Orientalism and Conspiracy

O R I E N TA L I S M A N D C O N S P I R A C Y
FM.indd i 12/10/10 5:34 PM

P1: PHB Trim: 156mm × 234mm Top: 29pt Gutter: 32pt
IBBK019-02 IBBK019-Serieslist-Royals ISBN: 978 1 84885 243 3 April 23, 2010 20:19
LIBRARY OF MODERN MIDDLE EAST

STUDIES
Series ISBN: 978 1 84885 243 3
See www.ibtauris.com/LMMES for a full list of titles
85. The New Arab Journalist: Mission and Identity in a 95. Kurds of Modern Turkey: Migration, Neoliberalism
Time of Turmoil and Exclusion in Turkish Society
Lawrence Pintak Cenk Saraçoğlu
978 1 84885 098 9 978 1 84885 468 0
86. Reclaiming Women’s Rights in Islam: The Challenge 96. Occidentalisms in the Arab World: Ideology and
to Muslim Patriarchy Images of the West in the Egyptian Media
Hanaan Balala Robbert Woltering
978 1 84885 118 4 978 1 84885 476 5
87. The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: 97. The Army and the Radical Left in Turkey: Military
From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey Coups, Socialist Revolution and Kemalism
Erik J. Zürcher Özgür Mutlu Ulus
978 1 84885 271 6 978 1 84885 484 0
88. Across the Wall: Towards a Shared View of 98. Power and Policy in Syria: Intelligence Services,
Israeli-Palestinian History Foreign Relations and Democracy in the Modern Middle
Ilan Pappé and Jamil Hilal (Eds) East
978 1 84885 345 4 Radwan Ziadeh
978 1 84885 434 5
89. Cultural Encounters in the Arab World: On Media,
the Modern and the Everyday 99. The Copts of Egypt: The Challenges of
Tarik Sabry Modernisation and Identity
978 1 84885 359 1 Vivian Ibrahim
978 1 84885 499 4
90. Palestine Online: Transnationalism,
Communications and the Reinvention of Identity 100. The Kurds of Iraq: Ethnonationalism and
Miriyam Aouragh National Identity in Iraqi Kurdistan
978 1 84885 364 5 Mahir Aziz
978 1 84885 546 5
91. Tuareg Society within a Globalized World: Saharan
Life in Transition 101. The Politics and Practices of Cultural Heritage in
Ines Kohl and Anja Fischer (Eds) the Middle East: Positioning the Material Past in
978 1 84885 370 6 Contemporary Societies
Irene Maffi and Rami Daher (Eds)
92. Orientalism and Conspiracy: Politics and Conspiracy 978 1 84885 535 9
Theory in the Islamic World
Arndt Graf, Schirin Fathi and Ludwig Paul (Eds) 102. The Politics and Poetics of Ameen Rihani: The
978 1 84885 414 7 Humanist Ideology of an Arab-American Intellectual
and Activist
93. Honour Killings: International Human Rights and Nijmeh Hajjar
Crimes Against Women in Turkey 978 1 84885 266 2
Leylâ Pervizat
978 1 84885 421 5 103. The Transformation of Turkey: Redefining State
and Society from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Era
94. Gender and Identity in North Africa: Postcolonialism Fatma Müge Göçek
and Feminism in Maghrebi Women’s Literature 978 1 84885 611 0
Abdelkader Cheref
978 1 84885 449 9
ii
Orientalism
&
Conspiracy
POLITICS AND CONSPIRACY THEORY
IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD
Essays in Honor of Sadik J. Al-Azm
Edited by Arndt Graf, Schirin Fathi

and Ludwig Paul
FM.indd iii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Published in 2011 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by

Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, NY 10010
Copyright © Ludwig Paul, Arndt Graf and Schirin Fathi, 2011
The right of Ludwig Paul, Arndt Graf and Schirin Fathi to be identified
as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or
any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
Library of Modern Middle East Studies, Vol 92
ISBN: 978 1 84885 414 7
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress catalog card: available
Typeset in Perpetua by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd., India

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham
FM.indd iv 12/10/10 5:34 PM

CONTENTS
Preface vii
Sadik J. Al-Azm – Speaking Truth to Power. A Personal Tribute ix
Stefan Wild
Personal Words to an Admired Teacher and Friend xv
Gernot Rotter
List of Contributors xix
PART ONE
Theoretical Approaches
1. Orientalism and Conspiracy 3
Sadik J. Al-Azm
2. Occidentalism as the Political Unconscious in the Literary 29
Construction of the Other
Lorenzo Casini
3. Edward Said and Bernard Lewis on the Question of Orientalism:
A Clash of Paradigms? 45
Mohd Hazim Shah
PART TWO
Historical Perspectives
4. An Orientalist Mythology of Secret Societies 71
Robert Irwin
5. A Cultural Sense of Conspiracies? The Concept of Rumor
as Propaedeutics to Conspiracism 87
Karin Hörner
6. Political Culture, Political Dynamics, and Conspiracism
in the Arab Middle East 105
Matthew Gray
FM.indd v 15/10/10 7:41 PM

CONTENTS
PART THREE
Contemporary Discourses
7. Polemics on “Orientalism” and “Conspiracy”
in Indonesia: A Survey of Public Discourse on the
Case of JIL Versus DDII (2001–2005) 129
J. M. Muslimin
8. Structural Orientalism, Contested Orientalism,
Post-Orientalism: A Case Study of Western Framings
of “Violence in Indonesia” 141
Arndt Graf
9. Memri.org – A Tool of Enlightenment or Incitement? 165
Schirin Fathi
10. The Tragedy of Iblis 181
Sadik J. Al-Azm
Notes 223
Bibliography 239
Index 255
vi
FM.indd vi 12/10/10 5:34 PM

PREFACE
Arndt Graf, Schirin Fathi, and Ludwig Paul
Sadik J. Al-Azm has been considered one of the leading Arab intellec-
tuals and social critics for about 40 years. He became known as such
to a broader Western public in 1989, after the “Rushdie affair”, when
he took a mediating position in the inter-cultural and inter-religious
discussions. In all these, he never failed to make clear his commitment
to enlightenment and freedom of the press and other media, through
which he has become one of the leading proponents of civil society in
the Arab world. He has also decisively influenced the Islamic/Western
“orientalist discourse” of the last 30 years.
The Saidian orientalist hypothesis aimed at correcting the “dis-
torted” picture that (it said) Western societies had constructed of the
Islamic world over centuries. By proposing an “Occidentalist hypoth-
esis”, thus holding up a mirror to the Islamic world, Al-Azm gave
another proof of his intellectual brilliance and wit. A typical ingredient
of the distorted Orientalist and Occidentalist attitudes are conspiracy
theories. It, therefore, seemed appropriate for us to organize a confer-
ence on “orientalism and conspiracy” to honor Sadik J. Al-Azm (in
June 2005, Hamburg), the papers of which are collected in the present
volume.
The term “conspiracy theories” usually denotes ideological pat-
terns of explanation that reduce complex political or social issues to a
simple black-and-white picture. This is done typically by constructing
a scenario in which the we-group is threatened and/or dominated by
a wicked group or organization that is working in secret. Conspiracy
theories are highly complex and socially relevant phenomena of global
impact and have not yet been investigated sufficiently so far.
vii
FM.indd vii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

P R E FA C E
Although conspiracy theories are widespread also in Western

countries, they seem to be of specific interest for the study of modern
Islamic societies. The one well-known conspiracy theory that ascribes
the aspiration at global dominance to Jewish and Zionist circles may
be called the universally most “successful” one and is indeed an inte-
gral part of most modern Islamist ideologies (but not only these). May
conspiracy theories be characterized as products or by-products of mod-
ern social-political developments? Or is the recent increase in number
and importance of conspiracy theories, in Islamic countries, rather to be
understood as a sign of failed modernization?
By addressing questions like these within various theoretical frame-
works, the conference aimed at contributing to a better understanding,
and more systematic investigation of conspiracy theories in Islamic
societies, taking into account the relevant regional and cultural aspects
that have influenced specific conspiracy theories. In detail, the follow-
ing issues were addressed:
• case studies on specific conspiracy theories
• the role that conspiracy theories have played in the framework of

orientalist discourses
• historical, theoretical, and conceptual conditions for the develop-

ment and existence of conspiracy theories
In addition, the conference also aimed at contributing to a cross-cultural

dialog, bringing together scholars from various Islamic and non-Islamic
countries. It is hoped that with the publication of the present volume, a
scholarly basis will be laid for a better mutual understanding of cross-
cultural misunderstandings.
viii
FM.indd viii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

SADIK J. AL-AZM –
SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER
A PERSONAL TRIBUTE
Stefan Wild
It was in the last days of December 1968, and I had just been posted to
Beirut. The capital of Lebanon was at that time the intellectually liveliest
of all Arab cities. It boasted four universities and had the freest press of
any Arab country. The local historical background was the Arab defeat
against Israel in the June war of 1967 – not more than 18 months had
passed. Nasserism was on the decline, and the Palestinian presence in
Lebanon began to emerge as a major political problem. On the interna-
tional level, this was the era of the Cold War, and the US military got
deeper and deeper entangled in Vietnam. I had only been in Lebanon
for some months, but I had already heard much about the young Syrian
university professor Sadik J. Al-Azm and his “radical views”. Sadik
had been teaching at the American University of Beirut and had run
into problems there. This was not the first and not the last time that
Sadik was at loggerheads with a university administration. I am not
aware that any Arabic university ever thought of awarding Sadik a
doctorate honoris causa. In any case, when I wanted to meet Sadik in
person, I could not see him. He had just been arrested and jailed. The
reason given by the authorities was hard to believe even at the time. The
charge was that Sadik had “stirred up confessional trouble”. The high-
est Muslim religious authority in Lebanon, the Mufti of the Lebanese
Republic, had intervened after Sadik had published his collection of
essays, Critique of Religious Thought (Arabic, Beirut 1968). The Sheikh
started a legal procedure. Lebanese penal law at the time punished
attempts to “foment confessional denominational trouble” as a kind of
ix
FM.indd ix 12/10/10 5:34 PM

SADIK J. AL-AZM – SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER
national high treason with up to three years in prison. The book had not
unleashed religious unrest, but it had angered the religious authorities,
especially the Sunni establishment. It was confiscated; Sadik at first hid
but on 8 January 1969 gave himself up to the Lebanese authorities and
was imprisoned. A week later, after a trial that was to become famous,
Sadik was released, and I could finally meet him. Many months later,
and to the credit of the Lebanese judicial system, he was acquitted on all
accounts by a Lebanese court.
Speaking truth to power often means to speak truth against power
and has its risks. The conflict between the scholar or – let us use the
much maligned word – the intellectual on the one hand and political
power on the other is symbolized in many languages by the metaphor
of the pen versus the sword. An Arabic proverb even idealistically pro-
claims the pen to be the “better sword”. The formula “speaking truth to
power” as the quintessential function and duty of the intellectual was
made famous by Edward Said (25 September 2003). This formula, of
course, does not mean that the intellectual simply possesses truth and
power does not. It means rather that the intellectual believes that truth
can only emerge in public debate and that public debate can only thrive
when this debate is not made subservient to and controlled by political
power. The intellectual does not claim to have found the truth, but he
insists that political power curbing public debate will kill truth. To create
a space of free public debate is, therefore, an essential part of the intellec-
tual’s task. It was and is Sadik’s task to create this space in Arab society.
Thus, almost all of Sadik’s writings are intended as contributions to
such a public debate. To be specific about Sadik’s part in this, I contrast
for a moment Sadik’s oeuvre with Edward Said’s work on the one
hand and Salman Rushdie’s on the other. To mention these two names,
Edward Said and Salman Rushdie, in connection with Sadik J. Al-Azm
is not a case of name-dropping. Sadik has written on Edward Said and
was close to many of his views, especially about the Arab-Israeli con-
flict. That did not prevent him from clashing very publicly with him on
some points and on some aspects of the Saidian concept of “oriental-
ism” – the title of probably the most influential book Edward Said wrote
(Orientalism, New York 1978). Sadik has also – much later – written
extensively on Salman Rushdie’s literary work. He not only defended
it as an exercise in free speech to which a novelist must be entitled,
rather, Sadik explained, Salman Rushdie’s famous novel The Satanic
FM.indd x 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Verses should be seen as a necessary step in modern literature that did

for a Muslim culture and for Islam what James Joyce had done with his
Ulysses for Irish Catholics and Christianity. There are numerous analo-
gies and similarities between the three authors, Edward Said, Salman
Rushdie, and Sadik J. Al-Azm. Sadik shares with Edward Said his pre-
dilection of the political essay, and he shares with Salman Rushdie a
deep distrust of institutionalized religion. But while Edward Said and
Salman Rushdie wrote and write mainly for a Western, especially a US
public, Sadik’s target readership is primarily an Arab public. Most of his
writing is done in Arabic, and his countless comments and interviews in
the press address an Arab reader.
It is probably fair to say that the favorite target of Sadik’s criticism is
the alliance of political power with institutionalized religion. But one
must not forget that Sadik’s first critique, the book Self-critique after the
Defeat (namely the defeat of 1967, published in Beirut in 1968) was pri-
marily a scathing attack on official Arab reactions to the defeat in the 1967
war. Already its title was a provocation. While official Arab political cor-
rectness at the time spoke of a “setback” or a “catastrophic misfortune”,
Sadik called a spade a spade and a defeat a defeat. This book was also
a showdown with Arabic nationalism and especially with Nasserism.
One has perhaps to have lived through this era to fully appreciate how
much courage it took for an Arab intellectual to criticize Gamal Abdel
Nasser, the symbol of pan-Arab nationalism at the time. Sadik ironically
wondered why the Arab leaders called the Israeli attack that led to the
Six Days’ War of 1967 a “cowardly act”, when the Arab countries had
claimed for years to be in a state of war with Israel, thus exposing the
hollow rhetoric of the Arab regimes. He was also an early critic of Yassir
Arafat, after the latter had become the chairman of the PLO and the new
symbol of hope for Arabs and Palestinians. In many ways, Sadik is the
writer who has made self-criticism of an Arab in Arabic famous; this
book was the mother of Arab self-criticism, as it were. Sadik produced
a constant parallel stream of criticism directed against the different US
administrations – but this is in this context less interesting.
Sadik is not only a writer, he is also somebody who loves public
debates, even when or rather especially when they are sharp. His public
debates with Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an icon of Islamic fundamental-
ist thought, or Hassan al-Turabi, the most famous Islamist of Sudan, live
on the Arabic TV channel al-Jazeera, years ago, have become famous.
xi
FM.indd xi 12/10/10 5:34 PM

It must have been one of the very few occasions on which, to their great
discomfort, these two had to publicly face flat contradiction and even
sardonic irony.
There are a number of constant topics in Sadik’s work: The commit-
ment to more justice for the Palestinians, the critical view of US policy in
the Middle East and his fight against the misuse of institutionalized reli-
gion in the service of oil and power. Let me try to point out what seems
to me to be an important trait of Sadik’s written work with philosophi-
cal implications. Sadik is and was part of what loosely has – or should
one say had – to be called the Arab left. Marxism seemed for many
Arab intellectuals the best way to understand their societies; social-
ism seemed a good way to build a better and more equitable society. In
this, Arab intellectuals were not alone. Throughout the world between
Europe and Latin America and particularly in many developing coun-
tries, socialism promised reform if not revolution. The “Arab Left” had
been projected back into the Middle Ages by such serious philosophers
as Ernst Bloch; Avicenna, Averroes, and al-Farabi were claimed as fore-
runners of modern leftist ideology. In Beirut, publishing houses and lit-
erary circles, clubs, journals, and newspapers ran the whole gamut of
the left: from orthodox communism split into Soviet and Chinese obser-
vance to non-dogmatic Marxism. In Germany, we have good reasons
to be skeptical of Stalinism and “real socialism” as practiced behind
the Iron Curtain. But in the Arab countries, most intellectuals were on
the side of the left even if this left was ill-defined. Secularism, rational-
ism, feminism, and scientific research seemed possible only if and when
these societies moved to the left. The Arab left offered the chance to be
part of an international project that allowed for an unheard of plural-
ism. We may smile today when we go through the yellowing pages of
Khamsin, the “Journal of Revolutionary Socialists of the Middle East”,
which appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s; it bore the name of
a desert storm and was published in Paris and London. But here was
one of the few platforms that opened a discussion between Arabs and
Israelis. This Arab left never confused Judaism and Zionism, and in
Khamsin we find Sadik J. Al-Azm’s name next to the names of Jewish
and Israeli intellectuals. The virtual disappearance of the Arab left after
the dissolution of the Soviet Union and after the downfall of state social-
ism is, in my view, one of the factors responsible for the rise of an Arab
and Muslim anti-Zionism that is becoming more and more tinged with
xii
FM.indd xii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

old-fashioned European anti-Semitism and is colored by quotations

from the Qur´an. One of Sadik’s most interesting books stated his com-
mitment to an enlightened form of non-dogmatic Marxism under the
title In defence of materialism and history (Arabic, Beirut 1990) – the date of
appearance is a telling indication of its intellectual position.
Sadik is an outspoken and unrepentant secularist. He fights for the
Enlightenment and refuses to see in secularism and Enlightenment
political notions poisoned by being derived from non-Arab or non-
Muslim sources. He calls for humanism, rationalism, religious plural-
ism, freedom of conscience – his polemical force rests on an eminently
moralist approach. The cliché that Sadik is an enfant terrible, a rebel
who invites scandals, is not entirely wrong. There is a strong confronta-
tional and combative element in most of what he writes. But the scandal
is calculated and is moral in the sense that it is deeply rooted in politi-
cal morality, in an almost deadly serious moral commitment. There
is nothing playful about this. The worst thing one could do to Sadik
would probably be to call him a post-modernist, a post-structuralist, a
de-constructionist or God forbid an adherent of Jacques Derrida. The
element of an arbitrary and endless epistemological game is incompat-
ible with Sadik’s moral commitment. Finally, it is a pleasure to read his
prose, especially the polemical passages.
xiii
FM.indd xiii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

FM.indd xiv 12/10/10 5:34 PM
PERSONAL WORDS TO AN ADMIRED
TEACHER AND FRIEND
Gernot Rotter
Sadik, getting this honorary doctorate from the Asia-Africa Institute of

the University of Hamburg may mean for you just one more – and I am
sure not the last one and not the most important one – among all the
prizes and honors you have been awarded by universities and other
institutions around the world. But for the Department of Islamic Studies
at the University of Hamburg it is certainly one of the unique events of
the last 20 years.
Since I am no longer an official representative of the Institute it is
not my duty here to deliver the official laudatory speech in the name
of the institute, but I would like to congratulate you in a very per-
sonal way.
In the mid-1990s, we discussed at the institute in Hamburg whom we
should invite to as a visiting professor. Without any hesitation, I pro-
posed you as our first choice. Until that time we two had not even met
personally. But intellectually you had already been a highly respected
spiritual friend – or should I say, an admired teacher of mine for about
30 years.
The starting point of this one-sided admiration must have been some
time in the last months of my first longer stay in the Near East, when I
was working as an assistant at the German Institute for Oriental Studies
in Beirut in 1968–1969. I finally had learned to read Arab newspapers
not only for the sake of improving my Arabic but for the sake of under-
standing the political and cultural life around me. At the same time, I
had started to follow discussions in Arabic when meeting with intellec-
tuals of the Lebanese society.
xv
FM.indd xv 12/10/10 5:34 PM

PERSONAL WORDS TO AN ADMIRED TEACHER AND FRIEND
Suddenly, in one of those days long gone, there was a book on every
one’s lips: An-naqd adh-dhâtî ba‘da l-hazîma, “Self-criticism after the
Defeat”, meaning the defeat of the Arab armies in the so-called Six Days’
War against Israel in 1967, written by an hitherto unknown young intel-
lectual of Syrian origin called Sadik J. Al-Azm. And only a few months
later, when I was already back in Germany, but still in close contact with
some Lebanese friends, I learned that a second book by the same author
with the title Naqd al-fikr ad-dînî “Critique of Religious Thought” had
come out and that this book was discussed even more controversially
than the first one.
I do not want to discuss the impact these two books had on the politi-
cal discourse in the Arab world in general – and on the life of their author.
This will be done, I am sure, by others in much greater detail. Instead, I
will focus on the considerable influence that these two books had on my
own academic development as a scholar of Islamic and Arabic Studies
or just as a politically thinking human being.
Before going to Beirut, I had just graduated in Oriental Studies at
the University of Bonn, where my two main teachers had been Otto
Spies and Annemarie Schimmel. Spies, at least in my impression, was
looking at the Near East in quite a conservative and realistic way,
although his main interest lay mainly in very special juridical questions
of medieval shari‘a law, mainly in Turkish and other oriental fairy tales
and in Turkish history. These were topics I myself was not very much
interested in, although I appreciated his capabilities as a teacher and his
great sense of humor.
Annemarie Schimmel on the other hand, herself being a mystic, was
looking at the Muslim world in a very emotional, enthusiastic, and
romantic way. This romanticism was not restricted to a certain time,
social class or intellectual movement in Islamic history but included
the whole modern Muslim world without any reservation and in all its
manifestations.
It cannot be denied that our small group of students was – in one way
or the other – fascinated by the Middle East, but this could not prevent
us from sometimes mocking her exaggerated admiration of the Muslim
World. Nevertheless, the influence of Spies and Schimmel on my aca-
demic development was considerable at that time.
With this background – in addition to the many sympathies for the
revolutionary movements that was typical among European students
xvi
FM.indd xvi 12/10/10 5:34 PM

in those days – I had come to Beirut for the first time. Only very slowly
did I take notice of the numerous contradictions within the Lebanese,
Syrian, and Palestinian societies around me, with the result that my
established image of the Arab world started to crumble. Yes, to a certain
degree, I lost my bearings. It was exactly at this time when your book
Self-Criticism after the Defeat came out. Line after line, I felt how furious
and enraged, how disappointed and hopeless you must have been while
writing this book. Whereas most young academics on the campuses of
Beirut’s universities – not to speak of the average citizens – were sure
that foreign conspiracies and interventions had led to the Arab defeat in
1967, you looked for the reasons inherent in the Arab world itself, in its
mentality and traditions, in its incompetence, inability, and unwilling-
ness to criticize itself.
Indeed, the word “self-criticism” (naqd dhâtî) is quite a recent word in
Arabic and just looks like a literary loan translation from either English
“self-criticism” or German “Selbstkritik”. Was it even you, Sadik, who
introduced this word into the modern Arab vocabulary, because of your
extensive knowledge of European philosophy, as only very few others
have in the Arab world?
Asking for self-criticism is asking for realism and rationalism. And
this – and I hope you agree with me, Sadik – is the leitmotif of all your
work: writing for rationalism in the Arab world.
Apart from the contents of the two mentioned books and many more
that followed – and into which I will not go here in more detail – there
were two aspects of your writing style that attracted me. First, in spite of
all your harsh criticism, irony, satire, and sarcasm you never regressed to
plain hatred. And second, you never lost your great sense of humor. For
instance, the way you used the word fahlawî or fahlawîya – taken from
the dialect and impossible to translate – to characterize Arab mentality
and the striking examples you used to depict this term to the reader
were just hilarious.
A good sense of humor is an important prerequisite of self-criticism
and rationalism. Therefore, all fundamentalist movements of the world,
be they religious or ideological or just moralistic, are lacking in any
sense of humor. This lack of humor is the connecting link among them –
it is their common feature. Living in the Arab world I met many an aca-
demic with an enormous sense of humor and very rationalist views. But
there are only very few of them who dare to stand up for their opinions
xvii
FM.indd xvii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

in public, like you do. One unforgettable instance was your famous
dispute with Shaikh al-Qaradawi on religious essentials broadcast on
al-Jazeera a few years ago. And it is for these reasons, Sadik, that people
like you are so important for the Arab world, especially in these days.
Several times during my 30 years as a teacher at the Universities
of Tübingen and Hamburg, I chose publications of yours as required
reading for my classes. I remember at least one of my former students,
Astrid Raab, decided on the basis of these classes to write her M.A. the-
sis on certain aspects of your publications. It goes without saying that I
supported this decision. You may remember that she even visited you
in Damascus and was very impressed by your personality. Upon her
return, she was even more motivated and consequently got the highest
marks for her thesis.
This student stands as a very good example for the fact that read-
ing your critical books on Arab society and politics did not deter her
from the Near East – as it did not deter me in the late 1960s. On the
contrary, she became so fascinated by the contradictions and incon-
sistencies of these societies that she decided to help establish modern
educational institutions in the region. Now she is working toward
this end in Afghanistan, as she had done already several years before
in Yemen.
Sadik, already years ago during your first stay as visiting professor at
our Institute, the enthusiasm your lectures generated among students,
as well as guests, confirmed my recommendation to invite you and in
return – so I hope – validated your acceptance.
Today, I came back to the university for the first time after nearly two
years. You all know the reason for this long absence. But when I was
told that you, Sadik, are here again and that you will be given an honor-
ary doctorate by the University of Hamburg there was no question in
my mind that I would come, as this is the best and most distinguished
opportunity I could imagine. Thank you very much.
xviii
FM.indd xviii 15/10/10 7:41 PM

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Sadik J. Al-Azm Born in Damascus, in 1934, philosopher, interna-

tionally well-known Arab intellectual, retired Professor of Modern
European Philosophy at the University of Damascus, visiting Professor
at the universities of Hamburg, Antwerp, and Princeton, fellow of the
Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. In 2004, he won the Duch
Erasmus Prize and the German Lucas Prize. In 2005 he became a
Dr. Honoris Causa at Hamburg University.
Lorenzo Casini (MA SOAS/University of London, 2002; PhD University

of Florence, 2005) is Assistant Professor in Arabic Language and
Literature at the University of Messina. Previously, he has taught Arabic
Language and Literature at the Universities of Perugia, Florence, and
Genoa and has been Jean Monnet Fellow of the Robert Schuman Centre
for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence.
His publications include Beyond Occidentalism: Europe and the Self in
Present Day Arabic Narrative Discourse (Florence: European University
Institute/RSCAS, 2008).
Schirin Fathi (PhD Hamburg 1993) teaches at the University of

Hamburg, where she also worked as Assistant Professor in the Asia-
Africa Institute (1997–2006) and as Guest Professor (Winter 2009). She
took on various research and teaching activities at renowned institutions
in Washington, DC, Amman, Jerusalem and Cape Town. Publications
cover the Middle East conflict, nationalism and nation-building in the
Middle East, issues of peace education and conspiracy theories.
Arndt Graf (PhD Hamburg 1997; Habilitation Hamburg 2004) is

Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Frankfurt,
xix
FM.indd xix 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Germany, since October 2009. Previously, he worked at Universiti

Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia from 2007 to 2009 and at the
Asia-Africa Institute of the University of Hamburg where he also served
as Assistant Professor (1999–2005). His teaching experience includes vis-
iting positions at Cornell University (USA) in 1998/9, the State Islamic
University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta (Indonesia) in 2004, and the
Université de La Rochelle (France) in 2005/6. Arndt Graf’s publications
mostly cover aspects of rhetoric, media, and communication in insular
Southeast Asia.
Matthew Gray is Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al-Maktoum, Senior Lecturer
at the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies (The Middle East & Central Asia)
at The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, a position
he has held since January 2005. Prior to that time, he held various posi-
tions with the Australian government. He has a PhD from ANU (2000)
and an MA from Macquarie University (1994). His research and teach-
ing focuses on the politics, international relations, and political economy
of the modern Middle East, and his publications have appeared in Arab
Studies Quarterly, Middle Eastern Studies, the Journal of South Asian and
Middle Eastern Studies, and the Australian Journal of International Affairs.
Karin Hörner, born in 1953 in Wuppertal, since 1986 lecturer of Islamic

Studies at the University of Hamburg, Asia Africa Institute (AAI), since
2002 head of the AAI Library. Publications on Orientalist travelogs and
iconography, Muslim gender roles, and clichés in media representa-
tions of Muslims.
Robert Irwin read Modern History at Oxford and taught Medieval

History at the University of St Andrews. He has also taught Arabic and
Middle Eastern History at various universities. He is the author of The
Middle East in the Middle ages, The Arabian Nights: A Companion, Islamic
Art, The Alhambra and For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their
Enemies. He has also published six novels, of which the most recent is
Satan Wants Me. He reviews for a wide range of periodicals and is a
director of a publishing company. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature and a Fellow of the London Institute of Pataphysics.
J. M. Muslimin graduated in 1995 at the Faculty of Syariah of the State

Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta (Indonesia) and in 1998 at
the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden (the Netherlands). In 2005, he received his PhD
xx
FM.indd xx 12/10/10 5:34 PM

at the Asia-Africa Institute of the University of Hamburg (Germany) with a

dissertation on “Islamic Law and Social Change: A Comparative Study of the
Institutionalization and Codification of Islamic Family Law in the Nation-
States of Egypt and Indonesia”. Currently, he is a lecturer and researcher at
the State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta (Indonesia).
Ludwig Paul, born 1963 in Munich, did Iranian studies and Linguistics
at the universities of Bonn, Göttingen, and Tehran in 1985–1995. He
was Research fellow at the Van Leer Institute (Jerusalem) in 1995–
1996. He obtained his PhD in Iranian Studies at the University of
Göttingen in 1996. He was Assistant Professor there in the period
1996–2003 and Professor for Iranian studies at the University of
Hamburg from 2003.
Gernot Rotter, born 1941 at Troppau (Czeckoslovakia), Assistant

Lecturer of Islamic Studies at the University of Bonn (1967), at the
German Institute of Oriental Studies in Beirut (1968/9), and at the
University of Tübingen (1969–1979), director of the German Institute
of Oriental Studies in Beirut (1980–1984), Professor of Islamic Studies
at the University of Hamburg until retirement (1984–2004), Member
of Parliament at the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate (1987–1991).
Publications on early and modern Islamic and African history, trans-
lations of medieval Arabic literature into German, articles on political
affairs in the Arab world in newspapers and magazines.
Mohd Hazim Shah holds a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies in

Science from Manchester University, England, a Master’s degree in
Philosophy from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in the
History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh,
U.S.A. In 1993, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of
History & Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, Australia.
He is currently a Professor and Head of Department, in the Department
of Science and Technology Studies, University of Malaya, where he
teaches the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. He has been
the Deputy President of the Malaysian Social Science Association since
2000. He has edited a book with Prof. K.S. Jomo and Dr Phua Kai Lit
entitled New Perspectives on Malaysian Studies (2002), and with Dr Phua
Kai Lit entitled Public Policy, Culture, and The Impact of Globalization
in Malaysia (2004), both published by the Malaysian Social Science
xxi
FM.indd xxi 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Association. Recently he has edited another book entitled, History,

Philosophy and Social Studies of Science: Essays in Honour of Ungku Aziz
(2006), published by the University of Malaya Press. He has published
in journals such as The American Journal of Islamic Social Science, the Asia
Europe Journal and Studies in Contemporary Islam. His research interest
includes theoretical studies on science and culture, and comparative
epistemology.
Tanja Strube, MA, born in 1978 in Hamburg, majored in Islamic stud-

ies; her subsidiary subjects were legal studies and political sciences, she
finished her MA thesis on the constitutional court of Egypt and started
to work as a lecturer at the Asia-Africa Institute in 2005.
Stefan Wild, born 1937 in Leipzig, 1968–1973, director of the German

Institute of Oriental Studies in Beirut, 1974–1977, Assistant Professor
of Arabic and Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of
Amsterdam, 1977–2002, Full Professor of Semitic Languages and Islamic
Studies at the University of Bonn. Since 2002, Professor Emeritus at the
University of Bonn, and 2003–2004 Fellow at the Institute of Advanced
Studies in Berlin. Publications on Semitic toponomastics, Arabic lexi-
cography, modern Arabic literature, and Qur’ anic studies
xxii
FM.indd xxii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

PART ONE
THEORETICAL APPROACHES
Chapter 01.indd 1 12/10/10 3:32 PM

Chapter 01.indd 2 12/10/10 3:32 PM
1
ORIENTALISM AND CONSPIRACY
Sadik J. Al-Azm1
The topic of “Orientalism and Conspiracy” is complex and this chapter

is an attempt to provide a collage of analyses, observations, criticisms,
experiences and commentaries dealing with several conventional and
unconventional themes substantively related to the issue.
I say this, in spite of Hasan Hanafi’s long-winded, verbose and
rambling call on the Arabs in general and the Arab intelligentsia in partic-
ular to rise to the pressing challenge of establishing a science of Istighrab
(i.e. Occidentalism), for the purpose of systematically studying and sci-
entifically understanding the West, pretty much the way the West had
studied us through its science of Istishraq (i.e. Orientalism).2
Unlike the term Istishraq, Hanafi’s Istighrab is itself a strange and
awkward word for naming a new scholarly discipline, considering its
current usages, meanings and connotations in Arabic such as: To find
strange, odd, queer and farfetched. “Gharb” means “West”, both in the
geographical and political senses of the word, while “ghareeb” means
“stranger”, literally “one who comes from the West”, also the far-off place
where the sun sets.
I certainly did not expect Hanafi’s call to lead to any tangible
results, nor did it escape my attention that if this projected science of
Occidentalism is to amount to anything at all, then it will have to seri-
ously conform to international standards of scholarship, research, criti-
cism, review and argument that are in their turn almost wholly of modern
Western origin and provenance. This surely would not only be enough
to impeach the authenticity of such a science in the eyes of the many in
the Arab and Muslim worlds that Hanafi is trying to reassure and uplift
but also enough to accuse Hanafi himself – by Islamists, for example –
of conspiring with the enemy to produce such an un-Islamic science as
Occidentalism.
Chapter 01.indd 3 12/10/10 3:32 PM

And surely enough, his introduction to the science of Occidentalism is

so overloaded with modern Occidental wisdom, learning, philosophiz-
ing, teachings and approaches that one wonders what is so particularly
Eastern or Islamic about it? Among its massive inclusions are an almost
scholastic summa of the history of modern European philosophy, the
affirmation of a naïve Hegelianism where the World Geist is about to
return East after having completed its classical journey from East to West
and a wholesale uncritical adoption of the West’s well-known modern
critiques of its own modernity with particular emphasis on the European
right-wing counter-Enlightenment types of critiques (Herder, Sombart,
Spengler, Heidegger, T.S. Eliot, Toynbee, Foucault) but without, at the
same time, neglecting to borrow profusely from such works on the left as
Martin Bernal’s Black Athena.3 Furthermore, the heavy influence of Paul
Hazard’s La Crise de la Conscience Européenne: 1680–1715 is unmistakable.
Scholars in the field know that Hanafi was publicly accused of heresy,
apostasy and Kufr in 1997 by none other than his fundamentalist friends
at Al-Azhar University; this in spite of his long-sustained efforts to play
to the Islamist gallery in Egypt and beyond. Sadly enough, Hanafi failed
to mount any vigorous, and/or principled and/or honorable defenses of
himself. The resulting disappointment led Gaber ‘Asfour, one of Egypt’s
most prominent literary critics and public intellectuals, to openly cas-
tigate him for the shabbiness of his stand, the incoherence of his reply
and the defensiveness and hypocrisy of his apology, especially compared
with the strong position taken earlier by Nasr Hamid Abuzaid who had
to deal with equally serious threats, charges and accusations (including
the annulment of his marriage) after the publication of his by now famous
book, Critique of Religious Discourse.4
In the end, Hanafi’s call for a science of Occidentalism (a) amounts to
a reaffirmation by means of an emulation of the much denounced and
much despised original Western science of Orientalism; (b) emanates
from a politics of resentment and a barely camouflaged sense of inferiority
where Occidentalism is supposed to do to the West what Orientalism
had already done to us, Easterners; (c) confirms all over again the much
derided and disparaged “essentialism” of the original Orientalist project
by reifying (and at times even fetishizing) anew “Orient” and “Occident”
to the point of characterizing his projected science of Occidentalism “as
not a history of facts but a description of essences” (p. 103), essences that
necessarily issue in a “struggle of civilizations” (p. 34), according to his
Chapter 01.indd 4 12/10/10 3:32 PM

account; (d) gives up completely on the possibility of historically ever

transcending this whole Orientalism/Occidentalism problematique in
the direction of a higher synthesis based on our common human con-
cerns and shared scientific and scholarly interests (i.e. a scholarly horizon
beyond both Orientalism and Occidentalism); and (e) forms a classical
instance of what I once called the trap of “Orientalism in reverse”.
There is also that other meaning of Occidentalism that comes through
the recent book of Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit bearing the title of
Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies.5
Here, Occidentalism refers to a specific kind of discourse (followed
by violent actions), emanating from the Arab and Muslim worlds whose
main purpose is to denigrate, denounce and condemn the West in every
conceivable way. In their more sophisticated version, these discourses
consciously model themselves on what is supposed to be the Orientalist
original and mean to retaliate by paying back the West and its Orientalism
in kind. But its productions, in my view, never rise to the level of a lofty
parody, a captivating satire or a truly funny take-off, except perhaps in
the literary works of Salman Rushdie.
A good example of the practice of this kind of retaliatory Occidenta-
lism is already to be found in Adonis’ “Manifesto of Modernity (or
Modernism)” of 1980,6 where, for example, the old doctrine of Ernest
Renan, about the imitative character of the Semitic mind versus the cre-
ative nature of the Western and/or European mind is turned around
to affirm that the essence of the Western mind is technicism, while the
Eastern mind is by its very nature creative. Adonis proceeds to explain
that technicism is no more than “application, reproduction, the transfor-
mation of an already present raw material, the imitation of a pre-given
model or plan”, while the Ibda’ of the Eastern mind is “creation out of
nothing, an emanation without pre-givens, an eruption without pre-
existing models”. He, then, appropriates Edward Said’s evocative phrase
to the effect that “the West Orientalized the Orient” and inverts it to con-
clude that whenever the West acts creatively, it Orientalizes itself, i.e.,
when it succeeds in transcending its technicism by engaging in real Ibda’
it Easternizes.
For Adonis, the West is technique, reason, system, order, method, sym-
metry and such. While the East is the prophetic, visionary, magical, mirac-
ulous, infinite, inner, transcendent, fanciful, ecstatic and so on. In other
words – and here I am using Adonis’ words – the East is an originary kind
Chapter 01.indd 5 12/10/10 3:32 PM

of nebular chaos out of which the derivative Western cosmos emerged.

But, the technologically superior West is not satisfied at present with mere
rebellion against the creative East out of which it came but is out to kill
the father tout court.
Then there is that vulgar, barbarous and spiteful Talibanish variety
of Occidentalism, which insists that: What you, the West and your local
stooges call our backwardness is our authenticity; what you term our
primitivism is our identity; what you denounce as our brutality is our
sacred tradition; what you describe as our superstitions is our holy reli-
gion; and what you despise as our illiteracy is our ancient custom, and
we are going to insist on their superiority to all what you have to offer,
no matter what you say and no matter what you do. Shukri Mustafa, the
leader and chief theologian of the “Excommunication and Migration”
Jihadi Islamist organization in Egypt was an ardent defender and prop-
agator of this kind of vulgar Occidentalism. He glorified illiteracy and
innumeracy in the true Muslim community as a part of the religious ideal
of the imitatio of Muhammad himself. Challenging almost everyone else
he asked:
Was it really possible for the Prophet Muhammad and his compan-
ions – the hermits of the night and the knights of the day, in God’s
service – to be also physicists, mathematicians, pioneers of space explo-
ration and makers of modern civilization?! For thirteen years in Mecca,
Allah’s Prophet taught the Muslims Islam and nothing but Islam, nei-
ther astronomy, nor mathematics, nor physics, nor philosophy; where
are those impostors who claim that Islam cannot be established unless
it becomes a pupil of the European sciences?7
Although Buruma and Margalit declare in their book that Islamism is

the main source of the worst manifestations of Occidentalism in our
time, they proceed to demonstrate the fact that the original springs of
all forms of Occidentalism everywhere are in the Occident itself.8 This
is why we find the more glib, ethereal and tricky affirmations and
defenses of the Talibanish version of Occidentalism in the work of a
thinker and author like Jean Baudrillard, particularly his essay about
the 11 September 2001 New York attacks: The Spirit of Terrorism.9 Here
is an example of what I would call his highly refined form of Talibanish
Occidentalism:
Chapter 01.indd 6 12/10/10 3:32 PM

This is the case, again, with Afghanistan. That, on a particular terri-

tory, all “democratic” freedoms and license (music, television – even
women’s faces) can be prohibited, and that a country can stand out
totally against what we call civilization (whatever the religious prin-
ciple invoked) – these things are unbearable to the rest of the “free”
world. It is unacceptable for modernity to be rejected in its universal
pretensions.
The lure of this kind of Occidentalism seems to emanate from what
Baudrillard praises as the “refractory zones of the world”, its “uncolo-
nized and untamed wild spaces, its sacrificial cultures, its sacralized soci-
eties, its high intensity communities” and so on.
Actually, Baudrillard goes so far in his super-attenuated Occidentalism
as to discriminate against the victims of the September 11 assaults in favor
of their terrorist attackers by calling the first “the people of an employment
contract” while celebrating the second as the people of a “pact and a
sacrificial obligation”, and unlike the contract, the sacrificial obligation is
“immune to any defection or corruption”. According to him “the miracle
(of the ‘sacrificial band’)” is to Have adapted to the global network and
technical protocols, without losing anything of this complicity “unto
death”. Unlike the contract, the pact does not bind individuals – even their
“suicide” is not individual heroism; it is a collective sacrificial act sealed
by an ideal demand. And it is the combination of two mechanisms –
an operational structure and a symbolic pact – that made an act of such
excessiveness possible.
But this is not the end of the story. Baudrillard’s September 11 sacrificial
band turns even Hegel’s master-slave dialectic around or upside down, if
you wish, for according to him:
. . . seen in that light, this is almost an overturning of the dialectic of

domination, a paradoxical inversion of the master-slave relationship. In
the past, the master was the one who was exposed to death, and could
gamble with it. The slave was the one deprived of death and destiny,
the one doomed to survival and labor. How do things stand today?
We, the powerful, sheltered now from death and overprotected on all
sides, occupy exactly the position of the slave; whereas those whose
deaths are at their own disposal, and who do not have survival as their
exclusive aim, are the ones who today symbolically occupy the position
of master.
Chapter 01.indd 7 12/10/10 3:32 PM

It is interesting to note as well that Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri speak
in their internationally successful book Empire10 of “a new nomad horde”,
“a new race of barbarians that will arise” a “new positive barbarism”, and
then proceed to celebrate at the end of their book the postmodern “nomadic
revolutionary” of today, i.e. the jihadist of Al-Qaeda. At this point, I am
certainly tempted to see in all this a sort of a European intellectual nos-
talgia dreaming of substituting Nietzsche’s exhausted Blond Beast with a
new and more forceful Brown Beast.
Here, I should not miss a mention of that benign and popular vari-
ety of Occidentalism which helps to reinforce shaken identities, promote
some self-assertion, improve self-esteem, restore wounded amour propre
and advance a sense of empowerment after the model of “black is beauti-
ful”, “vive la diffirence” (may be spelled with an “a” also, à la Derrida, to
indicate the simultaneous deferral of that “difference” which may never
make a difference after all), “communalism is organic”, “identity politics
authentic”, “multiculturalism liberating” and so on.
Salman Rushdie excelled in the use of this sort of Occidentalism, par-
ticularly in his super novel, The Satanic Verses. This is what he had to say
about it all:
I must have known, my accusers say, that my use of the old devil-name
“Mahound,” a European demonization of “Muhammad,” would cause
offence. In fact, this is an instance in which de-contextualization has
created a complete reversal of meaning. A part of the relevant context
is on page 93 of the novel. “To turn insults into strengths, whigs, tories,
blacks all chose to wear with pride the names they were given in scorn;
likewise, our mountain-climbing, prophet-motivated solitary is to be
the medieval baby-frightener, the Devil’s synonym: Mahound.” Central
to the purposes of “The Satanic Verses” is the process of reclaiming
language from one’s opponents. Trotsky was Trotsky’s jailer’s name.
By taking it for his own, he symbolically conquered his captor and set
himself free. Something of the same spirit lay behind my use of the
name “Mahound.”11
It would be most inappropriate for me to leave this topic of discussion

without saying something about or related to Edward Said’s sharply
debated and most influential book Orientalism – a book that is still alive
and kicking after the passage of more than a quarter of a century since
Chapter 01.indd 8 12/10/10 3:32 PM

its publication. First, I would like to present a prime example of what I

would regard as “Orientalism” in its really bad Saidean sense:
To live in Arabic is to live in a labyrinth of false turns and double mean-

ings. No sentence means quite what it says. Every word is potentially a
talisman, conjuring the ghosts of the entire family of words from which
it comes. The devious complexity of Arabic grammar is legendary. It
is a language which is perfectly constructed for saying nothing with
enormous eloquence; a language of pure manners in which there are
hardly any literal meanings at all and in which the symbolic gesture
is everything. Arabic makes English look simple-minded, and French
a mere jargon of cost-accountants. Even to peer through a chink in
the wall of the language is enough to glimpse the depth and darkness
of that forest of ambiguity. No wonder the Koran is so notoriously
untranslatable.12
Obviously Arabic is judged, here (and found very wanting), by the princi-
ples of a Cartesian conception of language – a conception implicitly based
on the doctrine of “clear and distinct ideas”, the primacy of quasi syllogis-
tic reasoning of the “I think therefore I am” type, the propositional nature
of all genuine saying and comprehending, and the full specifialibility and
discreteness of communicable meaning.
Now, if we shift to a postmodernist-deconstructionist approach to lan-
guage based on such principles as the disjunction of sign, signifier and
signified, the unending shiftiness of sense, the undecidability of meaning,
the paradoxes of incommensurability, William Empson’s Seven Types of
Ambiguity,13 the absurdities of self-reflexivity and so on, then would not
the Arabic described by Raban seem like the ideal language for the angst-
ridden Daseins of the postmodern condition?
In a comparable vein, Daryush Shayegan adopts and quotes
approvingly a similar view expressed by a most famous French Arabist
saying: “Referring to the spirit of the Arabic language, Jacques Berque
rightly observes, ‘the Arabic tongue, whose every word leads to God, has
been designed to conceal reality, not to grasp it.’”14 Again, in his Islam in
the World, Malise Ruthven reproduces this kind of judgment by quoting
approvingly Jonathan Raban’s description of the Arabic language and
by affirming that (a) “Arabic more than most other languages, eludes
translation, at least into the European languages” and (b) Arabic is “an
Chapter 01.indd 9 12/10/10 3:32 PM

eminently suitable language for religious expression”. Then, Ruthven

proceeds to explain this whole weird situation in the following manner:
Arabic is a language built around verbs. Substantives and adjectives are

always verbal derivatives, usually participles or verbal nouns. A clerk
is a writer, a book is a writ. Aeroplanes and birds are things that fly.
European languages, with their multiple origins, are much rooted in
substances: most nouns in English are things-in-themselves, not parts
of verbs, which are processes. It is precisely because Arabic refrains from
classifying words into discrete particles, but keeps them instead in a
logical and balanced relationship with a central concept – the verbal
root – that it becomes an eminently suitable language for religious
expression.15
Again, would not Arabic seem like the ideal language in light of a para-
digm shift in the direction of, say, (a) Alfred North Whitehead’s critique of
all Aristotelian philosophies of substance, simple location and misplaced
concreteness in favor of reality as process or (b) of Henry Bergson’s attack
on Chosisme and his dismissal of things-in-themselves in favor of univer-
sal flux and a continually creative form of evolution or (c) Georgi Lukács
rejection of reification and its discreet particles in favor of a reality of
events, circumstances and processes.
If “In the beginning was the Word”, was that “word” a verb or a
noun? According to Ruthven, it was a verb for Arabic and a noun for the
European languages. Then, the question is: Which is closer to the spirit
of modernity, starting with the static noun or the active verb? At least
Faust’s answer is clear from his new translation of the first verse of the
Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the deed.” Not that substances,
nouns and things-in-themselves are absent from the “Arabic language
paradigm”, for just as God had brought His creatures to Adam to give
them their proper names in Genesis (2:19–20), the Koran also teaches that
Allah “taught Adam the names of all things; then placed them before the
angels, and said: Tell Me the names of these if ye are ight” (1:31).
It is interesting to note as well that a committed Muslim feminist
author, academic and activist like Leila Ahmed in the United States, not
only accepts the pejorative “Orientalistic” Raban-Ruthven account of
Arabic but proceeds to turn it into the primary virtue of the language
by appealing to and making a lot out of the contingent fact that Arabic is
10
Chapter 01.indd 10 12/10/10 3:32 PM

written in consonants only, while the reader has to supply the vowels for
any reading to occur and for any meaning to emerge. This is how Ahmed
makes her case:
Moreover, a bias in favour of the heard word, the word given life and
meaning by the human voice, the human breath (nafas) is there, one
might say, in the very language itself. In Arabic (and also Hebrew)
script, no vowels are set down, only consonants. A set of consonants
can have several meanings and only acquires final, specific, fixed mean-
ing when given vocalized or silent utterance (unlike words in European
script, which have the appearance, anyway, of being fixed in meaning).
Until life is literally breathed into them, Arabic and Hebrew words
on the page have no particular meaning. Indeed, until then they are
not words but only potential words, a chaotic babble and possibility
of meanings. It is as if they hold within them the scripts of those lan-
guages, marshalling their sets of bare consonants across the page, vast
spaces in which meaning exist in condition of whirling potentiality until
the very moment that one is singled out and uttered. And so by their
very scripts, these two languages seem to announce the primacy of the
spoken, literally living word, and to announce that meaning can only
be here and now. Here and now in this body, this breath (nafas), this
self (nafs) encountering the word, giving it life. Word that, without that
encounter, has no life, no meaning.16
It is no less interesting to speculate about whether one may classify

this kind of celebration of the properties of the language of the Koran
as a form of Orientalism-in-reverse where Arabic certainly stops being a
language like other languages. The very flaws that Raban and Ruthven
detect in Arabic elevate it – and elevate the Koran and Islam with it –
to what Ahmed calls an “intrinsically aural language”. Actually, for her
what is most distinctive and valuable about Arabic, the Koran and Islam
is their inherent orality and aurality (p. 127).
Here are a few additional observations in a left-handed defense of
Arabic, on these new very Occidental and very European grounds:
1) In favor of Arabic one may cite, here, Rousseau’s view in his “Essay
on the Origin of Language” to the effect that “figurative language was
the first to be born” while “proper meaning was discovered last”; all
11
Chapter 01.indd 11 12/10/10 3:32 PM

of which should please Adonis and suit his Occidentalist thesis (not
to mention Ahmed’s auratic thesis), where such a figurative language
as Arabic would certainly come first, while such modern languages as
English and French, dedicated to “proper meaning” and literal com-
prehension, would come last.
2) Arabic, with its supposed “forests of ambiguity” would seem to fit

much better than, say, English into the overall critical scheme of a
master literacy theoretician like William Empson, especially when he
speaks thus in praise of ambiguity:
“Ambiguity” itself can mean an indecision as to what you mean,

an intention to mean several things, a probability that one or other
or both of two things has been meant, and the fact that a statement
has several meanings . . . Thus, a word may have several distinct
meanings; several meanings connected with one another; several
meanings which need one another to complete their meaning; or
several meanings which unite together so that the word means one
relation or one process.17
We can even raise the stakes higher, in this regard, by imagining

