acceptable oriental behaviors” and to “dismiss them when they failed to
20
companion and successor, was hailed in Washington after the conclusion of the Camp David
Accords as the “quintessential good Arab.”150 He was even praised, despite his modest peasant
origins,151 for his “great subtlety and sophistication.”152 Later, upon his assassination, President
Carter referred to him as a “latter day Pharaoh” along with the press which downplayed his Arab
side by highlighting the “exceptional beauty about his dark, complex face, noble as a
pharaoh’s.”153
Given the intersection between policymaking and academic circles, it is not surprising
that these political attitudes were supported by prolific Orientalist academic productions. Despite
the secular character of Middle-Eastern nationalism, Area Studies scholars have always found
ways to discredit it on either religious or racial basis. In Bernard Lewis’ essay The Return Of
Islam (1976), Arab nationalism is “at most a thin and easily shed veneer beneath which there
always remain the bedrock identity of Islam,” since “all those who belong to the Islamic
civilization have religion and the Muslim community as their primary loyalty.”154 Nevertheless,
the loyalty to the mythologized “Ummah” or Muslim Community can hardly account for the
tough crackdown on Islamist activists like the Muslim Brotherhood155 by those who championed
Arab Nationalism among secular Baathists and Nasserites. It can neither accommodate all the
wars and struggles for power that have characterized this region since the advent of Islam, in
which many Muslims had to kill their co-religionists in the name of various earthly pursuits.
Princeton, Columbia and other universities advocated in his book “the Arab Mind” a rather
unconventional theory. He linked the troubled relationship of the Arabs with the West to
everything from “prolonged breast-feeding to faulty toilet training, all of which produced a
disturbing inferiority complex in the Arab mind which in itself made it more difficult to shake
21
off the shackles of stagnation.”156 Patai’s approach is again predicated on the premise that
“sweeping generalizations about the personality of an entire people could be extrapolated from
dubious anecdotal and literary references.”157 The whole methodology of the book is “based on a
fatally flawed set of assumptions -most importantly, that there is one entirely homogenous Arab
culture, derived from nomadic Bedouin culture.”158 Such artificial unity ignores both “the
diversity and history of a people and a civilization that extends across dozens of countries, from
the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, and the deeply rooted Arab culture of cities and agricultural
communities.”159 To all that, The Arab Mind which has been described as “probably the single
most popular and widely read book on the Arabs in the US military” is also blamed for inspiring
the Abu Gharib scandal160 and remains a much recommended reading for Military Officers.161 In
contrast, in several American universities such as Darmouth College and UCLA, this book is
The works of influential Orientalist scholars like Hamilton Gibb, Bernard Lewis, (both
served as editors of the Encyclopaedia of Islam) Raphael Patai, Gustave von Grunebaum and
many others produced and reproduced the same broad generalizations about Islam, the Middle-
East and its inhabitants. Their theories were instrumental in shaping the interpretative framework
through which decision makers, be they civilian or military, have understood Islam and the
Middle-East. A case in point is the famous paradigm of “the Clash of Civilizations.” This rather
self-fulfilling prophecy illustrates once again how Orientalist ideas have been recycled and
integrated into social and political science in the USA. In fact Huntington’s milestone article
draws a great deal on Bernard Lewis’ pessimistic163 Orientalist “Master Narrative” 164 manifest in
the latter’s 1990 article entitled “The Roots of Muslim Rage.” The expression “Clash of
Civilizations” itself was used for the first time in the Lewis’ article.
22
More recently, Orientalist expertise has loomed large in the initiation and conduct of OIF.
As Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, paid a glowing tribute to the veteran Orientalist
Bernard Lewis, via video phone at a special ceremony held in Tel Aviv to honor Lewis in March 2002:
“Bernard has taught [us] how to understand the complex and important history of the Middle-East and use it to
165
guide us where we will go next to build a better world for generations”
Even before the 9/11 tragedy occurred, Lewis actively lobbied for war in Iraq in a
collective open letter addressed to President Clinton in 1998.166 Lewis is actually the father of
what the Wall Street journal calls the “Lewis Doctrine”167 which consists of “making Iraq a
Westernized polity, reconstituted and imposed from above like Kemal’s Turkey, which is to
become a bulwark of security for America and a model for the region.”168 He also wrote an
article for Newsweek International in early 2003, in which he made a case for American
intervention in Iraq and argued that “worries about Iraqi civilians --fighting in the streets,
Other Orientalists whose expertise has turned out misplaced, if not misleading, are Fouad
Ajami and Kanan Makiya, who along with Bernard Lewis advised the Bush administration in the
run-up to the Iraq war.170 Downplaying the risks of insurgency in post-Saddam era, they argued
that the Iraqis were going to meet American troops “with flowers and sweets.”171 The remarks of
Vice President Dick Cheney to the Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd National Convention are
As for the reaction of the Arab ‘street,’ the Middle-East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after
liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are ‘sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul
greeted the Americans.’ Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of Jihad. Moderates
172
throughout the region would take heart.
But most disturbing of all are the words of Bernard Lewis, hailed as the Dean of the
Orientalists, as he counseled the Vice President and Secretary of Defense on the coming war in
Iraq: “I believe that one of the things you’ve got to do to Arabs is hit them between the eyes with
23
a big stick. They respect power.”173 Apart from the racist tones of these remarks, they reflect a
long-standing Orientalist bias which consists of “underestimating the locals.”174 Such remarks
seem to highlight, at best, a lack of scientific neutrality and distance between the intellectual and
his subject. They also somehow give credence to the reproaches made by Lewis’ detractors that
although his work “purports to be liberal objective scholarship, it is in reality very close to being
propaganda against his subject material”175 Last but not least, during the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel
War, Bernard Lewis went so far as to warn, in the Wall Street Journal, that Teheran might drop a
nuclear bomb—a bomb that Iran by all accounts did not have—on Israel on August 22, 2006,
coinciding with the day that the prophet Muhammad went to Jerusalem and then to heaven.176 In
his own words: “this might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of
Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinajad plans any such
cataclysmic events precisely for August 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in
mind.”177 Orientalists definitely seem to think that their stature as renowned scholars would lend
the Muslim world, even when they clearly go against common sense.
assessment of the state of the Middle-East Studies lamented that the field was “beset by
and religious bias, as well as by a great deal of incompetent scholarship.”178 Ironically and in
quite similar words thirty years later, the founders of the new Association for the Study of
Middle-East and Africa, among which are Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, criticized Middle-
East Studies on the basis that “the increased politicization of these fields and the certainty that a
24
corrupt understanding of them is a danger to the academy as well as the future of the young
people it purports to educate.” They also declared their intention to “dispassionate” the debate:
"Given the importance of these regions, there is an acute need for objective and accurate
scholarship and debate, unhampered by entrenched interests and allegiances.”179 Such criticisms,
no matter how controversial they might be, have at least the merit of signaling a kind of
uneasiness in the field of Middle-East Studies.180 They also relativize academic Orientalism as
just another paradigm which has, like any other approach, its own flaws and imperfections.
