Thoughts on Orientalism The marvel that is known as Orientalism is but one position of Western misrepresentations of the Middle East. Most Arabs in Western countries will agree that the largest amount of indistinct information about Arabs come from the media, newspapers, magazines, or form television. When used by an Arab, the word ?Orientalist? generally refers to a western scholar who studies the Middle East. Edward Said a very intellectual Arab Christian Scholar describes the western views on the Middle-Eastern people. In his book ?Orientalism? he describes Orientalism as: ??By Orientalism I mean several things, all of them, in my opinion, interdependent. The most readily accepted designation of for Orientalism is an academic one, and indeed, and indeed the label still serves in a number of academic institutions. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient- and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist-either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism, ? (Said 2).
Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, father of the bin Lad...
محمد عبده
Pool in a Harem.He also states: ? To speak of Orientalism therefore is to speak mainly, although not exclusively, of a British and French Cultural enterprise, a project whose dimensions take in such disparate realms as the imagination itself, the whole of India and the Levant, the Biblical texts and the Biblical lands, the spice trade, colonial armies and a long tradition of colonial administrators, a formidable scholarly corpus, innumerable Oriental ?experts? and ?hands,? an Oriental professorate, a complex array of ?oriental? ideas, many eastern sects, philosophies, and wisdom domesticated for local European use- the list can be extended more or less indefinitely,? (Said 4).
Once a genuine seeker of the truth is attentive of the long-standing quarrel and resentment between Arabs and the West and learns not to trust everything, which...