(a) the liberation that Arabic could consequently provide from what
Stuart Chase once called “the tyranny of words”18 and (b) the complex
ramifications it could put at the disposal of either an Empson trying
to make sense out of such second-order discussions as “the ambigu-
ity of ambiguity”19 or of a critic like I.A. Richards attempting to figure
out “the meaning of meaning”.20 So, all lovers of Akira Kurosawa’s
classic movie Rashomon (1950) should not only admire Arabic for its
inherent auratic Rashomon-like qualities but should also esteem it as
the natural medium of “magical realism” and the suspension of all
realist norms.
3) Part of the problem of “living in Arabic”, according to Raban, is that

“every word is potentially a talisman, conjuring the ghosts of the entire
family of words from which it comes”; while on the other hand, part
of the glory of “living in Arabic”, according to Ahmed, is that every
word becomes an empty auratic receptacle for meanings. Raban, for
his part, proceeds to explain this “peculiarity” of the language by
12
Chapter 01.indd 12 12/10/10 3:32 PM

looking up the Arabic word for “child” (tifl) in Hans Wehr’s famous
dictionary – “the treasure-house of Arabic roots” – and then reporting
on what he found there in the following manner:
The word is tifl, and it derives from the root tfl, meaning to intrude,
obtrude, impose (upon); to sponge, live at other people’s expense; to
arrive uninvited or at an inconvenient time, disturb, intrude; to be
obtrusive. The linguistic family includes the words for softness, potter’s
clay, parasites, sycophants, initial stages and dawn. No richer or more
sceptical definition of childhood has, as far as I know, ever been made.21
Now, the intrigue should multiply greatly the moment we remember

that it took the deconstructive skills of a Jacques Derrida to concentrate
our attention on the talisman – word, “Pharmakon” in Plato’s Phaedrus and
to conjure the ghosts of the entire family of words attendant on it. In other
words, the verbal conjuring that seems to come so naturally and sponta-
neously to Arabic seems to require the Herculean intellectual efforts of
a Derrida to accomplish in French and Greek. And à propos of all these
ghosts and their conjural, it behooves us not to forget, here, Derrida’s
equally celebrated interest in “specters” and the “spectral”.22
In his famous essay, “Plato’s Pharmacy”,23 Derrida also conjures the
ghosts of the entire family of words related to “Pharmakon” such as
remedy, recipe, poison, drug, cure, harm, medicine, philter, pharmacia,
pharmakeus, sorcerer, magician, wizard, poisoner, scapegoat, etc., bring-
ing into play many other related contexts as well, like medicine, poli-
tics, farming, law, festivity, sexuality, family relations and, of course, his
favorite activity, writing. May one, therefore, conclude, à la Raban, that
“no richer or more skeptical definition of ‘pharmacology’ has ever been
made” in any language.
Now, on a Derridean reading, Arabic, as presented by Raban, Ruthven
and Ahmed, for example, would
– be intertextual through and through, an intertextuality that leaks on

all sides to boot,
– provide interpretative freedoms hitherto undreamt of under the grim

repressive logocentric regimes of conceptual clarity, distinct meanings
and literal truths,
13
Chapter 01.indd 13 12/10/10 3:32 PM

– form the finest natural example of the rhetorics of free play coupled
with an amazing capacity for limitless interpretative license, uncon-
trolled semantic slippage, unending textual vandalism and constantly
deferred meanings (and unmeanings),
– present the best simultaneous carrier of ambiguities, ambivalences,

limitless ramifications of sense, complimentary and antithetical mean-
ings, infinite signifying chains, indefinite play of semantic substitu-
tions, etc. that work to defy the most concerted tidy-minded attempts
to sort these things out and to baffle the most rigorous protocols of
reading,
– be all charisma and no routine and
– seem to act like the natural destabilizer of Derrida’s bête noire: “the
Western Metaphysics of Presence”.
Let me move on to say something about another engagement that I had

with Orientalism, but an Orientalism of a different kind.
A few months after September 11, I attended a prestigious conference
at the India International Center in New Delhi, dealing with India’s rela-
tionships with the Middle East. Under the direction and chairmanship
of the high politician, parliamentarian and scholar Dr. Singh, the Indian
colleagues at the conference worked hard at pushing a certain agenda.
They wanted to abolish the whole concept of the Middle East with all its
attendant baggage, implications and applications on account of its colo-
nialist origins, Orientalistic overtones and glaring Eurocentrist reference
point.
But, then, to my dismay and shock, they proposed instead the con-
cept of “West Asia” as the “proper” and appropriate designation for my
part of the world, the Arab Middle East, on account of its supposedly
greater authenticity, accuracy, adequacy and superiority in comparison
with the more conventional “Middle East”. I immediately shot back
arguing: If I have to make a choice, by way of self-description and/
or self account, between your natural vision of us as “West Asia” and
Europe’s natural vision of us as the “Middle East”, I will not hesitate for
a moment in opting for the second designation and for excellent reasons
at that.
14
Chapter 01.indd 14 12/10/10 3:32 PM

I explained to the conference:

First, that out of these two inherently biased and tendentious ways of
looking at and naming us, “the Middle East” has the advantage of wide
currency, the privilege of long-standing usage and the prestige of emanat-
ing from and referring to the center of the Modern world, i.e., Europe.
Second, that “West Asia” jarringly violates the fundamental way in
which we see ourselves as “Middle Eastern” Arabs by cutting us off from
Egypt – which is in Africa. In contrast, no Orientalist view, no Eurocentric
definition, no colonial conception of the “Middle East” has ever separated
Egypt from the rest of the Arab Mashreq, i.e., from the Eastern wing of
the Arab world, as we often refer to ourselves as well. I insisted also that
“West Asia” simply filters out another basic image of ourselves as part
and parcel of the Arab world, since it seems to relegate the entire region
of North Africa to some other realm or world.
Third, that “West Asia”, unlike the “Middle East”, simply robs us
from the Mediterranean dimension of our existence, history and self-
conception, a dimension permanently bound to and continuously
entangled with the other side of our lake, i.e., the European shore of the
Mediterranean. Here, I had to marshal all my arguments. I said, think
of Alexander the Great, Rome, Hannibal, Christianity going to Europe,
Islam extending itself to Spain and beyond, the Crusades, the Ottomans
in Europe, modern European colonialism and so on. Think of the fact that
these two sides of the Mediterranean share the Judeo-Christian-Muslim
tradition, the Greco-Roman heritage, Islam descending on Byzantium
and a culturally Hellenized Christian Middle East, Hellenism under-
lying the scholastic reason of Judaism, Eastern Christianity, Western
Christianity and Islam and their sharing of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus,
Adam, Eve, Abraham and Moses.
I concluded by insisting that this kind of transcultural, translinguistic
and transcontinental historical dialectic can in no way sit well with such a
meager concept as “West Asia”, so I would rather stick with the “Middle
East” in spite of its obvious flaws and well-known shortcomings.
I must confess, as well, that this intervention irritated my Indian hosts
and colleagues – especially on the first day – for busting the conference
agenda so soon. The mood improved later on, but I could not avoid devel-
oping the strong suspicion that they wanted so eagerly to call us “West
Asia” because they imported most of their oil from what to them is actu-
ally West Asia.
15
Chapter 01.indd 15 12/10/10 3:32 PM

Finally, I would like to bring out a certain political aspect of Said’s

Orientalism that I do not think has received adequate attention so far.
Said – both as loyal American and committed Palestinian – was
deeply disturbed by and very concerned over what I shall call the par-
adox of American policy in the Arab Middle East in general and vis
à vis the Palestinians in particular. For, while, on the one hand, all of
America’s vital interests and oil investments sit in the Arab world, its
strategies and policies have on the whole favored Israel and uncondi-
tionally supported its expansionist aims, on the other, all at the expense
of the Arabs and to the extreme detriment of the Palestinians.
Since the birth of the state of Israel, this paradox has been the source
of acute embarrassment (and even threat) to the Arab regimes allied with
the United States during the Cold War. They all needed an “explanation”
as to why America seemed incapable of producing policies commensu-
rate with its vital interests in the area, on the one hand, and that also
measured up to the minimum expectations of its closest Arab friends and
strategic allies there, on the other.
The dominant theory – for a long time favored and patronized by
the Saudi monarchy – blamed Jewish-Zionist organizations, forces, pres-
sure groups, vested interests, lobbies, funds, media, conspiracies and so
on for distorting America’s vision as to its vital interests in the Middle
East and as to where they really reside. The following are examples of
how this tactic worked in practice, chosen from some past Arab political
discourses:
“And so, The Zionist and American forces supporting Israel succeeded
in making the American President withdraw his commitment to the
phrase: The legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”
“The American President gave in to Zionist pressure and retracted

his support for Arab rights.”
“The friends of Israel in congress and outside, put pressure on the

American President and convinced him not to openly express his real
convictions on account of their detrimental effects on Israel.”
This kind of explanation worked conveniently to absolve the American

President from responsibility for very unpopular policies in the Arab
world and to relieve the embarrassment of the local regimes so closely
16
Chapter 01.indd 16 12/10/10 3:32 PM

allied to that president. Actually, Arab rulers claimed, then, in their pro-
paganda, that they were making progress in resolving the paradox of
American policy in the Middle East by helping the Americans see cor-
rectly where their long-term vital interests lie.
My claim, here, is that Said’s Orientalism meant also to provide a more
sophisticated explanation of the paradox of American policies in the Arab
world by appealing to French discourse theory in its Foucauldian version.
Accordingly, what comes to distort America’s vision in the area and deter-
mine the wrong-headed policies pursued there is that massive prison-
house of Orientalist discourse and language built over the centuries and
now fully absorbed by all Western (and particularly American) decision
makers, policy framers, administrators, rulers, diplomats, experts, spe-
cialists, academics, functionaries, military commanders, assistants, etc.,
dealing with that part of the world. Toward the end of his book, Said
explains himself in the following way:
The system of ideological fictions I have been calling Orientalism has
serious implications not only because it is intellectually discreditable.
For the United States today is heavily invested in the Middle East, more
heavily than anywhere else on earth: the Middle East experts who advise
policy makers are imbued with Orientalism almost to a person. Most of
this investment, appropriately enough, is built on foundations of sand,
since the experts instruct policy on the basis of such marketable abstrac-
tions as political elites, modernization and stability, most of which are
simply the old Orientalist stereotypes dressed up in policy jargon, and
most of which have been completely inadequate to describe what took
place recently in Lebanon or earlier in the Palestinian popular resistance
to Israel.24
The book certainly meant to dispel this distortion – by exposing the
formidable Orientalist apparatus underlying it – in the hope of improved
and more realistic American policies vis à vis the Arabs in general and the
Palestinians in particular.
II
Let me confess again that I am neither a believer in conspiracy theories

and explanations nor particularly knowledgeable about their origins,
causes and modes of operation. This is not to say, of course, that I am not
17
Chapter 01.indd 17 12/10/10 3:32 PM

very familiar with the genre, particularly the type that is so rampant in
the Arab world and that I invested much time and effort in combating.
My purpose in all that was always to minimize as much as possible the
harmful and delusionary effects of such theories and explanations even
on the considered views and judgments of otherwise very intelligent,
enlightened and thoughtful people.
I had always thought that the Arabs are the worst offenders around
when it comes to the addiction to conspiracy theories, particularly when
it comes to history, politics and international affairs, until one day Fred
Halliday of the London School of Economics corrected me by insisting
that that privilege belongs to Iran and the Iranians, by right.
This set me thinking about the role of Shi’ism, for example, in intensi-
fying this Iranian super addiction to conspiracy explanations, considering
that power was in fact usurped from Imamu ‘Ali and his heirs through a
series of dirty conspiracies.
It set me thinking as well about the role of theistic religion in general
and Islam in particular in perpetuating this affliction in the whole Middle
East and beyond, considering that to the religious mentality all expla-
nations are ultimately in terms of personalized will, intention, goal and
design – to my mind, a kind of higher order animism. Actually, one of the
attributes of God in the Koran is cunning (makr) and you cannot have a
good conspiracy without a lot of makr, on the one hand, while any seri-
ous exercise of the faculty of makr is bound to generate conspiracies of
all sorts, on the other. Perhaps, conspiracy theories are a humanized and
secularized version of ultimately religio-theistic ways of making sense of
history and of explaining the world.
This, in turn, brings to mind the old teleological argument for the exis-
tence of God in philosophical theology known also as the argument from
design, namely, that whenever and wherever a natural pattern seems to
emerge and/or form, there must be a conscious design behind it; and a
design always requires at least one designer. A similar situation would
naturally obtain even more forcefully when it comes to making sense out
of and explaining all the patterns that emerge, form and re-form in human
affairs, plans, goals, decisions and histories. Could it be as well, that con-
spiratorial explanations are a reversion to the causal enchantment of an
already thoroughly disenchanted modern world?
Of course, I am not saying that in today’s Middle East, for example,
you have to be religious and/or believe in gods and arguments from
18
Chapter 01.indd 18 12/10/10 3:32 PM

design to subscribe to conspiracy theories and act on them. For instance,

the secular left in the Arab world is as predisposed to the production,
circulation, adoption and use of such theories as the religious right. For,
there is no running away from the fact that the conspiratorial modes of
thinking and explaining are deeply ingrained in parts of the Arab social,
intellectual, cultural and the political conscious and unconscious. This is
why atheists, skeptics, agnostics, communists, Marxists, liberals, nation-
alists, secularists, etc. show themselves to be as prone to the influence and
use of the drug as the rest.
I am not saying either that conspiracies do not happen and that
foes, friends, enemies and allies do not conspire in the Middle East,
like everywhere else, against themselves and, above all, against each
other. I am not denying either that very often, when the strong consult
among themselves, take stock of their priorities and define their goals
and policies, it all looks like a dark conspiracy in the eyes of the weak.
I am certainly not affirming that conspiracy theories and explanations
are always wrong, crazy and beside the point; for, later events and rev-
elations have shown often enough that the peddlers of such theories
and explanations turned out to be quite on the mark in their own time
and place.
Let me recount a small story from memory. Shortly after the Ba’ath
party and the military seized power in Syria, 8 March 1963, Damascus
was buzz with rumors about a conspiracy hatched by the CIA, in
collusion with right wing Syrian forces and elements, to overthrow
the new progressive regime. Then, I had just returned to Damascus
after finishing my studies in the United States and quickly joined the
“rational center” there in criticizing the reigning conspiratorial men-
tality and in denouncing the resulting hysterical rhetoric and “absurd”
accusations of the new authorities against the United States and the
West in general. Many many decades later, and while in Washington
DC, I learned from freshly released classified documents of the State
Department that the crazy Syrian conspiracy theorists of those days
were right on target, while we the sober rational center of Damascus
were dead wrong.
Now, I would like to move on to place before you an account of some
of my own experiences with conspiracy theories.
(1) I was in Japan when the 9/11 airborne assaults on New York and
Washington DC occurred. The startled Japanese friends and colleagues
19
Chapter 01.indd 19 12/10/10 3:32 PM

I was interacting with saw no conspiracies in what happened but were

certainly at a loss as to what to make out of a situation where, on the one
hand, Islamic Jihad perpetrates a sensational act of terroristic violence
without precedent against the heart of the West, while, on the other, the
President of the United States seemed to act immediately to mobilize
the “Christian West” for a ferocious counter-crusade against Islam. It
all appeared to them more like a religious war resurrected from some
long gone dark ages than a conspiracy of any kind – hence the cul-
tured Japanese lady who whispered in my ear: “what kind of savage
religions do you have on your side of the world?” When I explained to
her that our religions are all “heavenly religions” (adyan samawiyya, as
we say in Arabic), revealed all the way down from the highest heaven,
she ironically asked: “And what have you left to all the other earthly
religions, then?” I would like to add a little aside, here, by saying that
I found it quite edifying to have experienced the September 11 shock
and its first repercussions in a culture very different from what I am
normally used to, i.e., in a culture where such commonplace cries as
“my God”, “mon Dieu”, “mein Gott”, “ya Rabbi”, “ya Ilahi” and so on had
no meaning at all.
Upon returning home to Damascus, Syria, I immediately found myself
immersed in conspiracy theories of every conceivable shape, form and
complexion about 9/11. The point of the whole commotion was to dis-
tance the Arabs, Islam and Muslims from what happened to the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon by blaming it all on all sorts of usual and
unusual candidates: the Mosad, the CIA, the Pentagon itself, the Jewish-
Zionist-imperialist plot, globalization’s super plotters and schemers, the
American military-industrial complex and so on. Right, Left and Center
were all implicated.
The most interesting rationalization in this context asked: But,
since when are the Arabs capable of such strategic planning, such
long-term preparations, such brilliant tactics, such faultless coordina-
tion, synchronization and implementation? The reassuring conclusion
inevitably followed: Since contemporary Arabs are neither Germans
nor Japanese, they could not have had anything to do with what hap-
pened in New York and Washington DC. For my part, I argued in
favor of a much simpler explanation of the whole phenomenon: the
Americans trained the mujahidin so well in Afghanistan, and for once
the Arabs among them learned their lesson so well that at the first
20
Chapter 01.indd 20 12/10/10 3:32 PM

opportune moment they turned its devastating impact on the masters

themselves.
In all fairness, I should say that a gradual but steady retreat of the
conspiracy theories occured in the face of the accumulating evidence
as to the party responsible for the September 11 attacks, with some
doubts, reservations and question marks lingering here and there. But
as always, the hard-core conspiracy theory believers can never be con-
vinced otherwise no matter how high the evidence piles up, because such
theories and explanations are driven by the turns of their own dialecti-
cal momentum – no matter how phantasmagoric it gets – rather than by
anything relating to evidence and the like.
The other side of the Mediterranean is not immune to conspiracy
explanations either – especially of the “super” variety. For example, in
his treatment of the 9/11 conspiracy theories, Jean Baudrillard produced
a meta-conspiracy theory of his own, i.e., a conspiracy theory of the circu-
lating conspiracy theories about 9/11.
He argued that the conspiratorial explanations of 9/11 really favor,
work for and serve the interests of the United States and the West in gen-
eral, because (a) they portray America as the sole agent and actor capa-
ble of such grand extremism and spectacular excess and (b) they rob all
other possible actors and agents around of the ability to perpetrate such
a grandiose feat as 9/11. In other words, it enhances the power and pres-
tige of America to no end for the rest of the world to believe that only
America dares to do a 9/11 to America. It is sick reasoning, but this is how
Baudrillard puts the matter:
The most recent of the versions of September 11, and the most eccentric,
is that it was all the product of an internal terrorist plot (CIA, funda-
mentalist extreme right, etc.). A thesis that appeared when doubt was
cast on the air attack on the Pentagon and, by extension, the attack on
the Twin Towers (in Thierry Meyssan’s 9/11: The Big Lie). Above and
beyond the truth of the matter, of which we shall perhaps never have
any knowledge, what remains of this thesis is, once again, that the dom-
inant power is the instigator of everything, including effects of subver-
sion and violence, which are of the order of trompe-l’oeil. The worst of
this is that it is again we who perpetrated it. This, admittedly, brings no
great glory to our democratic values, but it is still better than conceding
to obscure jihadists the power to inflict such a defeat on us. If it were
21
Chapter 01.indd 21 12/10/10 3:32 PM

to turn out that such a mystification were possible, if the event were
entirely faked up, then clearly it would no longer have any symbolic
significance (if the Twin Towers were blown up from the inside – the
crash not being sufficient to make them collapse – it would be very diffi-
cult to say they had committed suicide!). This would merely be a politi-
cal conspiracy. And yet, even if all this were the doing of some clique of
extremists or military men, it would still be the sign (as in the Oklahoma
bombing) of a self-destructive internal violence, of a society’s obscure
predisposition to contribute to its own doom.25
Clearly, this super-conspiracy theory hints that the circulating 9/11

conspiracy theories may very well be excellent self-serving American
fabrications and assures us that the United States ultimately stands to
benefit from them because they act to desacralize, disenchant, neutralize
and trivialize the massive sacrificial significance and grand impact of the
9/11 attacks by reducing them to just another big terrorist act not really
that different from the infamous Oklahoma bombing.
Allow me to confess that the following are some of the thoughts, images,
notions and titles that crowded in on me while reading Boudrillard on this
topic: Casuistry, Byzantine intrigue, hair-splitting, Surrealism, Jesuitical
distinctions, Theologico-dialectical feats, Big Brother, double-speak,
Dr. Calligary’s Cabinet, Kafka nightmares and George Orwell’s 1984.
(2) In my involvement with the Rushdie affair, I did battle with the two
major conspiracy theories that emerged in the Arab world about Salman
Rushdie and The Satanic Verses. The first regarded him either as a witting
or unwitting instrument of the continuing imperialist-Zionist-Orientalist
plot against the Arabs and Islam in general. The second saw in him a
secret agent of resurgent heretical Shi’ism out to defame, discredit and
undo Sunni Islam. The “instrument” version found favor among leftist
and nationalist circles and was best formulated, argued for and propa-
gated by the late Iraqi communist author and activist (living, then, in
Damascus) Hadi Al-‘Alawi.
Conspiracy theories in the Arab world usually start with a certain
formulaic rhetorical question: Exactly, why at this moment? Why now?
Or more specifically why did Rushdie write and publish The Satanic
Verses at exactly this moment and no other? The point of the question
is, of course, to intimidate, foreclose any further discussion and dismiss
from the start all other alternative answers or explanations, save the
22
Chapter 01.indd 22 12/10/10 3:32 PM

conspiratorial one intended. The question is usually asked assertively,

menacingly and with a lot of the superior airs of those privy to some
“deeper” knowledge or truth that escapes the rest of us, who naively
trust in appearances.
Inspite of Hadi’s intelligence, broad experience, learning and dar-
ing research and publications on such sensitive topics as “torture and
assassination in Islam” (including the assassinations ordered by the
Prophet himself), still he became the most important propagator of
one conspiracy theory about the Rushdie novel.26 According to him,
Rushdie served the imperialists – knowingly or unknowingly – by sit-
ting down to write a novel that fanned the flames of enmity between
the Iranian and Arab peoples at a time when Iraq and Iran were at war,
thus rendering a service to Saddam Hussein and his American allies
and backers at the time.
According to him, the imperialists resorted to the ruse of using both
the novel form and the reputation of an already established British third
world novelist to achieve their goal, because the more conventional forms
and open methods of deepening and intensifying the hatred between the
two now warring peoples have been exhausted – all to the profit and ben-
efit of world imperialism.
By way of entertaining you, I shall digress to mention that the Egyptian
Islamist lawyer Abdul-Halim Mandour, who charged Professor Nasr
Hamid Abu-Zeid of atheism before the courts in Cairo and clamored for
his dismissal from the University of Cairo made the following comment
about Naguib Mahfouz’s Islamically most controversial novel: “If we
consider The Children of Our Alley (also Gabalawi’s Children), of Naguib
Mahfouz we will find that it is an Italian novel translated to Arabic and
turned over to Naguib Mahfouz just to add his name to it”.
As is well known, conspiracy theories and explanations are in their
nature unassailable and irrefutable, because all seemingly contrary
instances, arguments, pieces of evidence, etc. are immediately absorbed
into the theory itself and turned into confirming instances of its claims.
So, my preferred tactic for combating them is to throw in the most out-
rageous and absurd theory possible under the circumstances and then
challenge the others to refute it. For example, I would argue, by sheer
assertion, and with all the necessary airs of superior knowledge, that
the Palestinian Intifada is really and in depth the result of a secret Plot
and Pact between Arafat and Ariel Sharon to destroy the resistance of
23
Chapter 01.indd 23 12/10/10 3:32 PM

the Palestinian People for the benefit of the Zionist-imperialist-Orientalist

plot, etc. Even the extreme anti-Arafatists keep quiet at this point as a part
of their “conspiracy of silence” against the man’s achievement and what
he has come to represent.
I shall return to Hadi now, for a glimpse of how the conspiratorial
approach works, by pointing out a few of the principles according to
which he said he had read The Satanic Verses – the following are virtual
quotations from his writings on the subject:
1) To what extent does the novel serve the imperialist West by stirring
up and nourishing Farsi-Arab enmity, particularly during the years of
the Iraq-Iran war.
2) Identifying the immediate political Western-colonial objective which

this or that character in the novel serves.
3) Exposing the Orientalist nature and drift of the novel in support of the
ideology of the West and in opposition to the ideologies of national
liberation. Here, Hadi accuses Rushdie of following in the footsteps
of the Jesuit Orientalist at the Université St. Joseph in Beirut, Henri
Lamens.
4) Demonstrating Rushdie’s role as a “spiritual missionary” by other

means for and in the West and on “the ruins of atheistic commu-
nism”, a role traditionally reserved for the media and journalism of
“America’s Arabs”.
5) Identifying those elements and forces that made Rushdie carry out
that kind of work.
6) Drawing attention to the fact that the novel embodies a premeditated

plan to denigrate the Arabs and to “detract from the personality of
the Arab”.
7) Exposing the distortions visited on the personality of Salman Al-Farisi

by Rushdie, all in the service of the ideology of the West in its war
against Islam and the East, on the one hand, and against materialist
scientific thought, on the other.
24
Chapter 01.indd 24 12/10/10 3:32 PM

8) Raising the consciousness of the Arab popular masses in order to

undo the effects of the Western media’s imperialist magic regardless
of whether that magic proceeds from a man of letters, a scholar or an
Orientalist.
Now, given Hadi’s Shi’i background, interpreting the personality of

Salman Al-Farisi poses a particularly sensitive problem when reading The
Satanic Verses. This is why he goes out of his way to contrast Salman’s
supposed great personality in building early Islam with what he calls
“the Salman Al-Farisi of Rushdie and of Western Ideology” constructed
to fulfill the double function of “satisfying a folkloric need of the West’s
idealistic obsessions with and misrepresentations of history” and of “con-
firming the Eurocentric rejection of any effective historical action outside
the European continent”. The problem becomes even more complicated
for him given his sure knowledge that Sunni-Omayad Damascus is still
full of popular conspiracy theories about this hero, namely, that Salman
was really a Persian plant sent to Arabia even before the Prophet became
the Prophet to sabotage the purity of true Arab Islam from the very start,
thus paving the way for the rise of the Shi’i schism and heresy.
The second conspiracy theory about Rushdie and The Satanic Verses
was elaborated at length by the Egyptian writer and literary critic, Zuheir
‘Ali Shaker, in a book published in Cairo under the title: The White Crow or
the Salman Rushdie Phenomenon.27 Shaker accused Rushdie of the following
misdeeds:
1) Belonging to the extremist esoteric Shi’i sect in India known as the

“Ghurabiyyah” (from ghurab, meaning crow in Arabic). This faction
holds the “heretical” belief that the Archangel Gabriel, either wit-
tingly or unwittingly, delivered the first revelation of the Koran to
Muhammad when he should have communicated it to ‘Ali, his first
cousin (and extreme look alike), as Allah had ordered him to do.
2) Satirizing, distorting and discrediting the true Arab Sunni version of

Islam, while cunningly adopting and promoting its false Shi’i version.
3) Camouflaging his true purpose of giving as wide a currency as pos-

sible to this heretical form of Islam by making dishonest and mislead-
ing declarations about his own atheism, secularism and leftism.
25
Chapter 01.indd 25 12/10/10 3:32 PM

4) Conspiring with Imam Khomeini to have the “fatwa” issued against

his person in order to insure for his novel the greatest possible world
attention and the broadest possible global circulation, all in the ser-
vice of spreading and propagating the heretical Shi’i kind of Islam
that it contains.
5) Producing a novel full of masques, pseudonyms, dreams, reveries and

magical appearances that in reality are no more than a transfiguration
of the despicable teachings of his sect about the transmigration, rein-
carnation and multiplication of souls.
6) Pretending to be a leftist, a secularist, an atheist and a libertine in

order to better serve his esoteric Ghurabism and its anti-Muslim and
anti-Sunni objectives.
7) Writing the novel to provide support in the West and other

places to the Farsi-Shi’i side in Iran’s war against Iraq, a war also
against the rest of the Arab world in general and Sunni Arabism
in Particular.
The first time I heard of the conspiracy theory accusing Rushdie of

being a secret agent of resurgent Shi’i Islam was in the academic year
1989–1990 while teaching in the Near Eastern Studies Department
at Princeton University. A Sunni Jordanian Fulbright Fellow from
Yarmouk University, Jordan, spending some time there, assured me
that the death sentence issued by Imam Khomeini against Salman
Rushdie (and known as the fatwa) is really part of a secret plot agreed
on by the Imam and Rushdie himself for the purpose of giving the
widest possible circulation to The Satanic Verses, because the Islam that
the author maligns in the novel is Sunni Islam, while the Islam which
he promotes is Shi’ism with all its heretical doctrines. In a manner typ-
ical to this kind of mentality and approach, the Jordanian colleague
assured me, with all the assertiveness and self-confidence in the world,
that he can obtain for me the documents necessary to prove all that,
including the text of the contract signed and sealed by both Rushdie
and Khomeini. He then gave me some anti-Shi’i Arabic propaganda
books and tracts produced in Pakistan and obviously financed by
Saudi Arabian money.
26
Chapter 01.indd 26 12/10/10 3:32 PM

For him, it was self-evident that The Satanic Verses is a deliberate prod-
uct of a conspiracy traceable back to Tehran the center of the expanding
Shi’i International. According to Shaker’s elaboration of the plot, The
Satanic Verses becomes at one and the same time a coded “ode of praise
and glorification of Imam Khomeini”, in spite of all appearances to the
contrary and “a manifest ode of biting satire and bitter defamation”
(hija’), of all the traditional enemies of the Imam and of the Shi’i heresy,
particularly ‘Aisha the most beloved and preferred wife of the Prophet.
As for the Imam’s death sentence against Rushdie and the publishers of
the novel, it was no more than a cunning ruse to achieve the following
goals:
1) Introducing the beliefs of the Shi’i Ghurabi sect to the whole world,
while at the same time denigrating the true Islam of the sunna. For,
had Khomeini been serious about the death sentence, he would have
had Rushdie killed first and then declared the fatwa to the world – but
he acted in exactly the opposite manner in order to give Rushdie the
chance to hide and escape.
2) Raising the sales of the novel from 50.000 copies in five months to
100.000 copies in a few days – and maybe the number will have risen
to half a million, by now.
3) Making the British government extend its protection to Rushdie as

a British citizen targeted by a Muslim foreign power, thus permit-
ting the British to present themselves in the false appearances of “the
home of democracy, the refuge of the scared and hunted and the pro-
tector of the freedoms of opinion and expression”.
4) Unleashing all the propaganda machines around the world in a

vicious anti-Muslim campaign of vilification and abuse, denouncing
Muslims for their savagery and blood-thirstiness.
5) Arousing the curiosity of Muslims all over the world about the novel,
who, otherwise, would not have paid any attention to it without the
so-called fatwa, as well as stirring some feelings of pity and sympathy
among Muslims for “this poor writer hounded to death by a suppos-
edly Muslim state”.
27
Chapter 01.indd 27 12/10/10 3:32 PM

6) Serving the Imam’s Shi’i vital interests while Saddam’s Iraq is

involved in a protracted war defending Arabism and Islam against
the historical enemy: Farsi-Shi’i Iran.
In the end, my point is, first, that although the course of the history of the
modern Middle East is indubitably full of conspiracies, the course itself is
not either a conspiracy or the product of a conspiracy; and, second, that
although the field of Orientalism is unquestionably full of all kinds of real
and imagined conspiracies, the field itself is neither a conspiracy nor the
product of a conspiracy.
28
Chapter 01.indd 28 12/10/10 3:32 PM

2
OCCIDENTALISM AS THE POLITICAL

UNCONSCIOUS IN THE LITERARY
CONSTRUCTION OF THE OTHER
Lorenzo Casini
INTRODUCTION
One of the many merits of Sadik J. Al-Azm’s contribution to the academic

debates on the subjects of orientalism and conspiracy is that it has always
been very attentive to the epistemological problems arisen by the ref-
erence to civilization as a category in the fields of Cultural Studies and
International Relations. Al-Azm’s critique to an incautious use (direct or
indirect) of this category can be appreciated not only in his famous essay
on Said’s Orientalism (Al-Azm, 1981) but also in a recent article in which
he compares Samuel Huntington’s understanding of civilization with that
of contemporary Islamist thought (Al-Azm, 2004).
This paper is a study in the politics of the construction of the Other that
moves from theoretical assumptions that are very close to those of Sadik J.
Al-Azm. The subject matter of the study is the construction of the West by
Arab writers and intellectuals who published their works during the first
half of the twentieth century. Its objective is to contribute to the elabora-
tion of a theoretical approach to the analysis of the construction of the
Other that does not base itself on the category of civilization, whose use, in
my opinion, implies an a priori (and too often misleading) understanding
of what defines a cultural identity.
The paper individuates narrative texts as the privileged locus for
the study of the cultural and ideological components that have partici-
pated in the making of cultural identities and highlights how modern
Arab identity developed in a dialogical relationship with European
modernity and through a rupture with the cognitive categories of the
Islamic tradition. While asserting the “dialogical” nature of modern
Arab identity, the paper investigates the ideological and political reasons
29
Chapter 02.indd 29 15/10/10 6:26 PM

that in different moments of the first half of the twentieth century have
brought Arab writers to represent Europe as the Other with respect to
their imagined self.
After presenting the theoretical foundations of this study, two major
narrative texts written by Egyptian authors and published respectively
in 1907 and 1933: the maqama by Muhammad al-Muwailyhi Hadith ‘Isa
Ibn Hisham (‘Isa Ibn Hisham’s Tale) and a renowned novel by Tawfiq al-
Hakim: ‘Awdat al-Ruh (The Return of the Spirit) are considered.
The analysis of al-Muwailyhi’s maqama is aimed at revealing the role
played by the Arab appropriation and elaboration of European moder-
nity in the formative process of modern Arab identity. The period consid-
ered is that of the transition from Islamic reformism to modernist thought
(Hourani, 1983, ch. 6–7), when the new ideals of modern nationalism
were taking root in Egypt and in other Arab societies, but the traditional
Islamic world view was still exerting an important appeal on the Arab
intellectual élite of the age. After having considered the situation at the
beginning of the century, I analyze the important transformations that
occurred in the Egyptian cultural context of the 1930s. Through the analy-
sis of ‘Awdat al-Ruh, I attempt to show how the most radical attacks on
“Western civilisation” originated in Egypt in continuity with the roman-
tic and elitist side of Egyptian territorial nationalism, in order to defend
the class interests of the Egyptian élite from the possible democratic and
socialist developments of the liberal ideals that had dominated during
the 1920s.
OCCIDENTALISM AND MODERN ARAB IDENTITY:

A CRITICAL APPROACH TO THE LITERARY
CONSTRUCTION OF THE OTHER
The studies on the representation of Europe in modern Arabic narrative

have tended to accept uncritically – as a factual reality and a grounded
epistemological basis – the divide between the domain of the Self and
that of the Other portrayed by the Arab writers in their fictional works.
As a result of this approach, the scholars have regarded the authors
of the works that they were studying as the representatives of a spe-
cific community: a nation (especially the Egyptian nation in the case
of the first Arabic novels and short stories) or a civilization (the East
30
Chapter 02.indd 30 15/10/10 6:26 PM

O C C I D E N TA L I S M I N T H E L I T E R A R Y C O N S T R U C T I O N O F T H E O T H E R
or Islam), and have focused their attention on their perceptions of the

European/Occidental Other. This kind of approach, centered on the
description of the image of Europe inferred from the different texts is
made explicit also by the titles of many critical studies, including those
of two significant monographs: Rasheed el-Enany’ Arab Representations
of the Occident: East-West Encounters in Arabic Fiction, 2006; and Rotraud
Wielandt’s Das Bild der Europaer in der modernen arabischen Erzahl und
Theaterliteratur, 1980.
The present contribution moves from a radically different premise
and embraces the constructionist assumption that collectivities (and their
boundaries) are symbolic constructions continuously re-shaped by its
members according to their own cultural and political agenda (Jenkins,
2002, pp. 12–22). According to this perspective, the function of the critical
analysis cannot be limited to the description of “the image” of the Other
represented by a particular author, but needs to investigate the relation-
ship between the literary construction of the Other and the production of
a specific image of the collective Self. Constructionists have given “lin-
guistic context” a primary importance in the construction of identities.
The attention of the paper has therefore been focused on the analysis of
the radical process of transformation of the Arabic “discursive space”
during the first half of the twentieth century.
The semantic sediments that form a language – and constitute the
potential basin of identities – should not be imagined as a harmonious
whole but as a combination of contrasting forces described by Bakhtin
with the concept of heteroglossia. With this term, he indicates: “the
coexistence (within a language and each word) of socio-ideological contradictions
between the present and the past, between different socio-ideological groups in
the present, between tendencies, schools, circles and so forth, all given a bodily
form” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 291). The literary genre of the novel represents a
privileged locus to study the components of modern Arabic heteroglossia,
because, as Bakhtin demonstrates, the stylistics of the novel is distin-
guished by “the movement of the theme through different languages
and speech types, its dispersion into the rivulets and droplets of social
heteroglossia, its dialogisation” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 263). Though the nar-
rative representations of reality are always historically and ideologically
determined, that is, contained by the forms in which reality is interpreted,
articulated and represented by each writer, narrative texts subsume
the contradictory character of reality within their language at the very
31
Chapter 02.indd 31 15/10/10 6:26 PM

moment in which they operate to contain it. It is to the heteroglossia of

a language that the critic can make reference to unveil the strategies of
containment of a text and grasp what Frederic Jameson (1981) names as its
political unconscious.
The literary construction of Europe as the Other in modern Arabic
fictional works can be analyzed as a narrative strategy aimed at
“containing” the collective identity of the authors within a unitary and
coherent image through the contrast to an as much unitary image of
Europe (Casini, 2008, p. 4). Through the analysis of the texts’ hetero-
glossia the critic can highlight the limits and contradictions of the texts’
strategies of containment and analyze the ideological motivations that
in different moments of the twentieth century have brought the Arab
writers to represent a hiatus between their own identity and modern
European culture. From this perspective, the construction of Europe
in modern Arabic narrative (at least till the turning point of the 1960s)
corresponds to what James Ketelaar and Chen Xiaomei have defined
as “strategic Occidentalism” (Siegerist, 2009, pp. 8–20), because it has
played its primary role as a tool in the domestic politics of the Arab
societies, where the competition for cultural and political hegemony has
taken place through the construction of rival images of the Self and of
its European Other.
ISLAMIC REFORMISM
T H E L I T ER ARY C ONS T R UC T I ON OF THE OTHER IN

H A D I T H ‘I S A I B N H I S H AM: T H E F O RM AS A STRATEGY OF
C O N TA I NME NT
Hadith ‘Isa Ibn Hisham (1907) by Muhammad al-Muwaylihi represents

the peak of a long process of rejuvenation experienced by the classical
genre of the maqama during the nineteenth century (Hafez, 1993) and also
the most successful literary expression of Islamic reformism. According
to the ideology that can be inferred from the strategy of containment of
the text, Islam and the West form two separate civilizations that pivot
around different epistemological principles. While modern Europe in
order to attain progress had to question the role of Christianity within
Western civilization, Islamic civilization can rely on the cognitive system
of its own tradition.
32
Chapter 02.indd 32 15/10/10 6:26 PM

In the context of the British occupation of Egypt, and of a society

sharply fragmented by the process of modernization, a reformed Islam
is held to be the sole force capable of keeping Egyptian society united
and of leading it toward modernity, progress and independence. What is
asked of Egyptians and all Muslims is to replace the imitation of the past
(taqlid) that had characterized the period of decadence of Islamic civiliza-
tion, with the adherence to the true spirit of Islam. This new approach
requires of the community’s intellectual élite an “effort” (ijtihad) in the
interpretation of Islamic revelation: the understanding of what are the
challenges of the modern age and the elaboration of a response based on
the fundamental principles of Islam.
Before highlighting the limits and contradictions of Islamic Reformism
as embodied in al-Muwaylihi’s maqama, I will reconstruct the strategy of
containment of the text and show how the Reformist concept and practice
of ijtihad finds its literary expression in the rejuvenation of the maqama
form.
The aspect of Hadith ‘Isa Ibn Hisham that most contributes to distinguish-
ing the text from the classical maqama is the attention, typical of modern
journalism, to the social and political reality of the time. This journalistic
mark of al-Muwaylihi’s maqama is a fundamental part of the formal rejuve-
nation of the genre and of the text’s strategy of containment. Through the
character of ‘Isa, the author explains how in the modern age the tasks that
the shari‘a (the legislative part of Islam) assigns to the “ulama” (plural of
‘alim, the religious scholars) are performed by journalists:
(Newspapers) are one of the aspects of Western civilisation that we have

imported into our own society. The purpose of issuing papers is to pub-
lish articles which give due credit for value and merit, and to rebuke
depravity; to criticise bad actions and encourage good ones, to draw
attention to points of imperfection and to urge people to correct mis-
takes. (. . .) To sum up, those who run the press occupy the position of
“those who condemn good deeds and rebuke bad ones” as referred to
in the Islamic shari‘a.
(al-Muwaylihi, 1992b, pp. 136–37)
This identification between ‘alim and journalist can appear to be

innovative and revolutionary with respect to the Islamic tradition. But
if from one side it implies a new social function and cultural formation
33
Chapter 02.indd 33 15/10/10 6:26 PM

of the ‘alim, on the other it binds the function of the journalist to the
prescriptions of the shari‘a. Even Hadith ‘Isa Ibn Hisham (serialized in
a newspaper) and its author (a journalist) are therefore bound to the
mission of Islamic reform: that of defining the role of the modern ‘alim
and fulfilling its functions. This “mission” finds its literary expression
in the specific roles carried out by the narrator and the protagonist of
al-Muwaylihi’s maqama.
Most of the episodes that in 1907 were to form Hadith ‘Isa Ibn Hisham
had been serialized in the newspaper Misbah al-Sharq between 1898
and 1900 with the title Fatrah min al-Zaman (A Period of Time), with the
declared intent to compare contemporary Egyptian society with that of
the first decades of the century. With this purpose in mind, the author
adopted as his hero the character of Ahmad Pasha al-Manikali, minister
of war during the reign of Muhammad ‘Ali, who in the first episode is
made to come back to life from his tomb in a Cairo cemetery, where he
immediately meets the narrator (‘Isa Ibn Hisham).
The first part of Hadith ‘Isa Ibn Hisham shows the impossibility for
the Pasha of understanding the rules of the new society by resorting
to the conceptions and interpretative categories of his own time. In this
part, the narrator becomes the Pasha’s imam (spiritual guide). His func-
tion is not only that of helping the Pasha to understand the rules of the
new society but also of giving him the instruments to discern what is
good and in agreement with the true spirit of the Islamic revelation and
what, instead, has to be condemned as corrupt and in contradiction with
the tenets of Islam.
Following the teachings of the narrator, the character of the Pasha
undergoes a gradual change that leads him to become a pious and
virtuous Muslim. After this transformation, the hero and the narrator
proceed together on the right path (al-sirat al-mustaqim), in the pursuit
of those norms of behaviur (mu‘amalat) that in the modern world should
guide the life of every Muslim. To this purpose, they decide to make con-
tact with every aspect of modern Egyptian society and to judge it through
a rational interpretation based on the sources of Islamic shari‘a.
The gradual change of the Pasha in the first part of the text is one of
the distinctive features of al-Muwaylihi’s maqama and is highly indicative
of the moral and ideological principles that inform it. The transforma-
tion of the characters as a result of the narrative events is a feature of the
new genre of the novel and cannot be found in the classical maqama. But
34
Chapter 02.indd 34 15/10/10 6:26 PM

the transformation of the Pasha in Hadith ‘Isa Ibn Hisham is quite differ-
ent from that experienced by the characters of the novel, as it brings the
Pasha to share the narrator’s focalization with whom al-Muwaylihi identi-
fies. The narrative result of this transformation is that the Pasha becomes
a second voice at the disposal of the writer/‘alim to express his opinions
on social and religious reform.
T H E S E M A NT I C OP E NI NG OF T H E TEX T
In Hadith ‘Isa Ibn Hisham, Egyptian cultural identity is identified with “the
authentic spirit” of Islam. In this sense it is an “absent self”, because this
spirit, according to the author, cannot be found in modern Egyptian soci-
ety, neither among the Europeanized élite nor the traditional “ulama”. But
it is also “a self in formation”, because the function of the text is that of
contributing to the manifestation of the spirit of Islam through a social
criticism that assumes as its main source the Islamic shari‘a and as its
operative tool the Islamic category of ijtihad. According to this view, the
concept of Other can refer to all that contradicts the spirit of revelation as
conceived by Islamic reformism but first of all to Europeans who do not
belong to the Islamic community and who are referred to with the generic
name of “foreigners”.
The binary opposition “reformed Islam” vs. the West, which consti-
tutes one of the pillars of the strategy of containment of Hadith ‘Isa Ibn
Hisham, reveals limits and contradictions throughout the text that cannot
be overcome. These contradictions are revealed in particular by the inca-
pacity of the language of Islamic tradition to describe the ideas and insti-
tutions appropriated from Europe and the impossibility of the author to
determine the limits of ijtihad, that is, to establish a clear divide between
the aspects of modernity that can be considered in harmony with the
“authentic spirit of Islam” and those that contradict it.
The belief that the cognitive categories of Islam can “contain” moder-
nity implies that they can describe modern ideas and institutions. The
first chapters of Hadith ‘Isa Ibn Hisham demonstrate quite the contrary,
as the Pasha cannot understand ‘Isa though they speak the same lan-
guage. The reason for the two characters’ inability to communicate is that
in the period between the death of the Pasha and his resurrection, the
Arabic heteroglossia had been permeated by concepts and ideas that can-
not be translated with reference to the traditional Islamic world view. The
35
Chapter 02.indd 35 15/10/10 6:26 PM

attempt of the narrator to explain these ideas to the Pasha in the language
of tradition leads to a series of endless and hilarious misunderstandings.
Among them, the most emblematic for the present study are those related
to the new judiciary system.
After being arrested for having beaten a donkeyman who was cheating
him, the Pasha is brought to the office of the public prosecutor (niyaba).
‘Isa explains to the Pasha what this office is and how it works:
Pasha: What is this “niyaba”?