Orientalists usually represent the Middle-East as a monolithic and benighted region whose
Therefore Middle-Easterners stances’ are not to be taken seriously, because “they are at bottom
merely irrational expressions of a Muslim collective psyche which had been gravely damaged by
its encounter with Western modernity.”183 Orientalists hold that the universality and centrality of
Islam in the lives of Muslims are beyond question.184 Such depictions overlook the diversity of a
region comprised of a multitude of ethnies, tribes and nationalities with different historical
trajectories and cultural backgrounds. They lump together all and sunder: Muslim terrorists (a
very marginal minority), extremists, moderates, seculars, agnostics, Sunnis and Shiites. Such
generalizations can prove misleading, complicating rather than facilitating the task of even the
lowest ranking soldiers. For example, “Marines who were instructed that Muslims were highly
pious and prayed five times a day, lost respect for Iraqis when they found a brewery in Baghdad
and men with mistresses.”185 Likewise, despite widespread Western images of Islamists as
uniformly violent and radical, Islamism represents a large spectrum extending from die hard
25
“modern phenomenon, the product of complex social, economic and cultural forces operating in
specific historical contexts and conjunctures.”186 In Turkey and Morocco, for instance, Islamist
parties have been incorporated into the political process and they are evolving in a rather
democratic and moderate direction. At the same time, die-hard extremists like Osama Bin Laden
have no religious or scholarly legitimacy. Their fatwas (opinions) are not binding on anyone187
and they do not represent any form of orthodoxy. If Bin Laden has any forerunners, they would
be, among many others, the Russian anarchists of 1881, the Oklahoma City bombers, the Zionist
terrorist groups Irgun and Stern Gang,188 or Guy Fawkes the “Catholic jihadist” who plotted to
blow up (by gunpowder) British Houses of Parliament as early as 1605.189 The condition of
women is another example where broad generalizations fail to take into account the diversity of
Middle-Eastern societies. For instance, Tunisian women have had the right to vote and to run for
election since 1957,190 just one year after Tunisia’s independence. Moroccan women, as well,
gained the right to vote as early as 1963. In contrast, Switzerland, situated at the heart of Europe,
did not grant this right to its women until 1971. Moreover, there are and there were many
prominent Muslim women leaders in the course of history,191 such as Queen Shagrat al-Durr of
the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt (AD 1250-57), Tansu Çiller (Turkey), Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan),
26
CONCLUSION
“Politically sensitive ecumenism is needed, not only to overcome anti-Western sentiments
within many Muslim countries but also to overcome the public stereotypes in America that limit
US flexibility in the pursuit of its national security.” Zbignew Brezezinski.192
In sum, Western perceptions of the Middle-East are largely informed by Orientalism both
as a cultural mode of thought and an academic discipline. Depictions of Islam, the dominant
religion, as a unitary and aggressive civilization have reinforced such frightening ideas as the
long standing tradition has played an important role in shaping how the public, the Media and
leaders, be they military or civilians, have made sense of the Middle-East in America. Views that
conditioned by the teachings of a monolithic Islam have influenced the policies and measures
pursued by America in this critical region. After all, leaders like scholars may “attempt to reach a
level of relative freedom from … brute, everyday reality, but they can never quite escape or
ignore their involvement as human subjects in their own circumstances.”193 While historians are
just beginning to explore the debilitating effect that cultural assumptions have had on diplomatic
relations with the Middle-East,194 growing emphasis on cultural awareness in the US military
seems to translate a consciousness that the traditional Orientalist perception paradigm has
reached its limits. However, pinning the hope of achieving an accurate understanding of Middle-
Eastern peoples and their culture exclusively on books that are in large part responsible of the
existing confusion –and that continue to feature on top of Military recommended readings- might
not be very helpful in achieving an accurate assessment of the situation and therefore devising
appropriate military strategies or measures. Now, Orientalist driven behaviors or attitudes may
just as well contribute to a sort of perception dilemma (by analogy with security dilemma.) In
27
such a dilemma, Orientalism and Occidentalism195 (Orientalism in reverse) would nurture one
Recommendations:
Of course, not all the knowledge produced by academic Orientalism is unreliable. There
are certainly elements of truth in this knowledge, but one has to be at least aware of the bias and
the imperfections of its approaches. Many of its methodologies are marred by epistemological
include foregrounding aspects and ignoring others and blaming socio-economic realities on
religious or racial defects.196 While the Orientalist expertise should not be taken nor rejected
wholesale, there is a need to enlist the expertise of other social science disciplines which have
kept up with scientific and technological development. Many Middle-East Studies researchers
have indeed adopted modern empirical tools such as surveys, statistics and case studies to
Orientalists’ authority should not be a free pass to issue overarching statements about the
Middle-East based only on their mastery of some of its language and their ability to decipher a
collection of dusty medieval texts. The raging academic debate in Middle-East Studies is
indicative of the existence of contending visions of the Middle-East. To feed officials or military
leaders just one version of “the Middle-East” is to limit their ability to effectively come to terms
with the realities they might encounter on the ground. Curricula aimed at heightening cultural
awareness of this region should therefore include the works of equally authoritative if not more
serious and rigorous academics198 presenting different approaches to this region. Based on OIF,
decision makers should not ‘slavishly’ embrace Orientalists’ pronouncements but rather take a
28
critical distance from their expertise. Awareness, at least, of the existence of the Orientalist prism
is a key step to successfully engaging this increasingly important region in the world’s great
political and economic affairs. It is time to challenge the conventional wisdom infused by
29
ENDNOTES
1
Edward Said, “The Clash of Ignorance”. The Nation. October 22, 2001 issue.
