Political Science

Orientalism can be best defined as the depiction and perception of eastern culture and society by andor for the West.  Orientalism is a mindset that generalizes cultures, races, and prejudices, as a difference of the Western world from the East. It can be said to be the divide between the West and the East, where the West considers itself superior to the East, because the West (especially the Americans) considers that which is alien to it, to be inferior to it as well. In more contemporary terms, it is also used as a term that describes the stereotyping of Islam, by both advocates, as well as academics of the  refugee rights advocacy . In fact, neo-Orientalism is a term for the particular aspect of this stereotyping which is used in context to any forced migration (especially if it affects women) and the proclaimed damage that it causes to refugee rights, whether these refugees are found inside or outside the Arab and the Muslim world.

Orientalism developed as the idea that the  Arab  is depicted by the  Non-Arab , usually the Americans and other Western people, to be irrational, untrustworthy, anti-Western, non-tolerant of the West and anyone who is non-Arab. And though the Arab and Non-Arab thinker have been found to have different opinions on Orientalism, the fact remains that these stereotypical descriptions of the Arab which has been penned down in literature and art by the West often, has laid down the foundations for both ideologies as well as policies of the modern era. Edward Said, a Palestinian-American literary theorist maintains  that the dogma that western Orientalist can be objective about their subjects while the Muslims and the Arabs cannot is a form of propaganda that has been corrupting the Orientalist philosophy. He says that not only does it degrades the subjects of the study, it also  causes these narrow-minded beliefs to bolster over time forming an incorrect view of the world.

Anwar Abdel Malek is another arab orientalism scholar who is sometimes credited with being a major influence for Saids work. Malek maintained that the Europecentric conception of Orientalists was the cause of the ethicist typology of the Arabs in their work, which then proceeds to essentialist view of them and causes racism. Other Arab Orientalists includes, Abdelnabi Asteef, Muhamad Shaheen, Duminik Male   who talks about scientific production of Orientalism, Hisham Jieet   who has criticized Orientalist methodology from the historical perspective, and Ahmad Abu Zeid who is known for his work on Orientalism and western emphasis on the self.

Some of the societal and political problems that this prejudicial position towards Muslims and Arabs create include that the mosque is seen to fail to represent religious freedom and diversity. Thus, Muslim groups have sometimes found that the communities they live in oppose the building of Muslim religious centers in the vicinity, if at all. Another social problem that this mindset creates and furthers is the disposition of the West toward the East, of a feeling of superiority which is usually based in a foundation of fear of  the other . The West fears the East, and therefore detests is, and thus does not go through the trouble of learning more about it with a more open mind and attitude. This fuels the vicious cycle of a prejudicial treatment of the East by the West, to such an extent that it affects and guides political motives of the West. This can be very clearly observed in the illustrations that are provided by the case of Iraq, and now Afghanistan

Non-Arab thinkers of Orientalism on the other hand, criticize what Edward Said has proposed and claimed in his writings. These non-Arab thinkers include two of the most famous ones British Historian, Robert Irwin, and Daniel Martin Varisco (an anthropologist and historian). Irwin rejects Said s theory that every European is a racist and an ethnocentric imperialist, by maintaining that even before the world thought about concepts such as  third-worldism  and post-colonialism, several Orientalists were already committed to the cause of Arab and Islamic politics. Varisco too argues that  The notion of Oriental homogeneity will exist as long as prejudice serves political ends, but to blame the sins of its current use on hegemonic intellectualism mires ongoing mitigation of bad and biased scholarship in an  unresolvable  polemic of blame. It is time to read beyond Orientalism.

If the non-Arab, specially the non-Arab of the West, was to realize that hisher pro-American attitude is merely a result of hisher patriotic passion, which has been fueled to such an extent as is depicted by the events of the 21st century, heshe will be able to see more clearly that in the name of patriotism, heshe is actually being conditioned to become and act as an anti-Muslim andor anti-Arab being.