‘Isa: In the new system it is the judicial authority responsible
for bringing criminal charges against offenders, acting on
behalf of the social body (al-hay’a al-ijtima‘iyya) (. . .)
Pasha: What is this social body on whose behalf he acts as deputy?
‘Isa: The community (umma) as a whole.
Pasha: Who is this mighty Amir whom the umma allows to act as
its deputy?
‘Isa: The man you see in front of you is neither an Amir nor a
man of great importance, but merely a peasant’s son whose
father has sent him to schools where he has obtained the
certificate (shahada). He is thus entitled to act as an attorney
of the Parquet (. . .)
Pasha: In God’s eyes the martyr has an exalted status (he
understands the term shahada in the traditional sense of
martyrdom) but how can you suppose that shahada and life
here on earth can both apply to one man at the same time?
(al-Muwaylihi, 1992a, p. 29)1
What is most interesting in this passage, for the present study, is the
impossibility of translating the idea of social body (al-hay’a al-ijtima‘iyya)
with the traditional concept of umma. As the political organization of
the umma is based on Islamic revelation, the judicial authority is not a
people’s delegate but responds directly to the Islamic shari‘a conceived
of as an expression of the divine will. ‘Isa, as an Egyptian citizen living at
the end of the nineteenth century cannot himself realize the distance that
separates the new institutions from the traditional ones, his world view
from that of the Pasha.
As has been observed, another expression of the contradictions
implicit in the strategy of containment of Hadith ‘Isa Ibn Hisham is the
36
Chapter 02.indd 36 15/10/10 6:26 PM

absence of precise indications about the limits accorded to the practice

of ijtihad. It is only through determining these limits and establishing
what are the aspects of modernity that are in accordance with the spirit
of Islam and those that are not that the project of Islamic reformism
becomes plausible.
The position of the author on this subject proves to be ambiguous and
contradictory at several points in the narration. The most explicit ambigu-
ity emerges in Chapter 23, dedicated to the visit of ‘Isa and the Pasha to
a wedding party. While a group of ‘ulama’ leaves the party as soon as the
music starts, because they consider it in contrast with the tenets of Islam,
a particularly learned religious scholar gives his opinions about music
(considered very positively) and other important topics of a theological
nature. In his speech, the scholar is able to find a synthesis between Greek
and Islamic philosophy, history, science, as well as the traditional sources
of Islamic law. He seems to be the prototype of the perfect ‘alim accord-
ing to the criteria of the narrator who in the course of the text supports
a wider and more profound preparation of the religious scholars: a ‘alim
who should complement his traditional learning with general knowledge
and the capacity to think rationally and critically. But, at the end of the
long speech given by the ‘alim, the author expresses (through the Pasha)
his concern about the ‘alim he has created:
You, however, esteemed shaykh, with your broad learning, your pro-
found study of the various aspects of knowledge, and your compre-
hension of the main features of European scholarship, you are clearly
quite exceptional! However, with all that said, I still would not wish all
Islamic “ulama” to have such a broad-based learning as yours. I would
not wish to see such subjects distract their attention from shari‘a schol-
arship and watch them become confused and bewildered. Few people
will force themselves to steer a middle course in things, to maintain a
balance in their pursuits, and stop at the appropriate limits (. . .). “Thus
God misleads on the basis of learning.”
(al-Muwaylihi, 1992b, p. 101)
The “appropriate limits” accorded to the practice of ijtihad remain

indeterminate, just as the divide between modern Arab identity and
modern European culture is impossible to determinate in terms of religion
or civilization.
37
Chapter 02.indd 37 15/10/10 6:26 PM

FROM EGYPTIAN TERRITORIAL NATIONALISM

TO ORIENTALISM
O R I E N TA L I S M AND “ T H E C R I S I S O F ORIEN TATION ”
In the Egyptian cultural context of the 1930s, the secular-territorial nation-

alism that had dominated during the 1920s suffered the advance of other
ideological orientations that had a different image of the Egyptian cultural
identity and of its relationship with the West. The trend that prevailed in
the second half of the decade has been defined orientalism because it rep-
resented Egypt and the Arab world as part of a larger Eastern civilization
engaged in a millenary antagonism with the West. The major criticism
moved by orientalism to modern Western civilization was directed to its
rationalist and materialist character, accused to have eradicated every
form of spirituality in the West and to be a tool in the hands of European
cultural imperialism. The orientalist intellectuals considered that the only
way for the Egyptians to attain a cultural as well as a political indepen-
dence was to cleanse themselves from the evil influences of European
materialism and recover their authentic Eastern – Islamic – spirit (see
Gershoni and Jankowski, 1995, ch. 2, pp. 35–53).
The spread of these hostile attitudes toward “Western civilisation”, and
the fact that the most influential writers of the period dealt with religious
themes (and with the life of the Prophet of Islam in particular), have brought
many scholars to state that the Egyptian intellectuals had gone through a
“crisis of orientations” with respect to the secular ideals supported in the
previous decade (about this debate: Charles Smith, 1973). Among these
scholars, someone has hinted that the “crisis of orientation” of the intellec-
tuals would demonstrate the superficial nature of the process of seculariza-
tion and westernization in the Arab context (Vatikiotis, 1969, p. 323).
In the following pages, through the analysis of ‘Awdat al-Ruh, I will
demonstrate how the dichotomy East vs. the West (conceived as a dichot-
omy spirit vs. matter) originated from within the theoretical background
of the Egyptian nationalism of the 1920s and cannot be interpreted as a
return to the past of Islamic tradition.
T H E C O N S T R UC T I ON OF T H E OT HER IN ‘AW DAT A L-R UH
A recent study by Jeff Shalan (2002) has examined the ideology of the
Egyptian novels published in the years of the apogee of Egyptian cultural
38
Chapter 02.indd 38 15/10/10 6:26 PM

nationalism (or Pharaonicism), with particular reference to the themes of

class and gender. As highlighted by Shalan’s study, the Egyptian Pharaonic
novel has been characterized by the coexistence of a progressive under-
standing of history (in the Positivist sense) and of a conservative and
paternalist attitude toward social relationships aimed at obscuring the
contribution made to the nationalist movement by Egyptian peasants and
women.
In my opinion, the conservative character that Shalan identified in
Egyptian nationalist novels can be traced back to one of the basic concepts
of Egyptian territorial nationalism: environmental determinism adopted in
the 1920s by some of the most prominent Egyptian intellectuals in order
to support the thesis of a continuity between modern Egyptian identity
and the ancient Pharaonic civilization.
According to this view, at the basis of any nation is its territory
(milieu) which determines the very essence of a nation throughout its
entire history. The Nile Valley would thus possess very marked and
unitary geographical traits that have remained unaltered in the course
of the millennia so as to keep unchanged the spirit and the social struc-
ture of the Egyptian nation (Gershoni and Jankowski, 1986, pp. 130–36).
The political implications of this representation of Egyptian national
identity can be grasped quite easily. If the social relationships and hier-
archies within the nation are conceived of as a mechanical consequence
of the environment, any project aimed at transforming them can be
accused of being unrealistic, if not a betrayal of the deepest essence of
the nation.
The literary construction of the West in ‘Awdat al-Ruh is founded on
environmental determinism and performs the function of distancing the
Egyptian nationalist movement from democratic ideals and ambitions
(identified with the West) and directing it toward authoritarian and anti-
democratic horizons, represented as connate to the Egyptian national
personality. To this purpose, the novel develops the Romantic and meta-
physical character of environmental determinism and contrasts the spiri-
tual unity of the Egyptians with the individualism and rationalism of the
Europeans. If the Egyptian nation has a spirit (al-ruh of the novel’s title)
determined by the environment, this does not vary according to each
citizen but instead unites all the population. The stress on the unity of
Egyptian citizens (imagined as a single individual) is the most recurring
theme of the novel. The individualism of the Europeans is represented
39
Chapter 02.indd 39 15/10/10 6:26 PM

as an evil that afflicts the European democracies, a centrifugal force that

undermines the unity of the nation in the name of the rights of a particu-
lar class or individual.
As observed by Anshuman A. Mondal (2000, p. 247), if the orientalist
dichotomy of East vs. West that imposed itself in Egypt during the second
half of the 1930s contrasts the spiritual nature of Eastern civilization with
the materialist character of the West, ‘Awdat al-Ruh is already moving
in this direction when it shows that there are two ways to know reality:
intuition (or knowledge through the heart) and intellect (or knowledge
through reason). Though the novel does not deny the value of the latter,
it is the former which is privileged. Intuition is held to be a hallmark
of Egyptian national identity and considered to be foreign to European
culture.
The opposition between Egyptian intuition and European rationality
is represented in two different moments of the novel, through the direct
speech of some of its characters. The first moment consists in the dialog
that takes place in the compartment of the train that brings the young hero
to his parents’ home in Damanhur. The second takes place in the house of
the hero’s parents, during a conversation between a French archaeologist
and a British inspector.
The conversation in the train compartment takes place when a Coptic
afandi (a representative of the emerging middle class) begins to exalt the
spirit of solidarity and collaboration of the Egyptian people and contrasts
it with the individualism of the Europeans. When a religious shaykh seated
next to him observes that Europeans are “people without Islam”, a third
passenger (who notes the embarrassment of the Copt) corrects him by
saying that the Europeans are “a people without a heart”, while a fourth
passenger adds that the word Islam, “as used today”, should not be inter-
preted in a merely religious sense as it refers “to the sense of piety, good
heart, and solidarity: feelings that one finds in Egypt and not in Europe”
(al-Hakim,1988, 2nd vol., p. 13).
This contrast between the heart of the Egyptians and the cold ratio-
nality and individualism of the Europeans is resumed later in the
novel, in the speech made by the French archaeologist about the spirit
of the Egyptian nation, contrasted to that of Europe. The archae-
ologist starts his long speech with a parallelism between the mod-
ern Egyptian peasants and the ancient Egyptians, the builders of the
pyramids:
40
Chapter 02.indd 40 15/10/10 6:26 PM

Our languages have terms only for the material reality. We cannot
imagine the feelings that have made of all these people a single per-
son capable of bearing on his shoulders huge stones for the length of
twenty years. He was smiling, cheerful, and friendly, happy to suffer in
the name of his idol (al-ma‘bud: the worshipped)
(al-Hakim, 1988, 2nd vol., p. 56 – our translation)
After having praised the ancient Egyptians, the archaeologist compares

them with the modern Egyptian peasants. As he observes, the modern
peasants, like their ancestors, work for hours and hours in the most dif-
ficult conditions, they receive just a piece of cheese as a reward for their
job and in spite of everything are happy. On the basis of these elements,
the archaeologist defines the Egyptian peasants as “a magnificent indus-
trial people” for the immediate future and contrasts them to the European
working class:
This is the other difference between them and us: our workers, when
they suffer together, let grow among them the seeds of revolution, the
discontent for what they suffer, disobedience. Their peasants, when
they suffer together, feel a secret satisfaction, and the pleasure for the
unity in sufferings. What a wonderful industrial people for the day of
tomorrow!!
(al-Hakim, 1988, 2nd vol., p. 57 – our translation)
In this last passage, in addition to the binary oppositions that have already
been observed (heart vs. individualism, intuition vs. rational knowledge)
a new one emerges, which is relative to the different attitudes of the
Egyptian peasants and the European workers toward work and the rul-
ing class. If the union of the former testifies to the unity of the whole
nation and its identification in the leader (al-ma‘bud), the unity of the lat-
ter is the potentially subversive one of modern trade unionism. The dif-
ferent attitude of the Egyptian peasants is traced back to their symbiosis
with the Egyptian environment and, thus, to the concept of environmental
determinism.
As highlighted by Table 1 below, the formal dichotomy that contrasts
two different civilizations hides in reality two competing political options
both supported by cultural orientations and ideologies originated in
modern Europe. The concept of Europe is associated with the democratic
41
Chapter 02.indd 41 15/10/10 6:26 PM

developments of European liberalism while the Egyptian “spirit” is

identified with an anti-democratic nationalism not dissimilar from the
political reality of the Fascist regimes that were emerging in several
European countries.
Table 1: The construction of the Other in ‘Awdat al-Ruh
Egyptian identity European identity

National unity Individualism
Intuitive knowledge (through Rational knowledge (based on
hearth/spirit) reason and free will)
Organic society Social conflict
Veneration of the leader Revolutionary threat
Anti-democratic nationalism Liberal democracy
CONCLUSIONS
O C C I D E N TA L IS M AND T H E DE B ATE ON C ON SP IRAC Y
The concept of occidentalism that has been elaborated in this paper and
applied to the analysis of two masterpieces of modern Arabic literature
neither refers to a “dehumanising” representation of the West nor to
any particular image of it. It rather describes the tendency, widespread
in modern Arabic thought and literature, to represent the self through
fictitous oppositions to an imagined Western “Other.” It is a clearly dis-
tinguished phenomenon from Arab conspiracism but, as the latter, can be
traced back to a condition of powerlessness with respect to the policies
carried out by the European countries and the United States. In spite of its
projection outside the borders of the Arab world, the literary construction
of the Other, like conspiracism, has played its primary role as a tool in the
domestic politics of the Arab societies where the competition for political
and cultural hegemony has taken place also through the literary construc-
tion of rival images of the West.
42
Chapter 02.indd 42 15/10/10 6:26 PM

REFERENCES
Primary Sources
al-Hakim, T. (1988a): ‘Awdat al-Ruh (2 vol.). Cairo: Misr li-l Tiba‘a.
al-Muwaylihi, M. (1992a): Hadith ‘Isa Ibn Hisham aw fatra min al-zaman (1907).
Tunis: Dar al-Janub li-l nashr.
al-Muwaylihi, M. (1992b): A Period of Time/part two (English translation of Hadith
‘Isa Ibn Hisham by Roger Allen). Reading: Garnet Press, pp. 99–379.
Secondary Sources
Al-Azm, S.J. (1981): “Orientalism and Orientalism-in-Reverse”, Khamsin 8.
London: Ithaca, pp. 5–27.
Al-Azm, S.J. (2004): “Time Out of Joint”, Boston Review, October-November, on
line edition: www.bostonreview.net.
Bakhtin, M. (1981): The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Casini, L. (2008): “Beyond Occidentalism: Europe and the Self in Present
Day Arabic Narrative Discourse”, EUI Working Papers, RSCAS 2008/30,
Mediterranean Programme Series, available online at http://cadmus.eui.eu/
dspace/bitstream/1814/9367/1/RSCAS 2008 30.pdf.
El-Enany, R. (2006): Arab Representations of the Occident. East-West Encounters in
Arabic Fiction. London and New York: Routledge.
Gershoni, I.; Jankowski, J.P. (1986): Egypt, Islam and the Arabs: the Search for Egyptian
Nationhood (1900–1930). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gershoni, I.; Jankowski, J.P. (1995): Redefining the Egyptian Nation, -1930–1945.
Cambrige: Cambridge University Press.
Hafez, S. (1993): The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse. London: Saqi Books.
Hourani, A. (1983): The Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Jameson, F. (1981): The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act.
London: Methuen.
Jenkins, R. (2002): “Different Societies? Different Cultures? What are Human
Collectivities?”, in M. Sinša, H. Mark (eds) Making Sense of Collectivity. London:
Pluto Press.
Mondal, A.A. (2000): Nationalism, Literature and Ideology in Colonial India and
Occupied Egypt. Ph.D. Thesis, SOAS – University of London. Published in 2003
as Nationalism and Post Colonial Identity: Culture and Ideology in India and Egypt.
London and New York: Routledge.
Shalan, J. (2002): “Writing the Nation: the Emergence of Egypt in the Modern
Arabic Novel”, Journal of Arabic Literature. Leiden: E.J. Brill, vol. 43, no. 3,
pp. 211–247.
Siegerist, M. (2009): Wrestling With The West: Consistency and Change in the
Representation of the United States in the Chinese Communist Party Newspaper
43
Chapter 02.indd 43 15/10/10 6:26 PM

People’s Daily 1949–50 & 1978–79. M.Phil. Dissertation discussed at the

University of Utrecht. Available online at: //www.igitur.nl/studenttheses/
per_faculteit.php?faculteit=Letteren&language=ne.
Smith, C.D. (1973): “The ‘Crisis of Orientation’: The Shift of Egyptian Intellectuals
to Islamic Subjects in the 1930s”, International Journal of Middle East Studies,
vol. 4, pp. 382–410.
Vatikiotis, P.J. (1969): The Modern History of Egypt. London: Weidenfeld and
Nicholson.
Wielandt, R. (1980): Das Bild der Europäer in der modernen arabischen Erzähl-und
Theaterliteratur. Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenländischen
Gesellschaft.
44
Chapter 02.indd 44 15/10/10 6:26 PM

3
EDWARD SAID AND BERNARD LEWIS

ON THE QUESTION OF ORIENTALISM:
A CLASH OF PARADIGMS?
Mohd Hazim Shah
INTRODUCTION
The controversy between Edward Said and Bernard Lewis on the question
of Orientalism is not only a matter of scholarship but also involves
partisanship and the advocacy of certain causes. Scholarship, however,
has been deployed for their respective purposes. In this article, I would
like to look at the controversy between Said and Lewis on the question
of Orientalism, both in terms of scholarship and scholarly values, as well
as the broader issues which are related to, and which frame and pro-
vide the context, for the debates. I will approach the question by engag-
ing in a close reading of two major texts, namely Said’s Orientalism and
Lewis’s Islam and the West, apart from consulting other secondary sources
that threw light on the debate. My contention is that the controversy be
best looked at not in terms of a purely scholarly debate between scholars
working “in the same field” but rather in terms of a clash of perspectives
on an issue which lends itself to both scholarly analysis and popular advo-
cacy, in which the scholarly resources of various disciplines are called
into play, and in which even the “rules of the game” or “the groundrules
of discourse” are themselves contested. This contestation takes several
forms, such as the legitimacy of certain epistemological positions, the rel-
evance of disciplinary tools and resources, and the relationship between
politics and knowledge, scholarship, and advocacy. In other words,
I would like to argue that the controversy between Said and Lewis be
looked at in terms of a clash of paradigms, rather than a straightforward
scholarly dispute in the spirit and mode of modern critical scholarship, or
on the other extreme, a vulgar political controversy couched in scholarly
45
Chapter 03.indd 45 12/10/10 3:33 PM

language and attracting their own band of followers. The notion of

paradigms was first used and popularized by Thomas Kuhn (1970[1962])
in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn used the term
“paradigm” to indicate a theoretical entity or network that is more com-
prehensive and all-embracing, compared to what is usually connoted by
the word “theory”. For example, a scientific paradigm contains the com-
ponent of “metaphysics” or “world-view”, which is not usually associ-
ated with a “scientific theory”, especially after the efforts of the Logical
Positivists and their successors, the Logical Empiricists. The term “para-
digm” therefore suggests something broader, and in a sense more inef-
fable, as can be seen in the various efforts at defining the exact meaning
of the term “paradigm” as used by Kuhn. Transposed to the context of the
Said–Lewis debate, we can say that since the debate involved not only
cognitive or scholarly content but also that of epistemology, cultural, and
political perspectives, which are closely linked to scholarly content, one
can therefore characterize the debate as that of a clash of paradigms, where
what is debated cannot be resolved simply by appealing to the empirical
database – in this case, historical facts and evidence for instance – but has
to be understood within a broader context of differing epistemological,
cultural and political perspectives, which inform the debate. Also, the
outcome of the debate touches on certain cultural, political, and even civ-
ilizational sensitivities and therefore cannot be treated on a purely scien-
tific plane, as if it involved a purely scientific question or issue, and hence
can be settled by purely scientific means. Since it involves ways of seeing
or looking at events in the world, it is also philosophical in its intent and
import and hence conforms more to Nietzche’s conception of philosophy
as “attempts to persuade others to look at the world the way we do”. But
having said that, I also grant the fact that the very notion of a “clash of
paradigms” might suggest from the outset a relativistic way of looking at
the issue and hence undermine any hope of achieving some satisfactory
resolution of the issue. It might very well be, however, that there is an
“in-built relativism” in the whole debate, in the sense that they are both
committed to a different set of premises and perspectives, in which disci-
plinary content is merely incidental to the debate. However, that conclu-
sion should only come at the end of our analysis and not be presumed
from the outset. The use of the concept of “paradigm”, however, need not
necessarily imply a global, holistic perspective, whose clash can only be
explained in terms of relativism. As some philosophers of science have
46
Chapter 03.indd 46 12/10/10 3:33 PM

T H E Q U E S T I O N O F O R I E N TA L I S M : A C L A S H O F PA R A D I G M S ?
argued, even paradigm clashes need not necessarily involve or imply

incommensurability.1
My aim in this article is not necessarily to “resolve” the Said–Lewis
issue concerning Orientalism, by judging between them and keeping a
score-sheet on certain parameters or suggesting how a solution or reso-
lution can be achieved out of their differences. My essay has the more
modest aim of attempting to understand the issues involved in the debate
and how they bear on larger political, socio-cultural, and civilizational
matters. Hopefully, such an understanding could pave the way toward
overcoming some of the major obstacles that have been impeding inter-
cultural and inter-civilizational relations, because of the entrenchment
of certain viewpoints which have been academically sanctioned or
legitimized.
THE NOTION OF “ORIENTALISM” IN SAID AND LEWIS:

MEANING AND REFERENCE
What do Said and Lewis mean by the term “Orientalism”? An answer to this
question is important in helping us understand the controversy between
them on the subject of Orientalism. In the Introduction of his Orientalism,
Said sets out to define what he means by the term “Orientalism” (Said, 2003,
pp. 2–3). Here he presents 3 different meanings of the word “Orientalism”;
Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient – and this
applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, histo-
rian, or philologist – either in its specific or its general aspects, is an
Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism. (p. 2)
Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and

epistemological distinction made between the “Orient” and . . . “the
Occident”. (p. 2)
. . . Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institu-

tion for dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements
about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it,
ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating,
restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. (p. 3)
47
Chapter 03.indd 47 12/10/10 3:33 PM

Finally, after having stated what he meant by the term, Said offers his take
on what Orientalism consists of, or refers to:
Therefore, Orientalism is not a mere political subject matter or field that

is reflected passively by culture, scholarships, or institutions; nor it is a
large and diffuse collection of texts about the Orient; nor it is representa-
tive and expressive of some nefarious “Western” imperialist plot to hold
down the “Oriental” world. It is rather a distribution of geographical
awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical,
and philological texts; it is an elaboration not only of a basic geographi-
cal distinction . . . but also of a whole series of “interest” which, by such
means as scholarly discovery, philological reconstruction, psychological
analysis, landscape sociological description, it not only creates but also
maintain; it is, rather than expresses, a certain will or intention to under-
stand, in some cases to control, manipulate even to incorporate, what is
a manifestly different world . . .
(Said, 2003, p. 12)
While Lewis restricts the term “Orientalism” to that of academic Orienta-

lism, of the kind produced by scholars on the Orient, Said, on the other
hand, extends the usage of the term to include the more popular,
non-academic writings on the Orient, including novels and travel diaries,
apart from government documents by scholar-administrators. This dif-
ference in the treatment of the scope of Orientalism (in fact Said devotes
one whole chapter to it) by the two writers explains in part the differences
in their views on the subject and some of their disagreements.
But as Lewis himself admits, Said’s concern is more with western
attitudes toward the Orient, rather than factual knowledge about the
Orient. As a study of attitudes and perceptions, it is therefore justified for
Said to appeal to literary texts, speeches, minutes, etc., and other writings
which are not strictly academic.
Said’s claim however, is that attitudes invariably influence and inform
content and the presentation of facts. Given his reading of western atti-
tudes toward the Orient, the inescapable conclusion is that almost all
writing on the Orient are biased, the bias being part of the Occident’s will
to power over the Orient. Here Lewis disagrees with Said, and tries to
claim for himself and other Orientalists an intellectual space marked by
academic objectivity. As Lewis put it (1993, p. 118):
48
Chapter 03.indd 48 12/10/10 3:33 PM

Another charge levelled against the Orientalists is that of bias against the
peoples they study, even of a built-in hostility to them. No one would
deny that scholars, like other human beings, are liable to some kind of
bias, more often for, rather than against, the subject of their study. The
significant difference is between those who recognise their bias and try
to correct it and those who give it free rein . . .
Beyond the question of bias there lies the larger epistemological

problem of how far it is possible for scholars of one society to study and
interpret the creation of another. The accusers complain of stereotypes and
facile generalizations. Stereotyped prejudices certainly exist – not only
of other cultures, in the Orient or elsewhere, but of other nations, races,
churches, classes, professions, generations, and almost any other group one
cares to mention within our own society. The Orientalists are not immune
to these dangers; nor are their accusers. The former at least have the advan-
tage of some concern for intellectual precision and discipline.
Although the intellectual space that Lewis is trying to defend can

perhaps be granted to the academic Orientalist, whose professional
norms require such an imperative, there is no guarantee, and in fact every
possibility of infringement of such norms, when we deal with “popu-
lar” Orientalism, including literacy works such as that of Gustav Flaubert
whom Said took to be his target.
But for Said, – and this is the more serious contention – even the
academic Orientalist is not free from reproach. In fact knowledge on
Orientalism and politics are enmeshed through and through (Hussein
2002), at least in Said’s assessment of scholars such as Bernard Lewis. Said
saw Lewis’s attempt to protect Orientalism as a branch of objective schol-
arship, as a ploy to keep at bay critics of Orientalism such as Said himself.
To quote Said (2003, p. 342):
On the one hand Lewis wishes to reduce Islamic Orientalism to the

status of an innocent and enthusiastic department of scholarship; on the
other hand he wishes to pretend that Orientalism is too complex, various
and technical to exist in a form for any non-Orientalist (like myself and
many others) to criticize.
Said defends his critique and approach to Orientalism by stressing the

different approach to history which he took and of the relevance of
49
Chapter 03.indd 49 12/10/10 3:33 PM

literature (Said’s field) to Orientalism. In the spirit of Foucault’s (2002)

Archeology of Knowledge, Said (2003, p. 342) claimed that “Lewis’s tactic
. . . is to suppress a significant amount of history”, which when taken
into consideration, can throw light on past and present attitudes toward
scholarship on the Orient. On the relevance of literature to Orientalism,
Said (2003, p. 343) wrote:
There are strong affiliations between Orientalism and the literary

imagination, for example, as well as the imperial consciousness. What is
striking about many periods of European history is the traffic between
what scholar and specialists wrote and what poets, novelist, politicians
and journalist then said about Islam. In addition – and this is the cru-
cial point that Lewis refuses to deal with – there is a remarkable (but
none the less intelligible) parallel between rise of modern Orientalist
scholarship and the acquisition of vast Eastern empires by Britain and
France.
In highlighting the traffic between scholars and “popular” writers on

Islam, Said appears to be suggesting that there is a direct causal influence
between the two groups in the shaping of their outlooks on the Orient,
hence justifying Said’s textual-literary approach toward understanding
Orientalism.
But Said’s main thesis, as stated in the last sentence of the above quota-
tion, remains contentious and controversial. In fact, Said’s formulation of
the thesis, i.e. in terms of a “parallel” between Orientalist scholarship and
Imperialism/Colonialism, rather than a direct causal influence, suggests
his own recognition of the difficulty involved in establishing the stronger
version of the thesis in terms of a direct causal relation (Said, 2003, p. 343).
To Lewis’s charge (Said, 2003, p. 342) that Said’s work is polemical and
partisan, not a product of academic scholarship issuing out of a scientific
process of “disinterested enquiry”, Said’s reply is two-fold. On the one
hand, he openly admits the partisan nature of his Orientalism, when refer-
ring to his critics, as when he wrote (Said, 2003, p. 339):
. . . among American and British academics of a decidedly rigorous

unyielding stripe, Orientalism, . . . has come in for disapproving attacks
because of its “residual humanism”, its theoretical inconsistencies, its
insufficient . . . treatment of agency. I am glad that it has! Orientalism is a
partisan book, not a theoretical machine.
50
Chapter 03.indd 50 12/10/10 3:33 PM

On the other hand, he points out to Lewis’s equally partisan approach

toward Orientalism, which he thought Lewis tried to hide beneath a
cloak of academic objectivity. In a strong retort to Lewis, published in the
Afterword of the second edition Orientalism, Said (2003, p. 342) wrote:
Lewis’s verbosity scarcely conceals . . . the ideological underpinning of

his position. . . . He proceeds by distorting the truth, making false analo-
gies and, by innuendo, methods to which he adds that veneer of omni-
scient tranquil authority which he supposes is the way scholars talk.
Take as a typical example the analogy he draws between my critique of
Orientalism and a hypothetical attack on studies of classical antiquity, an
attack which, he says, would be a foolish activity . . .
. . . the present political moment, with its reams of racist anti-Arab

and anti-Muslim stereotypes (and no attacks on classical Greece) allows
Lewis to deliver a historical and willful political assertion in the form
of scholarly arguments, a practice thoroughly in keeping with the least
creditable aspect of old-fashioned colonialist Orientalism. Lewis’s work
therefore is part of the present political, rather than purely intellectual,
environment.
But given the above scenario on Lewis and Said, and the question of the
relationship between scholarship, academic objectivity, ideology, parti-
sanship and advocacy, what are we to make of the role of scholarship
in the assessment of an “academic subject”? Perhaps what this episode
illustrates is the nature of the Humanities, as distinct from the sciences,
in which the question of objectivity can only be approached as an ideal
(or perhaps even not) but can never be realized. This does not, however,
detract from the value of the Humanities, because at least it makes clear
in explicit, articulated, intellectual forms the points that are at issue and
that bewitches the human imagination.
THE ISSUES DEBATED AND EXAMINED
In response to Said’s 1978 Orientalism,2 Bernard Lewis had published an

article “On the Question of Orientalism”, in The New York Review of Books,
24 June 1982, pp. 49–56. This was subsequently revised and enlarged
51
Chapter 03.indd 51 12/10/10 3:33 PM

into a chapter with the same title, which later appeared as Chapter 6
in Lewis’s (1993) Islam and the West. In response to Lewis’s criticisms in
that chapter, Said devoted a part of his 1994 Afterword to a rebuttal of
Lewis. What were the issues debated in the exchange between Edward
Said and Bernard Lewis? In this section, I will examine some of the
salient issues involved in the debate between Said and Lewis, consid-
ered as archetypal representatives who epitomized two major diamet-
rically opposed positions taken on the question of Orientalism. I will
examine them in terms of two major categories, i.e. (a) the epistemolog-
ical and (b) the methodological. In terms of epistemology, I believe the
divide that separates them is the division between modernist and post-
modernist epistemology (Hart 2004; Best and Kellner 1997), with Said
taking the postmodernist stance. In terms of methodology, again we
see the influence of epistemology and Said’s insistence on the relevance
of the humanities, literature, and the social sciences in the assessment
of Orientalism, as opposed to Lewis’s more conservative stance remi-
niscent of the Orientalist scholar whose emphasis is on history, phi-
lology, and Oriental languages. In other words, the rhetorical strategy
deployed by each party is to claim the relevance of their own disciplin-
ary backgrounds in making authoritative claims on Orientalism, with
Lewis insisting on “academic specialisation” in the classical Orientalist
fashion, while Said argues for a more interdisciplinary approach in
order to support some of his more controversial claims regarding the
interplay between knowledge and power.
M O D E R N I S M AND P OS T MODE R NISM IN LEWIS AN D SAID
Perhaps one way of looking at the difference between Said and Lewis
is the difference between their underlying epistemologies which influ-
enced their basic outlook, method of approach, historiography, etc.
(Rosenau 1992). To put it simply, Lewis’s epistemology is basically mod-
ernist, while Said’s is postmodernist. Said’s postmodernist approach is
evidenced by his scattered references to Foucault and other postmod-
ernist writers, even sometimes acknowledging their influence on him.
Lewis’s “conservative” modernist approach and methodology, on the
other hand, is seen in his conservative attitude toward methodology,
rationality, and objectivity – as least as ideals to be pursued, even though
they might not be achieved in practice.
52
Chapter 03.indd 52 12/10/10 3:33 PM

Whilst previously, critiques of colonialism were largely Marxist inspired,

this role has now been partly taken over by postmodernist critiques such
as Said’s. Even if one were to look at the intellectual genealogy involved,
postmodernist theories of knowledge such as that of Foucault had their
origins and were influenced by Marxist philosophy and theory of knowl-
edge. Thus post-colonial critiques that avail themselves of postmodernist
theories of knowledge, such as Said’s, can be said to be an extension of
leftist critiques of colonialism, with postmodernism now encompassing
“leftist” epistemologies in a post-cold war period.3
Said’s postmodernist perspective is amply illustrated in his 1978
Orientalism and further reinforced in a later edition with an Afterword
written in 1994. For example, Said’s various references to, and acknowl-
edgement of, Foucault’s work, especially The Archeology of Knowledge,
involving Foucault’s notion of discourse and the relationship between
knowledge and power. Other elements of postmodernist thought present
in Said are (a) his rejection of essentialism and essentializing tendencies
and (b) the social construction of knowledge and reality.
As opposed to this, we have Lewis’s conservative, “establishment”,
“modernist”/“objectivist” academic stance. That this is in fact a point of
contention between them is attested to by Lewis himself when he wrote
Anti-Orientalism is essentially an epistemology – concerned . . . with

“the theory or science of the method or grounds of knowledge”. In this
sense it should deal with facts and not, so one would assume, with fan-
tasy or invention.
(Lewis, 1993, p. 109)
The success of this book [Orientalism] and the ideas or, to be more pre-
cise, the attitudes that it expresses . . . requires some explanation. One
reason is certainly its anti-Westernism. . . . Similarly, the book appeals by
its use of the ideas and still more of the language of currently fashion-
able literary, philosophical and political theories.
(Lewis, 1993, p. 114)
In the first quotation above, Lewis directly refers to Said’s anti-Orientalism

as an epistemological position. However, Lewis defines epistemology
in its classical, traditional sense and does not seem to be aware of later
53
Chapter 03.indd 53 12/10/10 3:33 PM

developments in epistemology such as naturalistic epistemology or the

social constructivist epistemology that grew out of the sociology of knowl-
edge. The latter conception of epistemology, which is postmodernist in
character, however, constitutes a departure from the classical (modernist)
conception of epistemology which Lewis referred to and perhaps endorsed.
That Lewis endorsed the classical, modernist definition of epistemology,
whilst Said’s epistemology is essentially social constructivist, and hence
postmodernist in character, thus supports my contention that epistemolog-
ical differences, i.e. modernist vs. postmodernist, underlie the differences
in their respective outlooks and positions.
This interpretation is further reinforced in the following remark made
by Lewis (1993, p. 115) on the question of truth:
. . . According to a currently fashionable epistemological view, abso-

lute truth is either nonexistent or unattainable. Therefore, truth doesn’t
matter; facts don’t matter. All discourse is a manifestation of a power
relationship, and all knowledge is slanted. Therefore, accuracy doesn’t
matter; evidence doesn’t matter. All that matters is the attitude – the
motives and purposes – of the user of knowledge, and this may be sim-
ply claimed for oneself or imputed to another. In imputing motives, the
irrelevance of truth, facts, evidence, and even plausibility is a great help
. . . This is demonstrated in Orientalism, in which scholars whose meth-
ods and procedures are indistinguishable by any scholarly or method-
ological criterion are divided into sheep and goats according to their
support or lack of support for Arab causes. Such support, especially
when buttressed by approved literary or social theories, can more than
compensate for any lack of linguistic or historical knowledge.
There are two things to note in the above comment made by Lewis on
Said’s approach in Orientalism. The first is his allusion to Said’s alleged
relativism (Chuaquai 2002) in Lewis’s characterization of “the currently
fashionable epistemological view of truth” – which is again associated
with postmodernism. The second concerns the methodology that issues
out of such an epistemology, in which appeals to “literary or social theo-
ries . . . compensate for lack of linguistic or historical knowledge.” The
suggestion made by Lewis concerning Said’s approach is clear: that it
issues out of the currently fashionable postmodernist ideas, which accord-
ing to Lewis is unsound, and is not a mark of true scholarship. But these
54
Chapter 03.indd 54 12/10/10 3:33 PM

remarks only serve to further underscore the point made earlier about the
modernist-postmodernist divide in Lewis and Said, respectively.
O R I E N TA L I S M AND D I S C I P L I NARY RELEVAN C E
Orientalism, conceived as the academic study of the Orient, mainly by

Europeans or Westerners, but not exclusively so, brings into question the
methodology which is appropriate, and the disciplines which are relevant,
to its study. That this is a contentious issue is none the more obvious than
in the debate between Said and Lewis. Lewis chides Said for not equip-
ping himself with, and for not using, methods and disciplines, which
are customary for a seasoned Orientalist such as himself. For example,
Lewis points out to a knowledge of philology and Oriental languages as
a prerequisite for studying the Orient. On Lewis’ terms, someone who is
not trained in philology or Oriental languages is therefore not in a posi-
tion to make authoritative judgments or pass credible opinion on the
subject of Orientalism. Lewis’ ploy here – presented in the guise of schol-
arly standards – is to undermine the credibility of someone like Edward
Said in their pronouncements on Orientalism. Lewis would therefore in
effect be maintaining the status quo in Oriental Studies by arguing for the
very methodology and scholarly practices which have defined Oriental
Studies in the West for the last few centuries. But Said would have none
of this attempted exclusion by virtue of the non-possession of certain
qualifications deemed necessary for Oriental Studies. As Said (2003,
p. 106), in agreeing with Gibb, put it, “Orientalism is too important to be
left to the Orientalists”. But has Said really abandoned the demands of
scholarship when venturing into a subject such as Orientalism, for which
his own field of specialization or academic background did not specifi-
cally prepare him for? The fact that someone ventures into a field which
is not his initial field of specialization is not in itself sufficient grounds for
indictment. In fact, there have been instances, even in science, when dis-
coveries were made through the process of disciplinary migration, when
a new field of vision is brought into an existing field of study, from meth-
ods and perspectives brought from elsewhere. So for Said, the social sci-
ences such as history, economics, and politics are important and relevant
for the study of the Orient, because these factors do influence societies.
He saw these disciplines as being highly relevant toward achieving an
understanding of the Orient. But it is unfair to criticize Said, as Lewis
55
Chapter 03.indd 55 12/10/10 3:33 PM

did, for deploying the social sciences, which, according to Lewis, was
done in order to compensate one’s lack of knowledge in philology and
Oriental languages, replacing one’s analysis instead with dubious con-
cepts drawn from contemporary social science. The fact of the matter is
that bringing in the social sciences does not in itself load the dice in favor
of the anti-Orientalist. On the other hand, one’s Orientalist attitude can
still be sustained, even though one has moved from being a conservative
Orientalist using traditional Orientalist methods to being more receptive
of the social sciences. In fact one of Said’s criticism of H.A.R. Gibb rests
on this very point. When Gibb talked about the shift from Orientalism to
Area Studies, in which the social sciences then become relevant,4 none of
his previous Orientalist stance and attitude changed, with the result that
the social sciences has now become an additional tool for the indictment
of the Orient. But in Said’s hands, an appeal to the social sciences became
instead a strategy for defending the Orient against the Orientalists. So
in other words, bringing in the social sciences to the study of the Orient
does not in itself render unfair advantage to the anti-Orientalist or to
the Orientalist for that matter. Thus Lewis’ contention, or perhaps fear,
that invoking the social sciences would facilitate a critique of traditional
Orientalism is itself unfounded and unwarranted.
The more important question to ask perhaps is the question of whether
the social sciences could in fact contribute toward an understanding of
the Orient? And I think here that the answer is a resounding “Yes!” Here
one can think of the works of anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz on
Indonesia and North Africa, and Bernard Cohn (1996) on India, to see
how they could contribute immensely to an understanding of the East.
It could also help to overcome the “textual attitude” syndrome that Said
talked about, which prefers to reduce reality to the written word, as how
a philologist or a linguist would or might.
T H E M E TH OD OL OG I C AL C R I T I C I SM TO SAID’S OR IENTA LISM

A N D P O S S I B L E R E S P ONS E S
Said had in fact anticipated some of the methodological objections raised

by Lewis (1993), in his Orientalism of 1978. Said’s sensitivity to some of the
methodological issues involved is quite apparent in his remarks on meth-
odology in his critique of Orientalism. Said however, in my assessment,
had successfully circumvented some of these problems and justified his
56
Chapter 03.indd 56 12/10/10 3:33 PM

approach, partly based on a postmodernist epistemology which conse-

quently bears on his methodology. This is perhaps why Lewis’ criticism
of Said makes a direct reference to his postmodernist epistemology, quite
similar in fact to the way the late Ernest Gellner (1992, pp. 46–47), a soci-
ologist in the modernist mould, criticized postmodernist social science.5
One methodological objection which Said himself was aware of, and
which Lewis raised, was the question of disciplinary specialization. Is
a non-Orientalist, such as Said himself, qualified to pass judgment on
the Orientalist enterprise? Do not the strictures of academic professional-
ism and specialization require one to be an “insider”, i.e. trained in the
methods and practices of a particular field of study, in order to have any
credibility in commenting on the subject? What gives Said the right or
the qualification to be a disciplinary trespasser and yet maintain his aca-
demic integrity? I think there are several responses that can be made to
this kind of skeptical criticism of Said’s critique, some of which had been
given by Said himself. For a start, for Said “Orientalism is too important
to be left to the Orientalists”, which gives him the motivation to embark
on the enterprise, even though that in itself does not provide a method-
ological justification. Secondly, Orientalism as a field of study has more in
common with the humanities such as history and literature than it does
with the social sciences such as economics or sociology. Said’s own back-
ground in Western literature is therefore relevant to his task of examin-
ing the Orientalist enterprise, especially since his focus was the study of
Orientalist and Colonial attitudes toward the Orient, rather than a his-
torical survey or analysis of the Orient which would require him to be
more firmly based on “factual” disciplines such as history or economics.
One objection which has been raised by Lewis is the lack of knowledge of
Philology and the Oriental languages in scholars interested in Orientalism
such as Said. A lack of such knowledge, according to Lewis, cannot be
compensated by a knowledge of the humanities and social sciences – an
approach which Said himself seems to take – in trying to understand the
Orient. But given the fact that the subject of Said’s study is the Occidental
perception and treatment of the Orient, rather than a study of the Orient
itself, i.e. a kind of meta-level study. Lewis’s criticism, therefore, seems to
be irrelevant and off the mark. Said’s knowledge of European languages
such as English, French, and German, plus his knowledge of Arabic,
seems to serve his purpose quite well. As for Philology, since Said’s con-
cern was not with the textual analysis of Oriental texts, there does not,
57
Chapter 03.indd 57 12/10/10 3:33 PM

therefore, appear to be any terrible need for Said to be trained in the field.
Having satisfied ourselves that the so-called “methodological deficiency”
attributed to Said is not really serious, let us now look at Said’s more posi-
tive construction and try to see the novelty which Said brought to bear
in the study of Orientalism. There are basically two novelties which Said
introduced in his study of Orientalism. The first is the multi-disciplinary
approach which he adopted, thus enriching the study by bringing in the
resources provided by the different disciplines, in order to bear on the
subject (Bayoumi and Rubin 2000). This results in a sort of disciplinary
migration or hybridization. In fact, sociologists who have investigated the
phenomena of innovation, pointed out to this factor as a cause of inno-
vation. Thus it enhances, extends, and enriches the field of study, rather
than create gross inaccuracies or distortions. The second novelty is not
quite unrelated to the first but nevertheless requires separate mention.
It is Said’s creative use of his knowledge of literature and literary analy-
sis that is brought to bear on the question of Orientalism. Thus he was
able to scrutinize motives and hidden plots and meanings in the writings
of Orientalists, the same way he dissects and elicits meanings out of his
study of novels and other forms of literary works.
So all considered, I think the objection to Said’s critique of Orientalism
made on methodological grounds cannot be sustained and can be justifi-
ably rejected.
A CLOSER LOOK AT SAID’S ORIENTALISM
In this section, we will be taking a closer look at Said’s Orientalism, dis-

cussing its problems, and where possible, will attempt to clear common
misconceptions.
T H E S T R UC T UR AL I S M OF F OUC AU LT AN D EDWARD SAID
Said’s approach, insofar as it is modeled on Foucault’s perspective on

knowledge, suffers from similar drawbacks found in Foucault. One prob-
lem, in particular, relates to the question of “structure” and “agency” and
the relationship between them. Although both Foucault and Said subscribe
to some form of Humanism, their “structuralist” positions with regard to
knowledge-formation deprive “agency” of some measure of autonomy,
58
Chapter 03.indd 58 12/10/10 3:33 PM

and this to some extent undermine their Humanism. Foucault’s emphasis

on the “social”, as the determinant and (collective) agent of knowledge
production, not unlike the Marxist perspective, with Marx linking the
social with the economic, implies the lack of empowerment on the part of
the individual agent to create knowledge free from social or political pres-
sures. In fact with regard to scientific knowledge, this social constructivist
thesis has created a fair amount of controversy concerning the objectiv-
ity and rationality of science. In defending his allegation that Orientalist
knowledge is not value-free, not the objective expression of an individual
researcher’s thinking, Said has maintained the position that the individual
scholar is part of a social-institutional framework and that the knowledge
produced cannot therefore be free from the interests of such a framework.
Whether in Said’s mind this is regarded as an a priori truth, or whether
this claim has the status of an empirical thesis is not quite clear.
Such thinking of course is reminiscent of the (social) theories of
knowledge found in Marx, Mannheim, and recently Foucault. In try-
ing to undermine the notion of the objectivity of scientific knowledge
(and hence all knowledge that claims a scientific pedigree or status),
Foucault has looked at how certain science-related disciplines such as
medicine, psychology, and psychiatry were produced by certain insti-
tutions whose norms and values – some of which are percolations
from the wider society – are intricately interwoven with the content of
the disciplinary knowledge so produced. There is in a sense a kind of
Kantian (social) synthetic a priori in this process of the production of
scientific knowledge. Similarly, when Said argues that the Orientalist
is similarly situated – hence similarly constrained in his knowledge
production – involving as it does power transactions at various levels,
including the social, political, and economic, he is thereby directly or
indirectly endorsing the view that there cannot be an autonomous moral
agent in the production of knowledge. But not only is this theoretically
false, it is also untrue in practice. It is theoretically false because as aca-
demic institutions, Universities in the West had acquired some degree
of autonomy throughout its history till the present, and it is empirically
untrue because even amongst Orientalists themselves, we find schol-
ars of different stripes, some of whom were readily accepted by the
“natives” who form the object of their study. Examples that come to
mind are A.J. Arberry in the case of Islam, and Joseph Needham (1954)
in the case of China.
59
Chapter 03.indd 59 12/10/10 3:33 PM

At a normative level, such “structuralist” stances on knowledge

are undesirable on several grounds. Firstly, it denies the possibility of
individual agency to create knowledge that does not serve the interest
of “structure” or that go against the current of structure. This would
severely curtail the possibility of critique, including the ones advanced
by Foucault and Said in the twentieth century or Marx and Nieztsche
in the nineteenth century. The empowerment of individual thought
seems to be denied even at the outset. In any case, its assumption of a
mutually exclusive separation between “structure” and “agency”, can
be called into question, especially when one looks at more “synthetic”
views of their relationship as found in Anthony Giddens’ theory of
structuration or that of Margaret Archer’s (1996) view of the relation-
ship between culture and social structure. Secondly, it also privileges
from the outset, the social – as opposed to the objective (or insight-
ful) cognition of the solitary thinker a la Descartes (however ficti-
tious such an entity might appear to be) – in the process of knowledge
construction.
No doubt a great deal of light can be thrown when one adopts such a
social constructivist perspective in looking at the relationship between
Colonialism and the corpus of knowledge produced by the West on the
Orient within a largely colonial context. In fact, looked at in this way, it
almost becomes a truism and does not require the fancy intellectual foot-
work of a Foucault or an Edward Said to make the thesis look credible.
However, as I have argued above, such a thesis overlooks or even denies
the possibility of the independence of agency in the face of (colonial)
structure. One way historians can test this view is perhaps by looking at
the relationship between metropolis and colony and how the perception
and ideas of colony can sometimes differ from that of metropole within
the same colonial framework.7
No doubt there have been prejudices and bias in the construction of
knowledge of the Orient by the West, as Said himself has so remarkably
documented and textually analyzed. But prejudice and bias exist on the
other side too, as when the East describes itself or the West on its own
terms.8 Perhaps the difference lies in the asymmetrical power relationship,
thus lending greater moral credibility to the so-called “subaltern” voice.
But such an asymmetrical power relationship cannot justify a distortion
of truth by either side. The “oppressed” and “exploited” must seek their
political and economic redress by fair and true means, by knowledge that
60
Chapter 03.indd 60 12/10/10 3:33 PM

is ethically based and informed, not by seeking to commit the very sins of
those they condemn.
K A N T I A N S YNT H E T I C A P R I OR I I N SAID’S AP P ROAC H?
In a sense, Said’s thesis is irrefutable, or difficult to refute, not because it

is certainly true but because it contains an element of Kantian synthetic
a priori expressed or translated in social terms.9 The synthetic a priori in
Said’s thesis consists in the claim that knowledge is socially constructed
and that this construction is built or based on the European psyche and
value system, which is distinct from the Oriental mind and personality.
Presented in such a manner, Said’s approach seems to buy into the essen-
tialist position, which Said rejects when looking at Occidental character-
izations of the Orient.10 However, going back to my transposition of the
Kantian notion of the synthetic a priori on to Said’s social constructivism,
we can see that although the a priori element can be identified with the
assumption of the power–knowledge nexus, its existence is historically
forged – hence the synthetic element. So Said can be exonerated from the
charge of essentialism, primarily because he saw the domination of the
East by the West as an episode in human history that is capable of change
and not eternally transfixed.
Constructed in such a manner, Said’s thesis then becomes only capable
of illustration, or even confirmation, but not refutation. Karl Popper has
attributed such characteristics to Marxist and psychoanalytic theories,
defining them as unscientific according to his criterion of falsification.
Said’s assumption about knowledge and power has to be presupposed,
in order to see the explanatory power of such a theory. Given such an
assumption, it then becomes relatively easy to see history and literature
as expressions, or illustrations, of power in knowledge. But if that be the
case, does not Said’s thesis run the risk of being tautological, platitudi-
nous, and even vacuous? Bernard Lewis (1982, p. 48) has attempted to
refute or criticize Said’s claim concerning Orientalism, by arguing, for
instance, that German Orientalism, with its highly respectable scholar-
ship on the Orient, did not lead to German colonialism over Asia and
Africa, unlike what happened in the case of Britain and France.11 If that be
the case, i.e. if Said’s thesis is indeed open to refutation, then it suggests or
implies that Said’s thesis does have empirical content in that it attempts
to state and perhaps establish an empirical thesis about the influence of
61
Chapter 03.indd 61 12/10/10 3:33 PM

Orientalism on Colonialism. But Said fudges the issue when he falls back
on a weaker thesis, i.e. that there existed parallels between Orientalism
and Colonialism.
T H E R E DE MP T I V E S I D E TO S AI D’S WRITIN G
Although Said’s Orientalism has been criticized for its “anti-westernism”,

unfair portrayal of the Orientalist enterprise, and the tension it could
create in East–West understanding and relations (Hitchens 2003), a
closer reading of his work could dispel some of these misconceptions
and perhaps could even lead one to see the redemptive side of his writ-
ing. It remains true, however, that the sting will not be removed in the
major bulk of his text on Orientalism, and perhaps rightly so. This is
because Said saw it as his task to launch a critique on Orientalism, reveal-
ing the West’s bias against the Orient, and generally showing how the
Orient has been victimized both through knowledge and power. That
central thrust must remain with Said. But that thrust must be seen in its
proper perspective, as an advance whose aim is to redress, not domi-
nate, to reveal, not hide. Only then can one see the redemptive side of
Said’s work.
However, Said has also admitted that the book has turned into “sev-
eral different books” through the different interpretations and emphases
given to it by various readers. As Said (2003, p. 330) put it, “Orientalism,
almost in a Borgesian way, has become several different books”. In a way,
the various readings of the 1978 version of Orientalism have gone out of
control, so to speak, thus prompting Said to write an “Afterword” in the
later 1994 edition, partly as a reply to his critics and partly to clarify parts
of his position which have been misunderstood. A close re-reading of the
1994 version of Orientalism, I would argue, enables us to see the redemp-
tive side of his writing, partly because here Said clarifies what his true
intentions are and discusses certain views or interpretations which were
previously attributed to him.
One major misunderstanding of Said is the perception that he is anti-
West, pro-Arab and pro-Islam, in other words partisan in a most nega-
tive way, letting his partisanship influence his writing to the point that
it becomes an ideological piece, devoid of scholarly merit. Said’s aim
rather is to redress the East–West imbalance in knowledge and power
relations and create a sense of humanity based on equality and justice.
62
Chapter 03.indd 62 12/10/10 3:33 PM

To quote Said (2003, p. 28), “If this stimulates a new kind of dealing with
the Orient, indeed if it eliminates the ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ altogether,
then we shall have advanced a little in the process of what Raymond
Williams has called the ‘unlearning’ of ‘the inherent dominative mode’.”
In a passage clearly directed at his critics, and those who took him
to be a defender of the Orient, Islam, and Arab causes, Said caustically
remarked (2003, p. 331):
One scarcely knows what to make of these caricatured permutations of

a book that to its author and in its arguments is explicitly anti-essential-
ist, radically skeptical about all categorical designations such as Orient
and Occident, and painstakingly careful about not “defending” or even
discussing the Orient and Islam. Yet, Orientalism has in fact been read
and written about in the Arab world as a systematic defense of Islam
and the Arabs, even though I say explicitly in the book that I have no
interest in, much less capacity for, showing what the true Orient and
Islam really are. Actually I go a great deal further when, very early in
the book I say that words such as “Orient” and “Occident” correspond
to no stable reality that exists as a natural fact.
And in another passage he wrote (2003, p. 337): “ . . . in all my works I

remained fundamentally critical of a gloating and uncritical national-
ism.” Although Said’s Orientalism hardly comes out as an argument for
Universal Humanism, and despite his own admission that “Orientalism is
a partisan book, not a theoretical machine” (Said, 2003, p. 339), something
can be said about that Humanism which motivates Said’s work. Referring
to his own experience as an “outsider”, an “exile”, a cultural hybrid and
migrant, who crossed and transcended the East–West divide, Said (2003,
p. 336) wrote:
I have no doubt that this was made possible because I traversed the
imperial East-West divide, entered into the life of the West, and yet
retained some organic connection with the place from which I origi-
nally came. I would repeat that this is very much a procedure of cross-
ing, rather than maintaining, barriers; I believe Orientalism as a book
shows it, especially at moments when I speak of humanistic study as
seeking ideally to go beyond coercive limitations on thought toward a
non-dominative, and non-essentialist type of learning.
63
Chapter 03.indd 63 12/10/10 3:33 PM

Although some have appealed to his Orientalism in support of (Arab)

Nationalist or Islamist causes, Said distances himself from both
Orientalism and Occidentalism, seeking instead to a adopt a humanis-
tic, multiculturalist perspective. It is more accurate in fact to view Said’s
Orientalism as a multiculturist critique of the Orientalist enterprise, rather
than an attack on the Occident by the Orient – a suggestion which Said
himself would repudiate and reject because of its “Orient-centrism” or
“reverse Orientalism”,12 and because of its essentializing quality.
THE DEBATE ON ORIENTALISM AND ITS