2
Edward Said, Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978.
3
Britannica OnLine, http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9397174 (accessed November 2, 2008)
4
Edward Said, Orientalism.
5
Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945. Chapel Hill, NC:
6
Zachary Lockman , Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. New York,
7
Edward Said Orientalism. 2
8
David H. Petraeus, “Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from Soldiering in Iraq.” Military Review,
January-February 2006. Published by the US Army Command and General Staff College. In this article the ninth
observation reads : “Cultural Awareness is a Force Multiplier…knowledge of the cultural ‘terrain’ can be as
important as, and sometimes even more important than, knowledge of the geographic terrain.
9
Montgomery McFate, "The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture." Joint Forces Quarterly, Issue
thirty-eight, 3rd Quarter, July 2005. Published by the National Defense University. I take issue with the expression
Adversary Culture because it implies that all those belonging to that culture are adversaries which is not true.
10
Zachary Lockman , Contending Visions of the Middle East, 79.
11
Ibid., 79.
12
Albert Hourani, Islam in European Thought. Published 1991. Cambridge University Press 1996, 7.
13
Lockman, Zachary. Contending Visions of the Middle East, 149.
14
Ibid., 13.
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid., 13-14.
17
Ibid., 15.
18
Ibid., 15.
19
Ibid., 26.
20
Katharine Scarfe Beckett, Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of the Islamic World. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon
21
Ibid., 1
22
Sir Richard W. Southern Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages. Harvard University Press 1978, 28.Quoted
23
Ibrahim Kalin, “The Roots of Misconceptions: Euro-American Perceptions of Islam Before and After 9/11” in
Islam, Fundamentalism and the Betrayal of Tradition. Edited by. Lumbard Joseph E.B. World Wisdom, Inc 2004,
164
24
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 27.
25
Hassan Hanafi, Religious Dialogue & Revolution: Essays on Judaism, Christianity, & Islam, Anglo-Egyptian
26
Robert Avery Dulles, A History of Apologetics. Ignatius Press 2005, 106.
27
Ibid.
28
Zachary Lockman , Contending Visions of the Middle East, 39.
29
Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West, Oxford University Press, USA 1994, 85-86.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibrahim Kalin. “The Roots of Misconceptions”, 153.
32
Ibid.
33
Norman Daniel, The Arabs and Medieval Europe.London Longman, 1975. P22-23 quoted in Lockman, Zachary.
34
Ibid.
35
Miguel Asin Palacios, Islam and the Divine Comedy. Tr. Harold Southerland. Routledge 1968, 55.
36
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 32.
37
Paul T. Levin, “Narrating Oneself through the Other: Medieval Christians and Their Images of ‘The Saracen’”
University of Southern California. Prepared for presentation at the Center for International Studies,USC, November
March 2008)
30
38
John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, NY: Columbia University Press 2002.
P251. Quoted in Paul T. Levin. “Narrating Oneself through the Other”, 26.
39
Maxime Rodinson, Europe and the Mystique of Islam. Trans. Roger Veinus Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1987. P 6. Quoted in Lockman, Zachary. Contending Visions of the Middle-east, 27.
40
Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe : idea, Identity, reality, Macmillan 1995, 90.
41
Kenan Malik, “The Meaning of Race” Lecture delivered on a dayschool on 'The Reinvention of Race', Oxford
42
Ibid.
43
Eric Morton, “Race and Racism In The Works Of David Hume”. Journal on African Philosophy (2002): 1, 1.