BROADER IMPLICATIONS
The debate on the question of Orientalism, epitomized by the two schol-

arly giants representing diametrically opposed positions, and with their
own band of followers or sympathizers, is not an isolated academic debate
without broader implications or repercussions. Among these implications
are the following:
• Its impact on inter-cultural, inter-civilizational, and hence interna-

tional relations, especially the relationship between Islamic and West-
ern countries. It sets the tone for dialog between the two groups since
the debate has brought out issues which are central to East–West rela-
tions involving post-colonialism, Islam, etc.
• The relationship between scholarship, advocacy, politics, and group

interests.
• The question of how postcolonial states should deal with their own
colonial heritage, involving colonial knowledge of themselves, yet
maintaining their own sense of cultural identity and authenticity.
Part of the reason for the popularity and widespread reception of Said’s
Orientalism is the context in which the book came into publication.
After its first publication in 1978, there occurred the so-called “Islamic
Revolution” in Iran in 1979, in which Islam was again pitted against the
West, i.e. against America. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the
64
Chapter 03.indd 64 12/10/10 3:33 PM

disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, ushered in the
Post-Cold War period, in which Islam was set up as the “new enemy” for
the modern, liberal Western democracies in place of Communism. And
finally with 11 September 2001 and its political and military aftermath
involving Afghanistan, Iraq, and their invaders, namely, America and
Britain, the stage is set for an Islam–West dichotomy, rivalry, and enmity,
in the manner of the previous Cold War. Thus debates such as the one on
Orientalism, in this new geopolitical and geocultural context, assumes
the dimension and proportion of an “ideological warfare”, in which the
lines between politics, ideology, scholarship, and academic objectivity
becomes blurred. In fact this is nothing strange when we think of how
scientists were brought into the service of the conflicting nation-states in
the First and Second World Wars, thus debunking the myth of scientific
universalism and internationalism so passionately argued for by Robert
K. Merton, himself an American sociologist in favor of an open and free
liberal-democratic society a la America.
Third World Islamic countries are caught in a dilemma on this issue
because support of an anti-Orientalist position might eventually set
them against the military might of America, whilst accepting the Orientalist
position would mean a travesty of their own sense of national sovereignty
and cultural identity, with its implied acceptance of Colonialism, espe-
cially in the wake of Said’s critique. The only way out perhaps is to see the
debate in more nuanced terms, not in a simple dichotomy which leads to
the above-mentioned dilemma.
Positions taken on the issue of Orientalism certainly have broader
implications and bear on related issues such as Colonialism, Modernism,
and East–West relations. I have chosen to focus on the two major figures
in the debate on Orientalism, namely, Edward Said and Bernard Lewis
because it is in them that we find the most detailed articulation and
cogent argumentation of the issues involved concerning Orientalism.
Furthermore, their views have been influential on others concerned
with the same subject. Other lesser debates serve as footnotes to the
Said–Lewis encounter. Because of their importance, in terms of implica-
tions and influence, it is all the more important not to misunderstand or
misrepresent them, especially the stance taken by Edward Said. Said’s
Orientalism is a sophisticated and nuanced discussion of Orientalism and
not a simplistic and unqualified thesis that condemned the Colonial West
for conjuring up a distorted image of the East through their scholarship,
65
Chapter 03.indd 65 12/10/10 3:33 PM

literature, etc., which then serves as an instrument for subjugating the

East through physical, military, economic, and cultural domination. In
fact Said himself disowns the various attempts to appeal to his works
in support of causes such as Islamic fundamentalism, Arab Nationalism,
or even anti-Westernism. Even Bernard Lewis saw the appeal of Said’s
Orientalism in what he described as “the anti-Westernism of the book”
(Lewis, 1993, p. 114). So much so that Said had to add an extra chap-
ter entitled “Afterword” in the 1994 edition of Orientalism, in order to
clear the various misunderstandings that his book has generated. Said’s
Orientalism, when read closely and carefully, shows that the position he
adopts is a highly sophisticated, nuanced, and qualified one, though
admittedly partisan, passionately argued at certain places, and some-
times rather harsh in its condemnation of what he perceived to be a bla-
tant/flagrant affront on the human spirit and dignity. It is as a humanist
in a postmodernist setting that Said’s views must be understood, rather
than as a vulgar critic of the West. Though he chides the West for what it
had done – and is still doing – to the Orient, his prescription for redress
is certainly not one based on aggression and hatred toward the West. As
he himself insists, his efforts in exposing what he saw as the injustices of
the Occident toward the Orient does not have as its aim a further split
between East and West but rather so that humanity can learn to come
together on equal terms. The West must not continue to use its politi-
cal, economic, and military might to bring the East under its control and
domination but must ultimately learn to accept its humanity on the basis
of ethics. In this regard, Said was equally a critic of the “East” as he was
of the “West”. Lewis for instance, tactically deployed the views presented
by certain Middle Eastern intellectuals in attempting to undermine Said’s
anti-Orientalist position and depriving it of legitimacy by pitting Muslim
intellectuals themselves against Said, citing in particular the views of
the Egyptian philosopher, Fu’ad Zakaria (Lewis, 1993, pp. 116–117).
According to Lewis, there are Arab intellectuals who do not see Said’s
work as doing a favor to them but as something that could work against
their interest, because it puts the blame on scapegoats such as White
Colonialists and fail to look at their own weakness. This is in fact an old
argument to be made and is not dependent on Said arriving on the scene.
But the difference is that whereas previously such anti-colonial rhetoric of
the 1960s and 1970s resonate against the background of the Cold War and
perhaps inspired by leftist, Marxist, or nationalist ideology, Said’s critique
66
Chapter 03.indd 66 12/10/10 3:33 PM

coincides with Islamic revivalism and the decline of Communism, thus

re-igniting the Islam–West controversy. The relevance of Bernard Lewis
in this account, and his iconic stature as a Western scholar on Islam, is
also neither accidental nor coincidental. Lewis’s knowledge of Islamic
history, especially political and cultural history and his ability to connect
this knowledge with contemporary events involving America’s relation-
ship with the Islamic world further reinforce the perception that what is
at stake is the relationship between Islam and the West and the survival
of the two (Akhavi 2003). True to what Said had so ironically pointed out
in his Orientalism, the alliance between Knowledge and Empire seems to
be resurrected once more in its modern form.
Has scholarship therefore reached an impasse, a dead end, in attempt-
ing to undo what evil Empire had done? Or is scholarship perpetually
doomed to be a servant of power, however unjust and cruel that power
might be? Or can scholarship and rational discourse create a “fifth col-
umn” of enlightened individuals who can break out of the vicious cycle
of ideology, power, and the State? I would like to think that this is pos-
sible – that agency can retain its independence from structure and power.
But I must confess that under the present circumstances, I have to remain
a skeptic and at best entertain the slimmest of hopes in the remotest of
hearts.
REFERENCES
Akhavi, S. (2003): “Islam and the West in World History”, Third World Quarterly,
vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 545–562.
Al-Attas, S.M.N. (1993 [1978]): Islam and Secularism. Kuala Lumpur: International
Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization.
Al-‘Azim, S.J. (1981): “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse”, Khamsin, vol. 8,
pp. 5–26.
Andersen, H. (2001): On Kuhn. Belmont, California: Wadsworth.
Archer, M. (1996): Culture and Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bayoumi, M.; Rubin, A. (eds). (2000): The Edward Said Reader. New York: Vintage.
Best, S.; Kellner, D. (1997): The Postmodern Turn. New York: Guilford Press.
Chuaqui, R. (2002): “Orientalism, Anti-Orientalism, Relativism“, Nepantla: Views
from South, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 373–390.
Cohn, B.S. (1996): Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
67
Chapter 03.indd 67 12/10/10 3:33 PM

Fakhry, M. (2004 [1983, 1970]): A History of Islamic Philosophy. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Foucault, M. (2002 [1972]): The Archeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge
Classics.
Gellner, E. (1992): Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. London and New York:
Routledge.
Hall, C. (2004): “Remembering Edward Said (1935–2003)”, History Workshop
Journal Issue, vol. 57, pp. 235–243.
Hart, K. (2004): Postmodernism: A Beginner’s Guide. Oxford: Oneworld -Publications.
Hitchens, C. (2003): “Where the Twain Should Have Met“, The Atlantic Monthly,
no. 292, pp. 153–159.
Hussein, A.A. (2002): Edward Said: Criticism and Society. London: Verso.
Kuhn, T. (1970 [1962]): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Laudan, L. (1984): Science and Values. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lewis, B. (1993): Islam and the West. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, B. (2003): The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson.
Little, D.P. (1979): “Three Arab Critiques of Orientalism“, The Muslim World, vol. 69,
no. 2, pp. 110–131.
Needham, J. (1954): Science and Civilisation in China. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Rose, J. (2004): “Edward Said“, History Workshop Journal Issue, vol. 57, pp. 244–246.
Rosenau, P.M. (1992): Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and
Intrusions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.
Said, E. (2003 [1978]): Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
Said, E.; Lewis, B. (1982): “Orientalism: An Exchange“, New York Review of Books,
12 August 1982.
Spivak, G. (2005): “Thinking about Edward Said: Pages from a Memoir“, Critical
Inquiry, vol. 31, pp. 519–525.
Winstedt, R. (1961): The Malays: A Cultural History. Singapore: George Brash.
Zakariyya, F. (2005): Myth and Reality in the Contemporary Islamist Movement. London:
Pluto Press. Translated with an Introduction and Bibliography by Ibrahim M.
Abu-Rabi’.
68
Chapter 03.indd 68 12/10/10 3:33 PM

PART TWO
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Chapter 04.indd 69 12/10/10 3:34 PM

Chapter 04.indd 70 12/10/10 3:34 PM
4
AN ORIENTALIST MYTHOLOGY OF
SECRET SOCIETIES
Robert Irwin
In Orientalism, Edward Said argued that the French expedition to Egypt

in 1798 was the formative event in the establishment of institutional
Orientalism (Said, 1998, pp. 22, 42–3, 76, 79–88, 122, 168). But though
the brief French occupation of Egypt was an intellectual event in the his-
tory of Egyptology, it had little impact on the way that Arabic and Islamic
studies evolved in Europe in the decades that followed, and here it will
be argued that the bloody events of 1789 and the years that immediately
followed were more important in shaping the minds and interests of the
great generation of Orientalists who were to dominate the field in the
early nineteenth century.
In 1789 a mob stormed the Bastille. “In its most general form the ideol-
ogy of 1789 was the Masonic one expressed with such innocent sublim-
ity in Mozart’s Magic Flute (1791) . . . ” as Eric Hobsbawm has observed
(Hobsbawm, 1962, p. 79). In its less innocent form, the tree of liberty could
“not flourish unless moistened with the blood of kings” (The Times, 23
January 1793, quoting Bertrand Barère). In 1793 Louis XVI was guillotined
and the Jacobin Reign of Terror gathered momentum. Revolutionary agi-
tation spread to other places, most notably the Low Countries. The Terror
was bloody but brief and came to an end in Thermidor 1794, that is to say
July of that year.
The subsequent regime of Napoleon brought stability of a sort to
France, though Bonapartist propaganda had spread disturbing egali-
tarian ideals throughout Europe. After the Bourbon restoration of 1815,
there were those who hoped to see the complete and permanent re-estab-
lishment of the Ancien Régime. However, in the decades that followed,
the monarchies of Europe were haunted by spectres of revolution. The
Austrian minister, Metternich, wrote of himself, “You see in me the chief
Minister of Police in Europe. I keep an eye on everything. My contacts are
such that nothing escapes me” (De Bertier de Sauvigny, 1962, p. 105). His
71
Chapter 04.indd 71 12/10/10 3:34 PM

officials, policemen, and spies were particularly obsessed with the threat
posed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire by Masons, Carbonari, Illuminati,
and similar secretive and subversive organisations. Those obsessions
were fuelled by a heated and somewhat imaginative literature, produced
by exiles from the French Revolution that sought to find the origins of
the Revolution in a Masonic conspiracy. The most important and influ-
ential work here was the Abbé Barruel’s Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire
du Jacobinisme published 10 years after the outbreak of the revolution
(Barruel, 1797; c.f. Cohn, 1967, pp. 30–6; Roberts, 1972, pp. 199–219).
Everybody read Barruel. Apprehensions of conspiracies and riots found
justification in the events of 1848, the Year of Revolutions, when, for a
moment, thrones across Europe tottered. Such was the broad histori-
cal background to the beginnings of a sustained tradition of academic
Orientalism in France, Germany, Russia, and elsewhere.
A word now about the nature of Orientalism in the first decades of the
nineteenth century. The first thing to note is that there were very few peo-
ple indeed working in the fields of Arabic and Islamic studies. None of
the important figures was British, after the radical Whig, Sir William Jones
abandoned his early interest in Persian and Arabic in favour of Sanskrit.
Prior to Silvestre de Sacy’s elevation to a chair at the Ecole des langues ori-
entales vivantes in Paris, most Arabists and Persianists were perforce self-
taught, and interested amateurs continued to predominate throughout
the nineteenth century. Aristocrats and clergymen played a dispropor-
tionately large role in the development of Oriental studies. In the 1820s,
the Perpetual President of the Societé Asiatique was the Duc d’Orleans;
two barons were its vice presidents, and various dukes, marquises,
counts, and barons sat on its council (Nouveau, 1829, pp. 59–60). The Duc
de Blacas, though only an ordinary member, was one of the greatest col-
lectors of Islamic art in the century (Vernoit, 2000, pp. 1, 23). The British
Royal Asiatic Society was, like the Societé Asiatique, founded in 1823, and
in the course of the nineteenth century its members included the Duke of
Wellington, the Earl of Liverpool, the Earl of Aberdeen, the Marquess of
Salisbury and other members of the aristocracy far too numerous to list
here – as well as quite a few Indian princes (Beckingham, 1979, pp. 4–5).
Salons had as large a role as libraries in the diffusion of Orientalist learn-
ing, and in Paris, such grand scholars as Silvestre de Sacy, Julius Mohl,
and Ernest Renan were the successive habitués and even the hosts of
such salons. Orientalism was a field that was monopolized by Christian
72
Chapter 04.indd 72 12/10/10 3:34 PM

A N O R I E N TA L I S T M Y T H O L O G Y O F S E C R E T S O C I E T I E S
gentlemen. In France, the stern Jansenist Catholicism of Silvestre de Sacy

and other key Orientalists, including Etienne Quatremère and Garcin de
Tassy, was one of the reasons that “France’s most famous atheist”, Ernest
Renan, was an outsider in the field. Another reason, by the way, was that
Renan’s Arabic was lousy (Renan, 1883, p. 288). One of the side effects of
the Napoleonic Wars was the emancipation of the Jews, but the great age
of Jewish Orientalism came in later decades with Geiger, Weil, Goldziher,
and others (Kramer, 1999, pp. 11–19).
Though Orientalism was dominated by the aristocracy, the two key
figures in the development of Orientalism in the early nineteenth century,
Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy and Joseph von Hammer were not of noble
birth but both eventually acquired titles. Born in 1758, Silvestre de Sacy
was the son of a Parisian notary. Under Louis XVI, he worked in the Royal
Mint where he apparently had sufficient leisure to teach himself Arabic,
Persian, and several other languages. During the Terror he abandoned his
job at the Mint and fled Paris for a brief while. In 1795, he was appointed
to the Professorship of Arabic at the Ecole des langues orientales vivantes.
Despite the title of the institute at which he taught, Silvestre de Sacy was
not in fact interested in living Arabic and could not speak the language.
Texts were the thing. The furthest he went abroad was Genoa. He pub-
lished copiously on Sasanian, Arabic, Persian, and Islamic studies. In rec-
ognition of his scholarly achievements, he was made a Duke in 1832. He
died in 1838 (Dehérain, 1938; Fück, 1955, pp. 140–57). Publications apart,
he was an energetic and apparently inspiring teacher. He not only taught
most of the next generation of French Orientalists, including Quatremère
and Garcin de Tassy, but also most of the first great generation of
Orientalists in Germany, Russia, and elsewhere. Above all, Silvestre de
Sacy taught Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer and the methodologically dour,
dry, and pedantic Fleischer was to teach most of the following generation
of German Orientalists (Fück, 1955, pp. 170–3; Mangold, 2004, passim),
and it was German-speaking Orientalists who were to dominate the field
until, perhaps, the 1930s.
One person that Silvestre de Sacy did not teach was Joseph von
Hammer. Von Hammer exemplified a pre-Fleischer, romantic, and quite
unpedantic enthusiasm for all things Oriental. Von Hammer was born
in Graz in Austria in 1794. He entered the diplomatic service in 1796 and
trained as a superior kind of tarjuman or Dolmetsch. He was posted to
Constantinople in 1799 and took part in Sir Sidney Smith’s expedition
73
Chapter 04.indd 73 12/10/10 3:34 PM

against the French. In 1807, he returned from the East and was made a
privy counsellor. Subsequently he worked in the civil administration
where he had sufficient leisure to publish an intimidating amount of
stuff. In 1835, he inherited estates in Styria and took the title Freiherr von
Hammer-Purgstall. The Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (2nd ed., 10
vols., pp. 1827–35) is his main work, and when I was a student in the
1960s it was still on the SOAS reading lists (but those were the days when
English undergraduates might be expected to know some language other
than their own). Von Hammer also wrote and translated a vast amount of
material, and in 1809 he founded the Fundgruben des Orients, the first ever
Orientalist periodical, of which he was the major contributor. Though
prolific, von Hammer was wild and careless. His translations were exces-
sively free, and he was extensively criticized for scholarly inaccuracy.
Friedrich Christian Diez wrote a great fat book, Unfug und Betrug, in order
to expose von Hammer’s numerous errors, and the meticulous Fleischer
published a detailed criticism of von Hammer’s misreadings of al-Zam-
khshari’s Qur’an commentary (The Golden Necklace), the details of which
do not concern us here. Von Hammer died in 1856 (Fück, 1955, pp. 158–
66; Mangold, 2004, pp. 47–54, 77–80, 82–8; Reichl, 1973).
Unlike, say, the Orientalists of the seventeenth century (Pococke,
Erpenius, and Golius among them), both Silvestre de Sacy and von
Hammer were obsessively interested in heterodox Islam, though both
tended to view it as if from a Sunni perspective, perceiving Shi‘ism as a
breakaway from mainstream Sunni Islam and regularly judging Shi‘ism
in terms of the way it deviated from the alleged norms of Sunnism. De
Sacy wrote about both the Druzes and the Assassins as conspiratorial
cults and as revolutionary movements that used the trappings of reli-
gion to disguise political ambition. From his youth onwards, the Druze
doctrines and organisation were his first and chief enthusiasm. In part,
the reason was chronological. It just happened that some Druze doctrinal
manuscripts in the Royal Library were among the first texts to fall under
his gaze, and it was on these manuscripts that he cut his philological teeth.
However, when one reads the Exposé de la religions des Druzes, which he
only finally got around to publishing in 1838, shortly before his death, by
which time he had been working on the subject for over 40 years, it was
hard not to feel that at times when he appeared to be writing about the
Oriental sect, he was actually writing about agitators closer to home, and
the ostensibly dry and positivist Orientalist had in effect transformed the
74
Chapter 04.indd 74 12/10/10 3:34 PM

Druzes into the Masons and Jacobins of the Middle Ages. De Sacy was not
such a dry old stick, and he wrote with passion. He wrote in the hope that
“quelle fasse servir ce tableau de l’une de plus insignes folies de l’espirit
humain, à apprendre aux hommes qui se glorifient de la superiorité de
leurs lumières, de quelles aberrations est capable la raison humaine lais-
sée à elle-même” (Silvestre de Sacy, 1838, p. viii).
As with early Orientalist portrayals of Sufism, the Druze faith was
presented as a foreign import into Islam, since the Druze creed was
judged to be a mixture of Greek and Persian philosophy. Sacy’s contempt
for the masses is evident in his account of the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim
who, he claimed, imposed on foolish worshippers ready to become the
toys of anyone who could be bothered to take the trouble to seduce them.
In Hakim the Druzes had deified a sinister monster. The Druze practice
of reading the Qur’an allegorically also attracted Sacy’s unfavourable
attention. He compared it to the way that contemporary German theo-
logians were re-reading the Bible in order to find in it the ideas of Kant
and described those theologians as making use of the criticism of pure
reason in order to destroy the truths of the old Greek and Hebrew books
(Silvestre de Sacy, 1838, p. xxxiiin). (Just two years earlier in 1835–1836
David Strauss had published his critically analytical Das Leben Jesu, kri-
tische bearbeitet, which debunked the supernatural events related in the
Gospels.)
The general introduction to the Exposé was lengthy, and Silvestre de
Sacy did not confine his discussion narrowly to the Druzes. He also dis-
cussed the Fatimid Isma‘ilis, whom he thought similar to the Druzes,
and the Carmathians, whose aim had been to lead mankind to atheism
and immorality. De Sacy drew upon al-Nuwayri and al-Maqrizi in order
to present a picture of the nine successive stages of initiation by which
an Isma‘ili aspirant was successively led from a state of naïve belief in
the truths of revealed religion to a state of total cynicism combined with
utter subservience to the leader of a power-hungry cult. In presenting
this story of the nine-stage initiation of evil, de Sacy uncritically drew
on fragments of early Sunni propaganda that had been preserved in the
late Mamluk sources. A mythical Maymun ibn Abdallah al-Qaddah was
alleged by those sources to have founded Isma’ilism and to have fash-
ioned what was initially a seven-stage system of progressive revelation
that was designed to conduct the apprentice to unbelief and evil. This
particular piece of Sunni myth-making was eventually exposed by the
75
Chapter 04.indd 75 12/10/10 3:34 PM

researches of Ivanov in the twentieth century (Ivanow, 1955). Only after

246 pages of introduction did de Sacy think it fitting to bring “an end
to the listing of the aberrations of the human spirit that have disfigured
Mohammedanism over the centuries”. In an earlier article on Druze
manuscripts in European libraries, de Sacy had outlined how Druze ini-
tiates were not only dispensed from believing in God, the mission of the
Prophet, prayer, alms, fasting, and jihad but also excused from submis-
sion to legitimate authority (Silvestre de Sacy, 1824).
De Sacy also published a couple of articles on the Assassins which retold
the legends of the Paradise Garden which the Old Man of the Mountains
made use of in order to persuade drugged young men to carry out nefari-
ous deeds on his behalf. The Assassin system of beliefs (or should that
be unbeliefs?) was held to be similar to that of the Druzes in that there
was one message for the neophyte and quite a different one for the man
who was fully initiated. De Sacy was the first European to suggest that
the Assassins’s name in Arabic derived from their consumption of hash-
ish (English translation and commentary by Daftary, 1994, pp. 136–88;
Silvestre de Sacy, 1809, 1818).
However, von Hammer’s Geschichte der Assassinen was wilder and more
vehement, and it circulated more widely and was translated into English
(Hammer-Purgstall, 1818a, 1835). The book starts as it means to go on:
“the Assassins – that imperium in imperio, which, by blind subjection
shook despotism to its foundations; that union of spies and impostors and
dupes, which under the mask of a more austere creed and severer morals
undermined all religion and morality; that order of murderers, beneath
who daggers the lords of nations fell. The history of this empire of con-
spirators is solitary and without parallel; compared to it all earlier and
later secret combinations are crude attempts or unsuccessful imitations”
(Hammer-Purgstall, 1835, pp. 1–2). Though von Hammer acknowledged
a debt to de Sacy, he went somewhat further in tracing a mythical geneal-
ogy of secret societies.
Much of the evil was Persian in origin, for the Persians, resenting their
conquest by the Arabs, sought the ruin of Islam “by open war, but also
by secret doctrines and pernicious dissensions”. The Isma‘ili da’is, or mis-
sionaries, were “apostles of crime and impiety”. Al-Hakim was “the most
stupid tyrant of whom Islam makes mention”.
The Assassins of Syria and Iran were the ancestors of Europe’s subver-
sives, the Illuminati:
76
Chapter 04.indd 76 12/10/10 3:34 PM

To believe nothing and to dare all was, in two words, the sum of this
system, which annihilated every principle of religion and morality,
and had no other object than to execute ambitious designs with suit-
able ministers, who daring all and knowing nothing, since they con-
sider everything a cheat and nothing forbidden, are the best tools of an
infernal policy. A system which, with no other aim than the gratification
of an insatiable lust for domination, instead of seeking the highest of
human objects, precipitates itself into the abyss, and mangling itself, is
buried amidst the ruins of thrones and altars, the wreck of national hap-
piness, and the universal execration of mankind”.
(Hammer-Purgstall, 1835, pp. 36–7)
In common with many scholars whose notions of Pharaonic Egyptian

culture had been formed before Champollion began his work of decipher-
ment, von Hammer regarded hieroglyphs as means of concealing secret
doctrines, rather than as an ordinary mode of written communication,
and for him Egypt, “the mother of alchemy and treasure-hunting”, had
become in modern times “the native soil of secret sciences and secret
societies” (Hammer-Purgstall, 1835, p. 40). Elsewhere von Hammer had
made use of an occult treatise on cryptography ascribed to Ibn Wahshiyya
in order to support a ludicrously botched attempt to decipher Egyptian
hieroglyphics (Hammer-Purgstall, 1806; c.f. Iversen, 1993, pp. 130–1). It
seems most probable that the appearance in Ibn Washiyya’s treatise of
a bogus hieroglyphic labelled “Bahumid” that first made von Hammer
think that the alleged idol worship of the Templars had an Oriental origin.
He claimed that “the Templars had some acquaintance with the hiero-
glyphics, probably acquired in Syria” (Hammer-Purgstall, 1806, p. xiii). In
his treatise on the Assassins, von Hammer drew attention to the perceived
similarities in the structure of the order of the Assassins and the order of
the Knights Templar and to the fact that both orders had a red and white
garb, and he briefly referred to the Templars’ supposed blasphemous ini-
tiatory abjuration of the Cross (Hammer-Purgstall, 1835, p. 57, c.f. p. 216).
His study was explicitly a tract for the times and at one point he asks
himself whether he is being fair to the Assassins but then insists that he
is and asks the reader to consider the declared pure aims and sinister
realities of such modern groups as the Jesuits, Illuminati, and Templars
(in their bogus eighteenth-century revival) who actually practised regi-
cide and rebellion. Von Hammer digressed to discuss the Nusayris and
77
Chapter 04.indd 77 12/10/10 3:34 PM

the Druzes whom he denounced as being apostates from Islam and

practitioners of free love. Toward the end he returned to the question
of modern secret societies and now insisted that their resemblance to the
secretive Islamic sects of the Middle Ages could not be coincidental. The
Crusades were probably the vehicle by which the Assassin contagion was
brought to Europe, where it spread not just amongst the Templars but
also the Jesuits, the Freemasons and the Vehme. The Assassin infection
was ultimately responsible for the French Revolution. So, his book was
a warning against the “pernicious influence of secret societies in weak
governments, and of the dreadful prostitution of religion to the horrors of
unbridled ambition” (Hammer-Purgstall, 1835, p. 218). In the early nine-
teenth century, the history of the medieval Near East was monopolised
by monarchists and conservatives, and scholars like de Sacy and von
Hammer unthinkingly championed the rights of caliphs, sultans, and
emirs against the complaints of free-thinking philosophers, agitators, and
disorderly mobs.
Von Hammer’s history of the Assassins was written in a fever of
dread and hatred. Yet, it is comparatively sane compared to some of his
other writings. He was fluent in English and French, as well as Turkish,
Persian, and Arabic. Presumably he wrote “Mysterium Baphometis
Revelatum seu fratres militiae templi, qua Gnostici et quidem Ophiani
apostasie idoluliae et impuritatis convicti per ipsa eorum monumenta”
in Latin because of the alleged obscene rites that torturers working under
the instructions of Philip IV of France had got the Templars to confess to.
In this lengthy article, von Hammer argued that the Templars had been
infected by the doctrines of Oriental sects, including the Mazdakites and
the Assassins and that they had become Ophites, that is, worshippers of
the demonic snake which tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. Ophites
were alleged to have worshiped the phallus and cursed the name of
Jesus. He cited various curious bits of statuary and metalwork in sup-
port of his claim that the Templars worshiped a demon called Baphomet
and that Baphomet was to be identified as the Holy Grail as featured in
Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival and other works of medieval litera-
ture. Moreover, von Hammer believed that Baphomet was Arabic for calf
and thus its origin lay in the golden calf that the Druzes were supposed
to worship (Hammer-Purgstall, 1818b; c.f. Partner, 1982, pp. 139–45,
156–61). His ferocious indictment of the Templars must have been influ-
enced by the legends that circulated in the last decades of the eighteenth
78
Chapter 04.indd 78 12/10/10 3:34 PM

century concerning Jacques de Molay and the curse of the Templars. De

Molay, the Grand Master of the Templars, who went to the stake in 1314,
was thought to have cursed the lineage of the Kings of France. In the
eighteenth century, the German neo-Templars, a late eighteenth-century
secret society akin to the Illuminati, were known to have created “grades
of vengeance”. The death of the child Louis XVII in captivity in the
Temple in Paris was widely seen as the working out of the Templar’s
curse, and in 1796, Charles Louis Cadet de Gassicour’s Le Tombeau de
Jacques de Molay had already advanced the proposition that the Templars
were medieval anarchists whose lineage could be traced back to the Old
Man of the Mountains (Partner, 1982, pp. 130–2; Roberts, 1972, pp. 114–5,
193–4, 195–6).
Von Hammer’s proposition that, during the period of the Crusades,
Isma‘ili heterodoxy had infected Europe with the spirit of revolution and
unbelief was passed on in generations of crank literature. One finds it in
the anonymous Secret Societies of the Middle Ages published in London in
1846. Much later, Bernard H. Springett’s Secret Sects of Syria and Lebanon:
A Consideration of Their Origin, Creeds and Religious Ceremonies, and Their
Connection with Influence upon Modern Freemasonry relied on de Sacy and
von Hammer as well as Madame Blavatsky to construct the case that is
advertised by the title of his book (Springett, 1922). And here we may
remark that fantasies about the Eastern origins of Freemasonry were
enhanced by Masonic lodges’ adoption of pseudo-Oriental and Egyptian
rites and trappings, much of it under the influence of the charlatan
Cagliostro (Baltrušaitis, 1985, pp. 57–75; Gervaso, 1972; Iversen, 1993,
pp. 121–3). Sayed Amir Ali’s The Spirit of Islam (1922) presented the
Isma‘ilis as nihilists and as the intellectual ancestors of the Templars,
Illuminati, and revolutionaries of France: “In Islam the evils that we shall
describe arose from the greed of earthly advancement and the revolution-
ary instincts of individuals and classes impatient of the moral law and
order” (Ali, 1922, pp. 338–9).
Nesta Webster’s virulent Secret Societies and Subversive Movements (1924)
revived the full force of von Hammer’s polemic. “The East is the cradle of
secret societies” is her opening sentence. In what follows, Webster drew
upon de Sacy, von Hammer, and Dozy. According to Webster: “In Turkey,
in Egypt, in Syria now, as a thousand years ago, the same secret societies
which inspired the Templars, have never ceased to exist, and in this min-
gling of the East and West it is possible that the Grand Orient may draw
79
Chapter 04.indd 79 12/10/10 3:34 PM

reinforcement from those sources whence it drew its system and its name”
(Webster, 1924, p. 284). Some decades later, Arkon Daraul’s Secret Societies
presented once again the mythical nine-stage initiation of the Isma‘ilis.
Somewhat wildly, it also claimed that the Thugee cult was a branch of
the Assassins. It is evident that “Arkon Daraul” was actually Idries Shah
writing under a pseudonym (Daraul, 1961). In The Sufis, Idris Shah, this
time writing under his own name, claimed that the Carbonari were “dete-
riorated Sufis” and that Freemasonry had Sufi origins (Shah, 1964).
The idea of Isma‘ilis and Druzes as members of super conspiracies dedi-
cated to atheism, republicanism, free love and general mayhem remained
surprisingly popular with academic Orientalists for quite a long time. In
Histoire des musulmans d’Espagne, Reinhart Dozy wrote in his characteris-
tic novelettish high style about the vast and sinister Isma’ili conspiracy
that had threatened Umayyad rule in Spain and his particular hostility
was reserved for medieval Spanish Muslim intellectuals who thought
they were above the religious observances that they deemed to be fit only
for the vulgar (Dozy, 1861). Then Michael J. De Goeje’s Mémoire sur les
Carmathes de Bahraïn et les Fatimides presented Abdallah ibn Maymun as
a kind of crazed super criminal motivated by hatred of the Arabs and
Islam. Indeed de Goeje described his techniques of achieving power
over his followers as downright “satanic” (De Goeje, 1886, p. 1). Edward
Granville Browne’s A Literary History of Persia approvingly cited de Sacy,
Dozy, and de Goeje on Abdullah ibn Maymun and on the dark aims and
elaborate organisation of the Isma‘ilis. He also uncritically reproduced de
Sacy’s account of the levels of initiation all the way up to the ninth and
last level in which every vestige of dogmatic religion has been practically
cast aside, and the initiate has become a philosopher pure and simple,
free to adopt such system or admixture of systems as may be most to his
taste (Browne, 1928, vol. 1, pp. 393–5, 413–5). One cannot help feeling that
Abdallah ibn Maymun was welcomed by the Orientalists and introduced
into their monographs as a kind of early version of either Moriarty or Fu
Manchu in order to enliven what would otherwise have been remarkably
dull accounts of obscure Eastern heterodoxies.
The Orientalists were members of the establishment. As Eric Hobsbawm
has observed, “the bulk of the amateurs of the East and writers of pseudo-
Persian poems, out of whose enthusiasm much of modern orientalism
emerged, belonged to the anti-Jacobin tendency” (Hobsbawm, 1962,
p. 265). But some literary figures, such as Shelley, Hazlitt, and Michelet
80
Chapter 04.indd 80 12/10/10 3:34 PM

took a more benign view of the French Revolution, subversive conspira-

tors, and the possibility of social change in the future. There were even
those who made a cult of the Assassins. The Club des Haschischins, as
described by Theophile Gautier in Revue des Deux Mondes in 1846, appears
to have been a joyous Romantic parody and inversion of the sinister sect
that had been chronicled by the Orientalists. The membership that gath-
ered in the Hotel Pimodan in Paris may have included Gautier himself,
Baudelaire, Alexandre Dumas, and Gerard de Nerval (Jay, 2000, p. 105).
Baudelaire’s ‘Paradis Artificiels drew upon de Sacy and von Hammer
for the history of hashish (Jay, 2000, p. 109). Dumas’s novel, The Count
of Monte Cristo, included an episode that conflated elements from the
Arabian Nights with the story of the Old Man of the Mountains and his
hashish-intoxicated paradise as transmitted by the Orientalists (Jay, 2000,
pp. 112–3).
Nerval was particularly enthused by the idea of a subversive Orient,
and in his case this led him to think more kindly of al-Hakim and the
Druzes. His Voyage en Orient is not a straightforward narrative of his
travels to Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey (Nerval, 1851). For one thing, he
plagiarised a great deal from earlier writers, especially Edward William
Lane. For another, not only did the Voyage serve as a vehicle for a series
of fantastic stories, but his purportedly true accounts of his attempts to
secure a bride first in Egypt and then in Lebanon are almost certainly also
fictitious. It is quite clear that he read widely in the literature of academic
Orientalism, including that by Silvestre de Sacy, and he recycled their
findings in his stories. Those stories also fed upon his ill-fated love for
actress Jenny Colon and his recent nervous breakdown, as well as his con-
sumption of opium. His Cairo was a drug-infested “artificial paradise”.
Edward Said has criticised Nerval for his lack of documentary accuracy
(Said, 1978, pp. 23, 43, 180). One is surprised to find such a sophisticated
literary critic attempting to read a proto-Surrealist literary fantasy as if
it were an old newspaper. Unlike his grand French predecessors in the
Orient, Chateaubriand and Lamartine, Nerval travelled without a reti-
nue, and he mingled with the local people.
Although probably not a Freemason, Nerval was fascinated by
Freemasonry and sympathetic to it. “The Story of the Queen of the
Morning and Soliman Prince of the Genii”, embedded within Voyage en
Orient, is in large part a disguised and weirdly mystical account of his
emotional problems, but it is also a whimsical version of the origins of the
81
Chapter 04.indd 81 12/10/10 3:34 PM

story of the Freemasons – that is the career of Adoniram, builder of the

Temple in Jerusalem, his murder and the institutional descent from him
of the Freemasons as the “Sons of the Widow”. This story followed on
from what Nerval learnt or, more likely, pretended to have learnt about
the origins of Freemasonry in Lebanon. Here, Nerval claimed to have vis-
ited a Druze Sheikh in prison in Beirut in pursuance of his daughter’s
hand. When the Sheikh objected that Nerval was not a Druze and that it
was impossible to become one by conversion, Nerval claimed that he was
a sort of Druze, by virtue of being a Freemason. Nerval tells the reader
that Druze regard Masonic rituals and beliefs as being descended from
the Druze ones. The Templars were among the secretive groups that bor-
rowed Druze ideas. As symbols of recognition, the Druzes carried black
stones which they called “Bohomets” – that is the Baphomets of the
Knights Templar. The Druze allegedly believed that they had co-religion-
aries in Scotland, that is to say, members of the Ancient and Scottish rite
of Freemasonry.
Back in Europe, Nerval returned to the Eastern sources of Western
esoteric knowledge in Les Illuminés, where, in his brief and sympathetic
account of the occult charlatan Cagliostro, he reiterated his belief that the
Templars were the vehicle for an Esoteric wisdom of Eastern origin and
that their synthesis of Catholicism and that Eastern wisdom lay at the
origins of Freemasonry. He invoked Barruel in support of his contention
that the origins of the French Revolution had been mystical (Nerval, 1976,
p. 375).
But if Nerval had fed upon Orientalists texts, at least one Orientalist fed
upon Nerval’s romances, for Louis Massignon was obsessed with them
(as for that matter was Henri Corbin). From early on, Massignon was
also fascinated both by the Isma‘ilis and the Freemasons. Among other
things, he produced a survey of modern Freemasonry in Syria. However,
unlike most earlier Orientalists, he was inclined to take a relatively benign
view of the Isma‘ilis and the related secretive group, the Ikhwan al-Safa,
which he wrote about as if they were the precursors of modern guilds.
Massignon took the Isma‘ilis out of their mythical Paradise Garden and
placed them in the cities. Specifically he argued that in the ninth and tenth
centuries the Qarmatians were the first to organise guilds and that these
guilds in turn influenced the development of urban communes in medi-
eval Europe (Massignon, 1920a, 1952). Massignon read and used some of
the same materials that de Goeje had, but he discarded a part as Sunni
82
Chapter 04.indd 82 12/10/10 3:34 PM

propaganda and put a much more amiable spin upon the rest. In his
article “Karmatians” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, Massignon declared that
their secret conspiracy which was “based on reason, tolerance and equal-
ity . . . seems to have reached the West and to have influenced the forma-
tion of European gilds and freemasonry” (Massignon, 1927, pp. 767–72).
Just as important, as far as Massignon was concerned, was his convic-
tion that Qarmatian ideas and vocabulary had had a crucial influence on
Islam’s greatest saint, al-Hallaj. Even so, Massignon regarded all forms
of Shi‘ism as deviations from Sunnism and expressions of Islam’s decline
(Rocalve, 1993, p. 80). And, in another article on the Legend of the Three
Impostors, he traced the legend back to Abu Tahir, tenth-century Bahraini
Qarmathian, who was alleged to have remarked that “the world has been
taken in by three impostors: a shepherd, a doctor and a camel driver and
the last of the three was the worst of the lot” (Massignon, 1920b). Traces of
Massignon’s fascination with the conspiratorial nature of the Qarmathians
can be found in the early writings of his research student, Bernard Lewis.
In an article on medieval Islamic guilds, Lewis wrote of “the days when
the guilds formed a part of the Masonic system of the Qarmatis” (Lewis,
1937, p. 37, c.f. pp. 23–6).
The nineteenth-century European grand panic about the subversive
menace of secret societies lingered on. As late as 1870, in his novel Lothair,
Disraeli wrote as follows: “It is the Church against secret societies. They
are the only two strong things in Europe, and will survive kings, emper-
ors or parliaments” (Roberts, 1972, p. 18). However, in the course of the
nineteenth century such fears waned, particularly after the suppres-
sion of the revolutions of 1848. Moreover, the alleged menace posed by
Illuminati or Neo-Templars was first supplemented, and then to large
extent replaced, by the supposed dangers of a Jewish conspiracy, and
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1905) came at last to replace Barruel’s
Memoires as the favourite text of the paranoid. Though fantasies of a
Muslim conspiracy did linger on and indeed were given renewed vitality
by the Indian mutiny of 1857, those fantasies were usually about a con-
temporary Sunni Muslim conspiracy, as, for example, in such novels as
John Buchan’s Greenmantle and Talbot Mundy’s King of the Khyber Rifles
(both published in 1916). However, to return to the main subject of this
essay, scholars of the generation of de Sacy and von Hammer tended to
have a positivist and philological formation. They were not historians
by training, and they assembled their historical narratives by stringing
83
Chapter 04.indd 83 12/10/10 3:34 PM

together in a scissors-and-paste-fashion “facts” uncritically picked out

from early sources. Most of those sources regarding the Isma‘ilis and
Druze happened to be Sunni ones written centuries after the conspira-
cies they purported to describe. Since the early nineteenth-century,
Orientalists were unschooled in the methods and insights of social and
economic history; they tended to interpret a large and violent historical
process such as the French Revolution in terms of the deeds of wicked
master criminals and men bound to regicidal and atheistic conspiracy
by oath and initiation. Greed and ambition were viewed as the motors of
revolutionary change. When those same Orientalists came to write about
social and intellectual upheaval in the medieval Near East, they naturally
relied on the same type of interpretation, and they presented their find-
ings with a passion and a cadenced style that are no longer fashionable
in academic circles.
REFERENCES
Ali, S.A. (1922): The Life and Teachings of Muhammad or Spirit of Islam. London:
W.H. Allen.
Baltrušaitis, J. (1985): La Quête d’Isis: Essai sur la légende d’un mythe. Paris:
Flammarion.
Barruel, A. de (1797–1798): Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme, 5 vols.
1797–1798, London: Le Boussonier.
Beckingham, C.F. (1979): “A History of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1823–73”, in
S. Simmonds; S. Digby (eds) The Royal Asiatic Society: Its History and Treasures.
Leiden: Brill.
Bertier de Sauvigny, G. de (1962): Metternich and His Times. London: Darnton,
Longman and Todd.
Browne, E.G. (1928): A Literary History of Persia, 4 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Cohn, N. (1967): Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode.
Daftary, F. (1994): The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma‘ilis. London: I.B. Tauris.
Daraul, A. (1961): Secret Societies. London: Frederick Muller.
Dehérain, H. (1838): Silvestre de Sacy, 1758–1838: Ses contemporains et ses disciples,
vol. 27, Paris: Bibliothèque archéologique et historique.
Dozy, R.P. (1861): Histoire des musulmans d’Espagne, 4 vols., Leiden: Brill; English
translation by F.G. Stokes (1913) Spanish Islam, London: Chatto and Windus.
Fück, J. (1955): Die Arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20 Jahrhunderts,
Leipzig: Harrasowitz.
84
Chapter 04.indd 84 12/10/10 3:34 PM

Gervaso, R. (1972): Il grande mago: vita, morte e miracoli del conte di Cagliostro, Milan:
Rizzoli.
Goeje, M.J. de (1886): Mémoire sur les Carmathes de Bahraïn et les Fatimides, Leiden:
Brill.
Hammer-Purgstall, J. von (1806): Ancient Alphabets and Hieroglyphic Characters
Explained with an Account of the Egyptian Priests, their Classes, Initiations and
Sacrifices in the Arabic Language (A translation of Ibn Wahshiyya, Kitab Shawq
al-Mustaham fi ma‘arifat rumuz al-aqlam), London: G. and W. Nicoll.
Hammer-Purgstall, J. von (1818a): Die Geschichte der Assassinen, Stuttgart.
Hammer-Purgstall, J. von (1818b): “Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum seu fratres
militiae templi, qua Gnostici et quidem Ophiani apostasie idoluliae et impu-
ritatis convicti per ipsa eorum monumenta”, Fundgruben des Orients, vol. 6,
pp. 1–120, 445–499.
Hammer-Purgstall, J. von (1835): The History of the Assassins, tr. O.C. Wood,
London.
Hobsbawm, E. (1962): The Age of Revolution. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Jay, M. (2000): Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century. Sawtry, Cambs:
Dedalus.
Kramer, M. (1999): “Introduction” in M. Kramer (ed) The Jewish Discovery of Islam.
Tel Aviv: The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.
Ivanow, W. (1955): Studies in Early Persian Ismailism. Bombay: The Ismaili Society.
Iversen, E. (1993): The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition,
2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Lewis, B. (1937): “The Islamic Guilds”, Economic History Review, 1st series, vol. 8,
pp. 20–37.
Mangold, S. (2004): Eine “weltbürgerliche Wissenschaft” – Die deutsche Orientalistik
im 19. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Massignon, L. (1920a): “Le Corps de Métier et la Cité Islamique”, Revue
Internationale de Sociologie, vol. 29, pp. 473–489.
Massignon, L. (1920b): “La légende ‘de tribus impostoribus’ et ses origines
islamique”, Revue d’Histoire des Relgions, vol. 82, pp. 74–78.
Massignon, L. (1927): “Karmatians”, Encyclopaedia of Islam. Leiden: Brill, vol. 2,
pp. 767–772.
Massignon, L. (1952): “La ‘Futuwwa’ ou ‘Pacte d’Honneur Artisanal’ entre
Travailleurs Musulmans au Moyen Age”, La Nouvelle Clio, vol. 4, pp. 171–198.
Nerval, G. de (1976): Les Illuminés. Paris: Gallimard. 1st ed. (1850), Paris: n.i.
Nerval G. de (1851): Voyage en Orient. Paris: n.i.
Nouveau (1829): “Tableau du Conseil d’Administration”, Journal Asiatique, ou
Recueil de Mémoires, no. 17 bis May, pp. 59–60.
Partner, P. (1982): The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and Their Myth. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Reichl, S. (1973): Hammer-Purgstall: Auf den romantischen Pfaden eines österreich-
ischen Orientforschers, Graz: Leykam Verlag.
85
Chapter 04.indd 85 12/10/10 3:34 PM

Renan, E. (1883): Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse, 8th ed. Paris: Calmann Lévy.
1st ed., 1881.
Roberts, J.M. (1972): The Mythology of the Secret Societies. London: Secker and
Warburg.
Rocalve, P. (1993): Louis Massignon et l’Islam. Damascus: Institut français de Damas.
Said, E. (1978): Orientalism. New York: Vintage.
Shah, I. (1964): The Sufis. New York: Doubleday.
Silvestre de Sacy, A.I. (1809): “Mémoire sur la dynastie des Assassins et sur
l’origine de leur Nom”, Annales des Voyages, vol. 8, pp. 325–343.
Silvestre de Sacy, A.I. (1818): “Mémoire sur la dynastie des Assassins et sur
l’étymologie de leur Nom”, Mémoires de l’Institut Royal de France, vol. 4, pp. 1–84.
Silvestre de Sacy, A.I. (1824): “Notice des manuscripts des livres sacrés qui
se trouve dans diverses bibliothèques de l’Europe”, Jounal Asiatique, 1e série,
vol. 4, pp. 1–18.
Silvestre de Sacy, A.I. (1838): Exposé de la religion des Druzes, Paris: n.i.
Springett, B.H. (1922): Secret Sects of Syria and Lebanon: A Consideration of Their
Origin, Creeds and Religious Ceremonies, and Their Connection with Influence upon
Modern Freemasonry. London: Allen and Unwin.
Vernoit, S. (2000): “Islamic Art and Architecture: An Overview of Scholarship and
Collecting, c.1850–c.1950”, in S. Vernoit (ed) Discovering Islamic Art: Scholars,
Collectors and Collections. London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 1–61.
Von Hammer, J. Tubingen: n.i.; English translation by O.C. Wood (1835): The
History of the Assassins. London: Smith and Elder, Cornhill.
Webster, N. (1924): Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. London: Boswell.
86
Chapter 04.indd 86 12/10/10 3:34 PM

5
A CULTURAL SENSE OF CONSPIRACIES?

THE CONCEPT OF RUMOR AS
PROPAEDEUTICS TO CONSPIRACISM
Karin Hörner
Up until now, I have belonged to the cock-up persuasion, but it doesn’t

mean I can’t see the appeal of a good CT. [. . .] there is that all-purpose, highly
democratic and broadly rigorous research tool, Google, which discloses
2.52 million results for “conspiracy theory”, and for “cock-up-theory”,
761. So, clearly time for a re-think. Charles Nevin: “I’m beginning to see
conspiracies everywhere”
(The Independent, 20 March 2006)
Controversial topics cause strange side effects sometimes. Conspiracies

and so-called conspiracy theories are such a topic that seems to befuddle
many a mind. Thus, you find a scorching review of a pertinent book in
an academic journal followed by another rather unkind review of the
same book in the same journal a year later. Obvious oversights can indi-
cate the blind spot determined by a specific point of view. If you look
somewhat closer at the double review, this supposition of blocked rea-
soning is confirmed. The most conspicuous feature of this strange dupli-
cation is that both reviewers share the basic supposition of the book,
strictly speaking they share a proposition masked as a known fact: “The
Middle East” is a field rich in conspiracy theories. What the reviewers
reject is the author’s failure to substantiate this proposition in the proper
scholarly way. The scholar’s method is defective, and his social attribu-
tions are offending. This kind of reasoning is very peculiar and deserves
to be quoted.
The first review resents the flippant style and analytical shortcomings:
Although not unique, the Middle East has provided some of the more
fertile case studies for scholars interested in understanding conspiracy
theories and their implication. [. . .]./[. . .]. Even if one accepts Pipes’
87
Chapter 05.indd 87 15/10/10 6:27 PM

claim that Muslim Middle Eastern conspiracism is ubiquitous and

intense, [. . .] the book is more a collection of anecdotes than a serious
scholarly product.1
The second reviewer is even more bothered by an allegedly snotty attitude

and misses persuasive social and regional classifications:
We all know that the people of the Middle East, from all walks of life and
all ideological orientations, have relied on conspiracy theories to under-
stand their politics and history [. . .]./[. . .] What is objectionable about
this work is its reliance on a catalogue of public utterances of undoubt-
edly paranoid leaders in the Middle East [. . .]. Even more troublesome
is the denigrating manner in which this is done. Conspiracy theories
are not peculiar to the Muslim crowd. They are common throughout
the Third World, as well as among all human groups who have been
relatively powerless against an aggressive adversary.2
Usually, academic research has the purpose to find out things we do

not already know. On the contrary, scholars strive toward original and
critical studies; they wish to till their own field. My primary aim is a cri-
tique of the concepts “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracism”, respec-
tively, as represented in the pertinent works of two scholars, Bassam
Tibi and Daniel Pipes. I can see no explanatory or other scientific advan-
tage for the concept of an ingrained conspiracism of all or a majority of
Arabs or Muslims as much as I doubt that you have to be an American
nowadays to be a proper imperialist. The first reason why I chose their
approaches is that they marked the reopening of a field of research that
had not been tilled for decades. Most scholars cite Richard Hofstadter’s
article on the “paranoid style” in US politics, published two years after
Kennedy’s assassination, a focal point of conspiracy theories up till now.
The disappearance of the Iron Curtain and the events of the Gulf War
against Iraq in 1991 marked a new general set-up of world politics after
the cold war. At the same time, the extension and success of the inter-
net proved to incite a revolution in public communication. Accordingly,
old insecurities re-emerged with their concomitant remedies alongside
new insecurities that furthered new explanations and their circulation
by new means.
The second reason for my choice restricts the field the other way round:
Tibi and Pipes defined their framework long before al-Qaida entered
88
Chapter 05.indd 88 15/10/10 6:27 PM