44
Arthur Hertzberg, “The Chosen People” The New York Review of Books Volume 11, Number 7 October 24,
45
Maurice Bucaille, The Bible, the Qur’an and Science: The Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of Modern
46
Maurice Bucaille, The Bible, the Qur’an and Science, 118. The texts of the exchanged letters between Pope
Benedict XIV and Voltaire can be found on page 16 and 17 of the digitized version of “The Works of Voltaire”
available at http://books.google.com.
47
Ibrahim Kalin. “The Roots of Misconceptions”, 153.
48
Edward Said, Orientalism, P63.
49
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 64.
50
Ibid., 64.
51
Ibid.
52
Ibid.
53
Edward Said, Orientalism, 49.
54
Andrei S. Markovits, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America. Princeton University Press (2007), 219.
55
Edward Said, Orientalism, 3.
56
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East,66.
57
Ibid., 88.
58
Ibid., 89.
59
Ibid., 66.
60
Ibid., 89.
61
Douglas Little, American Orientalism, 10.
62
Charles Lutton, “The ‘Atlantic Charter’ Smokescreen: History As A Press Release” Journal of Historical Review
issued by Institute for Historical Review. www.ihr.org/jhr/v05/v05p203_Lutton.html (accessed 27 February 2008)
63
Edward Said, Orientalism, 151.
64
Lockman, Zachary. Contending Visions of the Middle East, 74.
65
Ibid., 77.
66
Albert Hourani, Islam In European Thought, P2.
67
Ignaz Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law. tr. By Andras and Ruth Hamori. Princeton University
Press. 1981. p 13. N 12. quoted in Hitchens, Christopher “East Is East.” Atlantic Monthly, Mar2007, Vol. 299 Issue
2. 109-111. also quoted in Manzoor Pervez. Method Against Truth: Orientalism and Qur’anic Studies at
68
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 79-80.
69
Ibid., 104, 108.
70
Franz Rosenthal, trans. The Muqaddimah, An Introduction to History. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1958. P623-627. See also Stone Caroline. “Ibn Khaldun and the Rise And Fall of Nations”. Saudi Aramco World.
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200605/ibn.khaldun.and.the.rise.and.fall.of.empires.htm (accessed 15
March 2008)
71
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 75-76.
72
Ibid., 69.
73
For further information on Orientalist painters and paintings visit: http://www.orientalist-art.org.uk/
74
Inge E. Boer, et al. Uncertain Territories: Boundaries in Cultural Analysis, Rodopi Publishers (2006), 84.
31
75
Edward Said, Orientalism, 118.
76
Douglas Little, American Orientalism, 314.
77
“It's Racist, But Hey, It's Disney” New York Times editorial, 14 July 1993.
78
Douglas Little, American Orientalism, 41.
79
Ibid., 12.
80
Ibid., 41.
81
Ibid., 12
82
Mark Twain, The Innocents abroad: Roughing It. 1869. Reprint , New York: Viking, 1984. Quoted in Little,
83
Ibid.P13
84
Roman Szporluk, Communism and Nationalism: Karl Marx Versus Friedrich List. Oxford University Press US
(1988). P45.
85
“Arabs and Americans” in The Economist 1/18/2003, Vol.366 Issue 8307. 80-81
86
Little Douglas, American Orientalism, 25.
87
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 241.
88
Edward Said, Orientalism, 284.
89
William Booth, “Cast of Villains 'Reel Bad Arabs' Takes on Hollywood Stereotyping.” Washington Post,
90
Edward Said, Orientalism, 286.
91
Ibid.
92
Ibid., 285-286
93
Fawaz Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests, Cambridge University
Press (1999), 7.
94
William Booth, “Cast of Villains,” P C01.
95
Edward Said, Orientalism, 285-286
96
Ibid.
97
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions, 194.
98
Zbigniew Brezezinski, The Choice: Global Domination Or Global Leadership. Basic Books, 2004. P48
99
Douglas Little, American Orientalism, 38-39.
100
Jack Shaheen, Arab Image Ltd. NPR Interview. October 12, 2007. Transcription at
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/10/12/07
101
Robert Fisk, “Film-makers must atone for their sins”. The Independent. 19 January 2008.
102
Ibid.
103
Ibid.
104
Douglas Porch, The Conquest of Morocco, Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2nd Edition, Edition (May 26, 2005), 114.
105
http://www99.epinions.com/content_120662101636 (accessed 28 March 2008)
106
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073906/quotes (accessed 28 March 2008)
107
Jon Blackwell,“1904: ‘Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead’” TheTrentonian.
108
Douglas Little, American Orientalism, 40-41.
109
Ibid.
110
Sam Keen, Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination. Cambridge: Harper and Row, 1986. P29
30. quoted in Jack Shaheen, Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture . Georgetown University
111
Edward Said, Orientalism, 285-286.
112
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL2087155420080221
113
Wilhelm Trevor, “Doubt cast on Anani's terrorist claims. Jihad adviser says story of holy war in Lebanon rings
http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/story.html?id=4a479502-4490-408e-bdb5-f2638619a62c (accessed 4
March 2008)
114
Neil Macfarquhar, “Speakers at Academy Said to Make False Claims.” The New York Times. February 7, 2008.
115
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 126.
116
http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2006-07/eastandwest.html (accessed 11 April 1008)
117
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 110.
32
118
Pinar Bilgin, “Is the ‘Orientalist’ past the future of Middle East studies?” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 2,
119
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 121-126.
120
Ibid., 110.
121
Edward Said, Orientalism, 295.
122
Quoted in John J. Mearsheimer, Stephen M.Walt “The Israel Lobby And U.S. Foreign Policy”. Columbia
123
Douglas Little, American Orientalism, 3
124
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/tr26.html (accessed 10 March 2008)
125
Ibid., 15
126
Ibid., 26
127
Ibid., 31
128
Mary Ann Heiss, “Culture and U.S. Relations with the Middle East.” OAH Magazine of History • May 2006,
P19-22. P21
129
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East,140.
130
Ibid.
131
Oleg Grabar, Edward Said, Bernard Lewis “Orientalism: An Exchange”. The New York Review of Books.
Volume 29, Number 13. August 12, 1982. Available at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/6517 (accessed 20 March
2008)
132
Zachary Lockman , Contending Visions of the Middle East, 132.
133
Ibid., 130.
134
Ibid., 108.
135
Jamil E. Jreisat, Politics Without Process: Administering Development in the Arab World, Lynne Rienner
Publishers, Published 1997. 39
136
Douglas Little, American Orientalism,54-56
137
Mary Ann Heiss, “Culture and U.S. Relations with the Middle East.” P21
138
Ibid., P20
139
Ibid., 21.
140
Ibid., 20.
141
David W. Lesch, “The Middle-East and the United States: A Historical and Political Reassessment”. Westview
Press – 2003. P51.
142
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 269.
143
Douglas Little, American Orientalism,317
144
Ibid., 309.
145
CIA, NIE 36-61, “Nasser and the Future of Arab Nationalism” 27 June 1961, “36 Arab World”, Box 6, NIE,
NSF, LBJL. Quoted in Little, Douglas. American Orientalism. 30.
146
David W. Lesch. “The Middle-East and the United States”, 143.
147
Ibid.
148
Ibid., 144.
149
Mary Ann Heiss, “Culture and U.S. Relations with the Middle East,” 20-21.
150
Douglas Little, American Orientalism, 34
151
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/sadat/
152
Douglas Little, American Orientalism,34
153
Ibid.
154
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East,174-175.
155
Military Review. July-August 2003. P29. Also available at www.au.af.mil/au/awcgate/milreview/abo.pdf.
(accessed 16 March 2008)
156
Douglas Little, American Orientalism, 35.
157
Emram Qureshi, “Misreading 'The Arab Mind'”. The Boston Globe. Issue May 20, 2004. Available at
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/05/30/misreading_the_arab_mind/ (accessed 13 March
2008)
158
Ibid.
159
Ibid.
160
Seymour M. Hersh, “The Gray Zone”. The New Yorker Magazine. May 24 2004. See also
33
Brian Whitaker, “'Its best use is as a doorstop'”. guardian.co.uk Monday May 24 2004. Available at
161
Capt James W. Lively, “Cultural Education: A Key to Winning the Global War on Terrorism.” Published by the
162
Emram Qureshi. “Misreading 'The Arab Mind'”. See also Ann Marlowe, "Sex, Violence, and ‘The Arab Mind,'"
163
Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure In Iraq. Penguin Books. 2007. P31.