A C U LT U R A L S E N S E O F C O N S P I R A C I E S ?
the political arena which changed the world of media and information
policies in a way that in terms of cultural limits may prove to be no less
important to the West than the fall of the USSR. These radical changes
are yet perceived to be so dramatic that they often obfuscate basic assess-
ments of information and explanation. To step back in time, therefore,
renders possible a clearer sight.
What I intend is a kind of sampling, a beforehand filter for theories on
conspiracy theories that might prove useful. So this is neither about prin-
cipal corrections of these notions nor an alternative concept to take their
place. I propose a concept that belongs already to the semantic field of
conspiracies but has been conceptualized as an analytical tool in a differ-
ent academic context: “rumor”. The main reason for my proposal is that
research on conspiracism and its sister frameworks share with their objects
an inclination to overextend their scope. Or, to change the field of meta-
phors, they can fall under the influence of this virus that makes them look
compulsively for secret webs of hidden actors. Conspiracy theories have
considerable intellectual charm. This is how they earned the appreciative
appellation “theory” and why scholars are protesting unfailingly that there
are real conspiracies and that conspiracy theories are not “real” theories.3
These are sign of at least partial blockades in reasoning. Therefore, I would
recommend looking out for related concepts that share principal features
with conspiracism but that are less beguiling.
Most research on conspiracy theories makes use of two kinds of written
sources: News reports by professional journalists, on the one hand, editori-
als and publications on the internet that are more or less clearly marked as
opinionated on the other hand. Examples of both genres will be examined
critically. The following analyses of a typical example of a report shows
that oral communication, not written documents, are the medium of con-
spiracy theories in certain contexts. A typical internet source will be anal-
yzed afterward in the context of the Orientalism paradigm.
Paul Taylor reported for Reuters in April 2003, under the heading
“Baghdad’s Easy Fall Fuels Arab Conspiracy Theories”, the following
news:
‘Arabs and Muslims do not believe what has happened and the coming
days will reveal these secrets,’ Amman shopkeeper Jalal Aboud said. ‘I
don’t think Saddam was killed as some believe. He’s hiding in a place
known only too well to the Americans.’4
89
Chapter 05.indd 89 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Is the shopkeeper’s communication good evidence for the headlined

“Arab conspiracy theories?” Journalists are no scholars, and it is a media
convention to cite the man from the street as a representative of “the
people”, and scholars should take care to use such “news” as evidence.
However, journalists themselves can be influential opinion leaders for
certain groups, especially certain popular authors of leading articles who
are important spokespersons of certain social classes in specific countries.
MEMRI’s reports include documentation of conspiracy theories pub-
lished by newspapers in Palestine. A few months after 9/11, MEMRI cites
from an article by a Palestinian journalist published in the Palestinian
Al-Ayyam. He wrote that the Orientalists faked evidence pointing at Arab
Muslim perpetrators to blacken the image of Arabs and Muslims.5 This
is a good occasion to have a look at the second kind of source for con-
spiracy theories: the internet. Firstly, in case the internet is the medium
that by its very nature as a web best suited for conspiracy theories and
their distribution6 and, secondly, in case that Middle Easterners suspect
Western conspiracies everywhere, Western Orientalists should be perfect
candidates for conspiracy theories with Orientalists as agents not only in
some obscure Palestinian publication but also in numerous variations on
the World Wide Web.
ARE ORIENTALISTS CONSPIRING AGAINST THE ORIENT?
However, Orientalism is not a popular concept outside academia, and most

Orientalists are known only to specialists. For this reason, Orientalism is
no popular subject matter for conspiracy thinking either. Islamist think-
ers and organizations sometimes pick out Orientalist scholars as protago-
nists of a hostile West; they but rarely call them “Orientalists” or charge
them for their “Orientalism”. The invectives they prefer are “imperial-
ists”, “capitalists”, “crusaders”, “Zionists” or “missionaries”. One of the
rare examples of Orientalism meant as a sub-project of the great Western
conspiracy is to be found on the internet. It is from a publication of the
notorious Hizb ut-Tahrir, and it shows that Orientalism is not a concept
the anonymous author uses confidently. The frame he prefers obviously
is crusader-missionary-imperialism:
Behind these missionary movements came the Orientalist movements

who had the same target and the very same objective.
90
Chapter 05.indd 90 15/10/10 6:27 PM

(. . .) a crusade was waged against Islam for the second time; this
time it was a cultural war which poisoned the mind (. . .) which was
far more dangerous than the crusader wars. The missionaries carried
out the spreading of their poisonous filth in the name of science and
humanity. The[y] used to do it in the name of Orientalism.7
All in all, Orientalists seem to be no promising candidates for the role

of conspiratorial agents of Western political domination. Orientalism
itself can be dismissed as a rival of conspiracists’ favorite ideologies,
Zionism and Imperialism. Conspiracists do not use specific agents, spe-
cific topics and topoi arbitrarily. They choose subjects for reasons that are
to be found in the social context in which they develop and address their
conspiracy theories.
If real or imagined conspiracies constituted an essential part of contem-
porary political culture in the Middle East and if it were in fact a typical
trait of Arab or Muslim political thinking or mentality to suspect con-
spiracies, then you must expect or even respect their cultural sense of
conspiracies and act accordingly. But perhaps people in general are more
inclined to suspect conspiracies nowadays than they were 20 years ago. In
this case, conspiracy thinking loses its distinctive quality for Arabs and/
or the Muslim world.
Questions like this represent two levels of research on conspiracies in
the context of Middle Eastern studies. There is the level of subject matter
where you ask whether you are dealing with a pervasive phenomenon.
You explore the possibility that all, many or some people in the Middle
East prefer or fall for conspiracy theories as explanations of what happens
in the world, even if there are other possible explanations. Statistics, inter-
view techniques, content analyses, and the elaborate and time-consuming
approaches would be appropriate on this level. However, is a “Middle
Eastern disposition to believe in conspiracy theories” a conceptual frame-
work promising enough to be worth the trouble? This question leads to
the second level.
On the level of methodology, you can ask whether “conspiracism”, a
term coined by Daniel Pipes, “conspiracy theory” or “conspiracy thinking”
is a promising heuristic concept to analyze a particular kind of phenom-
ena you already marked as conspicuous, if not pervasive. To categorize
certain political statements as products of “conspiracy thinking” may
have political consequences which are dramatically different from an
91
Chapter 05.indd 91 15/10/10 6:27 PM

assessment of the same statements as a product of individual lunacy. This

difference has to do with the political uses of scientific research which is
part of the domain of “Orientalism” as a theory. This is outside the scope
of this article.
TWO THEORIES OF CONSPIRACISM
My hypothesis is that there are many instances recorded as evidence of

the so-called conspiracy thinking which should be classified as rumors
because they are not necessarily designed as building blocks for a conspir-
acy theory. Research on conspiracies mentions rumors as a material for
conspiracies8 or a field with blurred limits to conspiracies.9 As a methodic
guideline for the study of rumors, I chose a study by the French scholar
Jean-Noël Kapferer which was first published in 1987 and translated into
English and German during the 1990s. Kapferer nowadays holds a chair
of marketing in Paris. He analyzed press scandals and established a phone
answering service “Allô, Rumeur!” People all over France were encour-
aged to report rumors. This way Kapferer got additional hard data for a
sociological research on how rumors work.
Rumors have already been part of the research done on conspiracies in
the Middle East but in an unsystematic way. I selected the work of two
scholars for the reason that they paced off the field more than a decade
ago: Bassam Tibi and the afore-mentioned Daniel Pipes.
There is another reason why I chose the work of these two scholars.
Both of them fit closely the profile of a typical Saidian “Orientalist”. They
both offer their professional expertise for political advice to media and
their respective governments. They share quite a few findings in their
search for the historical roots of Arab or Muslim conspiracism: e.g. its
roots in nineteenth-century European ideologies.
BASSAM TIBI: MODERNISATION, DIALOG, AND

TRUTH AGAINST CONSPIRACISM
Bassam Tibi, a scholar of Syrian origin, has held the chair of politi-
cal science in the University of Göttingen since 1973. He is a well-
established scholar who can boast an impressive list of publications
92
Chapter 05.indd 92 15/10/10 6:27 PM

and many international honors. During the Gulf War, he was regularly
consulted as an expert on the Middle East in the national radio sta-
tion Deutschlandfunk. Kapferer remarks in an addenda to his book that
the Gulf War coverage in the media in France amounted to “rumours
as live program”.10 The same applies to Germany where full-time
coverage of the war refashioned and boosted the so-called breakfast
television, i.e. early morning news programs that were in dire need
of interesting information. Therefore, academic advice by scholars of
Middle Eastern studies formerly largely ignored became much sought
after.
Tibi’s political position is best illustrated following the conservative
Carl Schmitt’s definition of policy as enmity. Tibi likes to itemize his
enemies: multiculturalists, leftists, feminists, totalitarianists, and last
but not least scholars of Arabic and Islamic studies. All these people
either make the principal mistake of glossing over the failings of Islam,
Muslims or Middle Easterners, or they do underestimate his work that
has pioneer quality from his point of view – a view that is more often
correct than not.
After the Gulf war, Bassam Tibi found that contemporary Arab cul-
ture encourages a perception of political and historical processes as
shaped by conspiracies. Machinations of the West and scheming fel-
low Arabs characterize a position Tibi explains in his book on “Die
Verschwörung – al-Mu’a-mara [in Arabic script]: Das Trauma ara-
bischer Politik” [Conspiracy: Trauma of Arab Policy] (1993). Arab
societies are portrayed as lacking individualization and enlighten-
ment. Two years after 9/11, Tibi stressed in an article for the weekly
magazine Die Zeit the Islamist tradition of alleged Jewish conspiracies
against Islam and Arabs in general.11 Like many of his colleagues in
political science, Tibi realigned his line of focus from Arab to Muslim
topics in the aftermath of 9/11, preferring to analyze radical Islam and
Muslim terrorism to the merely verbal and notional violence of Arab
conspiracy thinking.
Tibi mentions rumors in general in several places. He rarely gives
particular historical events and related interpretations contrasting their
scholarly accepted and distorted explanation, respectively, in detail.
However, he features general outlines of the standard Western version of
the history of the Middle East. The following passage is characteristic for
a particular instance:
93
Chapter 05.indd 93 15/10/10 6:27 PM

The veracity of reports cannot be checked in countries with a

despotic government. [. . .] the report about Shiite rebellions in South
Iraq that newly flared up [. . .] was neither ‘rumour’ nor ‘conspiracy’,
but real.12
Tibi’s general political advice concerning Middle Eastern conspiracism

is modernization. He recommends to European politicians in face of con-
spiracy thinking a remedy that reflects the liberal consensus more than
10 years ago:
Europeans should develop a sense of understanding of the conspiracy

thinking without forsaking their own politico-cultural identity. They
have to overcome the Arab’s conspiracy anxieties in a dialogue and
by joint global action of Europeans, Arabs, and other Muslims that
should testify to the non-existence of conspiracies.13
Remedies are not at the center of my argument, but I would like to men-
tion two obvious stress cracks in this bridge of understanding in order
to emphasize the relatively small scale of social groups in contrast to the
daunting quasi-objective Weltgeist-level of tradition vs. modernity. Firstly,
there would be no need of understanding without European anxieties
rooted in their “politico-cultural identity”. Secondly, it is modernization
itself that produces the anxieties that are expressed, appeased, and at the
same time reproduced by conspiracy theories. Modernization as an anti-
dote against “the non-existence of conspiracies” at first glance may be
likened to setting a thief to catch a thief.
Tibi suggested another concept for a similar problem in the context
of Islamism, “half-way modernity”.14 Closer inspection shows that the
uses of this displacement are also limited. Anxieties are no privilege of
the last two centuries. Research on conspiracy theories includes articles
on early modern witchhunts, political intrigues, “popery”, and the like.15
Conspiracy is discussed by social psychology as a historical phenomenon
to be found not only in the Middle Ages but also, for example, in the myth
of cannibalism.16 Anxieties aside, which half of modernity could it be that
Middle Easterners, Arabs, or Muslims miss by their failure to recognize
reality for what it really is? Conspiracy theories and conspiracism are
about the “hidden hand” of a secret actor causing certain phenomena. Is
the correct application of the category “causality” such a missing part of
full-fledged modernity?
94
Chapter 05.indd 94 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Niklas Luhmann inspected the notion of causality in terms of

modernity. While Tibi’s concept can be visualized as a pie chart of
whole and half modernity, Luhmann distinguishes between center and
periphery of modernity. Luhmann’s model suggests smooth transitions
between the two parties at first glance. He argues that on the periphery
people think and communicate in more personalized networks than at
the center They acquire and reproduce social competence “by numer-
ous social contacts, a lot of oral communications” that produce a cer-
tain “pattern for the discovery of forms of causality”. These forms are
“not self explanatory and not given by nature and not to be changed as
quickly as an adjustment to the structures of modern society would call
for.”17 Luhmann finds that research on the periphery of modern societ-
ies, especially on different concepts of the attribution of causality and
freedom are “autological theories” that exclude a naive concept of a sin-
gle objective reality, “simple two-value logic of truth”, both of which are
part of an outdated European tradition of “rationality-centredness”.18
If you accept Luhmann’s notion of the social construction of causal-
ity, conspiracism is not a failure. Modernity, half of fully fledged, as a
measure of reality is tautological. However, a second glance reveals that
the dichotomy of modernity and tradition he criticizes as “tautologi-
cal” is replaced by two “autological” positions. Modernity of whatever
grade or purity seems to be a closed circle that offers no alternative to
assimilation.
PIPES: LESSONS IN REALITY AGAINST CONSPIRACISM
Tibi’s American colleague Daniel Pipes is amongst scholars of Middle

Eastern studies notorious for founding Campus Watch to name just
one instance of his political activities. Pipes wrote his thesis in history
about Muslim slave soldiers in 1978 at Harvard University. He taught
at several universities and wrote several books on academic topics.
He is also well known as a political columnist and much sought after
as an interview partner, also by Arab media like the al-Jazeera. Pipes
has worked as a political adviser, adept at different functions, e.g. as
director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993; he
is founding director of the Middle East Forum (Philadelphia) and pub-
lisher of Middle East Quarterly. Pipes’ political work is thus much more
95
Chapter 05.indd 95 15/10/10 6:27 PM

conspicuous than Tibi’s. However, Pipes has much in common with

Tibi’s general political and academic stance: Both of them condemn
intellectuals of the political left, particularly feminists and multicultur-
alists. Both rediscovered the uses of the concept of totalitarianism years
before it became a fashionable topic in the media. Both deplore their
marginal status in the academic circles of Middle Eastern Studies and
Islamic Studies, respectively. Whenever influential academic colleagues
judge Tibi’s and Pipes’ political assessments in public as cases of cliché
Orientalist alarmism, they in turn assert their claim for valiant politi-
cal realism vis-à-vis a leftist majority’s intellectual garment dyeing and
reject the alleged intellectuals’ betrayal of their own Western values.
Tibi and Pipes both claim that the Middle Eastern nations either have
to follow in the steps of Europe’s development to modernity or bear the
consequences.
Pipes corroborates Tibi’s hypothesis that Arabs are more inclined
than other people to consider their political conflicts in terms of victim-
ization and hostile plots. However, Pipes developed the framework of
his research a bit earlier than Tibi. In 1992, he wrote in Orbis, a journal
published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute of the University of
Pennsylvania, mentioned above:
While the conspiracy mentality exists in all regions of the world, it is

outstandingly common in the Middle East. Few there resist its impact;
leading politicians, religious figures, intellectuals, and journalists
espouse wild fears of world domination by enemies. These ideas have
a home at the heart of the political spectrum and therefore influence the
tenor of Middle East political life. Nothing is so false that someone will
not believe it; and transparent silliness does not reduce the importance
of conspiracy theories.19
In his book, “The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy” (1998)20
Pipes argues for a special Oriental mentality that breeds real and imag-
ined conspiracies and defines: “A conspiracy theory is the nonexistent ver-
sion of a conspiracy.”21 The stylishly positioned attribute “nonexistent”
points to the colloquial concept of “theory” in contrast to reality.
He introduces the new term “conspiracism”, a neologism that not
incidentally ends on “racism”. The “conspiracist” Arab and Muslim
state of mind is – according to Pipes – not a genuine trait, much less
96
Chapter 05.indd 96 15/10/10 6:27 PM

an anthropological feature of mankind. It is an ideology imported from

the West like communism, nationalism, and other “-isms”. True to the
Orientalist’s prejudice, the Orient is a bit late and not able to do a good
copy. Like Tibi, Pipes underlines that conspiracism in the Middle East
is lagging behind for about a century after the European original, and
the Easterners got it all wrong because they did not import the appro-
priate Western context. Since Pipes sees himself as a scholar-cum-polit-
ical adviser, he on the one hand analyzes historical and present events,
and on the other hand, he foretells future developments, thus present-
ing guidelines for diplomats and politicians confronted with Middle
Easterners conspiracy theories.
The political mentality Pipes ascribes to Easterners is not very
favorable. The quotation above includes the mentioning of falsity and
silliness. Pipes calls instances of conspiracism consistently pathologi-
cal, illogical, preposterous, risible, ignorant, outdated, and – last but not
least – dangerous. Consequently, conspiracism is merely a lunatic “the-
ory” but still something that deserves serious research. Middle Easterner
are extremely gullible and, therefore, are to be compared only with fringe
groups in the West, thus reflecting on a global scale the centrality of the
West and the marginalized Middle East. The conspiracist collects obses-
sively “factoids” as evidence for his theory.
Pipes gives a bundle of detailed advice on how to deal with conspir-
acists. I would like to mention one that is comparable to Tibi’s. Under
the heading “Deny”, Western politicians are addressed like adults who
should deal patiently with recalcitrant children:
Without being rude, they [Europeans and Americans, KH] can signal
their disdain of Middle Eastern fancies and rationales. [. . .] This sort
of denial may not be heeded, but it needs to be made, repeated, and
amplified.22
Rumors are to be found in the explorative phase of research. The history of

Pipe’s book and its sequel “Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes
and Where It Comes From” (1997)23 echoes the stages of an intellectual infat-
uation that reminds me of Umberto Eco’s novel “Foucault’s Pendulum”.
Or perhaps, if you would prefer to avoid the literary, you could analyze
it as a stereotypical story about acquiring a bad habit that turned into an
addiction and in the end even into an obsession.
97
Chapter 05.indd 97 15/10/10 6:27 PM

THE TEMPTATION OF FANCY STORIES
Conspiracies as curious stories are Pipes’ raw data and their attraction is
described with a mixture of nostalgia and regret typical for a reformed sin-
ner. Some intellectuals, Pipes says, love to flirt with conspiracies as fashion-
able distractions24 for their humor and “happy insanity”.25 Rebecca Moore
calls conspiracy theories “wild stories”, and finds at least on the internet
“frequently a sense of humour and fun in most of the conspiracy sites”.26 I
doubt that the attribution of “humour” has any critical power in this con-
text and should like “fashion”, “happy insanity”, and “distraction” be inter-
preted in contrast to the serious work of scientific research.27
Wild and curious stories are the domain of novels and movies on the
market. Conspiracy plots of secret societies were the mark of one of the
most successful genres of eighteenth-century novels. There has been
a hausse for mysteries in all kinds of media for many years, from JFK
by Oliver Stone and The X-Files to the bestsellers by Dan Brown and
publications like Robert Anton Wilson’s “Everything Is Under Control:
Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups” (1998).28
Obviously, Pipes himself has been attracted in the same way.29 He
explains in his preface that his book “began as a lighthearted collection of
anecdotes” (p. IX).30 He gives no details in this context. However, if you
take a look at his articles on conspiracy you get an idea of what he means.
For example, on the topic of Lady Di’s death, Pipes and his co-author Hill
Kasha wrote an article in 1997. They start with a clear distinction of the
Western and Arab press, beginning with the Western press representing
a source critical approach:
Western journalists mused on the purported drunkenness of the driver

and how the paparazzi distracted him, their Arabic-speaking counter-
parts overwhelmingly agreed that ‘There is no doubt about the presence
of a conspiracy behind the death of Diana.’
The use of litotes (“no mere curiosity”) transports a reasoning by innu-

endo. It is amusing what these people say. Amusement is no good reason
for serious people to take an interest in these childish stories. However,
if these stories are signs of a “mentality” it is a legitimate business. The
metaphors of “plumb line”, and deep exploration suggest that the men-
tality is of a dark underground nature.
98
Chapter 05.indd 98 15/10/10 6:27 PM

The conspiracy theories (. . .) are no mere curiosity but a plumb line into
the mentality of a people. This makes them worth exploring in some
depth.
Curiosity is declared to be no good reason for serious research, but

the word “intriguing” suggests that it is still a major temptation. (…)
“Hypothesis” is a term associated with rational operations. It stresses
that the difference of Western reader-journalist and Arab press is reflected
in different rational approaches: on the one hand genuine “solid fact”
(Western criticism) and on the other hand reputed “whimsical” fact
(Arab conspiracism).
What makes the Arab press so especially intriguing is the manner in

which it builds on its own hypothesis, reporting the merest whimsy as
solid fact.
Now at least Pipes shows his hand and lists the intriguing “factoids”.
They are typical anonymous rumors blown up into extravagant headlines
that are characteristic of the yellow press all over the world:
Some journalists assumed that Diana had already converted to Islam:

‘Recite the Fatiha [the opening chapter of the Qur’an] for the soul of
Diana’ read one headline, implying that she was a Muslim at the time of
her death. Or another: ‘Murder was the easiest solution for the British
government to deal with a Muslim princess.’ One account asserted that
Diana had agreed to wear the hijab, Islamic modesty clothing, on her
head. Others stated as fact that Diana was pregnant by Dodi and the
two were soon to announce their plans to marry in November.31
RUMOR, FACTUAL INFORMATION, AND VALUE

JUDGMENT
The main reason for classifying the messages on Diana rumors is that
there is no reason why they should be more than rumors. A rumor can
be defined as the expression of beliefs in an unofficial public sphere
which are – like opinions – not fully determined by proven facts and –
unlike opinions – not rooted in some fancy of the speaker but based on
99
Chapter 05.indd 99 15/10/10 6:27 PM

and implied by a system of convictions shared by the speaker’s com-

munity. I propose the use of Ockham’s razor: Entities should not be
multiplied unnecessarily. Why assume lasting effects of a nineteenth-
century European pattern of thinking on the thoughts of a shopkeeper
in Amman in April 2003 if the explanation as an instance of rumor
will do?
The main characteristics of conspiracism are its defensiveness and
social exclusiveness. Rumor is also a strictly group-oriented and exclusive
concept, but not necessarily defensive. Rumors share with conspiracism
an aesthetic predilection for “a good yarn” and often present variations
of historic stock motifs.32 However, in contrast to conspiracism, rumors
have nevertheless the popular reputation to be short-lived and to be eas-
ily “refuted by science”. One of the reasons why rumors are thought to
be ephemeral might be that the favorite way of expressing is tradition-
ally an oral person-to-person communication. The bulk of Kapferer’s data
are from the local and national press. Today, SMS and blogs should be
included. Also in contrast to conspiracy theories, rumors are generally
seen as a generic form of human communication, while conspiracy theo-
ries are associated with modernity by Pipes and Tibi alike. There are good
reasons for such a historical contextualization; still there are drawbacks to
this view which should not be ignored.
In addition, it is difficult to find ways of falsifying an imputation of
conspirational thinking on a macro-level. However, if you cannot criticize
an attribution of conspiracy thinking what you are dealing with is not
research, but faith or ideology. Rumor is defined by Kapferer as a com-
municative media used by groups to convey certain evaluations. He lists
several dead ends of research on rumors: Rumors are not pathological or
irrational33 – rumors will not be spread without good reason; people who
circulate a rumor jeopardize their reputation.
Tibi and Pipes as well as many colleagues are concerned about the dif-
ference between real and imagined conspiracies. This is besides the point
if you follow the research on rumors. Kapferer shows that rumors are
not false or fictitious – therefore there is no use in presenting evidence
against a rumor. This confirms findings on prejudices and identity. Recent
research on conspiracies stresses also that it is not wise to explore the
veracity of conspiracy theories.34 However, there is more to this advice
than a reservation or a suspension of judgment, more than a tactical dis-
guise in the presence of deluded informers. It means that the rumors and
100
Chapter 05.indd 100 15/10/10 6:27 PM

the so-called theories are not about facts but about values and have to be
analyzed in the context of specific groups and their values and interests.
This is an insight that is very hard to convey – “truth” itself is an over-
whelmingly strong value in the social discourse of science in the public.
Therefore I will not expound it in this paper.35 Real conspiracies should
be addressed not by Middle Eastern Studies but by secret services and
other security institutions that have to defend the present government
and powerful people in general.
At least one of the rumors Kapferer analyzes in extenso is still en vogue
all over Europe: The list of food additives that are reputedly carcinogenic,
a list of E-Numbers that is still distributed by health shops and consumer
counseling institutions. French people are perhaps more concerned about
the quality of their food than Germans are. It will be no surprise to you
to hear that typical French rumors are about McDonald’s Hamburgers
being made of earthworms – while in Germany it is dog food in Chinese
restaurants.
Rumors thus often, but not always, reflect apprehensions of particular
groups. These anxieties might concern a large group, for instance,
parents of teenage daughters who care about their safety. This is the
background of rumors about the kidnapping of girls from fashionable
shops, discos, and similar places, the names of which and the type of
perpetrators will conform to the local situation. To give an example for
a rumor of a smaller social range – wearers of contact lenses are inter-
ested in the rumor that lenses can be “welded” to the eye in case of
explosions. Other rumors reflect specific political conditions: Kapferer
mentions rumors about Pompidou’s illness and the purported political
consequences.
There is an important area that has been neglected up till now – at
least to my knowledge. Kapferer does not mention hopeful rumors that
stem not from anxiety but from the opposite, wishful thinking. Anxieties
as well as wishes can be translated into normative statements. For
instance, the case of Lady Di’s conversion is a wishful rumor: Muslims
who spread it confirmed thereby that they find it proper for Christian
consorts of Muslim men to become Muslims themselves and make that
public by wearing the hijab that in turn is a sign for their valuing female
modesty. If you wish to understand the specific social evaluation of the
Zionist world conspiracism, you first have to look for the group the ide-
ology is addressed to. Conspiracism amongst German Neonazis is to be
101
Chapter 05.indd 101 15/10/10 6:27 PM

distinguished from conspiracism amongst French Beures and amongst

people in Gaza.
RUMOR AS WATCHDOG AGAINST ALARMISM
The downgrading and contextualisation of explanations we find fanciful

to rumors should enhance the quality of analyses on reactions of the
“Arab Street” as well as political theorizing in the Arab press. Rumors
are – as Sadik J. Al-Azm tells us – one of the media by which politics are
developed and come to pass:
Consider [. . .] the intense debates that have been raging inside Syrian
society since the Madrid Conference on Israel over the ‘peace process’
and the nature of our future relationship with the neighbor, as well as
the fears, anxieties, disappointments, failures, and expectations aroused
by a coming, seemingly willy-nilly, deal with the old enemy. Here, a
word of warning is very much in order against possible misunderstand-
ings. These intense discussions are not open public debates aired on
radio and television or conducted through newspapers, magazines,
pamphlets, etc., but are highly charged, comprehensive, and pervasive
exchanges whose main vehicles are the time-honored methods of oral
transmission, through conversations among people who are within ear-
shot of each other. This is Damascus’s rumor mill and the people’s free
press at one and the same time.36
After 9/11 the thresholds for aggressive anti-Western propaganda and

Islamophobia dropped. Threats from any Islamic group or faction are
taken seriously, no matter who it is. Scientific discussions of conspiracy
theories in Middle Eastern Studies often show a strong touch of excitement
you do not find in studies on US American New Age cults or Indonesian
fringe groups. “Rumours mills” can prove to be effective political weap-
ons; still, on a scale of political relevance they are usually classified as
petty in comparison to the grand master level of world conspiracies. On
the other hand, it might be interesting for future research on the work-
ings of propaganda amongst Muslims to compare the failed global scan-
dalization against the rumor about defilements of Koran pages and the
successful worldwide dispute about Muhammad caricatures.
102
Chapter 05.indd 102 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Since universities and disciplines must compete increasingly for pub-

lic funds and public attention, it is a temptation to draw public atten-
tion by dramatizing representations of your own field of research. So
the introduction of the level of rumors should work as a safeguard
against conscious or unconscious alarmism and culturalist attributions
of mentality.
Scholars like Tibi and Pipes show that conspiracism is an interesting
phenomenon for Middle Eastern Studies. Years before their colleagues in
the fields of political and Middle Eastern studies, they pointed out to the
public that there is a renaissance of anti-semitic topoi in Islamist publica-
tions which proved to spread into more moderate circles and discourses
in Europe and elsewhere, mixing sometimes with streaks of neo-nazism.
Conspiracism is certainly worthwhile to study in historical and recent
works of conspiracists. However, for analyzing Middle Eastern explana-
tions of contemporary events, premature assumptions of an Arab or even
Muslim cultural sense of conspiracism can obstruct and distort the view.
Therefore, you should first try on theoretical boots of the smallest size
available and that would be rumors instead of world conspiracies.
REFERENCES
Al-Azm S.J. (2000): “The View from Damaskus”, The New York Review of Books, 47,
No. 10 (15 June 2000), pp. 70–77, citation p. 70, also to be found on the internet:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/46 – (20 June 2005).
Carl, F.G.; Serge, M. (eds) (1987): Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy. New York:
Springer.
Coward, B.; Swann, J. (eds) (2004): Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early
Modern Europe: From the Waldensians to the French Revolution. Aldershot: Asghate.
Farhi, F. (1999): “Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy.”
(Review). IJMES, vol. 31, pp. 454–457.
Hellinger, D. (2003): “Paranoia, Conspiracy, and Hegemony in American Politics”,
in H.G. West, T. Sanders (eds) Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of
Suspicion in the New World Order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hizb-ut-Tahrir, (2005): The Crusader’s Animosity, p. 2. http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.
org/english/books/state/chapter_41.html – (15 June 2005).
Hörner, K. (1993): “Der Begriff Feindbild, Ursachen und Abwehr”, in Hrsg. von
V. Klemm; K. Hörner (eds) Das Schwert des Experten. Heidelberg: Palmyra,
pp.34–43.
103
Chapter 05.indd 103 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Jaworski, R. (2001): “Verschwörungstheorien aus psychologischer und

aus historischer Sicht”, in Hrsg. von U. Caumanns; M. Niendorf (eds)
Verschwörungstheorien: anthropologische Konstanten. Osnabrück: fibre.
Kapferer, J.-N. (1987): Rumeurs, les plus vieux média du monde. Paris: Éd. du Seuil.
Kapferer, J.-N. (1996): Gerüchte: das älteste Massenmedium der Welt, Leipzig: Gustave
Kiepenheuer Verlag.
Luhmann, N. (1995): “Kausalität im Süden”, Soziale Systeme, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 7–28.
Matt, P. von (2006): Die Intrige: Theorie und Praxis der Hinterlist. München, Wien:
Hanser.
Moore, R. (2005): “Reconstructing Reality: Conspiracy Theories about Jonestown”,
Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 200–220, 2002 also to be found as
prepublication on the internet: http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/
Articles/conspiracy.htm – (21 June 2005).
Paul T. (2005): “Reuters: 11 April 2003”, Baghdad’s Easy Fall Fuels Arab Conspiracy
Theories. available online at http://www.drumbeat.mlaterz.net/April%
202003/Arab%20conspiracy%20theories%20fueled%20041103a.htm – (15 June
2005).
Pipes, D. (1992): “Dealing with Middle Eastern Conspiracy Theories”, Orbis: A
Jornal of World Affairs, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 41–56, also to be found on the internet:
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/214 – (15 June 2005).
Pipes, D. (1997): Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes
from, New York: Free Press.
Pipes, D. (1998): The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy, 2nd ed., New
York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
Pipes, D.; Hilal K. (2005): “Diana and Arab Conspiracy”, Weekly Standard,
10 November 1997. http://www.danielpipes.org/article/290 – (15 June 2005).
Siavoshi, S. (1998): “Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of
Conspiracy.” (Review). IJMES, vol. 30, pp. 272–274.
Stein, H. (2004): Endlich Nichtdenker! Handbuch für den überforderten Intellektuellen
(mit praktischen Übungen). Berlin: Eichborn.
Tibi, B. (1994): Die Verschwörung, Hamburg, p. 147.
Tibi, B. (2003): “Der importierte Hass”, Die Zeit, no. 7.
104
Chapter 05.indd 104 15/10/10 6:27 PM

6
POLITICAL CULTURE, POLITICAL DYNAMICS,

AND CONSPIRACISM IN THE ARAB
MIDDLE EAST
Matthew Gray
Conspiracy theory (naz. ariyyah al–mu’¯amarah), conspiracy rhetoric, and

the more general “conspiracism” 1 have begun to gain greater attention
among scholars and observers of politics in the Arab Middle East, even
though traditionally there has been a paucity of scholarly analysis of it,
especially by political scientists. Arab Middle Eastern conspiracism has
been touched upon by some scholars, including Leon Carl Brown in
his influential work International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules,
Dangerous Game (1984), more recently by El–Nawawy and Iskandar (2003)
in the context of the characteristics and influence of the Qatar-based satel-
lite television station Al-Jazeera, and less comprehensively by some other
writers on religious concepts and radicalism in the region (see for example
the short mentions in Bonney 2004 and Juergensmeyer 2000). The main
English language book on Middle Eastern conspiracism is Daniel Pipes’
The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy (1996); a largely polemi-
cal work, useful for having identified the importance of conspiracism and
in providing a description of some of its manifestations but marred by
Pipes’ own preoccupation with anti-Semitism and by an extremely lim-
ited and rudimentary analytical or explanatory discussion of the political
dynamics that might account for Arab Middle Eastern conspiracism.
This paucity of scholarship on conspiracism is unfortunate, given that
as a phenomenon conspiracism says much about political culture and
political dynamics in the Arab Middle East, while also drawing on politi-
cal culture and dynamics as a source. While conspiracism is not unique to
the Middle East region – witness the strong state conspiracism of the for-
mer Soviet Union, and of course the degree of popular conspiracism in the
contemporary United States – it is important at two main levels in Arab
countries: first, as a tool of state communication with society and, second,
as an explanatory discourse at the more popular, “street” and elite levels
105
Chapter 06.indd 105 15/10/10 6:27 PM

of Arab politics. It appears to broadly cross regions and social classes,

and, therefore, perhaps is a less pejorative tag than in, say, the United
States. This may not be just a reflection of its breadth but also of the rela-
tively formative stage of explanations of conspiracism in the region; there
is no seminal work such as that of Hofstadter (1965) on the “paranoid
style” in US political culture with which to explain – or also to discount –
conspiracists and conspiracism in the Arab Middle East. Conspiracism in
the Arab world is different, therefore, to that in the United States, as it is
a feature of state rhetoric and not solely or predominantly a discourse by
individuals within marginal or disenfranchised social forces, even if it is
partly sourced from such individuals and groups as well as from the state
and its political elites.
This paper offers some thoughts from political science about possible
sources of conspiracism in the Arab world and of possible explanations
for conspiracism as a style of political discourse and popular explana-
tion in the region. It covers four broad areas in its narrative and seeks to
place conspiracism into a context of existing political science theory. The
aim in so doing is to consider not only the origins of conspiracism in the
Arab world but also the ways in which conspiracism is created, fostered,
and used as a form of political language and as a representation of inter-
pretations of political dynamics. It begins by considering the roots and
history of political conspiracy in the Middle East and how this history
influences contemporary thinking by both political leaderships and wider
social forces. It then discusses past failures of Arab political ideologies
and the weaknesses of newer models of economic development and polit-
ical modernization, suggesting that a sense of ideological “aimlessness”
may in part account for mistrust of government and a propensity toward
conspiracism. Partly as an extension of this dynamic, the multiple layers
of political identity and political loyalty are outlined, with the impact that
the state must compete for legitimacy and support against other, more
local units of belonging and loyalty, such as family, tribe, and religion.
When the state fails to ensure such support, and instead is often seen as
an abstract actor or an imposed layer of authority, the affect may be a
suspicion of the state and its motives and, less often, the interpretation of
the state as a threat to the individual or to groups with which people are
most closely linked at a local, social, and political level. Finally, the gaps
between Arab leaderships and their populations is considered, includ-
ing the ways in which leaderships and political elites – in some cases
106
Chapter 06.indd 106 15/10/10 6:27 PM

P O L I T I C A L C U LT U R E A N D C O N S P I R A C I S M I N T H E A R A B M I D D L E E A S T
consisting of minorities that are often exclusionary toward wider social

forces – use conspiracism as a source of popular legitimacy, mass mobi-
lization, or to “Otherize” threats to the regime and thus to strengthen
the metaphorical fortress within and from which they often govern. The
dynamics of conspiracist discourse is also assessed, including the ways in
which conspiracism forms an unwritten political contract between lead-
erships and populations, with conspiracism paradoxically being both a
tool of political control and an informal method of popular criticism of
political leaderships and elites. The essay concludes with some thoughts
on political culture and conspiracism; while not supporting a pathologi-
cal explanation for the preponderance of conspiracism, political culture
nonetheless plays a small role in providing the mood and mechanics by
which conspiracism is more likely than otherwise to occur.
POLITICAL HISTORY AND CONSPIRACISM
The rather obvious and banal observation that conspiracies do, in fact,
occur as a natural dynamic of politics does not detract from the inherent
truth of the observation. In the case of the Arab Middle East, moreover,
there is a strong history of foreign penetration of the region, most notably
over several centuries of Ottoman rule and, more recently, in the first
half of the twentieth century, by European powers operating under colo-
nial mandates. Despite the economic benefits that colonialism brought
to many parts of the region (Owen, 1993, pp. 111–124), such rule was
penetrative and submissive of traditional and local political elites, under-
mined political development both at the national and local levels (Bill
and Springborg, 1990, pp. 231–233), and even sought to move beyond
mere physical control of territory and individuals to also influence the
thinking, and by extension the political perspectives and dynamics, of
the colonized (Mitchell, 1988, pp. 95–127). To many Arabs under colo-
nial rule, the European elite was an opaque layer of authority positioned
above society but able to exert political control over its destiny and to
shape social norms and group identity (Fanon, 1965, see especially pp.
127–158). The new political elites that were created or the old ones that
were nurtured by colonialism were often seen as being in consort or even
under the direct control of the foreign occupying power; even though
many were to later lead post-independence modernizing efforts in many
107
Chapter 06.indd 107 15/10/10 6:27 PM

countries, a great many instead represented an extension of colonial

control and, by definition, an actor within and target for conspiracist
theories. This is a pattern that continues to occur, when contemporary
governments are seen as colluding with major powers such as the United
States, by inviting the foreign power into the region, whether in the form
of military forces for the protection of the state or in the guise of Western
culture and its symbols.
Two classic examples of conspiratorial conduct with enduring legacies
are the collusion between King Abdallah of Transjordan and the Zionist
movement in Palestine in the 1940s, and the 1953 overthrow of Iranian
Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq. King Abdallah’s collusion with
the Zionist movement was aimed initially (especially in the 1920s) at gain-
ing Jewish investment for Transjordan. Later, especially in the lead-up to
the Israeli declaration of statehood and the 1948–1949 Arab–Israeli war,
Abdallah colluded with the Zionists and the British on the partition of
Palestine to guarantee the border of Transjordan and to avoid the emer-
gence of a Palestinian state led by the firebrand nationalist and Islamist
Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al Hussayni (Rogan, 2001, pp. 108–110).
Abdallah’s collusion was real and had real consequences for the failure of
a Palestinian state to emerge based on the 1947 UN Partition Plan but is
often explained by conspiracists as being encouraged or caused by British
duplicity and meddling. In turn, a link is then established to a broader
colonialist conspiracy, with Abdallah as a tool of the British in securing
the emergence of Israel. Abdallah as a calculating, rational political actor,
with his links to Zionists explained by his own political calculations, is
often downplayed or ignored.
The overthrow of Mossadeq in Iran in 1953 is also important, as it adds
emphasis to conspiracist views on the United States as a meddling for-
eign power in the region. Officials based at the US and UK embassies
in Tehran, including intelligence officers, provided financial and logisti-
cal support to anti-Mossadeq rallies and conservative forces, as well as
worked to reinstall the Shah and avoid a strengthening of the communist
Tudeh party (Rubin, 1980, pp. 54–90 but especially pp. 80–90; Saikal, 1980,
pp. 11–45 but especially pp. 44–45). With US support, the Shah’s rule was
re-established, and strong links between him and the United States would
later prove crucial in the growth of anti-Shah sentiment that led to the
1978–1979 Iranian revolution. Beyond that, the overthrow of Mossadeq
continues to be cited popularly as an example of US willingness to meddle
108
Chapter 06.indd 108 15/10/10 6:27 PM

in the Middle East and to create or sustain governments that suit US stra-
tegic and economic ambitions.
There are, of course, other political events of a conspiratorial nature
of note. Pipes (1996, p. 330) points to Israeli intelligence activities in
Egypt, specifically to the 1954 Lavon Affair, as an example. Other Mossad
activities – and indeed, Mossad’s efficiency in general – help to support a
conspiratorial view that Israel has a far stronger hand in regional events
than it in fact does have. If even a small number of the claims made about
Mossad are true, then it is indeed effective at mounting operations against
Arab countries and targets (see among others Raviv and Melman, 1990;
Reeve, 2000; Thomas, 1999). Some of these books, however, such as Hoy
and Ostrovsky (1990), contain a tone and allegations that make it seem,
at times, like the book is actually itself a case of conspiracist paranoia.2
Beyond the operations of Mossad, the opaque nature of patrimonial lead-
ership in the Middle East, and the traditional threat to leaders from coups
d’ètát, sets a climate of political suspicion and provides plenty of ammuni-
tion to conspiracy theorists.
Important to note here is the importance placed by Middle Easterners
on the past and on an understanding of history. The Egyptian intellec-
tual Fawzy Mansour quotes Marx on the link between the past and the
present: “[a]longside of modern evils, a whole series of inherited events
oppress . . . we suffer not only from the living, but from the dead. Le mort
saisit le vif.” (Mansour, 1992, p. 47), declaring “How much more fitting
this description is for the Arab World in the second half of the twen-
tieth century” than Germany a century earlier (Mansour, 1992, p. 48).
Barry Rubin, when discussing the overthrow of Mossadeq, makes the
observation that “[t]he political events of the early 1950s are little more
than ancient history to most Americans. To most Iranians, however,
that period was the essential backdrop to their 1978–1979 revolution . . .”
(Rubin, 1980, p. 55). The strength of popular memory is recognized by
regimes, which will construct historical interpretations to build popular
legitimacy and the concept of shared heritage (Davis and Gavrielides,
1991, pp. 116–148), although when such attempts fail, society’s view of
the state is likely to plunge.
This is not to argue that the strength of historical memory in the Middle
East creates a propensity toward conspiracism. Rather, that conspiracies
actually occur means that conspiracists can point to examples of foreign
intervention or collusion by indigenous political elites, which in turn
109
Chapter 06.indd 109 15/10/10 6:27 PM

strengthens arguments that wider conspiracies are at work in society.

Historical memory provides more foundations upon which conspiracists
can potentially build but does not in itself create or cause conspiracism.
Thus conspiratorial events in recent Middle Eastern history help to move
conspiracism beyond being merely a discourse of the powerless that chal-
lenges conventional or orthodox political and historical explanations for
events or conditions, or beyond being what Rudmin (2003) calls “naïve
deconstructive history”, and instead grounds a conspiracy theory in the
context of an actual past political conspiracy. Actual cases of conspiracy
help construct the foundations for an argument that is presented as inter-
nally consistent, often by extrapolating past events into imbued current
implications, or by citing past examples as evidence that anyone chal-
lenging the conspiracy – or the conspiracist – is inherently ignorant or
naïve.
CONSPIRACISM AND THE SENSE OF IDEOLOGICAL

INCHOATENESS AND AIMLESSNESS
The contemporary Middle East appears to many to be in a condition

of ideological aimlessness and introspection, brought on by the fail-
ure of post-independence political and economic ideologies such as
Arab Nationalism, Pan-Arabism, state-led economic development, and
“Nasserism” in the period from the 1950s to the 1970s, and with later
political ideologies such as economic liberalization, democratization, and
political Islamism failing to widely or adequately fill the void left by the
shortcomings of these earlier political and developmental strategies.
To the prolific – and some would say controversial or hostile (Said,
1978, pp. 314–319) – scholar Bernard Lewis, for example, the Middle East
is in a period of economic and military weakness, especially vis–à–vis its
traditional competitor, Europe (Lewis, 2002). He extends this view into a
relationship between a sense of decline and a rise in political Islamism,
especially violent or extremist Islamism, by pointing to the past achieve-
ments of Muslim Empires, where it is widely held that religion was
coterminous and concomitant with political, military, and economic devel-
opment and growth. He argues, therefore, that the perception of history
of the “Middle Easterners” is nourished from the pulpit, in the schools,
and by the media, and although it may be – indeed, often is – slanted
110
Chapter 06.indd 110 15/10/10 6:27 PM

and inaccurate, it is nevertheless vivid and powerfully resonant (Lewis,

2003, p. xxi). However, Sadik J. Al-Azm differently argues that the same
fate awaits (political) Islamism as was met by earlier secular ideologies:
“Today the hard–core Islamists’ spectacular terrorist violence reflects a no
less desperate attempt to break out of the historical impasse and terminal
structural crisis reached by the world Islamist movement in the second
half of the twentieth century.” (Al-Azm, 2004, n.p.).
The Lebanese-born scholar Fouad Ajami, in talking about “the Arab
predicament”, sees what is termed here as “ideological aimlessness” as
being in fact an indigenous ideological conflict over the degree to which
external power, the lure of introversion, and the fear of foreign penetra-
tion play out; in his words, it is in essence a conflict “between the quest
for the Occident’s power and success and the desire to retreat to their own
universe, to try to find their own values, to rebel and say no to those who
judge and penetrate” (Ajami, 1992, p. 251, also quoted in Sadiki, 2004,
p. vii). In Ajami’s view, therefore, there is not just a sense of decline in
the region but also a fear of penetration or conquest by outside powers
and, by implication, of foreign influences – an important point to note
when looking at some of the possible psychological explanations for
the preponderance of conspiracism at both leadership and popular lev-
els in the region. A later work by Ajami (1998) provides a more specific
consideration of the role of intellectuals, and their thinking in modern
Arab political history, but draws a not-dissimilar conclusion; that the gap
between the intellectual world and the “world as it was” (Ajami, 1998,
p. 283) was not breached, and the intellectual impact on political elites’
behavior, especially in the diplomatic realm and in relation to Israel, slid
in the 1970s and 1980s toward irrelevance (Ajami, 1998, pp. 283–297). A
different approach but one with essentially the same impact is offered
by Al-Azm, who views Arab intellectuals as a crucial source of non-state
discourse but laments the lack of critical freedom enjoyed by intellectu-
als as a result of “the state’s monopoly over culture . . .” (Al-Azm, 1997,
p. 125). Either way, the impact was that Arab intellectuals – who it can be
assumed were and are less prone to the imaginations of conspiracism –
sat alone in a twilight of irrelevance both to the political deeds of their
statesmen and the political aspirations of the wider Arab population in
the post-independence period.
It is noteworthy that Ajami’s The Arab Predicament (1992) clarifies its
aims with a subtitle of “Arab Political Thought and Practice since 1967”,
111
Chapter 06.indd 111 15/10/10 6:27 PM

as it is 1967 that is widely considered to be the year that Arab Nationalism

(and its close cousin, Pan–Arabism3) died, having been embodied in large
part by the former Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Nasser. Nasser him-
self lived on for three more years, but the humiliation of the Arabs’ dra-
matic and comprehensive defeat in the June 1967 ’Six Day’ war ended
effectively any hope that it would be the vehicle on which Arabs would
ride, unified, into Jerusalem to reclaim the Holy Land for the Palestinians.
Of course, it was not only the 1967 war that in practice ended Arab
Nationalism; also important was the growing divisions among Arab
states, especially the schism into rich and poor as oil wealth poured into
the region after the 1960s. Perhaps most important, however, was the
inherent vagueness of the term, which complicated attempts to apply it
in practice (such as in the ill-fated attempt at the formation of the United
Arab Republic between Egypt and Syria over 1958–1961), plus the chal-
lenges of applying it to the weak or young political institutions of the state
(Bill and Springborg, 1990, p. 78). While the Arab “street” and its sense
of Arabness remains strong even today – perhaps out of political frustra-
tion – a more formal Arab Nationalism at the political leadership level
was weak and unwieldy because it remained predominantly conceptual
rather than practical, slowly giving way to a more unifying, class-bridg-
ing Islamism (Bill and Springborg, 1990, p. 78) and providing a “veneer”
behind which nation-state nationalism grew stronger despite its frac-
tious nature (Sadiki, 2004, p. 165). Al-Azm sees Arab nationalism as hav-
ing been less about Arab unity per se and more as “a means of retrieving
that usurped role of world–historical leadership and of history–making”
(Al-Azm, 2004, n.p.); a view consistent with the commonly heard calls
for a return to the “Golden Age” of Islam as well. To many conspiracists,
the failure of earlier ideologies can be put down to foreign interference or
even collusion between domestic elites and foreign powers. Certainly, the
failure of the United Arab Republic was due in no small part to opposi-
tion to the union from landed and traditional elites in Syria, who saw
their wealth and social positions threatened by unification. More widely,
however, conspiracism serves as an excuse for the failure of leaderships
and ideologies during this period and is an attempt to lay blame for failed
or inadequately managed developmental and modernization efforts at
the feet of other, more veiled political actors.
The attendant economic policies of Arab political leaderships dur-
ing the 1950s–1970s have also struck trouble and seen a collapse in their
112
Chapter 06.indd 112 15/10/10 6:27 PM

legitimacy and popular support. Along with much of the developing

world during this period, most of the Middle East sought to control pri-
vate sector activity, especially at the larger or more strategic end of the
economic scale, and to modernize economies and societies through state
ownership and state interventionism. This was certainly the model of
economic development chosen by the larger Arab states such as Egypt,
Iraq, Algeria, Syria, and others (Perthes, 1995, pp. 36–42; Waterbury, 1983,
pp. 57–82, 1993, pp. 31–68), as well as Iran in the 1950s, when nationaliza-
tion came to the political fore (Saikal, 1980, pp. 35–45) and later remained
at least as a notion or aspiration. Such experiments – usually mounted by
the same modernizing, secular (often military) leaderships that espoused
Arab Nationalism (Bill and Springborg, 1990, pp. 14–30) – failed for sev-
eral reasons and not only because of the broad change in development
ideology toward the market (explained by those such as Fukuyama
(1992), Friedman (1999), and the like who see liberalism, whether eco-
nomic or political, as a natural path to development and democracy).
Public sector-led modernization instead created bureaucracy-led stagna-
tion, often with state institutions remaining weak and potential economic
leaders more loyal to primordial groupings such as family or clan than to
the state and its institutions. Import substitution industrialization failed
to maintain its initial pace, especially when the state failed to meet indus-
trial firms’ later need for further capital. The state’s extractive capacity
remained limited to the extent of its popular legitimacy – even if it regu-
larly exceeded that boundary out of fiscal necessity – and in some states
economic crisis forced the state into programs, usually modest ones,
of crisis-induced economic reform. In Egypt and elsewhere, this took the
form of a policy of “[economic] opening” (al-infit¯ah.). Perhaps above all,
economic modernization and a strong state did not bring with it the polit-
ical development, including democratization that had been promised and
which had become the expectation of much of the population – a reason
for the ebb in support for modernization theory among scholars, as well.
Gradually but increasingly commonly, the state’s ideological rhetoric
remained static, while its economic policies and political conduct drifted
further away from what it had initially enunciated as its raison d’ètre.
The more recent attempts at economic reform and al-infit¯ah. promise
economic development – as did their predecessor ideologies – but such
development is by no means guaranteed. Even in its early years, al-infit¯ah.
was challenged as being a policy that created “fat cats” and encouraged
113
Chapter 06.indd 113 15/10/10 6:27 PM

profiteering (Bill and Springborg, 1990, p. 426). Thus an appendage was cre-
ated under the new Egyptian president Husni Mubarak in the early 1980s
to create the new term “productive infit¯ah.” (al-infit¯ah. al-int¯aji4) (Bill and
Springborg, 1990, p. 426). Not only do economic prescriptions risk becom-
ing “ritualistic incantations” (Bill and Springborg, 1990, p. 440) – which
would have the same impact as past policies in marginalizing certain
groups or of expanding the chasm between the state’s elites and society –
but many of the economic policies thrust upon the region by multilateral
lending bodies, in the form of what has become known as the “Washington
consensus” (Williamson, 1993), inflict immediate pain. Regardless of their
longer-term benefits or justifications, such policies impact large segments
of society through, for example, the removal of subsidies on basic com-
modities or the rationalization of public sector services.
Moreover, if – some would say when – such policies fail to deliver
what they have promised, and especially if they marginalize large (sub)
groups, conspiracism will likely manifest itself as a popular explanation
for the policies and their impacts, probably linking foreign intervention
(economic in this policy instance, but related in many minds to a broader
cultural and social penetration of the region by the US and Western culture
and cultural symbols) to the negative results of the state’s liberalist devel-
opment policies. Sadiki makes this link when talking about democracy as
“simply a footnote” to the ultimately exploitative “economic correctness”
(which he defines very simplistically as “marketization and privatiza-
tion”) (Sadiki, 2004, p. 372). This perspective is touched upon several
times, for example, also when discussing the link between sovereignty
and international lending bodies such as the World Bank (Sadiki, 2004,
p. 348). The language, if not the intent, of this simplified linkage of eco-
nomics to politics and exploitation is reminiscent of a broad, mass style
of conspiracist explanation in the region. The link between Western eco-
nomic policy prescription and foreign penetration had, of course, already
been made by leaderships: Ayatollah Khomeini’s conspiracist-type fear
of “Westoxication”, which he first enunciated in the early 1980s, was not
only about cultural penetration but also developed from Iran’s experience
with economic penetration and exploitation and was not-coincidentally
heard during periods of economic difficulty or austerity (Hiro, 2001,
pp. 199–200, 210–213). In a somewhat similar vein, Fawzy Mansour sees
economic penetration as having created a praetorian bureaucracy and
a comprador business and quasi-business sector that is in cahoots with
114
Chapter 06.indd 114 15/10/10 6:27 PM

external or foreign capitalist powers (Mansour 1992, see as an example

pp. 92–104 on the case of Egypt). He goes on to make the Marxian pan–
Arabist argument that Arab unification is linked to economic autonomy
and thus both to a freedom from foreign penetration and to a resurgence
and redevelopment of the Arab world (Mansour 1992, pp. 116–127). Less-
articulate populist arguments along this line are very common in the
Middle East.
Linked somewhat to a sense of ideological aimlessness in the region
and a sense or fear of Western penetration, therefore, is a less specific fear
of what the “West” actually is and for what it stands. There is a defen-
sive “Othering” aspect to anti-Western or anti–US conspiracism, in other
words, especially at the mass levels but also among some intellectuals.
Framing this as Bernard Lewis (1993) and others do as the “West” and
“Islam” – thus contrasting a geography with a religion – does not help
such interpretations, for it automatically creates the image of a secular
“West” and a “religious” Middle East, in turn sharpening the character-
ization that many Middle Easterners, Muslim or not, make of a compara-
tively corrupt, impersonal or imposing “West”. At a more radical level,
this can translate into Occidentalism (typically expressed as al–istighr¯ab in
Arabic) but noting that Occidentalism can mean different things to dif-
ferent people. Buruma and Margalit (2004) use it as a term for a hatred of
the West: “The dehumanizing picture of the West painted by its enemies”
(Buruma and Margalit 2004, p. 5). It can also, of course, be a diametric
of Said’s (1978) “Orientalism”, in which case it might be interpreted as
“Oriental discourse about the Occident” [including but not exclusively that
which is subjective and an act of counter-othering] (Sadiki, 2004, p. 111).
A more generous view of it is provided by Sadiki (2004, pp. 128–129),
when discussing the views of the contemporary thinker Hassan Hanafi
on Occidentalism, where it is offered as an “emancipatory counter–dis-
course [to Westernization]” (Sadiki, 2004, p. 129). Any of these forms of
Occidentalism may include conspiracism. In some cases, conspiracism
will provide a way to justify anti–Western sentiments by pointing to real
or imagined wrongs of the Western “Other”. In other cases, such as that of
the notorious medievalist Islamist Taliban that ruled much of Afghanistan
in the period 1996–2001, the destruction of Western symbols, “signs” or
objects was also a reinforcement of their interpretations of themselves; a
way of “purifying” Afghanistan (Buruma and Margalit, 2004, pp. 44–45)
and removing things which they saw as foreign and as having a negative
115
Chapter 06.indd 115 15/10/10 6:27 PM

impact on social morality or religion. This is consistent with the views

of Wildavsky, a prolific writer on political preferences and political
culture: “Adherents of cultures learn their identity by knowing not only
what they are for but also what they are against. It is cultural conflict
that gives meaning to cultural identification” (1988, p. 593). Finally,
conspiracism can form part of a cultural narrative about the “Self”
in the Middle East: as a way to define one’s strengths by contrasting
them with other cultures; to explain weakness or foreign penetration
in the past; or, most simply, as a (witting or unwitting) expression of
xenophobia.
CONSPIRACISM AND THE GAP BETWEEN LEADERSHIPS

AND SOCIETY
If we take at face value the common view that the Middle East is a high
power distant culture, the impacts of this on conspiracism raise two inter-
esting questions. One, does this promote a fatalistic interpretation of
political outcomes that, in turn, suits the development of conspiracism?
Alternatively – or as well – does conspiracism represent an attempt at
a discourse by the weak or marginalized, within a political system that
allows them little formal discursive space?
Given the large and possibly growing chasm between political word
and deed in the Middle East, there is clearly a link between political dis-
satisfaction, even marginalization, and conspiracism at a popular level in
the Middle East, as there is elsewhere. Fenster (1999, p. 67, quoted in Pratt,
2003: n.p.) claims that he takes a “realist” approach to explaining conspira-
cism (versus what he calls the “symbolist” approach of Hofstadter and
others), in that “[conspiracy theories] ideologically address real structural
inequities, and constitute a response to a withering civil society and the
concentration in the ownership of the means of production, which together
leave the political subject without the ability to be recognized or to signify
in the public realm” (Fenster, 1999, p. 67, quoted in Pratt, 2003, n.p.). Such
an assertion is just as true of the Middle East as it is of the United States, on
which Fenster focuses, although there is less of the “symbolist” discourse
in the case of the Middle East, perhaps because of the important role that
conspiracist rhetoric plays in formal state discourse and communication
with society (more on which later).
116
Chapter 06.indd 116 15/10/10 6:27 PM

The gap between leaderships and society stem not just from the gap
between policy rhetoric and policy implementation, despite the impor-
tance of this as an explanation for conspiracism at the mass level. The gap
is also an indication of the strengths of local politics and of the multiple
layers of identity held by many people in the Middle East. Further, the
gap is a manifestation of minority governments, which remain a feature
of some Arab states and the opaque neo-patrimonial networks that many
leaders create around themselves to reinforce their positions and enhance
their reach into the institutions and social forces of politics.
Minority governments also are an important consideration as a source
of popular conspiracism. They are in power in Syria, where an Alawi
leadership controls a majority Sunni population, in Bahrain, where a
Sunni royal family controls a majority Shi’a population, and in effect
in Lebanon, where a consociationalist quasi-democracy means that no
one group – Sunni, Shi’a, Christian, Druze, or others – controls govern-
ment, even if the Christians and Sunnis have disproportionate power
and influence over it. Until 2003 Saddam Hussayn’s Iraq was another
example of a minority government. Minority governments, of course,
must find something other than structural legitimacy upon which to
base their power, and as part of this process, many choose to marginal-
ize other, non-governing groups (that is, in most cases, the majority of
the population). A sense of conspiracism by the state against the popu-
lation can, therefore, emerge, where the state is viewed as being – or is
– deliberately exclusionary and at times oppressive against movements
that might develop into a more pervasive threat to the state or its elites.
More generally, even in states where the ruling elite broadly represents
the society’s majority, there is still a propensity to marginalize, or even
conspire against, groups that present a real, potential, or imagined threat
to the regime or elite, the result of the large minority populations of the
region and the broad heterogeneity of the states of the region (Bill and
Springborg, 1990, pp. 38–39).
This marginalization, and the ways in which it is challenged, occurs
not just because of minority governments, or sectarian or ethnic fragmen-
tation but also on the basis of social class. Bayat (1997) provides some
interesting examples of poor people’s movements in Iran, citing examples
of how such movements are formed out of groups dislocated or neglected
by the 1978–1979 revolution. While he does not discuss conspiracism, his
observations about the origins of dislocation and the forms of anti-state
117
Chapter 06.indd 117 15/10/10 6:27 PM

thinking and conduct are relevant and highlight the broader challenges
to governments in the region. Silverstein (2000) considers conspiracism
in Algeria during the civil war in the 1990s, with informal accounts and
popular, informal discussion taking the place of media and other infor-
mation that the state had censored, as well as conspiracism forming part
of the popular response to the violence suffered by Algerians during the
civil war (Silverstein, 2000, n.p.). In response, therefore, to the “tactical
manipulation of knowledge [by the state]” (Silverstein, 2000, n.p.) and to
violence, conspiracism becomes a method of fighting back, of challenging
the state’s censorship by construing that it must have something to hide,
of undermining party officials that are often popularly viewed as no more
genuine or nationalistic than the colonial administrators they replaced,
and of explaining nasty state behavior by groups such as the security ser-
vices (Silverstein, 2000, n.p.). The Algerian example gives strength to the
idea that conspiracism in the Middle East can be a genuine, mainstream
response to people’s fears and political anxieties – and even a way of chal-
lenging authoritarianism or poor political leadership – and is not merely a
manifestation of paranoia as in Hofstadter’s (1965) more dismissive, pejo-
rative view of the case of the United States. More important, conspira-
cism as essentially a self-delusion, as per Pipes’ (1996) more pathological
explanation, is demonstrated by the Algerian example as being especially
shallow and simplistic. El–Nawawy and Iskandar (2003, pp. 58–65) make
a strong case that the Qatar-based satellite television station Al-Jazeera
uses conspiracism effectively as a way to empower its viewers, vis–à–vis
their individual governments, at an inter-state level.
It is important to recall that not only “all politics is local” but more
broadly that there are multiple and often competing layers of identity and
loyalty in the Middle East, of which the state is but one. While nation-
state nationalism and the power of centralized authority has increased
in the Middle East in the post–independence period, this does not pre-
clude alternative or contending loyalties from distancing citizens from
their government nor indeed of localized politics and sub-state loyalties
from usurping the state’s authority. Middle Eastern societies have con-
tinually had a strong element of family, clan, and tribal loyalties – what
Bill and Springborg (1990, pp. 85–138) call “the genes of politics” – with
which the state has had to relate and contend for power (Lapidus, 1990,
pp. 25–47). These loyalties not only compete with each other and with the
state but also with other influences on politics and identity such as social
118
Chapter 06.indd 118 15/10/10 6:27 PM

class and religiosity (Eickelman and Piscatori, 1996, pp. 35–36). When
the state has failed to build its popular legitimacy, as demonstrated ear-
lier, plus shifted into a post–populist phase of authoritarianism or some
similar form of greater coercive control over society, an obvious outcome
is a growing mistrust by the citizenry of the state itself and, by exten-
sion, of the state’s motivations. That the state’s motivations come into
question is a foundational aspect of conspiracism in any society; indeed
such a case for conspiracism in the United States and other societies is
made routinely, pointing to the growth of government secrecy (CCC, n.d.,
n.p.), as minority fears of majority governments (added to the strength
of some conspiracist orators) (Cooper with Ferguson, 1990, pp. 30–31) or
as an Othering of the bureaucratized state (Fenster, 1999, p. 74 quoted in
Pratt, 2003, n.p.). Conspiracism could also be viewed more broadly in the
same way that Kishtainy (1985, p. 128) sees Arab humor and joke mak-
ing as a method for an independent-minded population to express their
autonomy from government. The bureaucratization that has occurred in
much of the Middle East over the second half of the twentieth century,
especially a massive growth in domestic intelligence services’ penetration
of society, reinforces distrust of the state and acts as a source of popular
conspiracism.
The opaqueness of the state’s motivations is linked not least of all to
the intricate neo-patrimonial webs that leaderships build around and
below themselves, through which they exert control over, and ensure the
loyalty of, the wider institutions of state power such as the bureaucracy,
the military and, increasingly, religious institutions and new classes such
as private sector business people. Through these networks, leaders cre-
ate a web of “power elites”, which “shapes the political style and molds
the political system of a society” (Bill and Springborg, 1990, p. 137). Such
a system has two important impacts for the study of conspiracism: it
encourages informal politics and opaque decision-making dynamics, and
it creates rivalries among the elite but loyalty upward to a political leader.
Thus the state, as evidenced by its leader and those surrounding him
or her, becomes seen by the wider population as an inaccessible, secre-
tive network that reaches its own private symbiotic arrangements, and
oftentimes therefore as corrupt and out of touch with popular concerns.
It is only a short step from seeing the state in this light to thus viewing
the individuals at the summit of the state as people who act against their
own citizenry to guarantee their political survival and to build their own
119
Chapter 06.indd 119 15/10/10 6:27 PM

political and financial positions and thereby assume that such individu-
als are inherently conspiratorial toward others. This is, of course, often
an accurate interpretation of such actors, who will conspire against each
other or work together against social forces to secure their political posi-
tions and the attendant privileges. Thus, it is less the inherent culture of
the region that accounts for conspiracism and more the ways in which
Middle Eastern political culture fosters a set of dynamics, not least of all
state–society dialog (or lack thereof), from and within which conspira-
cism emerges and becomes part of popular discourse about an elite that
is distant and opaque.
THE STATE AS THE CONSPIRACIST RHETOR
The discussion above has predominantly been focused on cases where the
population, rather than the state or its elite, is the rhetor. One characteris-
tic which sets the Middle East apart from some other regions, however, is
the fact that conspiracism is often part of the state’s discourse and not just
a discourse by particular marginalized or dissatisfied minorities (or less
transparently, by social forces). While some forms of conspiracism may
challenge a state’s power, it is common to find states also acting as con-
spiracist rhetor, typically through the use of monopolized mass media, or
governing party structures, or under the direction of a charismatic leader.
There are several explanations for this state behavior.
First, such conspiracism can aid the state in diverting attention away
from its political or developmental flaws or failures and toward a con-
structed enemy; to “relieve responsibility” (Pipes, 1996, p. 359) and to win
wider popular support for state policies or behaviors that otherwise may
be more effectively challenged (Pipes, 1996, pp. 358–361). Pipes dwells, if
largely descriptively, on this when looking at the portrayal of Israel and
Jews by Arab leaderships and political institutions. In this sense, state
conspiracism is a version of the United States and USSR using conspira-
cism as state propaganda, as touched upon (but unfortunately not fully
developed) by Young and Launder (1988, p. 217), even though the rhetoric
in, say, the United States was usually less extreme and vitriolic than what
often comes from state media in the Middle East. Conspiracism becomes
a form of state-led Othering and of creating a larger imagined enemy, in
turn increasing popular suspicions of the enemy.
120
Chapter 06.indd 120 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Conspiracism also serves as a form of inverse–relevance rhetoric during

political or economic transition, as a way of pretending that nothing is
changing when, in fact, it is. States therefore maintain the rhetoric of ear-
lier ideologies – often reflecting the popular view of the “street” – and the
rhetoric of conspiracies against these ideologies, as a way of distracting
attention from the state as the agent or source of change. Conspiracism
is also, of course, a useful way to construct counter-facts; if believed by
people, they serve a direct purpose of protecting the state or elite through
misinformation. If not believed, counter-facts may still be useful, as
Wedeen points out, as a way for citizens to justify to themselves their
compliance with the state (Wedeen, 1999, p. 41).
All of the above has the three-pronged effect of strengthening popu-
lar nationalism, diverting opposition energies away from the state or its
leadership, and reinforcing the state as a source of protection against a
perceived enemy – all of which are especially useful to states, such as
those common in the Middle East, that lack structural legitimacy or whose
policies are moving into a post-populist phase.
Conspiracism can also form part of the symbolism of the state. One
reason why many states tolerate conspiracism by social groups is per-
haps because dialog serves the state’s interests as well; in such cases the
state, while not the rhetor, is nonetheless at least partly the conspiracist.
More specifically, it can occur in what Kassem (2004, p. 170) refers to as
the assertion and reassertion of a political leader’s domination. While
Kassem does not enter the debate about conspiracism directly, his obser-
vations about leadership attacks on individuals and groups in the public
sphere (Kassem, 2004, pp. 170–177) are of great relevance, as such actions
commonly include conspiracism as a tactic. Kassem uses the example of
Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who among other things was accused of taking and
misusing foreign funds and of damaging Egypt’s international image;
such accusations are very close in flavor to conspiracism. Lisa Wedeen’s
(1999) observations on the role of symbolism in Syrian politics may also
be instructive in explaining state conspiracism not only in the uses of
counter-facts already mentioned but also a way for the state to monopo-
lize public space and discourse (Wedeen, 1999, p. 42) or to “disorientate”
people and thus reduce their capacity for independent action counter to
that desired by the state (Wedeen, 1999, pp. 44–45). Such rhetoric and con-
spiracism can, of course, have a reinforcing effect at two separate levels:
first, if state lies or misinformation creates an environment where people
121
Chapter 06.indd 121 15/10/10 6:27 PM

falsely repeat the rhetoric or an expression of allegiance with the state, or

second, where citizens themselves develop and engage their own con-
spiratorial or counter-factual discourses to challenge those of the state.
CONCLUSION
The Middle East is not unique in containing examples of conspiracism

either as popular discourse or as state narrative nor necessarily in the pre-
ponderance of conspiracist language in the public and private spheres.
There is no objective measure of the degree to which certain societies or
polities are conspiracist; however that conspiracism occurs – and occurs
on a regular basis, sustained by a variety of political actors and forces – is
not under serious challenge. What can be challenged, however, are the
reasons for this, which is also an under-studied area of political science in
the Middle East region.
The aim of this paper has been to present some thoughts on the political
science explanations that might assist in developing a cohesive account
for conspiracism in the Middle East. The three main areas of explana-
tion outlined have sought to do this by analyzing the state and society as
conspirator: first by establishing the foundational prospects that actual
conspiracies offer a potential conspiratorial narrator; second, by outlining
the sources of popular conspiracism, including the current political and
ideological situation in much of the Middle East and how this is perceived
in the region; and third, by examining the ways in which the state, often
consciously, contributes to the place of conspiracism in the public sphere
and in popular discourse.
Many of these observations are not unique or exceptional to
the Middle East; in terms of the perceived gap between local and
national politics, and the breach between state ideology and pol-
icy implementation, for example, a similar argument could be made
for it being a source of conspiracism in the West as well. Even state
conspiracism is not wholly unique to the Middle East and occurs in
other cultures; while most Western liberal-democratic states are less
inclined toward outright conspiracist discourse, and perhaps even less
sharp in their political rhetoric, they are not unfamiliar with politi-
cal language and idiom that seeks to influence populations through
the less-than-scientific application of fact to state narrative. The
122
Chapter 06.indd 122 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Middle East is an interesting case study, however, not least because

of the political fragility of many states, the conflicts within groups
in many states, the international conflicts that have bedeviled the
region and continue to do so, and in turn the role that conspiracism
has played in these areas and the relationships that it has developed
with them.***
REFERENCES
Ajami, F. (1992): The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice since 1967.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ajami, F. (1998): The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey. New York:
Pantheon.
Al-Azm, S. (1997): “An Interview with Sadik J. Al-Azm”, Arab Studies Quarterly,
vol. 19, no. 3, Summer, pp. 113–126.
Al-Azm, S. (2004): “Time Out of Joint: Western Dominance, Islamist Terror, and
the Arab Imagination”, Boston Review, October–November, available HTTP:
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR29.5/alazm.html (accessed 11 March 2005).
Bayat, A. (1997): Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Bill, J.; Springborg, R. (1990): Politics in the Middle East, 3rd ed. Glenview IL: Scott,
Foresman/Little, Brown.
Bonney, R. (2004): Jih¯ ad: From Qur’¯ an to bin L¯ aden. New York: Palgrave
MacMillan.
Brown, L.C. (1984): International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous
Game. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Buruma, I.; Margalit, A. (2004): Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies.
New York: Penguin Press.
CCC (Centre for Conspiracy Culture). (no date): Conspiracy Thinking and Conspiracy
Studying, available online at http://www.wkac.ac.uk/ccc/content/essay1.
htm (accessed 11 March 2005).
Cooper, M.; Ferguson, G. (1990): “The Return of the Paranoid Style in American
Politics”, U.S. News & World Report, 12 March, pp. 30–31.
Davis, E.; Gavrielides, N. (1991): “Statecraft, Historical Memory, and Popular
Culture in Iraq and Kuwait”, in E. Davis, N. Gavrielides (eds) Statecraft in
the Middle East: Oil, Historical Memory, and Popular Culture. Gainesville FL:
University Press of Florida.
Eickelman, D.F.; Piscatori, J. (1996): Muslim Politics. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
El–Nawawy, M.; Iskandar, A. (2003): Al–Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is
Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism. Cambridge, MA:
Westview Press.
123
Chapter 06.indd 123 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Fanon, F. (1965): A Dying Colonialism. London: Pelican; an English translation from

the original French, F. Fanon (1959) L’An Cinq de la Révolution Algérienne,
François Maspero.
Fenster, M. (1999): Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Friedman, T. (1999): The Lexus and the Olive Tree. London: HarperCollins.
Fukuyama, F. (1992): The End of History and the Last Man. New York: The Free Press.
Hofstadter, R. (1965): The Paranoid Style in American Politics. New York: Knopf.
Hoy, C.; Ostrovsky, V. (1990): By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a
Mossad Officer. New York: St Martin’s Press.
Juergensmeyer, M. (2000): Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious
Violence, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kassem, M. (2004): Egyptian Politics: The Dynamics of Authoritarian Rule. Boulder:
Lynne Rienner.
Kishtainy, K. (1985): Arab Political Humour. London: Quartet Books.
Lapidus, I.M. (1990): “Tribes and State Formation in Islamic History”, in
P.S. Khoury; J. Kostiner (eds), Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lewis, B. (1993): Islam and the West. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lewis, B. (2002): What Went Wrong? The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the
Middle East. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Lewis, B. (2003): The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson.
Mansour, F. (1992): The Arab World: Nation, State and Democracy. London: Zed
Books.
Mitchell, T. (1988): Colonising Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrovsky, V. (1994): The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad’s
Secret Agenda. New York: HarperCollins.
Owen, R. (1993): “Egypt and Europe: From French Expedition to British
Occupation”, in A. Hourani; P.S. Khoury; M.C. Wilson (eds) The Modern Middle
East: A Reader. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Perthes, V. (1995): The Political Economy of Syria under Asad. London: I. B. Taurus.
Pipes, D. (1996): The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy. London:
MacMillan Press.
Pratt, R. (2003): “Essay Review: Theorizing Conspiracy – Before and After 9/11”,
Theory and Society, vol. 32, no. 2, April, 255–271, available HTTP: http://mtprof.
msun.edu/Spr2002/Pratt.html (accessed 11 March 2005).
Raviv, D.; Melman, Y. (1990): Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s
Intelligence Community. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Reeve, S. (2000): One Day in September: The Story of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games
Massacre. London: Faber and Faber.
Rogan, E.L. (2001): “Jordan and 1948: The Persistence of an Official History”, in
E.L. Rogan; A. Shlaim (eds) The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
124
Chapter 06.indd 124 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Rubin, B. (1980): Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rudmin, F. (2003): Conspiracy Theory as Naïve Deconstructive History. available
online at http://newdemocracyworld.org/conspiracy.htm (accessed 11 March
2005).
Sadiki, L. (2004): The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter–Discourses.
London: Hurst & Company.
Said, E. (1978): Orientalism. New York: Vintage (“Vintage Edition”).
Saikal, A. (1980): The Rise and Fall of the Shah: 1941–1979. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Silverstein, P.A. (2000): “Regimes of (Un)Truth: Conspiracy Theory and the
Transnationalization of the Algerian Civil War”, Middle East Report, 214, Spring,
available online at http://www.merip.org/mer/mer214/214_silverstein.html
(accessed 11 March 2005).
Thomas, G. (1999): Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad. New York:
St Martin’s Press.
Waterbury, J. (1983): The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two
Regimes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Waterbury, J. (1993): Exposed to Innumerable Delusions: Public Enterprise and State
Power in Egypt, India, Mexico, and Turkey. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Wedeen, L. (1999): Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in
Contemporary Syria. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Wildavsky, A. (1988): “Response to D.D. Laitin, ‘Political Culture and Political
Preferences’”, The American Political Science Review, vol. 82, no. 2, 589–597.
Williamson, J. (1993): “Democracy and the ‘Washington Consensus’ ”, World
Development, vol. 21, no. 8, 1329–1336.
Young, M.J.; Launer, M.K. (1988): Flights of Fancy, Flights of Doom: KAL007 and
Soviet–American Rhetoric. Lanham MD: University Press of America.
125
Chapter 06.indd 125 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Chapter 06.indd 126 15/10/10 6:27 PM
PART THREE
CONTEMPORARY
DISCOURSES
Chapter 07.indd 127 12/10/10 3:35 PM

Chapter 07.indd 128 12/10/10 3:35 PM
7
POLEMICS ON “ORIENTALISM” AND

“ CONSPIRACY” IN INDONESIA:
A SURVEY OF PUBLIC DISCOURSE ON THE
CASE OF JIL VERSUS DDII (2001–2005)
J. M. Muslimin
INTRODUCTION
In the context of Indonesia, the discussions and deliberations on

Orientalism and conspiracy have been discussed quietly and prevailed
for years. The discussion on this issue had been started at least before the
Independence of Indonesia, especially when the polemics on cultures was
in progress, and correspondence occurred between the figures of Islamic
movement, M. Natsir, A. Hassan, and Soekarno (The first Indonesian
President) in the 1930s and 1940s.1
The intensified discussion came up again in the 1970s with the emer-
gence of the Islamic reform movement. The spokespersons of this move-
ment were Nurcholish Madjid and friends, who were mainly the Islamic
activists and those from Islamic Student Association (Himpunan Mahasiswa
Islam, HMI) and from the circle of the State Islamic Institute (Institut
Agama Islam Negeri, IAIN) Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta promoted by Harun
Nasution. Furthermore, an intellectual figure from Nahdlatul Ulama (NU),
Abdurrahman Wahid, participated as well in the movement.2
What had been done by Nurcholish Madjid and Harun Nasution were
then “confronted” by old figures, especially those from the ex-Islamic
Party Masyumi, such as Rasjidi, a professor in Islamic Studies from the
University of Indonesia (UI), who was at the same time one of the found-
ers of the Indonesian Islamic Preaching Council (Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah
Indonesia, DDII). In support of Rasjidi´s position, a similar reaction also
came from Ridwan Saidi, a colleague of Nurcholish Madjid from the
Islamic Student Association (HMI) itself.3
129
Chapter 07.indd 129 12/10/10 3:35 PM

If we observe some points carefully, such as the logic used by the pro-
ponents of reform and those who were against the Islamic thought reform
movement, we find that the points of argument were indirectly based on
the assumption that there were strong influences of orientalist’s thoughts
in the minds of reformers. Furthermore, the influences were so strong that
it was possible that the reformers had made themselves complicit with
Western or Orientalist interests.4
The following elaborations will shed light on the development of the
discourse and themes of the debates which had occurred, especially in
recent years: in the time when words like “orientalist’s influences” and
“conspiracy” have become more direct and real.
LIBERAL ISLAMIC NETWORK (JARINGAN ISLAM LIBERAL,

JIL) VERSUS THE INDONESIAN ISLAMIC PREACHING
COUNCIL (DEWAN DAKWAH ISLAMIAH INDONESIA, DDII)
The emergence of JIL in 2001 was the continuation of Islamic reform move-
ment whose seeds had been planted long before. The activists of JIL are
dominated by young people who had been raised on NU traditions and
led by Ulil Abshar Abdallah who is also active in the NGO known as the
Committee of Human Resources Development Studies (LAKPESDAM)
of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). Other names associated with this group are
Zuhairi Misrawi and Lutfi al-Saukani.5
It can be said that JIL originally brought up the agenda of Islamic
thought reformation which was more or less similar to the movement
that preceded them (Paramadina group led by Nurcholish Madjid).
However, compared to Paramadina, JIL activities and voices are more
various, vocal and influential. JIL runs its own website on the internet
and initiates public dialogs through radio all over Indonesia, 6 television
and national newspapers. Furthermore, JIL actively pursues cooperative
programs with American-based foundations, such as Ford Foundation or
the Asia Foundation. Such widespread networking and publications had
never been attempted by Paramadina.
The antithesis of JIL is DDII.7 The founding fathers of the latter were
the old activists of the legendary Islamic Party (Majelis Syuro Muslimin
Indonesia, Masyumi). The prominent spokesmen of this group are Adian
Husaini and Adnin Armas. Both are graduates of the International
130
Chapter 07.indd 130 12/10/10 3:35 PM

P O L E M I C S O N “ O R I E N TA L I S M ” A N D “ C O N S P I R A C Y ” I N I N D O N E S I A
Institute of Islamic Thought (ISTAC) Malaysia, and also Hartono Ahmad

Jaiz, an ex-journalist and social activist.8
Related to the accusation of the orientalist’s role and the influence and
the existence of a conspiracy, some of the main themes brought up by the
JIL which are confronted directly by DDII’s activists are as follows:9
I N C L U S I VE T H E OL OG Y
JIL activists are people who vocally state this issue on some occasions. The
JIL community hold a common view that the epistemological building of
the right Islamic attitudes (theological) is the submission to God regard-
less of the color and nature of the religion. By submitting to God, every-
one will be able to achieve rewards from Him even without participating
in an organized religion.10
For JIL activists, there are generally three types of attitudes toward
the inter-faith dialog process. Firstly, it is an exclusively theologi-
cal attitude. Consequently, by this attitude only Islam is considered
the right religion, while other religions are wrong paths that mislead
their followers. Secondly, it is the inclusive attitude; this attitude con-
firms the view that religions outside Islam are considered to be implicit
forms of Islam. Thirdly, it is the pluralistic-theological attitude. This
attitude is best expressed in the statement that “other religions are
equally valid ways to the same truth”, “other religions speak of differ-
ent, but equally valid truths”, “each religion expresses an important
part of the truth”.11
From the logic and arguments used in expressing their inclusive and
plural theological views, the JIL group usually refers to the theologians
and religious thinkers such as Karl Rahner, Alvin Platinga, John Hick and
Syed Hosein Nasr, besides referring to the Koran.
T H E D E S A C R AL I ZAT I ON OF I S L AMIC LAW
The refusal of Islamic Law within the nation-state context is a theme

eagerly taken up by JIL as well. For JIL activists, the first victims of an
imposition of Islamic Law shall be women.12 Besides, there will be many
negative impacts which will come up as a result of forcing the implemen-
tation of Islamic Law in Indonesia. Ranging from poverty issues, injustice
in Law to the deprivation of civil rights as a result of the centralism of
power and exegesis by one single exegete.13
131
Chapter 07.indd 131 12/10/10 3:35 PM

Besides those effects, for JIL activists the tragic thing is that the imple-
mentation of Islamic law will ruin the foundations of national secularism
which will end up in a totalitarian state. Ulil Abshar Abdallah states
. . . Liberal Islam can accept a secular form of a state which is superior to

a fundamentalist one because secular country is capable of containing
both energies of piety and sinfulness at the same time.14
On other occasions, Ulil also explains that in Islamic law, ritual aspects
are distinguished from the inter-personal (interactive and horizontal
activities) ones. Ritual areas have been arranged in detail. All ritual proce-
dures must be in accordance with the fixed guidelines of the religion. For
example, the number of raka’as in prayers cannot be added or reduced.
On the other hand, inter-personal areas are progressive and dynamic,
corresponding to the development of human civilization and cultures.
Whereas God’s law related to The Book of Criminal Law (Kitab Undang-
undang Hukum Pidana, KUHP) never existed. The punishments such as
cutting off hand, retaliation and stoning are simply derived from the
influences of Arabic cultures.15
According to Ulil, the core of law is the realization of five basic virtues:
to protect the soul, mind, religion, possessions and honor. For instance,
the protection of the mind is realized in the form of liquor prohibition.
This prohibition is conditional. Therefore, vodka in Russia can be allowed,
since it is very cold there.16
In other essays, Ulil states that issues concerning Islamic law is a
manifestation of the the Muslim community which have resulted from
their incapacity to cope with the many essential problems they face.
Furthermore, the JIL group also suggest a process of deconstruction of the
established logics of Islamic law. The failure in deconstructing it will cause
Islamic law to remain in shackles and restricted within the old paradigm.17
Still related to the Islamic law, another member of JIL (Luthfi
al-Saukani) also proposes that the concept of Islamic law does not really
exist. The concept was in fact derived from ideas and works of those who
have over-idealized Islam.18
To Luthfi, all laws implemented by a society are basically positive
laws. These include the law applied by the Prophet himself. The Koran
became the source of the constitution used at that time only because there
were no other sources better than the Koran itself.19
132
Chapter 07.indd 132 12/10/10 3:35 PM

However, Luthfi also states that the Koran itself was not the only
source of law at that time. Historically, Muhammad himself also derived
from the traditions of the people, including the cases of criminal law, such
as stoning, body amputation, burning at the stake, in the cases of sod-
omy, and the implementation of blood money in cases of murder and
forgiveness.
To Lutfi, given such historical facts, Muhammad was a man who
interacted with the Jewish people and tribal groups living in Medina
and took up the existing laws which applied to the society at the time.
Therefore, the law which was implemented was not a purely Islamic law.
Furthermore, in some rituals such as the pilgrimage to Mecca, are contin-
uations from the tradition and practice of the Jahilliyah era (before Islam).
The concept of alms giving is a heritage of Roman law which had been
revised. Prayer is a legacy of the Jewish traditions taught by David, which
had been modified.20
In the economic system, according to Luthfi, Muhammad consented
to all Roman practices which dominated almost all administrations and
states. Moreover, Muhammad himself still used coins with the picture of
Yustianus and dealt with trade transactions following Roman ways. In
short, all the efforts of the Prophet were directed toward establishing a
civil society on the basis of revelations which he had received recorded in
the Koran, but he did not stop there. He also analyzed the realities which
had developed whether in economic, social or cultural issues.21
C O N FR O N T I NG F UND AME NTAL I S M
In their statements, the JIL community also declared that one of their main
tasks is to eliminate the virus of fundamentalism. It is expressed in one of
the essays they posted in their official website:
The fear over the emergence of “extremism” and “fundamentalism” of

the religion has made some people worried recently. The indications of
this are so significant. The rise of a number of Islamic militants, church
destruction (and other religious buildings), the proliferation of media
that publicise “militant Islam” aspirations, the use of the term “jihad”
as a means of justification in some attacks towards other religions, etc,
are several developments which indicate the rise of the extreme religion
aspirations. Of course, if there is no effort to restrain the dominance
133
Chapter 07.indd 133 12/10/10 3:35 PM

of the militant religious point of views, in the long term, these views
held by militant religious groups will possibly be dominant. When
this happens, there will be some negative impacts on the establish-
ment of democracy in Indonesia because the militant religious point of
view generally provokes conflicts between existing religions, let’s say
between Islam and Christianity . . . Open, plural and humane religious
points of views are the only essential values at the foundation of a dem-
ocratic life.22
J I L ´ S S O UR C E S OF AR G UME NT S AN D JUSTIFIC ATION
If we observe the sources of authority used, and the process of legitimiz-

ing arguments conducted by JIL in all their statements and opinions, we
will find that the patterns and references are as follows.
First, they refer to the legitimate primary and secondary religious tex-
tual sources. Primary texts are the ones taken from the Qur’an or tradi-
tions, while the secondary texts are derived from the opinions of classical
and contemporary scholars; second, they refer to the texts and opinions
contextually and not literally. It means that the socio-historical situations
and conditions when the text were made constitutes the most important
part in understanding the meaning of the texts; third, to find social rele-
vance and problems mapped according to modern situations, the JIL com-
munity also refer to the books and main opinions of orientalists. Some of
the Christian theologists’ and orientalists’ thoughts which are frequently
referred to are the conceptions of religious secularization and theologi-
cal revolution of Harvey Cox, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ludwig Feuerbach,
analysis of the social history of Islamic law by JND Anderson, Joseph
Schacht, intellectual and sociological mapping by Charles Kurzman,
Qur’anic studies and researches by Theodore Nöldeke, Friedrich Schwally,
Gotthelf Bergsträsser, Aloys Sprenger, Arthur Jeffrey, Andrew Rippin, John
Wansbrough, Abraham Geiger, history of Islamic culture by Montgomery
Watt, etc.23
Among Muslim writers, the JIL group quote much from the results
of studies on Islam by Fazlurrahman, theological revolution by Farid
Essack, Ashghar Ali Enginer, analysis of Islam and politics by Ali
Abdurraziq, Islam and feminism by Fatima Mernissi, social history of
Islamic law by AA Fyzee, Qur’anic textual analysis by Nasr Hamid Abu
Zaid, Muhammad Arkoun, etc.24
134
Chapter 07.indd 134 12/10/10 3:35 PM

Furthermore, as mentioned in their official website in 2001, in order

to become contributor in some of the JIL publications and media, the JIL
group cooperates with several scholars and intellectuals from many parts
of the world, including Sadik J. Al-Azm from the University of Damascus,
Syria.25
DDII´S RESPONSES
As we can predict, the emergence of the JIL group was harshly responded
to by the DDII group. From some responses available, especially the ones
represented by the writings of Adian Husaini, Hartono Ahmad Jaiz and
Adnin Armas, the characteristics of the responses can be classified as
follows:
First, the JIL group are refuted through the Islamic literal approach.
The JIL group is clearly classified as a group that goes astray theologi-
cally. The JIL group is not only regarded as disturbing the established
religious understanding, but they have also departed from the basis and
foundation of Islam itself. Hartono Ahmad Jaiz, who best represents the
first response states that the JIL group
destroys the meanings of Islam, faith, believer and infidel; delegitimate

(doubt) the validity of the copy of the Utsmani Qur’an and offer a criti-
cal edition of Qur’an; compares the Qur’an with other holy books; dele-
gitimate (doubt the validity) of Qur’anic exegesis; ruin Islamic law.26
Intending to compare what has been done by the JIL group with the opin-
ions of Ali Abdul Raziq from al-Azhar University, Adian Husaini gives
historical illustrations that Raziq was expelled from the al-Azhar Scholar
Council due to (a) making Islamic law a religious law that had nothing
to do with wordly rules; (b) having the opinion that the only motive of
prophet Muhammad’s campaigns was political expansion; (c) asserting
that governmental body in the Muhammad era had no definite govern-
ment system; (d) believing that Muhammad was supposed to be a mere
messenger of God (spiritual leader), not a political leader; (e) stating that
there was no agreement among scholars to appoint an Islamic leader;
(f) denying the existence of the Islamic court system; (g) thinking that the
government in the early period of Islam was a secular government, and
not a religious one.27
135
Chapter 07.indd 135 12/10/10 3:35 PM

Second, there are responses and accusation that the JIL in fact has been
involved in a conspiracy with orientalists, Christian, West and Jewish peo-
ple to weaken the strength of the Muslim community. Hartono Ahmad
Jaiz, Adian Husaini and Adnin Armas say that all the opinions put for-
ward by the JIL group are the manifestations of orientalist influences and
part of conspiracies involving Christian-Western-Jewish interests.28
Adian Husaini, a prolific writer on conspiracy theory, after giving his
comments that there are orientalist influences in the JIL ways of thinking,
concludes that these are all “Christian missionary traps” and “Zionist’s
tricks”.29
Furthermore he mentions that the history of Zionist influence has
prevailed in Indonesia since long ago. Referring to the book written
by Iskandar P. Nugraha titled Decomposing East and West Boundaries:
Theosophy and Nationalist movement in Indonesia (Mengikis Batas Timur
dan Barat: Gerakan Theosofi dan Nasionalisme Indonesia (2001),30 A. Husaini
concludes that long before the independence of Indonesia, Freemasonry
organization which were really a secret Jewish organization had emerged
in Indonesia.31
According to Husaini, Freemasonry exerted influence through its activ-
ities in the theosophy movement. This theosophy movement had a great
impact on national independence figures. For instance, Soekarno’s par-
ents were members of this theosophic organization. Muhammad Hatta him-
self (vice-President in Soekarno´s era) also obtained a scholarship from
Ir. Fournier and van Leeuwen, who were both members of the theoso-
phy organization. While other figures of the national movement, namely,
Mohammad Yamin, Abu Hanifah, Agus Salim, Achmad Soebardjo,
Radjiman Widyodiningrat, Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo, Douwes Dekker,
Armijn Pane, Sanoesi Pane were classified as members or closely associ-
ated with this theosophy organization.32
To Husaini, this Zionist influence was so significant in Indonesia that
in the reformation era (2001) Zionist strategies were still being applied.
He quotes without critical comment the book of Sidik Jatnika The Zionist´s
Movement with Malay Face (Gerkan Zionis Berwajah Melayu)33 as follows:
The most advanced Zionist movement agents in Indonesia is a move-

ment that hijacks the reformation euphoria. In the name of liberty,
human rights, etc, they openly start to strive for a recognition of
many social and sexual deviant behaviors as the reality that must be
136
Chapter 07.indd 136 12/10/10 3:35 PM

appreciated and given the right to live in Indonesia. They campaign

clearly that communism and atheism or satanic worship must be pro-
vided the right to live in Indonesia as religions or ideologies. They even
shamelessly strive for prostitution, homosexuality and lesbianism to be
regarded as valid professions and behaviors. Surprisingly, when people
raid or attack these social deviants, the blame is not on the latter, but the
people are the ones who are held responsible for violating individual
human rights to fornicate, and to have sex with the same sex (homo-
sexuality or lesbianism).34
Husaini´s colleague Adnin Armas wrote a book which is fully illustrated

with many comments and philosophical arguments. However, he gives
his book the very simple title of “The Influence of Christian-Orientalists
towards Liberal Islam”.
THE TRIUMPH OF CONSPIRACY THEORY?
In responding to the arguments and ideas of the JIL, the activists of DDII
seem to accuse JIL of being conspirators using the theory of conspiracy
to refute their ideas. Why did they suggest such an assumption? Looking
at the structure of their arguments and the socio-political context of
Indonesia, there are several possibilities that can motivate it, namely the
following:
First, it is the psycho-politics of the Indonesian scriptural Moslem
group. They feel that they have repeatedly failed to implement Islamic
syariah as the national system of Indonesian law. Since the Dutch colonial
era, the Old Order of President Soekarno, the New Order of President
Soeharto, until the era of reformation, Islamic syariah, as they have
defined it, could not become part of the real life in Indonesia. This reality
could generate social disappointment which can in turn create prejudice
toward others.35
Such psycho-politics does not take place among the substantial Moslem
groups, such as the JIL group. This group basically assumes that the con-
tent and substance of Islam is more important than its formal nature.
They also believe that though Islam is a universal and eternal faith, it
must nevertheless be interpreted continually in accordance with the
development of the time and context. Besides, they assume that the form
137
Chapter 07.indd 137 12/10/10 3:35 PM

of the Indonesian state which is based on Pancasila is a final alternative,

and there is no need to establish an Islamic State. They also assume that
personal interpretations regarding the validity and truth of the religion
is relative; the absolute and authentic truth can only be reached by God.
These assumptions of the JIL group make them more tolerant than
others on the issue of religious interpretation. Such a basic understand-
ing can also make it easier for them than the scripturalist group to hold
dialog with different social entities. With such a basic attitude, socially
and politically, the JIL are more pragmatic, open-minded and accom-
modative toward others. These attitudes, without doubt, can be accused
by the scriptural group as conspiracies with out-group interests, mainly
America (United States of America).
Second, it is an oversimplified reading of reality. The scriptural read-
ing and interpretation of reality give a theological and normative concept
similar to the formulas in math and the natural sciences. With this for-
mula, people can generalize the definition of “we” and “they” only by a
simple understanding. As a consequence of such an outlook, when they
see something different from their standard they will judge it soon as a
part of an imitative process and/or conspiracy.
The example of such a quick judgment can be seen from how Husaini
concludes that Agus Salim’s interaction with different figures from dif-
ferent political groups can be interpreted to prove that he was involved
and was a part of conspiracy with a secret mission which is called
Freemasonry movement. In fact, Salim was known since his youth as a
Moslem leader in the history of Indonesian struggle for independence. He
was also involved for long time in the Sarikat Islam (SI).
Furthermore, without a clear and detailed explanation, Husaini also
assumed that the emergence of the human right awareness movement
and the defense of communism, lesbianism and homosexualism are also
parts of a Zionist global mission. So far, we cannot understand what the
relationship between these issues and Zionism is. The proper answer we
find is that the root of the assumption and accusation is an oversimplified
reading of reality and the cultivation of a theory of conspiracy.
Third, the use of conspiracy theory found its ground and political
momentum through the use of nationalistic issues, public sentiment as
well as public emotion for particular purposes. After the process of reform
in the atmosphere of Indonesian politics signaled by the fall of Soeharto,
the scriptural Moslem group failed to win significantly and dominantly
138
Chapter 07.indd 138 12/10/10 3:35 PM

in the fair and democratic political competition. The emergence of suspi-

cion of the influence of global Zionism can be understood as the struggle
to decrease and combat what they called American interest (such as the
campaign to uphold human rights, democratization issues, cooperation
with Ford Foundation or the Asia Foundation).
However, such a strategy of accusation relates also to the efforts of
strengthening the symbols of Indonesian solidarity and to come closer to
the nationalist conservative group who are still dominant, particularly in
military.
Moreover, after Indonesian reform, there are many individuals in the
military who had a special relationship with the scriptural Moslem group.
The close linkages between them are due to the existence of mutual bene-
fit: by approaching the scripturalists, the ex-military group expected them
to give political support and moral protection from being jailed due to
their black record concerning the politics of violence and human rights in
the era of Soeharto. Whereas for the scriptural Moslem group, to be close
to the ex-military power is also important, because it can break tensions
in their relationship (at least at a symbolic level) with the nationalist-
conservative group. Furthermore, with this process of mutual symbiosis,
the teaching and mission of the scriptural group can be conserved and
accommodated in the political structure and bureaucracy.
139
Chapter 07.indd 139 12/10/10 3:35 PM

Chapter 07.indd 140 12/10/10 3:35 PM
8
STRUCTURAL ORIENTALISM, CONTESTED

ORIENTALISM, POST-ORIENTALISM: A CASE
STUDY OF WESTERN FRAMINGS OF
“VIOLENCE IN INDONESIA”
Arndt Graf 1
The debates on Orientalism tend to reiterate some particular aspects:2
– the possible bias of Western academic, literary, and artistic produc-

tions of “knowledge” about non-European or non-Western cultures
and societies;
– the relevance of such a possible bias to Western countries and their

political, economic, and military strategies toward non-Western
countries;
– the relevance of such possible Western bias to the world market of

knowledge production on non-Western countries, including the
knowledge market of the (formerly) colonized.
In this paper, I develop the hypothesis that, at least in the case of aca-
demic knowledge production on Indonesia, the overall Western intel-
lectual hegemony has considerably decreased since the colonial era, in
several clearly distinguishable phases which I call structural Orientalism,
contested Orientalism, and post-Orientalism.
To illustrate this hypothesis in an initial, limited case study, I depart
theoretically from one of Edward Said’s observations on typical aspects
of Western Orientalist bias, namely Western constructions of the
deviant violence of such “Oriental peoples”, as Muslims, Indians, or
Africans. Said (1978) argues that such notions of Oriental violence often
served historically as a legitimization for imperialist “pacification” and
“civilizing” efforts shouldered, as they saw it, by Western powers. If
this is the case, then such an assumed popularity of the cliché of the
141
Chapter 08.indd 141 15/10/10 6:27 PM

“violent Oriental” may have led to a great quantity of publications on

violence in non-Western countries in certain phases. Hence, the quan-
tity of Western publications on non-Western violence can be taken as an
indicator of a qualitative tendency, especially in a long-term compara-
tive perspective.
As a case study, I have decided to look at the output numbers of
printed publications on “violence in Indonesia” published in Indonesia
and abroad, from the era of high imperialism and colonialism (1880) to
the present day. Indonesia could be an excellent example for Orientalist
constructions of the violent Oriental in general and the violent Muslim
in particular, since it is the world’s most populous Islamic country
with about 200 million people as registered believers. The question is
whether the assumed Orientalist clichés of violent Orientals have pro-
duced a corresponding quantity of Western publications on Indonesian
violence.3
THE SAMPLE
My inquiry is based on the holdings of the Koninklijk Instituut voor de

Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV) in Leiden, the Netherlands, which
is the central research center for the former and current colonies of the
Netherlands in Southeast Asia, South Africa, and the Caribbean. The aim
of the KITLV is to collect and document everything which is of interest to
these (former) spheres of Dutch interest. Its holdings are most compre-
hensive on the topic of violence in Indonesia, although there are certainly
various publications which have still escaped the attention of the KITLV
team. In this regard, the acquisition policies of the KITLV function as an
important filter for the field. Since the KITLV is one of the most prominent
centers of Indonesian studies worldwide, its policies of inclusion or exclu-
sion in its library exert an important gatekeeper role.
This gatekeeper role is even more accentuated by the documenting
services of the KITLV online catalog.4 In contrast to other great collec-
tions on Indonesia, the KITLV online catalog documents not only its book
holdings but also its holdings of journal articles on Indonesia in great
detail. This additional service adds to the attractiveness of the KITLV as
the standard resource on Indonesia which most researchers in the field
of Indonesian studies would choose to consult. The KITLV makes its
142
Chapter 08.indd 142 15/10/10 6:27 PM