164
Michael Hirsh, “Bernard Lewis revisited”. Washington Monthly. November 2004 edition.
165
Alain Gresh, “Malevolent fantasy of Islam”. Le Monde Diplomatique. August 2005. English version available at
166
http://www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/rumsfeld-openletter.htm ( accessed 20 February 2008) and
167
Frederick Kempe, “Lewis ‘Liberation Doctrine for Mideast Faces New Tests”, The Wall Street Journal. Dec 13
168
Michael Hirsh, “Bernard Lewis revisited”.
169
Michiko Kakutani, “How Books Have Shaped U.S. Policy” New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New
170
Michael R. Gordon, Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story Of The Invasion And Occupation Of Iraq.
171
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/congress/winning_hearts_shehata_jun04.pdf (accessed 20 March 2008)
172
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html (accessed 8 March 2008)
173
Jeffrey Goldberg, “Breaking Ranks.” The New Yorker Magazine. Oct.31, 2005 issue. See also Ali Tahir.
“Bernard Lewis: Historian or Lobbyist for war?” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Washington Mar
2006. Vol25, Issue 2; P74. According to this article in a letter to the New Yorker Magazine Bernard Lewis
confirmed his remarks adding: “He who treats friend and foe alike will arouse only distaste for his friendship and
174
D. T. Jervis, “Review Essay Orientalism, Occidentalism, And American Policy In The Middle East” Association
of Third World Studies, Inc. Journal of Third World Studies, Vol. XXI, No. 2, 2004 P293-298. P296.
175
Ali Tahir, “Bernard Lewis: Historian or Lobbyist for war?” The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
176
Akhavi Khody , “Neoconservative Scholars Establish Mideast Studies Group”, Global Information Network.
177
Bernard Lewis, “August 22 Does Iran have something in store”. The Wall Street Journal. Aug. 8, 2006. available
178
“Area Studies: A critical Assessment” in the Study of The Middle East : Research and Scholarship in the
Humanities and the Social Sciences, ed. Leonard Binder (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1976). Quoted in
179
Akhavi Khody , “Neoconservative Scholars”.
180
For further information on the turmoil in Middle-East Studies read: Sethi Chanakya. “Near East Studies
Department Faces Warring Factions”. The Daily Princetonian. December 8th, 2004. Available at
181
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 88.
182
Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim rage.” The Atlantic Monthly. September 1990.
183
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, 176.
184
Ibid., 174-175.
185
Montgomery McFate, “The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture”
186
Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East,220
187
David Waines, An Introduction to Islam. Cambridge University Press 2003, 86
188
Walter Laqueur, “World of Terror”. National Geographic Magazine. November 2004. Available at
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0411/feature4/fulltext.html
189
The Economist.:“The new wars of religion.”. Leader, Issue Nov 1st 2007. Available at
190
Laurie A. Brand. Women, the State, and Political Liberalization: Middle Eastern and North African Experiences.
191
http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/Muslim_Leaders.htm
34
192
Zbigniew Brezezinski, The Choice: Global Domination Or Global Leadership. Basic Books, 2004, 58.
193
Albert Hourani, "The Road to Morocco". The New York Review of Books, Vol. 26, March 8, 1979, pp. 27-30.
194
Mary Ann Heiss, “Culture and U.S. Relations with the Middle East,” 21.
195
D. T. Jervis “Review Essay Orientalism, Occidentalism, And American Policy In The Middle East” Association
of Third World Studies, Inc. Journal of Third World Studies, Vol. XXI, No. 2, 2004
196
For ample details about the shortcomings of the Orientalist tradititon see The chapter on the Critique of the
197
Works such as Fawaz Gerges, Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy are representative of this
tendency which relies on interviews and case studies. See also works which rely on surveys such as John Esposito,
Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. Gallup Press. March 8, 2008.
http://www.gallup.com/consulting/worldpoll/26410/gallup-center-muslim-studies.aspx
198
Idem
35
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