STRUCTURAL ORIENTALISM, CONTESTED ORIENTALISM, POST-ORIENTALISM
immense library accessible through such aids as keywords. On average,

four to five keywords are assigned per publication, usually according to
the concepts which occur in the texts themselves. This means that, for
instance, a text which centers on terms like “war” or “conflict” is only
accorded the additional keyword “violence” if this term plays an impor-
tant role in the text, at least in the eyes of the librarians of the KITLV.
Consequently this assignment of keywords constitutes a second gate-
keeper filter.
The sample which any researcher on Indonesian affairs can obtain via a
keyword search in the KITLV online catalog is therefore a doubly filtered
rendition of the complex realities of publications on that topic. However,
it is a powerful and important rendition, since it contributes largely to the
subsequent renditions in further research.
Our inquiry into the publications on “violence in Indonesia” can
only benefit from this librarian gatekeeper practice, since it allows us
to check all the publications on Indonesia that are catalogued in the
KITLV system for the occurrence of the keyword “violence” – regard-
less of what kind of violence is dealt with in the individual publica-
tion. We thereby obtain the standard sample which every researcher on
Indonesian violence consulting the KITLV catalog would obtain using
this keyword search.
In the following, I will look at this standard sample by taking
into account the main periods in the history of modern Indonesia,
namely:
– the period of high colonialism, from 1880 until 1942;
– the period of Japanese occupation, 1942–1945;
– the period of Indonesia’s war of independence (the so-called revolusi),

1945–1949;
– the first democratic period in Indonesia, 1949–1957/9;
– the period of authoritarian regimes in Indonesia under Sukarno and

Suharto, 1957/9–1965/6 and 1965/6–1998;
– the second period of democracy and freedom of speech, 1998 to now.5
143
Chapter 08.indd 143 15/10/10 6:27 PM

“VIOLENCE IN INDONESIA” IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD
In the phase of high colonialism, according to the KILTV keyword assign-

ments, there was almost no monographic publication with a central focus
on the concept of “violence in Indonesia”. The few exceptions are liter-
ary works, mostly with a Sino-Malay background, which feature violence
against women. The KITLV holds such works from 1897, 1935, and 1938.
Since Sino-Malay novels were not collected systematically in colonial
times, it is possible that the few documented works represent an entire
genre focusing on that particular notion of violence against women.6
The computer catalog of the KITLV does not list any academic work
by either Dutch or other Western authors from the colonial era under the
keyword “violence in Indonesia”. Possible explanations are that
– the violence on the Dutch side was not framed by Dutch colonial writ-
ers and the KITLV librarians as “violence” but, say, as “punishment”,
“war”, or “conflict”;
– the fashionable term for framing Indonesian violence in that period

was and still is not “violence” but something with a more culture-
oriented focus, such as “head-hunting”.
The first assumption can be substantiated if we check the keyword

“war” in the computer catalog of the KITLV, for every year from 1880
to 1942, i.e. the year in which the Dutch East Indies were occupied by
Japanese troops. In fact, this framing of Dutch violence as Dutch warfare
in Indonesia was apparently rather popular in the colonial period as well
as it is still in the present cataloguing system, since the KITLV catalog
lists numerous Dutch works from the colonial period under the keyword
“war”. Many of these publications focus on colonial wars in various areas
of Indonesia, such as Lombok, Bali, Java, and Aceh. In fact, one of the
most violent, cruel, and bloody colonial wars against the kingdoms of
Bali in 1906 is featured under the euphemistic book title “The Expedition to
Bali” (Ekspeditie naar Bali 1906).7
Apart from such euphemistic renditions of Dutch violence, the search
for the keyword “war” in the phase of high colonialism in Indonesia also
produces a number of Malay-language literary texts, mostly novels. In
some of these novels, “war” is associated with distant times and remote
144
Chapter 08.indd 144 15/10/10 6:27 PM

countries. However, some of these works have a very contemporary set-

ting, such as the Japanese cruelties in China in the 1930s, the colonial war
of Italy in Libya, or wars over Tibet. It might be an interesting topic for
future research to see whether such Malay-language literary renditions
of distant wars served the function of fictionalizing domestic conflicts,
including those with the Dutch colonizers. Possibly, books like that on the
war of Italy in Libya can be seen as an important sub-text in the colonial
Indonesian discourse on “violence” between Europeans and non-Euro-
peans which was otherwise dominated by official Dutch euphemistic
framings.
Let us now have a closer look at how Indonesian violence was framed
by Dutch authors in the period of colonialism, according to the KITLV
sample. A certain emphasis seems to lie on the topic of head-hunting, with
monographic publications in 1916, 1931, and 1936 which are listed with
that particular keyword.8 Apart from these, there are various anthropo-
logical publications on Indonesian affairs featured under the keyword of
“death” which span the entire colonial period. In most of these publi-
cations, however, it is death rituals which are described and discussed,
which means that it is not so much the violent death which constituted
the main emphasis. For the colonial period, it is therefore questionable
whether books on violent Orientals as such were published in great num-
bers in the Netherlands or in the Dutch East Indies. Rather, it seems, the
emphasis tended to be placed on deep cultural differences in a broader
sense. It is possibly part of this perceived deep cultural gap between the
colonized and the colonizer to which the anthropological gaze in most of
the books from the colonial era kept in the KITLV seems to be restricted.
The vast majority deals with the study of the colonized. The colonizing
endeavor undertaken by the Dutch, including violence perpetrated by the
Dutch themselves in the various colonial wars, is left unruffled in this
field of colonial anthropological studies.
1945–1949: “POLICE ACTIONS” AGAINST “VIOLENT

YOUTH GANGS”
On 17 August 1945, Sukarno and Hatta declared the independence of

Indonesia. At that time, the defeated Japanese army was still in the archi-
pelago, and many parts of the Netherlands were still destroyed by the
145
Chapter 08.indd 145 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Second World War. However, the government of the Netherlands which

had just been itself liberated from foreign occupation did not accept
this declaration of Indonesian independence and sent troops to restore
“order”. Until the final recognition of Indonesia’s independence in 1949, a
cruel and very violent colonial war was fought out, with an unaccounted
number of Indonesians being killed.9
Our keyword search in the library of the KITLV for the traces of this
immense violence produces only a few hits for this period from 1945 to
1949. These few hits seem to link the notion of “violence” only to the acts
carried out by the Indonesians involved. One such title of a pamphlet
written by a Chinese Indonesian in 1947 reads as follows: Memorandum,
outlining acts of violence and inhumanity perpetrated by Indonesian bands
on innocent Chinese before and after the Dutch police action was enforced
on 21 July 1947. This publication seems to have been in line with other
elements of the public relations of the pro-Dutch elements, since the
KITLV holds another similar publication from 1949 under the keyword
“violence”, namely Miscellaneous documents covering the period January
1948–June 1948 in connection with the Truce Agreement and the Eighteen
Renville Principles.10
Apparently, there is a distinct associative link between the
concepts of “Indonesian violence” and “revolusi”, under which name
the Indonesian war of independence from 1945 to 1949 is known. It
seems that the two documents mentioned were part of the political
strategy of the pro-Dutch elements to denigrate Indonesian endeav-
ors to achieve independence by pointing out acts of violence com-
mitted by pro-independence youth bands. The overall propaganda
goal was to create the image of pro-independence Indonesians as
being violent in the sense of being uncivilized, inhumanely cruel,
and savage. It begs the question to what extent such a rendition of
Indonesian violence as non-civilized savagery could build on already
existing stereotypes of Indonesian cultures as being culturally funda-
mentally different.
In contrast to the association of the notions of “Indonesians” and “vio-
lence”, the violence perpetrated by the colonizer was merely labeled as
“police action”, underlining the fundamental difference between those
who defend law, order, and civilization, and those who are in need of
being policed or pacified. The antonym of the concept of “violence in
Indonesia” can thus be seen in the often-quoted “pax neerlandica” (Dutch
146
Chapter 08.indd 146 15/10/10 6:27 PM

peace) which hides the structural and partially very manifest violence of
the colonial regime behind the image of “Dutch peace”.11
It is interesting that both documents of 1947 and 1948 mentioned were
written in English, not Dutch, the language of almost all the other publica-
tions from the colonial period. The principal target group was apparently
an international, English-speaking audience outside the Netherlands,
most probably in America, which should be convinced of the deep cul-
tural legitimization of further Dutch rule, police actions, and efforts at
pacification. Eventually, for various reasons these propaganda efforts
finally failed, and the government of the Netherlands had to accept the
independence of the Republic of Indonesia in 1949, not least having to
bow to American pressure.
One of the main legacies of that period of Dutch violence in Indonesia
is that the concept of “violence in Indonesia” obtained the connotation of
Indonesian savagery as opposed to Dutch-Western civilization. The ques-
tion in terms of Orientalism is how powerful that particular Orientalist
construction of “violence in Indonesia” was to be in the post-colonial
period.
KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION ON INDONESIAN VIOLENCE

AFTER INDEPENDENCE
One of the key factors in the evaluation of Orientalist distortions of

Indonesian affairs is that the Dutch colonizers had invested very little
in the modern education of the millions of Indonesians whom they gov-
erned. Werner Röll (1981, 2nd ed.) estimates that in the year of Indonesia’s
declaration of independence, 1945, there were only about 400 Indonesian
alumni of universities and colleges, including engineers and medical doc-
tors, out of a population of then approximately 70 million people. More
than 93% of Indonesians were illiterate.
Since the Dutch colonizers were systematically trained at their excel-
lent Orientalist institutions, the colonizers enjoyed a considerable intellec-
tual hegemony over the colonized. This intellectual hegemony dominated
all academic fields, including those concerned with aspects of violence.
In order to liberate Indonesian discourses from that kind of Orientalist
intellectual hegemony, the various Indonesian governments since 1945
have launched huge endeavors to build up an educational system which
147
Chapter 08.indd 147 15/10/10 6:27 PM

would be able to produce competitive knowledge. Despite various hostile

Duth interventions in the 1940s and 1950s, and despite several errors of
learning as they went along, the overall results in the education system of
Indonesia are impressive. In 1980, there were already 196,000 Indonesian
students at about 40 universities and colleges. In 1990, these numbers had
mushroomed to the incredible number of 1.5 million students at about
900 universities and colleges.12
It is the intellectual abilities of these millions of well-educated
Indonesians which have shifted the balance of intellectual hegemony
considerably. Foreign renditions of Indonesian affairs have become
increasingly less important. Orientalism as a foreign intellectual hege-
mony seems therefore to be most relevant for the colonial period and
the few first decades thereafter. For this period, it could be called
“structural Orientalism” in the production of academic knowledge,
since structurally the academic centers of the colonizers were of an
overwhelming importance to the colonized. At the same time, “struc-
tural Orientalism” does not necessarily mean that each and every con-
tribution which was published in the Netherlands or, more generally,
by non-Indonesian researchers, was biased. Rather, it is the immense
imbalance in the quantities of production of knowledge that led to a
hegemonic position of the colonizers and hence a distorted representa-
tion of the colonized.
The background to structural Orientalism in the colonial period
might also have informed the ideology of anti-Orientalism with
which we can identify the broad interest in books on “Orientalism”,
particularly in the 1970s in Indonesia and beyond. Examples for that
heightened interest are Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) as well as the
Indonesian-language book Orientalisme dan Orientalisten (“Orientalism
and Orientalists”), by Ismail Jakub (1971), than Rector of the State
Islamic Institute (IAIN) of Surabaya, Indonesia.13 At an individual
level, the anti-Orientalist ideologies were probably most important to
the generation of Indonesian scholars of the 1970s who were among
the first to face Dutch or Western intellectual hegemony at an academic
level in greater numbers. Probably, it was often quite a bitter struggle
for many Indonesians of that generation to gain academic acceptance
in the traditional Western centers of research on Indonesia. It is under-
standable that concepts of Western academic arrogance and bias like
“Orientalism” gained great popularity in these years, especially since
148
Chapter 08.indd 148 15/10/10 6:27 PM

ideologies of anti-Orientalism were often linked with those of anti-colo-

nialism and anti-imperialism.
However, as far as the topic of “violence in Indonesia” is concerned,
the situation for Indonesians was even more complicated because of
the authoritarian regimes of Sukarno and Suharto which lasted from
1957/9 to 1998, with a transitional period wrenched by violence from
1965 to 1968.14 State violence committed by these regimes15 was all too
often too dangerous to be discussed openly within the country itself.
In this regard, Western universities offered not only Westerners, but
also dissident Indonesians, an open space for research and criticism.
This has to be kept in mind when we look at the quantitative output
of independently published publications (monographs, collective vol-
umes, separate editions and the like) on Indonesian violence from 1945
until the step-down of President Suharto in May 1998 which are listed
in the KITLV catalog with the keyword “violence”. Until the end of
1997, 30 such monographic publications on violence in Indonesia were
published outside the country (eleven of which in the Netherlands). In
Indonesia itself, the number in the same period was 29. These approxi-
mately balanced output numbers are a clear indicator that the conditions
of structural Orientalism had already altered considerably. This clearly
different period should therefore bear a different name. I would suggest
designating it the period of “contested Orientalism”, since it is marked
by a shifting balance in the struggle on intellectual hegemony in which
neither party had a clear advantage.
THE BOOM IN PUBLICATIONS ON INDONESIAN

VIOLENCE, 1998/9–2003
1998, the year of Suharto’s step-down, marks a watershed in the knowl-

edge production on Indonesian violence. In Indonesia, 24 books on
“violence in Indonesia” were published in this year alone, outside
of Indonesia only three. Broadly speaking, reviewing the sample of
the KITLV holdings it can be said that the liberalized book market in
Indonesia after the fall of Suharto and his regime resulted in a veri-
table boom in the production of knowledge about violence in Indonesia
itself, as Table 1 demonstrates. From 1999 to 2003, in Indonesia alone
157 books were published on aspects of violence. This is almost three
149
Chapter 08.indd 149 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Table 1: Books on Indonesian violence by country, 1999–2003

Percentage Percentage of the
of the world non-Indonesian
Country of Number market (i.e. of market (i.e. of 63
publication of books 220 books) books)
Indonesia 157 71.36% –
Netherlands 17 7.72% 26.98%
Australia 10 4.54% 15.87%
United 10 4.54% 15.87%
Kingdom
USA 9 4.09% 14.28%
Germany 4 1.81% 6.34%
Denmark 4 1.81% 6.34%
Philippines 3 1.36% 4,76%
Belgium 1 0.45% 1.58%
East Timor 1 0.45% 1.58%
France 1 0.45% 1.58%
Portugal 1 0.45% 1.58%
India 1 0.45% 1.58%
Singapore 1 0.45% 1.58%
Total 220
quarters (71.36%) of the total production of the entire world market of

books on Indonesian violence (220 books) in that period. Such an over-
whelming hegemony in the production of knowledge and ideas is of
course very different from the situation of structural Orientalism that
had prevailed in the colonial period and the first decades after inde-
pendence. I would call this period thus the period of post-Orientalism.
It is interesting that these objective quantitative changes in publica-
tion output on violence in Indonesia were not immediately realized at a
subjective level by everybody in the field. On the basis of the analysis of
collective volumes which appeared outside of Indonesia, Purdue (2004,
p. 191), for instance, summarizes that in this period “with the exception of
a few entries, particularly in Coppel,16 there is little writing by Indonesian
scholars” on the topic of Indonesian violence.
However, whether Indonesian authors were finally included in Western
collective volumes on Indonesian violence or not, the main argument
150
Chapter 08.indd 150 15/10/10 6:27 PM

which we can obtain from the analysis of the KITLV keyword sample
is that such Western policies of exclusion and inclusion had become
much less significant in terms of intellectual hegemony and Orientalist
knowledge production than in the period of structural Orientalism. In
this period of structural post-Orientalism, the change in the quantitative
balance of intellectual hegemony becomes even clearer if the other places
where books on violence in Indonesia have been published are taken into
consideration. The Netherlands, as the former colonial power, still occu-
pies the leading position in the non-Indonesian market, with 17 volumes
(monographs, collective volumes, etc.) on “violence in Indonesia” pub-
lished between 1999 and 2003. However, this is only 7.72% of the world
production on that topic, namely 220 books. If we consider only the
non-Indonesian market, i.e. 63 books, the publications published in the
Netherlands still represent about a quarter of all book publications. Even
if we remember that the place of publication is not necessarily linked to
the national or academic background of the authors, the net balance of
Indonesianist publications per country can be taken as an indicator of the
attractiveness of its academic centers and academic publishers. The pub-
lication record of 1999–2003 for the Netherlands is far from the old times
when this country held the academic monopoly in Indonesian studies,
although it is still remarkable. This is especially the case if we limit our
view to the European market only. Here, the Dutch share still consists of
17 out of 38 publications, which is almost half of the regional European
market. This means that it is no longer the formerly colonized Indonesia
which is confronted with the intellectual hegemony of the Netherlands,
but rather its European neighbors which are not as active in studies on
Indonesian affairs or which do not have similarly specialized publishing
houses.
At the global level, the KITLV keyword sample suggests that the
non-Indonesian market of publications on violence in Indonesia from
1999 to 2003 is dominated not only by the Netherlands (17 books
or 26.98%), but also by Australia (10 books or 15.87%), the United
Kingdom (10 books or 15.87%), and America (9 books or 14.28%).
The rest of the market is divided between 9 other countries, of which
Germany, Denmark, and the Philippines produced more than one pub-
lication. In general, in these nine “small” countries the attention paid
to the topic of “violence in Indonesia” by both authors and publishers
seems to be of a scale considerably less than in the Netherlands and the
151
Chapter 08.indd 151 15/10/10 6:27 PM

three Anglo-American countries. The reasons might include a different

emphasis in terms of the object of study, a different density of centers
of Indonesian studies, and also that these countries are less attractive to
international publications on Indonesia than the Netherlands and the
Anglo-American countries.
THE WORLD MARKET OF JOURNAL CONTRIBUTIONS

ON “VIOLENCE IN INDONESIA”, 1999–2003
As documented above, the general picture of the KITLV keyword sam-

ple is that the production of knowledge on the topic of “violence in
Indonesia” is now far and away in the hands of Indonesians themselves.
The question is whether under these thoroughly altered conditions, for-
eign publications (still) place different emphases on certain aspects of
“violence in Indonesia” than do Indonesian contributions, constructing
a particular distorted image which would fit a hypothesis of an eternal,
ongoing, static Orientalism. In order to investigate this point in more
depth, I shall now look at the world production of academic journal
articles on the topic of “violence in Indonesia” in the five year-period
from 1999 to 2003. The reason for choosing journal articles is that they
are much shorter than books and that the assignment of the same num-
ber of keywords as for books is consequently much more revealing of
the actual content. This enables a greater understanding of qualitative
aspects. At the same time, it allows us to compare the output numbers of
book publications and journal contributions on “violence in Indonesia”.
Since these are two closely related, yet different categories of publication,
a comparison of the results can give an indication for the validity of the
keyword methodology.
The sample is again constituted according to the keyword assign-
ments by the librarians of the KITLV who normally give between four
and five keywords per article. This allows the inclusion not only of those
articles that have the word “violence” in their title, but also those that
cover that aspect in their contents. In order to concentrate on more elabo-
rated intellectual contributions, only journal articles of more than seven
pages are taken into consideration. Contributions to collective volumes
are not included, since the computer catalog of the KITLV seems to be
a bit erratic in its inclusion politics in this point, with collective volumes
152
Chapter 08.indd 152 15/10/10 6:27 PM

sometimes being entered only as a whole, sometimes with all its individ-
ual contributions. It is of course possible that there are more publications
than those mentioned here, however, the sample is constructed according
to the choices made by the KITLV library team as the main gatekeepers
and therefore represents one of the most important perspectives on the
scene of journal contributions on “violence in Indonesia”.
The first look is at the rough geographical distribution of journal arti-
cles on Indonesian violence in the five-year period from 1999 to 2003. For
this period, the KITLV library documents worldwide 70 journal articles
which are related to this keyword. Of these, 47 or 67.14% were published
in Indonesian journals. Only about 32.86% or roughly a third of the total
appeared outside of Indonesia. These numbers are very similar to those
found in the book production on “violence of Indonesia” since the fall of
the New Order documented above, with the Indonesian share at 71.36%.
This means that the journal articles documented by the KITLV library,
albeit probably not all-encompassing, also convey a realistic picture of
the overall relations of knowledge production. On the basis of the KITLV
keyword sample, we can no longer speak of a non-Indonesian hege-
mony in the intellectual discourse on the issue of Indonesian violence
or of an ongoing structural Orientalism. Rather, in this phase of post-
Orientalism, Indonesians seem to dominate this field, at least in terms of
quantitative output.
The leading place for journal publications on “violence in Indonesia”,
outside the country itself during the period considered, is America, or,
to be more precise, the journal Indonesia which is published at Cornell
University. Nine out of 23 non-Indonesian journal articles were pub-
lished there, which is almost half (39.13%) of the non-Indonesian journal
contributions on the subject. In this non-Indonesian category, it is pos-
sible to prove that a particular journal has a relative quantitative hege-
mony. This dominance is unrivaled, since the closest followers in this
race for publications, Australia and the Netherlands, have only about a
third of the American output in this category. With both countries each
at only 13.08% of the non-Indonesian output and even a mere 4.28%
share of the total world output respectively, there can be no allegations
leveled that academic journals in any of these countries exert a quantita-
tive hegemonic impact in either category which would be comparable
to the colonial period of structural Orientalism. However, it has to be
added that several of the 17 book publications on this topic published
153
Chapter 08.indd 153 15/10/10 6:27 PM

in the Netherlands in the period considered also centered on “violence

in Indonesia” in the form of collective volumes. The apparent leading
role of the American journal Indonesia (39.18%) in the category of jour-
nal contributions is therefore in reality challenged by the overall market
share of Dutch book publications in the non-Western category (26.96%),
which is about twice as much as the total American share in the book
category (14.28%).
In general, the analysis of the shares of the journal contributions by
country of publication results in about the same leading countries of
knowledge production on “violence in Indonesia” as in the book cat-
egory, namely Indonesia itself as the unrivaled market leader, followed
by the Anglo-American countries and the Netherlands, with a few pub-
lications elsewhere. This picture is, of course, based only on the KITLV
keyword sample. It reveals, however, the journal contributions which
are made available most prominently in the field of Indonesian violence
studies. With this qualification in mind, it is nevertheless a good indica-
tor that also in the field of journal contributions on Indonesian violence,
the period of structural Orientalism is over, and that Indonesians them-
selves have now in the period of post-Orientalism taken the lead in writ-
ing their own history, including its violent aspects.
THEMATIC EMPHASES AND DIFFERENCES BY JOURNAL,

1999–2003
The question is whether the analysis of journal contributions on “violence

in Indonesia” can reveal more than just the relations of quantitative out-
put and hence the market shares of countries in publication. In order to
get a better glimpse of the qualitative aspects of these journal contribu-
tions, I would like to reorganize Table 2 according to the contributions on
“Indonesian violence” by journal, not by country, as is done in Table 3.
The analysis per journal reveals that one single journal alone, namely
the Indonesian Jurnal Perempuan (“Journal of the Women”), produces
about one-third (32.85%) of all elaborated journal articles of more than
seven pages that are published worldwide on topics related to “vio-
lence in Indonesia” and that are taken notice of in the KITLV keyword
sample. In Indonesia, the market share of that journal is even higher,
namely about half of all contributions (48.93%). One might safely
154
Chapter 08.indd 154 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Table 2: Journal articles on Indonesian violence by country of publication, 1999–2003
Chapter 08.indd 155

Percentage of the Percentage of the
world market non-Indonesian
Country Number Journal names (number of articles on (i.e. of 70 journal market (i.e. of 23
of publication of articles Indonesian violence) articles) journal articles)
Indonesia 47 Jurnal Perempuan (23), Analisis CSIS (5), Jurnal 67.14% –
Demokrasi dan HAM (5), Antropologi Indonesia
(4), Pantau (2), Populasi (2), Gamma (1), Kalam
(1), Mitra (1), Persimmon (1), Seni (1), Tajuk (1)
USA 9 Indonesia (9) 12.85% 39.13%
Australia 3 Review of Indonesian and Malaysian affairs (2), 4.28% 13.04%
Melbourne Journal of Law (1)
Netherlands 3 RefleXie (1), Erasmus mag. (1), Volkskrant mag. (1) 4.28% 13.04%
United Kingdom 2 Southeast Asia Research (2) 2.85% 8.69%
Singapore 2 Commentary (1), Sojourn (1) 2.85% 8,69%
PR China 2 Proceedings of the international union of 2,85% 8.69%
anthropological and ethnological sciences
(IUAES) inter-congress (July 24–28): 2
Switzerland 1 Rev. int. Croix-Rouge (1) 1.42% 4.34%
Japan 1 Tonan Ajia kenkyu (1) 1.42% 4.34%
Total 70 – 100% –
155
15/10/10 6:27 PM
Chapter 08.indd 156
Table 3: Popularity of the topic “violence in Indonesia” by journal, 1999–2003
156
Percentage of the Percentage of
Percentage of the non-Indonesian the Indonesian
Number world market (i.e. of market (i.e. of 23 market (i.e. of 47
Journal of publication of articles Country 70 journal articles) journal articles) journal articles)
Jurnal Perempuan 23 Indonesia 32.85% – 48.93%
Indonesia 9 USA 12.85% 39.13% –
Analisis CSIS 5 Indonesia 7.14% – 10.63%
Jurnal Demokrasi dan HAM 5 Indonesia 7.14% – 10.63%
Antropologi Indonesia 4 Indonesia 5.71% – 8.51%
Populasi 2 Indonesia 2.85% – 4.25%

Pantau 2 Indonesia 2.85% – 4.25%
Review of Indonesian and 2 Australia 2.85% 8.69% –
Malaysian affairs
Southeast Asia research 2 Singapore 2.85% 8.89% –
Proceedings of the international 2 China 2.85% 8.69% –
union of anthropological and
ethnological sciences (IUAES)
inter-congress (July 24–28)
Kalam 1 Indonesia 1.42% – 2.12%
15/10/10 6:27 PM
Chapter 08.indd 157
Percentage of the Percentage of
Percentage of the non-Indonesian the Indonesian
Number world market (i.e. of market (i.e. of 23 market (i.e. of 47
Journal of publication of articles Country 70 journal articles) journal articles) journal articles)
Mitra 1 Indonesia 1.42% – 2.12%
Tajuk 1 Indonesia 1.42% – 2.12%
Seni 1 Indonesia 1.42% – 2.12%
Persimmon 1 Indonesia 1.42% – 2.12%
Gamma 1 Indonesia 1.42% – 2.12%
Melbourne journal of law 1 Australia 1.42% 4.34% –
RefleXie 1 Netherlands 1.42% 4.34% –
Erasmus mag 1 Netherlands 1.42% 4.34% –
Volkskrant mag. 1 Netherlands 1.42% 4.34% –
Commentary 1 Singapore 1.42% 4.34% –
Sojourn
Sojourn 1 Singapore 1.42% 4.34% –
Rev. int. Croix-Rouge 1 Switzerland 1.42% 4.34% –
Tonan Ajia kenkyu 1 Japan 1.42% 4.34% –
Total – 100% –
157
15/10/10 6:27 PM
assume that in this journal, aspects of violence against women play an

important role. At the same time, it is interesting that, based on the key-
word assignments of the KITLV, this single Indonesian journal alone
seems to have the same quantity of violence-related output as the entire
non-Indonesian academia, namely 23 publications on “Indonesian vio-
lence” from 1999 to 2003. It seems that, at least in the KITLV keyword
sample, in the period of post-Orientalism the most prominent issues
in Indonesian violence studies are no longer Western renditions of
Indonesian violence but rather gender-related aspects which are dis-
cussed in Indonesia itself.
The second place in this ranking of journals excelling in contributions
about Indonesian violence is the American journal Indonesia (9 contri-
butions = 12.85% of the world output = 39.13% of the non-Indonesian
journal output). The question is whether at least these nine contributions
have something in common which could be interpreted as a particular
Orientalist framing of Indonesia. In this regard, it might be helpful to con-
sider the particular setting of the editorial board of this journal Indonesia
which consists mainly of the professors of the Southeast Asia Program
of Cornell University. Benedict Anderson, James Siegel, and several
others have to be mentioned here as the most important gatekeepers in
the period considered.17 It seems that their particular research interest in
“Indonesian violence” has contributed to the high density of publications
on this topic in their journal. However, the question is whether the fact
that a group of scholars is working on a particular problem in a concen-
trated way should necessarily be linked to a huge accusation like that of
Orientalism or even conspiracy with all its implications. It seems instead
that we have a close network or a school at work in this case, as it happens
with other topics in other cases, as well.
The following place in this ranking of journal articles based on the
KITLV keyword sample shows that the topic of “violence in Indonesia”
was also thematized five times in Analisis CSIS, the journal of the Centre
for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta. This emphasis
is quite understandable since the CSIS is closely linked to an influential
fraction within the Indonesian military which has a natural interest in
discussing such topics. In a certain sense, this interest-driven emphasis
is mirrored by the next journal on the list, the Jurnal Demokrasi dan HAM
(“Journal for Democracy and Human Rights”) that can be considered
an important forum of the democratic movement of Indonesia. If taken
158
Chapter 08.indd 158 15/10/10 6:27 PM

together, the comparatively high numbers of articles on “violence in

Indonesia” in these two journals are an indication that in the period con-
sidered, political aspects of violence, such as those related to the military,
or concepts of democracy and human rights, played a significant role in
Indonesian domestic politics. This can be explained by the circumstances
of the transition in Indonesia from an authoritarian regime to a parlia-
mentary democracy, with violent riots and even elements of civil war in
several parts of the country in 1999 and the following years.
The next journal in the ranking is Jurnal Antropologi (“Journal of
Anthropology”), which demonstrates that in Indonesian anthropological
discourse, the topic of violence seems to enjoy a certain degree of height-
ened attention. This degree of emphasis and attention cannot be com-
pared, however, with the popularity of topics of gender-related violence
as evidenced in Jurnal Perempuan. Jurnal Perempuan features five times
more articles on violence-related issues than Jurnal Antropologi. The other
journals in the ranking which, according to the KITLV keyword assign-
ments, have published only one or two articles on “violence” are statisti-
cally insignificant and will therefore not be considered further.
CONCLUSION
It has been demonstrated in this study informed by a methodology from

media and communication studies that the concept of “Orientalism” can
be modified in the Indonesian case by a differentiation of the concept into
three phases. In particular, the results in this case study on Western and
Indonesian publications on the topic of “violence in Indonesia” based on
the KITLV keyword sample are as follows:
There was an almost monopolistic intellectual hegemony of the for-
mer colonizer, the Netherlands, in the production of academic knowl-
edge on “violence in Indonesia” up until the end of the colonial period
(1945–1949). This can be called the period of “structural Orientalism”.
Typical for Orientalist distortions in this period are Western euphemis-
tic framings of Western violence in Indonesia as “war”, “expedition”,
“punishment” and the like. Especially in the period of the Indonesian
war of Independence (1945–1949), Indonesian violence is portrayed as
savagery which constituted an important legitimization of Dutch efforts
to bring about “civilizing” and “pacification”. In this colonial setting,
159
Chapter 08.indd 159 15/10/10 6:27 PM

the associative antonym for “Indonesian violence” is “Dutch peace”

(pax neerlandica).
The monopolistic power relations in the production of knowledge on
“violence in Indonesia” were increasingly challenged in the first decades
after Indonesian independence by the new generations of Indonesian
scholars who were raised in an environment of much greater intellectual
freedom than in the colonial period. However, in this period of “contested
Orientalism”, the production of knowledge on topics related to violence
in Indonesia was still hampered by the political situation of authoritarian
rule at home, especially by state violence committed by the Indonesian
regime itself. This means that the former centers of Orientalist knowledge
production abroad served in this period increasingly as places for study
and publication by dissident Indonesian intellectuals.
The big shift in power relations in the quantitative production of
knowledge on “violence in Indonesia” was brought about by the upsurge
in democratization in Indonesia after the step-down of President Suharto
in 1998. In the five-year period from 1999 to 2003, Indonesia dominated
both the global markets in book publications and journal contributions on
Indonesian violence by about two-thirds. Indonesian perspectives have,
therefore, in this period of “post-Orientalism” become hegemonic, while
the Netherlands has to share its formerly monopolistic position in foreign
studies on Indonesian violence at least with the Anglo-American coun-
tries Australia, America, and the United Kingdom. Other countries, such
as France, Germany, Denmark, and Singapore have produced much less
on this topic which might be attributed to several reasons, including a
lack of interest in and a fascination for this particular topic or a weaker
institutional situation of Indonesian studies in general.
The analysis of journal contributions in the KITLV keyword sample for
the period 1999–2003 suggests that one particular aspect of violence, namely,
that of violence against women, has gained an important position in the
Indonesian, and hence the global, discourse on violence in Indonesia. The
output of the Indonesian Jurnal Perempuan (“Journal of the Women”) in the
sample is as high as the combined output of all non-Indonesian journals
together. This could be an argument that in this period of post-Orientalism
the gender problematic might have become in certain regards more promi-
nent than the problematic of Orientalism, at least in the Indonesian discourse.
For the non-Indonesian journal contributions, particularly those pub-
lished in the Cornell University journal Indonesia, seem to play a hegemonic
160
Chapter 08.indd 160 15/10/10 6:27 PM

role, at least in quantitative terms, with almost half of the non-Indonesian

category being published in that journal. The Cornell school, therefore,
does have an important stake in this topic, as has the Netherlands that
is still of considerable importance in the category of book publications.
However, the significance of both non-Indonesian places of publication
seems to have decreased, given the enormous vitality in the Indonesian
intellectual production itself.
Conceptually, I would suggest distinguishing the following periods in
the production of knowledge on “violence in Indonesia”:
1) The period of structural Orientalism, in which the academic centers

of the colonizers determined the discourse, framing Western violence
euphemistically and Indonesian violence often in cultural terms;
2) The period of contested Orientalism, marked by an emerging aca-

demic self-consciousness of the formerly colonized. In this period,
various personal encounters between the perpetrators and the
victims of colonialism took place, often still in asymmetric power
relations. This period is hence still often marked by bitter personal
experiences and a strong ideology of anti-colonialism in general and
anti-Orientalism in particular. I would see much of the writings of
the generation of Edward Said, Ismail Jakub, and Sadik J. Al-Azm
in this light, in which the varying degrees of bitterness or openness
might be attributed to different personal experiences with Western
academic snobbery.
3) The period of post-Orientalism which is marked by a very vital market

in academic knowledge production undertaken by the formerly colo-
nized people themselves, facilitated by a successful democratization
and liberalization. The Indonesian discourse itself has become hege-
monic in Indonesian studies in a way that the former preoccupations
with the ideology of anti-Orientalism are now being overridden by
new topics, such as the gender problem.
The Indonesian case demonstrates that structural Orientalism can be

overcome by a strongly increased investment in the education system
of the formerly colonized, by contesting Orientalist distortions intellec-
tually, and finally by liberalization and democratization of the political
161
Chapter 08.indd 161 15/10/10 6:27 PM

regime. However, the question is whether such a reversal of intellectual

hegemony could again be counterbalanced by foreign powers by non-
intellectual means in the political, military, or economic realms.
REFERENCES
I N T E R N ET S OUR C E
KITLV Collections Library. (2005): http://www.kitlv.nl/home/Library/. The

Netherlands: Library of the KITLV, Leiden.
Coppel, C. (ed) (2001): Violent Conflicts in Indonesia: Analysis, Representation,
Resolution. Richmond: Curzon.
Cribb, R. (ed) (1990): The Indonesian Killings of 1985–66: Studies from Java and Bali.
Clayton, Victoria: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University.
Cribb, R. (2000): “From Petrus to Ninja: death squads in Indonesia”, in B. Campbell;
A.D. Brenner (eds) Death Squads in Global Perspective. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, pp. 181–202.
Jakub, I. (1971): Orientalisme dan Orientalisten. Perihal ketimuran dan para ahli
ketimuran. Surabaya: Faizan.
Kusliah, W. (ed) (1999): Direktorat Sejarah dan Nilai Tradisional, Direktorat
Jenderal Kebudayaan, Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan. Jakarta: Proyek
Inventarisasi dan Dokumentasi Sejarah Nasional.
Lombard, D. (1990): Le carrefour javanais. Essai d’histoire globale. Paris: Editions de
l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
MacFie, A.L. (2000): Orientalism. A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Maier, H. (1990): “Some Genealogical Remarks on the Emergence of Modern
Malay Literature”, Journal of the Japan-Netherlands Institute, vol. 2, pp. 159–177.
Moedjanto, G. (2003): Dari pembentukan pax neerlandica sampai Negara Kesatuan
Republik Indonesia. Yogyakarta: Penerbit Universitas Sanata Dharma.
Philpott, S. (2000): Rethinking Indonesia: Postcolonial Theory, Authoritarianism and
Identity. Basingstoke: MacMillan; New York: St Martin (Indonesian translation:
Meruntuhkan Indonesia: politik postkolonial dan otoritarianisme. Transl. Nuruddin
Mhd. Ali, Uzair Fauzan. Yogyakarta: Lembaga Kajian Islam dan Sosial (LKIS),
2003.
Purdue, E. (2004): “Describing Kekerasan: Some Observations on Writings on
Violence in Indonesia after the New Order”, Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en
volkenkunde, vol. 160, no. 2–3, pp. 189–225.
Röll, W. (1981, 2nd ed.): Indonesien: Entwicklungsprobleme einer tropischen Inselwelt.
1st ed. 1979. Stuttgart: Klett.
Said, E. (1978): Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Siegel, J.T. (1998): A New Criminal Type in Jakarta: Counter-Revolution Today. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
162
Chapter 08.indd 162 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Statistisches Bundesamt. (1993): Länderbericht Indonesien. Wiesbaden: Statistisches

Bundesamt.
Suwirta, A. (2000): Suara dari dua kota: revolusi Indonesia dalam pandangan surat kabar
“Merdeka” (Jakarta) dan Kedaulatan Rakyat (Yogyakarta), 1945–1947. Jakarta: Balai
Pustaka.
Tarling, N. (2001): Southeast Asia: A Modern History. Melbourne: Oxford University
Press.
Tobing, K.M.L. (1986): Perjuangan Politik Bangsa Indonesia: Renville. Jakarta:
Gunung Agung.
163
Chapter 08.indd 163 15/10/10 6:27 PM

Chapter 08.indd 164 15/10/10 6:27 PM
9
MEMRI.ORG – A TOOL OF ENLIGHTENMENT

OR INCITEMENT?*
Schirin Fathi 1
INTRODUCTION
Any discussion of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is

controversial to the point of activating conspiratorial allegations of varied
shades. If I were not fully aware of this, it became clearly evident in the
run-up to and preparation of, this paper, as will be shown further down.
This topic elicited reactions from various quarters. The views on MEMRI
have come to be another one of those yardsticks by which a person’s affili-
ation or leanings may be measured. The way in which MEMRI is received,
either embraced or rejected, allows conclusions to be drawn regarding
the political and ideological standing of any one person. Similar to the
way in which Said’s Orientalism or, in a lesser way, Huntington’s Clash of
Civilizations have managed to polarize a whole range of disciplines, the
proponents and critics of MEMRI, too, mark the two poles of ideological
discourse on the Middle East. Now, the partisanship among scholars and
experts on the Middle East is deplorable as such, and it has become so
widespread, lending itself to ridiculous interpretations and reinterpreta-
tions, that MESA’s current President, Ali Banuazizi, warned that “the bar-
rage of criticism directed at scholars on the Middle East . . . accusations of
ideological bias and distortion of the truth, mediocrity, and irrelevance to
the nation’s foreign policy goals . . . could potentially undermine the integ-
rity of our academic institutions.” He reiterates that “our real strength as
*In a cautionary note, I would like to point to the fact that the research for this article was
conducted in 2004 and 2005. Since then a number of articles have appeared on MEMRI,
continuing the debate. Some of those articles may be found on the following webpage
http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Middle_East_Media_Research_
Institute. One major problem, however, is presented by the fact that MEMRI has
updated its website since this article was written, deleting and restructuring some
pages as well as changing the focus of its research topics.
165
Chapter 09.indd 165 12/10/10 3:39 PM

a mature professional association, . . . , is demonstrated by our ability to

welcome and accommodate colleagues with diverse perspectives on the
critical issues that we face.”2
A discussion of MEMRI is deemed important for several reasons: the
first reason has been alluded to above, MEMRI’s capacity within the
realm of Middle Eastern academic and popular discussion to polarize and
incite. The second reason is to look at MEMRI as an extremely success-
ful media, campaign and public relations tool geared toward “western”
decision and policy makers. And the last reason is situated within the
context of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its accompanying instruments of
the dissemination of information about oneself and the other. The fact
that such an instrument exists only on one side of the equation makes its
examination all the more expedient.
THE CONTROVERSY ON MEMRI
The launch of MEMRI in February 1998 was hailed by many observers

of Middle Eastern events as a positive step to enhance transparency,
to ease communications and to foster a better mutual understanding
between “the Middle East” and “the West”. Bernard Lewis was quoted
commending MEMRI on being an invaluable source for anybody really
interested in the region (Doering 2002). Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of
the New Republic, calls MEMRI “the most important research source for
the Arab world”, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post considers MEMRI
“to be an invaluable research tool”, and the former CIA Director James
Woolsey finds it “excellent”.3 The Institute’s self-proclaimed raison d’être
as espoused on its homepage is to explore the Middle East through the
region’s media. It aims to bridge “the language gap which exists between
the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic,
Farsi, and Hebrew media, as well as original analyses of political, ideolog-
ical, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East.”
It thus provides a view into the region’s media that is often otherwise
unavailable to English speakers who are not literate in those languages.
MEMRI’s stated aim is to observe the political and cultural controversies
and conflicts in the Middle East. Within this context, it wants to reveal the
Arab “double talk”, especially concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict/
peace attempts, and to expose the hate propaganda that is widespread
166
Chapter 09.indd 166 12/10/10 3:39 PM

MEMRI.ORG
in sections of the Arabic and Farsi press, thus sensitizing the West to its
image in parts of the Middle East as the enemy or the other. Its principle
is to translate and not to assess.
And this is exactly where the many critical voices take up and dis-
pute the stated purpose of this Institute. The accuracy of its transla-
tions is rarely disputed. However, the extent to which its selection
is contextual or truly representative of Arab/Iranian media is very
often disputed. The critics allege MEMRI to construct a selective view
of Arab and Farsi opinion and to present through its tendentious
sample a distorted and unbalanced picture of the Arab and Muslim
world. Not disputing that the articles translated by MEMRI are actu-
ally found in the Arabic and Farsi press but stating that they are
counterbalanced by other opinions which hardly find their way into
MEMRI’s selection – thus goes the charge of “cherry-picking” the
vast Arabic press, highlighting “those [articles] that suit its agenda
[but] are not representative of the newspapers’ content as a whole”
(Whitaker 2002).
Another contention is that MEMRI attempts “in some way [to] fur-
ther the political agenda of Israel” (Whitaker 2002). MEMRI is geared
toward Western policy and decision makers, and the claim goes that
through sweeping generalizations and selective statements reflecting
minority opinions, the ignorance and misunderstandings between
the “west” and the Arab world and Iran are perpetuated and Western
perceptions are changed for the worse – which furthers Israel’s agenda.
Arab Media Watch alleges that “by passing itself off as an independent
organisation with a quasi-academic name, MEMRI has deceived a
number of journalists into thinking it is a reliable source of informa-
tion. . . . [and] almost all its staff members have been strongly partisan
in their political and military work. [This too] should cast immediate
doubt upon its credibility as an organisation and the accuracy of its
work”.4 Some of these allegations will be picked up in the course of this
analysis and commented upon.
The fact that MEMRI’s headquarters are located in Washington, DC,
with branch offices, among others, in Jerusalem, where MEMRI also
maintains its Media Centre, certainly fuels some of the critics’ suspicions.
The suspicions went so far that MEMRI’s founder accused critics of “try-
ing to paint MEMRI in a conspiratorial manner by portraying us as a rich,
sinister group”,5 clearly trying to evoke conspiracies of a different kind.
167
Chapter 09.indd 167 12/10/10 3:39 PM

Nonetheless, MEMRI is viewed by its adversaries as one more public

relations campaign on behalf of Israel, and it has been placed in close
proximity to far right political quarters in Israel and the neo-conservative
establishment of the United States.
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
Some facts are indisputable, and these refer to the institutional organiza-
tion and structural make-up of MEMRI. One among these facts is that
it was founded in 1998 with its headquarters in Washington, DC, and
branches presently in Jerusalem, Berlin, Baghdad and Tokyo. It assumed
a more prominent role after the events of 11 September 2001, due to
increased Western public interest in Arab and Iranian affairs. At that
time, it expanded its staff considerably, setting up new branches, and
it was regularly quoted by major American and European newspapers.
A conversation with a MEMRI staff in Berlin6 revealed that the London
office has apparently closed recently due to personnel problems but that
offices in Baghdad and Ankara are in the process of being opened. Yigal
Carmon, the founder and head of MEMRI, confirmed in a phone con-
versation7 and ensuing email correspondence that the London office has
been closed; however, he cited the heavy financial burden as the reason.
Rumors of an office in Baghdad began circulating right after the offi-
cial end of the military intervention in Iraq.8 Mr. Carmon confirmed the
opening of an office in Baghdad, with “several Iraqis on MEMRI’s pay-
roll” – a fact that was disputed by the Berlin office a day or two before.
He pointed out, however, that under the current circumstances in Iraq,
their presence is not transparent, and the office is not publicly identifi-
able. There had also been an office in Moscow in 2003 but that too has
closed due to financial restraints. On the other hand, a Turkish branch is
in the process of being established. The impression conveyed is one of a
dynamic, fluid, rapidly exploring and expanding institution, consider-
ing that up to eight locations have been established within a span of
seven years.
Originally, MEMRI translated out of Arabic, Farsi and Hebrew with
an emphasis on Arabic media and press and an increasing share of Farsi
press. Yet, articles translated out of the Hebrew press were scarcely found.
The head of the Berlin office, Dr. Jochen Müller, maintains that the project
168
Chapter 09.indd 168 12/10/10 3:39 PM

MEMRI.ORG
of Hebrew translations has been discontinued altogether, partly also to

avert the charge of an obvious imbalance between the Arabic and Hebrew
media covered. Mr. Carmon from the Washington headquarters main-
tains that the project of covering the Israeli media had been originally
envisioned when – due to personnel and financial restraints – the work of
MEMRI was limited to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. However, he asserts,
within the first year after MEMRI’s launching, the scope expanded, and
the “Israel Project” was abandoned. In addition, he points out, 80% of
the Israeli media may be found online in English, so there is no need to
provide additional translations. I might interject that this similarly holds
true for a large share of the Iranian media. The fact that Hebrew is still
listed on the websites is shrugged off by Mr. Carmon as a pure oversight
that “should be changed one day”.9 In my phone conversation with him,
Mr. Carmon tried to discount the web presentation as a minor concern of
his. This appears curious for an organization that ostensibly and detect-
ably attaches great importance to its self-presentation.
Apart from English, the Institute translates into a host of languages:
French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and
Turkish. Considering that the Institute hopes to enlighten the West about
the East, the separation of Turkey from the East does not become quite
clear and seems arbitrary, almost evoking orientalist hegemonic divisions
of the area in question. On inquiry, the staff at the Berlin office was unable
to explain this division in any satisfactory way. Mr. Carmon denied that
there were translations into Turkish. Rather, it was the other way round.
This misinformation on the website, too, was attributed to an oversight
and a negligent handling of the website.
MEMRI is financed through private donors and foundations,
such as the Shoah Foundation, the Meyerhoff Foundation, Randolph
Foundation, Schusterman Foundation, Cohen Foundation and Koret
Foundation among others that were supplied through said telephone
conversations by the staff members in Berlin. A precursory and very
limited check revealed that a good number of these foundations have
emphases on “Jewish Life and Culture” or Israel-related projects and/
or support conservative projects in the United States.10 The Lynde And
Harry Bradley Foundation – which was incidentally not mentioned
by the MEMRI staff but has verifiably supplied MEMRI with fund-
ing – is according to www.mediatransparency.org one of “the coun-
try’s largest and most influential right-wing foundations”, sponsoring
169
Chapter 09.indd 169 12/10/10 3:39 PM

also the Heritage Foundation and the Hudson Institute.11 According to

Mr. Carmon, however, it is mostly “centre/centre-left foundations” who
finance MEMRI. As an example, he cites the Ford Foundation which has
apparently entered into negotiations as a possible sponsor. Since MEMRI
is registered as an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization, it
has tax-deductible status under American law and is as such subsidized
by US taxpayers. I did not follow Mr. Carmon’s provoking advice to con-
sult the IRS records as to MEMRI’s financial standing, but nonetheless I
find the stated $3 million as the annual budget of MEMRI quite unrealis-
tic, considering that it is currently maintaining five or possibly six offices
and 60 permanent staff.12
THE QUESTION OF PERSONAL AFFILIATIONS
There is more than one way of looking at such an institution. A basic

structural analysis looking at the institutional structure, as I have
attempted to do above, is one option. The ardently conspiratorial
approach would be to limit the analysis to the people behind the insti-
tution. And incidentally, the controversy, if not saying conspiracy, that
has been brewing about MEMRI, has been mostly suspended on the
person of MEMRI’s founder, president and registered owner of the web-
site, Yigal Carmon. According to Whitaker, a journalist with the British
Guardian, and Kirchner13 of the University of Gießen, Carmon has spent
most of his adult life in the Israeli military, mostly working with intel-
ligence units and counter-terrorism. As both these sources, however,
have encountered the wrath of MEMRI in the form of lawsuits or the
threat of legal proceedings – and to avert the always latently implicit
accusation of antisemitic sentiments that critics are often admonished
and charged with – I will quote Yossi Melman of the Israeli daily
Ha’aretz who wrote: “Carmon, today president of the Middle East
Media Research Institute, embarked at the time [the time refers to the
post-Oslo period] on a private crusade, closely monitoring reports that
circulated in Palestinian and Arab media. A former senior officer of MI’s
504 unit, who subsequently served as an anti-terror adviser to prime
ministers, Carmon operated as a one-man intelligence force, and relent-
lessly tracked down recordings. He handled a network of informants
in PA areas, and paid each dozens, or hundreds, of shekels for a single
170
Chapter 09.indd 170 12/10/10 3:39 PM

MEMRI.ORG
tape.”14 When asked about his professional career, Colonel Carmon

describes himself as a former member of the Israeli government and
stresses the fact that he has been retired for 13 years. In a phone con-
versation with me, he tried to dispel the doubts about his person and
to construct an ideological proximity between himself and ex-General
turned peace activist Matityahu Peled. I can understand that people
feel unfairly treated when their work is judged by their past career. Yet,
when dealing with the media is it good enough to say that who you are
or who you associated with does not matter?
One of these former associates is Meyrav Wurmser, who used to be the
executive director and has since quit MEMRI. Currently, she is director of
the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute in Washington,
DC, which was founded by Herman Kahn and can be safely called a
bastion of the neo-conservative establishment in the United States. She
is also associated with the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, directed
by Daniel Pipes. Topping the current research agenda of the Hudson
Institute is the “The War on Terror and the Future of Islam”. Dr. Meyrav
Wurmser, in a very telling, current self-description on the biographi-
cal pages of the Hudson Institute’s website, is described as “a leading
scholar of the Arab world. Through her work at MEMRI, Wurmser
helped to educate policymakers about the Palestinian Authority’s two-
track approach to “negotiating peace” with Israel: calling for peace in
the English press and with Western policymakers while inciting hatred
and violence through official Arab language media.” This statement cor-
responds to MEMRI’s original mission statement, and it is in line with
the information supplied by Yossi Melman; however, it stands in stark
contrast to a statement made by Jochen Müller of MEMRI Berlin, who
describes the current political agenda as working toward “a contri-
bution for a sustainable peace and reform process in the region”.15 As
there is no reason to think that the goals of MEMRI Berlin and MEMRI
Washington differ to such an extent, speculation would be that MEMRI
has begun to redefine its goals under – possibly – the impression of
unabated criticism. This might also offer an explanation as to why the
original websites of MEMRI with its mission statement and a description
of its core staff have disappeared into the Internet archives. In response
to my personal inquiries directed toward the MEMRI office in Berlin,
they were obliging and courteous. Still I find it a bit disconcerting that
its current website furnishes no information about its staff, board of
171
Chapter 09.indd 171 12/10/10 3:39 PM

directors or advisors, or funding as is usual practice with think tanks

and non-profit organizations elsewhere. In either case, this discussion of
MEMRI’s staff and funding has been exhausted elsewhere,16 and there is
no need to dwell on the same arguments.
MEMRI’S HANDLING OF ITS CRITICS
There is, however, need to say a few words on MEMRI’s interaction with
its critics. In the preceding section, there was some allusion to the efforts
on part of MEMRI to discredit those who publish or say things that are in
contradiction to MEMRI’s self-representation. One way to cast disrepute
on their adversaries is to allege that the critics have dishonest motives.
Most often these motives smack of antisemitism or have to be seen in
some conspiratorial context.
When taking its critics on, MEMRI does not shy away from entering
into public debate, just as it is not squeamish when it comes to resort-
ing to legal action. The mayor of London, Mr. Ken Livingstone, the
Guardian’s Brian Whitaker, the German magazine inamo and Juan Cole
from the University of Michigan are among those that have entered into,
or been threatened with, legal battle with MEMRI. Cole refers to them
as “SLAPPs – Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation”, and they
have been prominently used against environmentalists. “The targets of
these law suits are generally not radical environmentalists nor profes-
sional activists. They are ordinary middle-class people who are concerned
about their local environment and have no history of political activity.
They are often the organisers of opposing groups, or perceived trouble
makers”17.
The author of this article encountered a similar treatment, short of a
lawsuit, but with an effort at intimidation. This paper was presented at the
University of Hamburg in June 2005, at a workshop in conjunction with
the conferral of the honorary doctorate upon Prof. Sadik J. Al-‘Azm, emer-
itus professor of modern European philosophy at Damascus University,
in recognition of his seminal intellectual achievements. When I presented
the paper, my object of research and analysis, namely MEMRI, was atten-
dant – in itself an unsettling, or at least an uncommon, situation. MEMRI’s
founder, Yigal Carmon, was quite active lobbying during the breaks
against my paper before it was held, but then he left the workshop when
172
Chapter 09.indd 172 12/10/10 3:39 PM

MEMRI.ORG
it was my turn to speak, while the head of the Berlin office and a colleague
of his stayed on. The situation got a little out of hand when aforemen-
tioned members of MEMRI and other sympathizers accused me during the
ensuing discussion of hatching a “conspiracy against MEMRI”, of having
a “secret agenda” and “not liking” the organization. It must be pointed out
that this is not really the kind of language used in academic settings. But
more than that, this kind of language bespeaks the mentality and mindset
of the denouncer, revealing less about my work than about his own dispo-
sition. In addition, MEMRI’s repeated denial that it is a partisan lobbying
institution highlighted in an exemplary way some of the issues touched
upon in this workshop.
While it was my initial intention to scrutinize an organization that
lacks a certain transparency and transports an image of the “Orient” that
may be seen in continuation of the school of Orientalism in the Saidian
sense, the precursory research – and much more, the spectacular perfor-
mance during the discussion in the workshop – turned into a little case
study of the possible mechanics of conspiracies. At least, this case study
highlights the importance of transparency and reiterates the fact that its
absence facilitates a milieu open to all possible theories, conjectures and
allegations.
THE SUBSTANCE OF MEMRI’S WORK – A BRIEF OVERVIEW
Apart from the sometimes inconclusive and contradictory structural

information on MEMRI and the personal data, I would like to focus now
on the substantive content of MEMRI’s work. In addition to press transla-
tions, MEMRI regularly publishes media analyses and “in-depth stud-
ies”, the “Inquiry and Analysis Series”, relating to Middle Eastern affairs.
It distributes them, free of charge, by fax and email to anybody interested,
with a wide distribution among Congresspersons, congressional staffers,
legislators, policy makers, journalists, academics and interested parties.
According to its president, it reaches 60,000 direct subscribers per email
list with multiplication through postings on other email lists. The number
of individual users is estimated to be about a million. MEMRI is explic-
itly geared toward a Western audience, most prominently the United
States. It has been hardly received in the Middle East itself, and if there is
mention of MEMRI there, it is done with regard to its founder’s past, for
173
Chapter 09.indd 173 12/10/10 3:39 PM

example, in al-Jazeera in conjunction with the recent antisemitism legisla-

tion, the “Global Antisemitism Review Act” of 2004,18 or in private discus-
sions where it is perceived as an Israeli institution.
MEMRI runs several press-monitoring projects on specific topics. Its
currently ongoing subjects are as follows.19
• At the top of the list is the Jihad and Terrorism Studies Project, in which
it responds to the “threat of militant-Islamic terrorist organizations
operating in the United States [which] has become a reality”. This
project “monitors militant-Islamic groups that educate and preach
Jihad and martyrdom in mosques, school systems, and in the media.”
The work of this focus is self-explanatory.
• United States and the Middle East - This section features translations and
analyses of Middle Eastern news and events which impact the United
States. The Middle East Policy is a quick review, which presents this
picture: out of the 12 items of this project in the current year (2005), 11
portrayed a clear-cut anti-American tone, be it on the Iranian nuclear
program, on the strain of Egyptian-US relations, anti-Americanism
in the Turkish media, anti-Americanism in Palestinian sermons or
the issue of American alleged Koran desecrations and Arab reac-
tions to that. A particular gruesome report is on a Saudi paper writ-
ing on American harvesting of Iraqi organs. Granted that US policy
has seen better days than these in the Middle East, this representation
in MEMRI does cast a very lopsided view, considering the number
of Middle East states that can still be counted as loyal friends of the
United States.
• The Arab-Israeli Conflict - a project which supposedly “focuses on cur-
rent developments in the peace-process, as well as its breakdown”
seems to have been discontinued as the last item dates from Decem-
ber 2003.
• Inter-Arab Relations - Also, this focus seems quite inactive as the last
entry dates from July 2004. MEMRI states that “this section of the
website focuses on main inter-Arab developments such as the decline
of pan-Arab nationalism, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and will
review elements of unity and disunity in the Arab world.” Yet, the
majority of reports in this project aim mostly to point to differences
among Arab states, often in an unqualified, rhetorical and irrational
and emotive way. Some of the headlines read, for example: “Syrian
174
Chapter 09.indd 174 12/10/10 3:39 PM

MEMRI.ORG
Newspaper hints: Saddam better off committing suicide”, “Long live

dictatorship”, “Saudi paper calls on Saddam to abdicate or commit
suicide” and the like.
• Economic Studies - This is apparently also inactive, as it was covered
only until 2003 with one additional report in 2004 and none since. Its
“primary purpose . . . is to bring to the American reader news and
comments of an economic nature on the Middle East based on sur-
veys of primarily non-English sources”. In effect, the studies pub-
lished again portray a one-sided image, presenting the Arab world
as only stagnant (“the failure to establish a knowledge society”), cor-
rupt, non-productive (“the Saudi nightmares about Iraqi oil”) and not
attractive for investment (“record decline in gdp”). This too, is not the
full picture!
• Antisemitism Documentation Project - “this section of MEMRI’s web-
site documents Arabic newspaper reports, editorials, and other media
sources which are primarily based upon antisemitic themes. During
recent years, Arab antisemitism has become a main catalyst of antise-
mitic incidents throughout the world”. This last sentence, to insinu-
ate that antisemitism is a predominantly Arab phenomenon in itself
would deserve a lengthy debate, as I find this statement incendiary if
it is allowed to stand on its own, in total neglect of historical develop-
ments of the European/Christian roots of antisemitism and the cur-
rent political realities.
Most items under this rubric corroborate a view of rampant anti-

semitism in the Middle East. Interestingly enough, in the past months
(early to mid-2005, prior to the election of Ahmadinejad as Iran’s
President!) there is a heightened interest about Iranian antisemitism.
One wonders whether this could in any way be linked to the Iranian
nuclear program or to Iran’s image as the new/old “bad boy on the
block”?
This should, however, not detract from the fact that the items in this
section fulfill an important purpose by exposing the antisemitic accu-
sations that are unfortunately widespread in all sectors of Arab society.
Apart from exposing the most gruesome examples of Holocaust denial
and blood libel, among others, there is also a report in the Inquiry and
Analysis Series (No. 135)20 – incidentally by Yigal Carmon – that takes
up the relatively recent, incipient discourse among Arab intellectuals
175
Chapter 09.indd 175 12/10/10 3:39 PM

to criticize and battle Arab manifestations of antisemitism. His analysis

is limited to recent examples of criticism, it is ahistoric (for a relatively
recent analyses of Arab intellectual discourses regarding the Holocaust,
see Omar Kamil 2003 or Israel Gershoni 1999, who emphasizes the intel-
lectual discourse among Arabs until the creation of the State of Israel in
1948 and the Palestinian Nakba, or Azmi Bishara and Edward Said), and it
does not refer to the current political circumstances that may not be totally
dismissed in this discussion. Yet, he portrays some intellectuals who dis-
tance themselves from the instrumentalization of the Holocaust in Arab
discourses, who demand that Arab intellectuals recognize the Holocaust
for what it was and who heavily criticize Arab intellectual denial so far,
pointing to many of the historical mistakes the Arabs have committed
in their recent past. In this respect, the item discussed presents a valu-
able and constructive contribution in contrast to other reports of this kind
that have more of a fig-leaf character,21 or the sheer listing of recurrent
accusations.
• Reform in the Arab and Muslim World, - According to MEMRI’s self-
description, this project “focuses on advocates of reform, and the
debate surrounding it, within the Middle East and Muslim world.
The project . . . will focus on women’s rights, civil society, and educa-
tional systems . . . debates on democracy and the rule of law, protec-
tion of the individual, and freedom of speech, religion, and assembly.
. . . the debate on reform in Islam, as well as the misuse of religion and
Economic Reform, which examines issues of free market economy,
globalization, and modernization.” A review of this year’s headlines
only, however, reflects a different stress. Out of 36 items in the reform
project, approximately half deal with a critique – in one way or the
other – of the pervasiveness of Islam in the Middle East, advocating
a secularist agenda to separate religion from politics. This probably
prompted Cole to say that MEMRI “rewards secular Arabs for being
secularists”.22 The other half deals with oppositional politics of some
form, with the electoral process, with the harassment of intellectuals
and with feminist issues.
As I said before, this cannot be more than a very brief overview of the
topics and issues addressed and especially the last two projects war-
rant a much more detailed analytical discussion than could be offered
within the scope of this paper. Especially the reform project needs a
176
Chapter 09.indd 176 12/10/10 3:39 PM

MEMRI.ORG
detailed analysis that cannot be done without in-depth background

information and knowledge of the various oppositional forces in the
Arab world. Only then can one ascertain whether the reform project
actually reflects all shades of reformers, those that try to synthesize
reform with their convictions – be they Islamic, leftist or national-
ist – or whether it concentrates on those that advocate and emulate
the “American way of Life”. An in-depth analysis of this section is all
the more imperative, as MEMRI seems to recently present the reform
project as its flagship.
The picture of the Arab/Islamic world that has been presented, albeit
in a sketchy way, through the projects discussed so far, has not been the
most flattering. It has construed for the most part a view of the Arab
world and Iran that thrives on negative stereotypes and clichés that are all
too familiar. To counterbalance this impression, it seems that the Reform
Project has been designed as a figure head to veer in a new direction. It’s
aim is to find and amplify the progressive voices in the Arab world. Thus
a bipolar view of the Middle East is construed, on whose one pole you
may find the radical, jihadist, terrorist, corrupt, stagnant, irrational and
antisemitic elements, and on the other extreme, the pro-western, secular,
reform-willing representatives, corresponding to the hegemonic view of
the American establishment. That there exists a whole middle range of all
shades of conservative to leftist, religious to secular, authentic to imitative
discourses in the Middle East – that incidentally make up the bulk of the
debate – is neglected.
CONCLUSION
Originally, in that above-mentioned, now-deleted archived page from

MEMRI’s website it has also been said that “In its research, the institute
puts emphasizes [sic] the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish
people and to the state of Israel” (sentence removed from its site on
5 November 2001.)23 Now, since the war in Iraq, the purpose is ostensi-
bly a different one, reflecting a change in its self-conception. The focus
now is on “encountering the stereotypes about Islam and the societ-
ies of the region” and to “support the Middle East peace process and
democratisation and reform processes in the Arab societies and Iran”24
Interestingly enough, the Institute accuses Western, especially German,
177
Chapter 09.indd 177 12/10/10 3:39 PM

scholarship of assuming a paternalistic, protective, guilt-ridden post-

colonial attitude toward the Middle East and of not taking the dan-
gerous specters of Arab nationalism and Arab antisemitism seriously
enough.25 Yet, it is actually MEMRI that assumes a paternalistic attitude
when, for example, Mr. Carmon counters charges of misrepresentation
in an interview with Al-Sharq al-Awsat and maintains that “MEMRI
directly or indirectly even serves the Arabs in that it points the mislead-
ing Arab voices to their mistakes and thus advances the positive voices.
This way, it becomes apparent that not all Arabs are like Osama bin
Laden or Zarqawi.”26 Contrary to all protestations of the facts’ neutral
presentation as they are found in the Middle East, a certain sense of mis-
sion is apparent throughout the work. And to be fair, it has to be said that
there have definitely also been positive side effects to MEMRI’s work,
not the least being a re-evaluation of ethical standards in Arab newsp-
apers toward a critical self-censorship when it comes to antisemitism.
In addition to a mission – how ever we want to define it – a clear
agenda is also apparent. And this one is easier to pinpoint: it is clearly
pro-Israeli and pro-West, in a US-conservative fashion. Israel has long
understood that it needs strong and enduring allies outside the region,
and it has always taken on an unwavering pro-Western stance just as the
“west” – notably the United States – has come to rely on Israel. MEMRI
likes to present itself as the window toward the Middle East. God knows,
the Middle East needs many windows to allow transparency and fresh
winds to enter – and thankfully there are some organizations and initia-
tives who aim to do exactly that. But MEMRI is not the window to the
Middle East, if anything it offers peepholes on two poles of Arab and
Islamic discourse.
But what about using MEMRI, what about the various accusations?
There is no monolithic answer. As a translation service, it is of great
value. As a research tool, the evaluation is more complex as it demands
good background information in order to contextualize the information
obtained, due to the organization’s lack of transparency and attempt to
pose as something different than what they are. The problem is that many
of the journalists, politicians and lay persons who use MEMRI cannot and
will not do this. And this is where the main objection to MEMRI comes
into play. It presents itself as an independent research institute, but it
acts as a tool geared toward shaping opinion by “producing an orient” –
in the true sense of Edward Said’s usage – and through this it has an
178
Chapter 09.indd 178 12/10/10 3:39 PM

MEMRI.ORG
increasing influence in shaping perceptions of the Middle East. MEMRI

has understood that politics today is waged in the media and it fulfills its
role as a public relations, lobbying and policy-making instrument with
the highest professional standard.
REFERENCES
Beder, S. (1995): “SLAPPs – Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation: Coming

to a Controversy Near You”, Current Affairs Bulletin, vol. 72/3, pp. 22–29.
Bishara, A. (1994): “Die Araber und der Holocaust – die Problematisierung einer
Konjunktion”, in R. Steininger (ed), Der Umgang mit dem Holocaust: Europa –
USA – Israel, Wien: Böhlau, pp. 407–432.
Bishara, A. (2004): “Die Feinheiten des Rassismus”, inamo, 39/2004, pp. 45–50.
Böhme, C. (2002): “Die Stimme des Nahen Ostens”, Tagesspiegel 12 April 2002.
Carmon, Y. (2003): “Harbingers of Change in the Antisemitic Discourse in the
Arab World”, MEMRI – Inquiry and Analysis Series, No. 135, 23 April 2003.
Doering, M. (2002): “Sprudelnde Quellen”, Berliner Zeitung, 2 October 2002.
Fisk, R. (1996): “Blind für die Geschichte”, Die Zeit, 11 October 1996.
Flores, A. (2004): “Arabischer Antisemitismus zwischen Dämonisierung und
Analyse”, inamo, 37/2004, pp. 48–52.
Freund, C.P. (2001): “The End of the Orientalist Critique”, Reason, December 2001.
Hayes, C. (2002): “‘Selective MEMRI’ – eine Präzisierung”, inamo, 32/2002,
pp. 50–51.
Höpp, G.; Wien, P.; Wildangel, R. (eds) (2004): Blind für die Geschichte? Arabische
Begegnungen mit dem Nationalsozialismus. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag.
Institute for Policy Studies (2010): “Right Web – Tracking Militarists’ Efforts to
Influence US Foreign Policy”, http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/
Middle_East_Media_Research_Institute (last accessed on 25 May 2010).
Joggerst, K. (2004): “Vergegenwärtigte Vergangenheit(en) – Die Rezeption der
Shoah und Nakba im israelisch-palästinensischen Konflikt”, in G. Höpp;
P. Wien; R. Wildangel (eds) Blind für die Geschichte? Arabische Begegnungen mit
dem Nationalsozialismus, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, pp. 295–334.
Kamil, O. (2003): “Araber, Antisemitismus und Holocaust. Zur Rezeption der
Shoah in der arabischen Welt”, Teil 1 und 2, analyse + kritik 33, vol. 473 and 474,
pp. 14–15; 20–21.
Kirchner, H. (2002): “Yigal Carmon – Ein Leben für die Besatzung”, Inamo, 32,
pp. 46–48.
Knoblauch, E. (2004): “Israel eine Stimme geben”, zenith, 4/2004, p. 49.
Lavie, A. (2003): “Partners in Pain, Arabs Study the Holocaust”, CounterPunch,
12 February 2003.
Meier, C. (2002): “Absichten statt Einsichten”, zenith, 4/2002, p. 20.
179
Chapter 09.indd 179 12/10/10 3:39 PM

Melman, Y. (2002): “Don’t Confuse us with Facts – How Israeli Military Intelligence
Botched Assessment of Arafat”, Ha’aretz, 16 August 2002.
MEMRI. (2002): “Stellungnahme MEMRIs zu dem Artikel v. Brian Whitaker in
inamo Nr. 31/2002”, inamo, 32/2002, p. 49.
MEMRI. (2005): Aus arabischen Medien – Gesellschaftskritische Stimmen im Nahen und
Mittleren Osten. Berlin: iz3w und MEMRI.
MEMRI Special Dispatch (2005): “Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: Interview zur Arbeit von
MEMRI und zu Scheich Al-Qaradawi”, 31 März.
Newsletters der Botschaft des Staates Israel–Berlin, various issues. http://nlar-
chiv.israel.de/
Nordbruch, G. (2004): “Geschichte im Konflikt – Der Nationalsozialismus als
Thema aktueller Debatten in der ägyptischen Öffentlichkeit”, in G. Höpp;
P. Wien; R. Wildangel (eds) Blind für die Geschichte? Arabische Begegnungen mit
dem Nationalsozialismus, Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, pp. 269–294.
Raz-Krakotzkin, A. (2004): “Aus dem Lehrbuch: Geschichte des Zionismus und
Geschichte des Landes”, inamo 10/38, pp. 24–28.
Said, E. (1998): “An die arabischen Unterstützer von Roger Garaudy: Der Dritte
Weg führt weiter”, Le Monde Diplomatique (dt. Ausgabe) 5608, 14 August 1998,
pp. 1–5.
Said, E. (2000): The End of the Peace Process, Oslo and After. London: Granta Books.
Solnick, A. (2003): “An Israeli Arab Initiative to Visit Auschwitz”, Inquiry and
Analysis Series – No. 136, The Middle East Media Research Institute 25 April
2003. http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/855.htm
Taub, G. (2003): “MEMRI Gains”, Correspondence – An International Review of
Culture and Society Winter 2002/2003, vol. 10, Published by the Council on
Foreign Relations.
Whitaker, B. (2002): “Selective MEMRI”, Guardian Unlimited 12 August 2002.
Internet site is accessible at http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journal-
ist/story/0,,773258,00.html
Wulf, J.-H. (2004): “Rollentausch der Dunkelmänner – Das Middle East Media
Research Institute (MEMRI) mit Sitz in Washington weist auf Antisemitismus
in arabischen Medien hin”, taz 30 April 2004, p. 19.
Zuckermann, M. (2003): Zweierlei Israel? Hamburg: KVV Konkret.
Zuckermann, M. (2005): Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte 33,
Antisemitismus – Antizionismus – Israelkritik, Göttingen: Wallstein.
180
Chapter 09.indd 180 12/10/10 3:39 PM

10
THE TRAGEDY OF IBLIS 1
Sadik J. Al-Azm2
I am the spirit that ever denies.
—Goethe, Faust
SECTION ONE
P R O L O GU E
If we try to identify the basic feelings through which the three Semitic
religions expressed man’s relationship to God, we would discover that
they are limited to three: love, fear, and hatred – love of God, fear of His
power and punishment, and hatred of His enemy, Iblis (Satan). Religious
thinkers treated these feelings in numerous books and lots of pages. Their
views on Iblis ranged from serious attempts to determine the position
that he occupies in the order of the universe, his relationship to God, and
the purpose of his existence to mere profuse explanations of his deception
of people and to teaching them well-known invocations and incantations
so that they can dismiss him and ward off his evil. There is no doubt
that each one of us bears in our minds a particular image of Iblis’ char-
acter inherited as an indivisible part of his or her traditional culture and
religious upbringing. I find it unnecessary to expatiate on recalling this
image of Iblis in the popular mind because it is well known to all of us.
Iblis was a favorite angel of God and was of great consequence in
the order of the heavenly host until he disobeyed God’s order and was
expelled from paradise, incurring eternal damnation. Thus, Iblis became
the embodiment of everything evil, acquiring all the attributes that are
incompatible with God. We note here that Iblis’ name indicates his essence,
which is “iblas” – that is, total despair of God’s mercy and of return to par-
adise (this according to traditional Muslim interpretations of the meaning
of iblas).3 We are all familiar with the proverb that signifies a total loss
of hope: Like Iblis’ hope of return to paradise. The word Iblis connotes
181
Chapter 10.indd 181 12/10/10 3:39 PM

scheming, temptation, suggestion of evil thought, instigation to rebellion,

disobedience, and other hideous and abominable characteristics that the
imagination of man has incorporated into a single character: Satan. In the
course of time, man’s imagination generously allotted to Iblis great cre-
ative intellectual powers, innovative artistic capabilities, and the ability to
perform supernatural and miraculous acts and deeds. Thus, Iblis became
next to God in terms of his powers, abilities, and achievements.
Imam Jamal al-Din ibn al-Jawzi wrote a book entitled Talbis Iblis, (The
Dissemblance of Iblis)4 in which he recounted the ways that Iblis employs to
deceive people, leading them away from the right path. What is curious
about this book is that not only does it depict the conventional image of
Iblis’ character, but it also, inadvertently, confers on him innovative, cre-
ative powers that elicit appreciation and admiration. A case in point is Ibn
al-Jawzi’s crediting to Iblis the emergence of most great religious and phil-
osophical movements in the history of Islamic civilization. He thus turns
Iblis into a great philosopher and a superb theologian. Ibn al-Jawzi claims
that sophistry, materialism, naturalism, the theory of natures, the reli-
gions of the Far East, Christianity, scholastic theology, and the Muctazilah
(school) were all the work of Iblis and the result of his deception of think-
ers and of ulema (religious scholars).5 Likewise, Ibn al-Jawzi attributes
the movements of the Kharijites and the Rafidites (al-Rafida, i.e., the Shi’a
branch of Islam), asceticism and sufism to Iblis’ deception of the imams
(leaders) of these movements, including Abu Talib al-Makki and Imam
al-Ghazali.6 Of some philosophical ideas, Ibn al-Jawzi says, “Aristotle and
his followers claimed that the earth was a star in the center of the celestial
sphere and that there are people (cawalim), rivers and trees on each star,
just as on Earth . . . so consider what Iblis has led those fools to believe,
despite their claim to sound mind.”7 Moreover, Ibn al-Jawzi recounts the
following about Iblis’ deception of grammarians and men of letters: “He
deceived those people and preoccupied them with the important disci-
plines of grammar and language, which are individual duties (fard cayn),
and diverted them from the necessary knowledge of the acts of worship
(cibadat) and from what is worth knowing, such as morals and righteous-
ness (salah al-qulub).”8
It can thus be inferred that the prevalent idea about Iblis’ capabilities
is not limited primarily to leading people astray from the right path but
rather proceeds to include vast powers and great capabilities. If taken
seriously, the powers attributed to Iblis would make him responsible for
182
Chapter 10.indd 182 12/10/10 3:39 PM

THE TRAGEDY OF IBLIS
the course of most events and for most philosophical, artistic, and politi-
cal movements in the history of civilization.
The above quick review examined the popular traditional image of
Iblis and the powers attributed to him. That aside, the purpose of this
study is to reconsider the story of Iblis and to study his character, attitude,
responsibilities, and fate from a perspective different from the beliefs and
ideas that have heretofore governed our conception of this creature. The
primary sources to be examined are the Koranic verses that recount the
story and biography of Iblis, as well as works by Muslim thinkers who
took interest in Iblis, his character, his disobedience, his function, and his
end.
However, I would like to make it clear that this study is conducted
within a specific mytho-religious framework, which ensues from man’s
mythical imagination and fabulatory faculties. I do not intend to treat the
story of Iblis within the purview of pure religious faith, or to talk about
him as if he were a real existing being. Rather, I will approach him as a
mythical character created by man’s fabulatory faculties and amplified by
man’s fertile imagination. In dealing with the subject of Iblis, I find myself
face to face with an ancient, deep-rooted mytho-religious tradition. What
I most desire to achieve is to reconsider one of the primary characters to
come down to us in this heritage, but always remaining within the con-
fines of the primary data of mythological thinking, and without deviating
from its basic postulates.
It is worth mentioning here that the popular preconceived notion of
myth and its importance is somewhat removed from the real role that
myths play in people’s lives and the texture of cultures. We are accus-
tomed, for example, to dismissing something as mere “legend or myth,”
to depreciate its importance, to banish it from mind, to deny it any prac-
tical reality and/or objectivity, and to show that it is mere illusion and
fantasy. It is therefore necessary to digress a little and explain some
important facts about the nature of myth and the significance of mytho-
logical thinking for man and society.
Philosophers have defined man as a rational being, an animal
endowed with the faculty of speech and reason. If man is such, then he
is also a “mythological” animal, for just as man is the only animal that
is endowed with speech and reason, he is also the only animal that cre-
ates fables and legends and transforms them into complex mythologies,
and then believes in them categorically as if they were real indubitable
183
Chapter 10.indd 183 12/10/10 3:39 PM

facts. Mythical thinking is thus an essential characteristic of man and

an important aspect of his mental activity in the broad sense of the
word. That is the reason why many researchers have directed their
attention to the study of the mythical activity of man, for uncovering
fundamental truths about him, his society, his capabilities, cultures,
and civilizations.
By way of example, when you hear me speak of the “tragedy of Iblis”
in this lecture, you undoubtedly go back in your minds to the old organic
connection between tragedy and drama on the one hand and myth and
mythical thinking on the other. Moreover, a reconsideration of this legend-
ary character that we customarily call Iblis will yield new dimensions and
significant results as regards religion, art, and philosophy. Researchers
have spared no effort to explain the organic relationships and connections
between mythical thinking and the religious, artistic, and philosophical
dimensions of any of the great issues that mankind faces.
Mythology in itself has been and still is potentially a religion, poten-
tially an art, and potentially a philosophy, because it contains in its flex-
ible and indeterminate framework (a) the elements of comfort and solace
that are necessary for every religion, (b) the elements of creative artistic
expression necessary for human aesthetic responses to the stimuli that
affect humans everywhere, and (c) a disposition to explain events and
interpret existence, as well as to inquire about its origins and purpose.
Additionally, myth has been and still is the medium through which
mankind confronted its great and persistent problems, such problems as
death, destiny, evil, and the origin, purpose, and meaning of things in
general. For that reason, mythology has always been a creative cultural
force and a rich source for religious thinking, philosophical contempla-
tion, and artistic expression. For further elucidation, I shall quote a state-
ment by the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945), who was
one of the pioneering scholars to study the nature of myth. He showed its
essential relationship to man’s other intellectual, spiritual, artistic activi-
ties. Cassirer defined the world of myth, the world to which I have con-
fined myself in this lecture, as:
The world of myth is a dramatic world – a world of actions, of forces, of

conflicting powers. In every phenomenon of nature it sees the collision
of these powers. Mythical perception is always impregnated with these
emotional qualities. Whatever is seen or felt is surrounded by a special
184
Chapter 10.indd 184 12/10/10 3:39 PM

atmosphere – an atmosphere of joy or grief, of anguish, of excitement,

of exultation or depression. Here we cannot speak of “things” as a dead
or indifferent stuff. All objects are benignant or malignant, friendly or
inimical, familiar or uncanny, alluring and fascinating or repellent and
threatening.9
I must affirm, at the end of this prefatory section of my essay, that the
mention of God, Iblis, jinn, angels, and the heavenly host does not
mean that these names refer to real but invisible beings. The structure
of the (Arabic) language ipso facto necessitates that I write and speak in
a certain manner that seemingly suggests the actual existence of these
characters. This is merely a linguistic illusion. If I were writing about
Prince Hamlet, for example, none of you would believe that the name
Hamlet referred to a real being outside the scope of the literary heritage
from Shakespeare. Likewise, when we say “Hamlet killed his uncle,”
we do not believe that such an incident did actually occur in Denmark.
Similarly, when we say “God expelled Iblis from Paradise,” we should
not think that such an incident did occur in the history of the universe.
Such utterances are meant symbolically and are not descriptions of
actual events.
SECTION TWO
The sources that we are consulting in this study on the story of Iblis begin
with a description of his lofty position in the heavenly host before he was
expelled from Paradise. In his book Taflis Iblis (The Failure of Iblis), Imam
Izz al-Din al-Maqdisi addresses Iblis thus:
God in His omnipotence created you, showed you His wondrous

creations, summoned you to His presence, clothed you with the
robe of His unity, crowned you with His hallowed and praisewor-
thy crown, allowed you to move freely amongst His angels. These
angels sought your light, enjoyed your presence, were guided by
your knowledge, and followed your example. Hence, you still
remained in the heavenly host, savoring the fullest cup and the
sweetest speech. How often were you a teacher for the angels and a
leader of the cherubim?10
185
Chapter 10.indd 185 12/10/10 3:39 PM

Then there are the Koranic verses that relate what happened to Iblis, how
he disobeyed God, and how God cursed him until the Day of Judgment
and expelled him from paradise:
And when thy Lord said unto the angels: “Lo! I am about to place a
viceroy in the earth, they said: Wilt Thou place therein one who will do
harm therein and will shed blood, while we, we hymn Thy praise and
sanctify Thee? He said: Surely I know that which ye know not. And He
taught Adam all the names, and then showed them to the angels, say-
ing: Inform me of the names of these, if ye are truthful.” They said: Be
glorified! We have no knowledge saving that which Thou hast taught
us. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the Knower, the Wise. He said: O Adam!
Inform them of their names, and when he had informed them of their
names, He said: Did I not tell you that I know the secret of the heavens
and the earth? And I know that which ye disclose and which ye hide.
And when We said unto the angels: Prostrate yourselves before Adam,
they fell prostrate, all save Iblis. He demurred through pride, and so
became a disbeliever
(Koran 2: 30–34).
And (remember) when thy Lord said unto the angels: Lo! I am creat-
ing a mortal out of potter’s clay of black mud altered. So, when I have
made him and have breathed into him of My spirit, do ye fall down,
prostrating yourselves unto him. So the angels fell prostrate, all of them
together save Iblis. He refused to be among the prostrate. He said: O
Iblis! What aileth thee that thou art not among the prostrate? He said:
Why should I prostrate myself unto a mortal whom Thou hast created
out of potter’s clay of black mud altered? He said: Then go thou forth
from hence, for verily thou art outcast. And lo! the curse shall be upon
thee till the Day of Judgment. He said: My Lord! Reprieve me till the
day when they are raised. He said: Then lo! thou art of those reprieved
till an appointed time. He said: My Lord! Because Thou has sent me
astray, I verily shall adorn the path of error for them in the earth, and
shall mislead them every one, save such of them as are Thy perfectly
devoted slaves
(Koran 15: 28–40).
186
Chapter 10.indd 186 12/10/10 3:39 PM

And We created you, then fashioned you, then told the angels: Fall ye
prostrate before Adam! And they fell prostrate, all save Iblis, who was
not of those who make prostration. He said: What hindered thee that
thou didst not fall prostrate when I bade thee? (Iblis) said: I am better
than him. Thou createdst me of fire while him Thou didst create of mud.
He said: Then go down hence! It is not for thee to show pride here, so
go forth! Lo! thou art of those degraded. He said: Reprieve me till the
day when they are raised (from the dead). He said: Lo! thou art of those
reprieved. He said: Now, because Thou hast sent me astray, verily I shall
lurk in ambush for them on Thy Right Path. Then I shall come upon them
from before them and from behind them and from their right hands and
from their left hands, and Thou will not find most of them beholden
(unto Thee). He said: Go forth from hence, degraded, banished. As for
such of them as follow thee, surely I will fill hell with all of you.
(Koran 7: 11–18).
The story of Iblis, as recounted in these verses is simple on the face of it.
God ordered him to prostrate himself before Adam, but he refused and
suffered the consequences. However, to surpass this superficial view of
the problem of Iblis, we need to go back to an important idea advanced by
some Muslim scholars: The distinction between divine command or order
and divine will. An order ipso facto is either obeyed and executed or is
disobeyed. The one given the order has the choice of obeying or disobey-
ing. As for divine will, it is not subject to such considerations because it
cannot, by its very nature, be refused. Anything that the divine will wants
is of necessity existent. God willed the existence of a great many things
but also ordered mankind to keep away from them. Similarly, He ordered
man to perform certain things but also wanted man to fulfill things other
than the ones He had ordered. Thus, we can say that God ordered Iblis to
prostrate himself before Adam but willed him to disobey His order.11 Had
God willed Iblis to fall prostrate, he would have done so immediately,
since God’s slave has no strength or power to disobey divine will. If we
were to consider the matter from this perspective, we would be able to
regard order and command as accidental, or contingent, in comparison
with the eternity of divine will and the timelessness of God.
If we reconsider the Koranic verses that we have just cited, it becomes
clear that God wanted the angels to “hymn His praise and sanctify Him.”
Al-Tabari states in his famous Tafsir that “praising and sanctifying” God
187
Chapter 10.indd 187 12/10/10 3:39 PM

constitutes profession of the Oneness of God (tawhid), affirming His utter

transcendence and denying to Him the attributes that the polytheists
assign to Him.12 In other words, tawhid (profession of the Oneness of God)
is the foremost and absolute duty of angels to their Creator and is thus the
reason why the angels are totally immersed in fulfilling their duty to God
with all their being and esse (essence). As for the other duties imposed on
the heavenly host, they are accidental and secondary in comparison with
the absolute duty that derives from the divine will itself.
After having demonstrated the difference between absolute duty
toward God and the partial duty of obedience to the orders of God, it is
now possible to distinguish the following points about Iblis’ refusal of
God’s order:
1) There is no doubt that Iblis disobeyed the divine order when he

refused to prostrate himself before Adam, but he was in total confor-
mity with divine will and with his absolute duty toward his Creator.
2) Had Iblis prostrated himself before Adam he would have departed

from the reality of tawhid and rebelled against his absolute duty
toward God. God wanted the angels to sanctify Him and to hymn His
praise. Thus, prostrating himself before Adam would have subjected
Iblis to the errors of the polytheists, who ascribe to the Him attributes
He is free from. Falling prostrate before any other than God is abso-
lutely impermissible, because such an act constitutes polytheism. In
fact, Iblis’ choice raises a very important question: Does real obedi-
ence consist in obeying an order or in submission to God’s will? Does
righteousness lie in submission to absolute duty or to the secondary
duties of obedience? If the answer to this question were simple and
clear, tragedy would not have been a part of man’s life, Iblis would
not have found himself in such a dilemma nor would he have fallen
between the claws of Command and Will. We infer from this that Iblis’
attitude represents absolute insistence on tawhid in its purest sense
and manifestation. It is as though Iblis wanted to say, “A forehead that
has fallen prostrate before the One God will not be humbled before
any other existent creature.”13
Al-Hallaj, the martyr of Sufism, expressed such an opinion in his book
Kitab al-Tawasin: “Moses met Iblis at the steep incline of Mount Sinai and
said to him: “What hindered thee that thou didst not fall prostrate?” Iblis
188
Chapter 10.indd 188 12/10/10 3:39 PM

replied, “What hindered me was my profession of the One God. Had I

prostrated myself [before Adam] I would have been like you. You were
summoned once to ‘gaze upon the mountain,’ and you gazed. I was called
one thousand times to prostrate myself, but I did not, for I believe in my
profession of the Oneness of God.”14
3) Iblis justified his refusal to prostrate himself before Adam logically

and clearly: “I am better than him. Thou createdst me of fire, while
him Thou didst create of mud.” In addition, the Koranic verses just
mentioned imply a latent justification of Iblis’ refusal: his foreknowl-
edge that Adam and his progeny would create havoc and disaster and
would shed blood on earth. Such was the common feeling of all the
angels when they said to God, “Wilt Thou place therein one who will
do harm therein and will shed blood, while we, we hymn Thy praise
and sanctify Thee?” The angels, including Iblis, were cognizant of the
great sins and offenses that Adam and his progeny would perpetrate
on earth. Thus, they found it to be an enormity that God should create
those who would disobey Him and who would shed blood.
A close examination of Iblis’ first argument, which consists of a compari-

son between his essence, fire, and Adam’s essence, clay, demonstrates
that it was not as much haughtiness and vainglory as it was a reinvoking
of a fundamental truth, which God had willed and brought into being.
This truth is that the natures created by God are not all of the same degree
of sublimity and perfection. Rather, He distinguished between them, not
only with respect to their material and natural characteristics but also with
regard to their worth and perfection. Accordingly, we can classify beings
and kinds in a specific hierarchy of perfection which starts with Absolute
Perfection itself, and descends gradually according to the degree of per-
fection that God had bestowed on each kind, until we draw near nothing-
ness, the lowest limit that we stop at.
There is no doubt that fire, by nature and essence, occupies a higher
and more sublime rank in this order than clay. In other words, Iblis’
comparison between his essence and that of Adam involves a specific
philosophical viewpoint of the order of the universe and the classifica-
tion of natures according to their degree of perfection. Iblis’ reply was
thus correct, because the Creator had created things as they are regard-
ing their degrees of perfection and sublimity, and His order to Iblis to
189
Chapter 10.indd 189 12/10/10 3:39 PM

prostrate himself before Adam constitutes an obvious violation of this

system and a departure from the hierarchy that God willed and brought
into being. If Iblis’ essence in the ladder of perfections was higher than
Adam’s, then fire can only lower itself to clay by following a course
contrary to its nature, which is incompatible with the degree of perfec-
tion bestowed upon it by God. This will remain impossible until there
is a radical change in the divine will, whereupon It changes the order
of essences or natures from what they had been since He made them. In
other words, God ordered Iblis to do one thing but willed him to per-
form another. We will, therefore, realize later that the command to lay
prostrate was not an order of will but rather an order of trial.
It is curious to note in this regard that the change that occurred in
Iblis after his expulsion from paradise did not affect his essence but
rather his attributes and modes. His image was thus disfigured, and he
became damned and cursed. In his own special way, al-Hallaj illustrated
this reality in the above-cited dialog between Moses and Iblis, whereby
Iblis explains to Moses that the change and disfigurement that befell him
affected only his external and ephemeral conditions but did not affect his
permanent essence or his constant knowledge of the provisions of the
divine will. Moses said to Iblis: “You ignored the order.” Iblis replied:
“That was a trial, not an order.” Moses said: “He surely changed your
image.” Iblis replied: “Moses, this is all deception. The circumstance is
unstable; it changes, whereas the true knowledge is still the same. It has
not changed. Only the persona has changed.”15
As for the second argument that Iblis presented to justify his refusal
to lay prostrate before Adam, it was based on the angels’ knowledge that
Adam and his progeny would do harm unto the world and would shed
blood. Therefore, how could Iblis, who was immersed in tawhid, in God’s
praise and sanctification, the one who was imam of angels (archangel),
the preacher of the cherubim, how could such as he fall prostrate before a
creature who would do harm on earth and would shed blood? Al-Hallaj
summarized this aspect of the subject as such:
God said to Iblis: “Do you not lay prostrate, O ignominious one? Iblis
replied: I love Thee and he who is in love is humble (mahin). You char-
acterized me as ignominious, but I have read in A Revealed Book what
this will bring upon me, O Thou Omnipotent One. How could I debase
myself to Adam while you created me of fire and created him of clay?
190
Chapter 10.indd 190 12/10/10 3:39 PM

Clay and fire are irreconcilable opposites. I have served you longer, am
of greater worth, am more knowledgeable, and am more perfect of age
than Adam.”16
We thus infer that the story of Iblis as recounted in the Koranic verses
is not as simple as we had imagined. It is not a story of conflict between
good and evil, right and wrong. Iblis fell between two millstones, the
millstone of divine will and that of divine command. He had to make a
choice that would determine his destiny, a choice between his absolute
duty of professing the Oneness of God, of hymning His praise, and sanc-
tifying Him and the secondary duties of obedience that God had ordered
him to fulfill. His ordeal was therefore replete with dramatic and tragic
elements.
Before I proceed with unpacking the implications of this conception
of Iblis’ ordeal, I feel obliged to refute the assertions promoted by Abbas
Mahmud al-Aqqad in his book, Iblis. Al-Aqqad attempts to defend the
superficial traditional conception of Iblis’ character as merely a being who
disobeyed God’s order, and so God expelled him from paradise. As such,
Al-Aqqad refuses to acknowledge Iblis’ ordeal and upholds the necessity
of Iblis’ prostration before Adam. Upon scrutiny, we find that Al-Aqqad’s
opinion is based on two arguments.
1) Angels had to lay prostrate before Adam because he was better than
they. Adam was capable of doing good and evil, whereas angels
could do good only. They are safeguarded against the temptation of
evil and thus it is not attributable to them.17
2) Iblis must prostrate himself before Adam because God had taught
Adam all the names but had not taught them to the Angels, which
makes Adam superior to them.18
I shall refute each argument separately.

It seems to me that al-Aqqad’s claim that Adam was superior to the
angels because he was subject to both good and evil, whereas they are safe
from such temptations, is fundamentally false for the following reasons:
a) The story of Iblis demonstrates that even the chiefs of the angels and
those favored by God among them are not safe from the temptation
of evil, or else Iblis would not have disobeyed God and would not
191
Chapter 10.indd 191 12/10/10 3:39 PM

have met such a miserable fate. We therefore infer that angels are
subject to good and evil. Like man, they are subject to the trials of
evil and are required to do good, which negates Adam’s superior-
ity to angels and consequently eliminates the need to lay prostrate
before him.
b) If we assume, hypothetically, with al-Aqqad that the angels are not
subject to good and evil but rather always do good, due to their
nature and essence, does that mean that Adam is better than they?
Let us rephrase the question in more general terms: Which creatures
are superior: Those who do good on occasion and do evil on other
occasions, inflicting harm on earth and shedding blood, or those
who do good only, constantly and forever?
The answer to this question is very clear and needs no discussion, based
on the premise that our moral conception of the perfect will dictates that it
is the will that constantly and effortlessly does good, because doing good
has become part of its essence and intrinsic nature. As for the imperfect
will, it is still struggling and striving to defeat the temptation of evil in an
attempt to come close to the perfect will, which is its ideal.
If the angels, according to al-Aqqad’s claim, are free from the tempta-
tion of evil, then God had undoubtedly bestowed upon them a perfect
will that would make them far superior to Adam and his progeny. When
God said to the angels, “Lo! I am about to place a viceroy in the earth,”
the angels demurred before such an enormity and answered: “Wilt Thou
place therein one who will do harm therein and will shed blood?” Does
al-Aqqad intend to make Adam’s ability to do harm and shed blood a
source of his superiority over the angels?
We now proceed to refute al-Aqqad’s second argument, the claim
that it is the angels’ duty to fall prostrate before Adam because God
had taught him, not the angels, all the names. We have shown ear-
lier that Iblis was superior to Adam because of Iblis’ intrinsic nature
and essence; his superiority was not due to contingent, ephemeral
conditions such as those acquired by Adam when God taught him all
the names. In other words, Adam’s knowledge of all the names does
not constitute one, or indeed any, of his distinguishing and essential
characteristics.
There is no doubt that the angels could have learned all the names if
God had wanted that. We therefore infer that Adam’s knowledge of all
192
Chapter 10.indd 192 12/10/10 3:39 PM

the names was contingent, and was bestowed upon him by God to entice
the angels to lay prostrate before him. Hence,
1) Adam is not superior to the angels, including Iblis, neither because

of his ability to do good and evil nor due to his knowledge of all the
names.
2) Iblis’ essence is better than and superior to Adam’s essence, because

God created him from fire and created Adam from clay. God had not
intended clay to be as high in the order of things as fire.
3) Al- Aqqad’s claim that it was incumbent upon Iblis to fall prostrate
before Adam because Adam was superior to the angels is false and to
be rejected.
SECTION THREE
We return now to Iblis’ ordeal that resulted from the contradiction of

command and will. Al-Hallaj expressed Iblis’ ordeal with splendid con-
ciseness: “When Iblis was told to lay prostrate before Adam, he addressed
the Truthful (God): “Has the lofty honor of prostration only for You been
lifted, so I prostrate myself for him? By ordering me to lay prostrate
[before Adam], You have prevented me from doing so.”19
Imam al-Maqdisi defined the nature of the contradiction between
divine order and divine will as follows:
I have considered with certitude the circle of eternal happiness and

eternal damnation. It turns on the line of the command and the centers
of the will. Between them is indeterminate subtlety and lonely narrow
space. The traveller in this strait has no companion for success. The
giver of the order grants, but the will plunders. What is endowed by the
giver of the order is plundered by the will. The orderer says, “Do,” but
the will says, “Do not do.”20
It appears that Imam al-Maqdisi had considerable understanding of the

importance of the dramatic and tragic elements of Iblis’ ordeal, hence
his emphasis on the element of contradiction faced by Iblis and on his
193
Chapter 10.indd 193 12/10/10 3:39 PM

inability to find an appropriate exit from his ordeal. The choice that Iblis
had to make was critical for his destiny. His eternal happiness or misery
depended on his choice. He could surrender to the requirements of the
will and be consistent with his absolute duty, thereby attaining eventual
happiness, or he could slide into submission to God’s order and to the
secondary duties of obedience, thus failing the test and becoming forever
miserable. In short, the order to lay prostrate placed Iblis’ being, life, and
eternal happiness in the balance because “the giver of the order grants,
but the will plunders,” and “the orderer says do, but the will says do not
do.”
In addition, al-Maqdisi’s statement shows that those who undergo
such an ordeal do not have a clear, bright path nor are they given a chance
to distinguish easily between a right choice and a wrong choice because
of the indistinguishable “subtlety . . . of the two.” Furthermore, those who
are placed in such a predicament find themselves totally alone, unable to
benefit from the counsel or assistance of friend or companion. They have
to make the choice alone and they must bear the consequences of their
choice. The path that they were predestined to take is, as al-Maqdisi said,
a “lonely narrow space.”
In the following pages, I shall try to determine the elements of tragedy
in Iblis’ ordeal and to highlight its various aspects as precisely and clearly
as the subject allows. I will, therefore, rely on two principal sources: the
Greek drama of Sophocles and the story of Abraham in the Semitic reli-
gious tradition.
I need not dwell long on the story of Abraham. Abraham was ordered
to slay his son Isaaq (or Ishmael) and when he was about to execute the
order, God ransomed him “with a tremendous victim (Koran 37: 107).”21
I pause here for a moment to refer to a well-known study by Kierkegaard
of the story of Abraham in his book, Fear and Trembling. I have relied in this
section of my study on the general outlines of Kierkegaard’s interpretation
of Abraham’s trial. However, this should not preclude some basic differ-
ences between the opinions that I will present and Kierkegaards’special
standpoint on the persona of Abraham. There is no doubt that the story of
Abraham contains powerful tragic potentials and many of the basic ele-
ments of tragedy. However, we cannot under any circumstances consider
it a real tragedy because it has a happy, optimistic, and pleasing ending.
The feeling left by the story of Abraham differs completely and qualita-
tively from the feeling left by the story of King Oedipus, for example.22
194
Chapter 10.indd 194 12/10/10 3:39 PM

There are many considerations that make Iblis’ ordeal a real tragedy,
and I will point them out as follows:
1) A tragedy often occurs at the time of major crises and violent events
that upset the status quo, rock the foundations of current systems, and
shake the prevailing values so much so that those undergoing such
trials feel that their former being and familiar mode of existence have
been put to trial and that the moral, spiritual, and material compo-
nents of their surrounding world are about to collapse. God had given
Abraham “a gentle son.” “And when his son was old enough to walk
with him, Abraham said, “O my dear son, I have seen in a dream that
I must sacrifice thee. . . . ” (Koran 37: 101–102). Abraham was ordered
to sacrifice his son as an offering to God. This order upset all measures
and standards, broke down all values, and blurred and confused all
features and characteristics. The merciful compassionate father has to
kill his son, with premeditation, calmness, and submission.
Iblis was a teacher to the angels and a leader to the cherubim. He was,
as al-Maqdisi observes, calm and peaceful, sound and virtuous, and while
he was in the presence of witnesses, God brought Adam into being and
ordered him to lay prostrate before Adam.23 Thereupon the order of the
heavenly host shook, and all standards and measures were toppled again.
The forehead of Iblis, which had only prostrated itself before the One had
to prostrate itself before a human. The teacher who taught tawhid to angels
had to disavow the earlier sanctification and glorification of God. Fire had
to submit to clay. But Iblis refused to prostrate himself before Adam and
was thus damned until the Day of Judgment. In other words, the story
presents Iblis’ disavowal and his expulsion from paradise at the highest
of his glory, then at the lowest point of his suffering and misery. In this
respect, the story of Iblis was much like the ancient Greek story that pres-
ents King Oedipus at the apex of his power and glory and then presents
him wandering in the labyrinths of despair, suffering, and agony. Both
Iblis and King Oedipus became outcasts, disfigured and loathsome, after
they tumbled to the abyss of suffering. Whoever had supported them
became their adversary.
2) When we consider the drama Antigone, we discover that the heroine’s

tragic end was a consequence of the essential contradiction between
what Antigone represents on the one hand and what Creon, the King
195
Chapter 10.indd 195 12/10/10 3:39 PM

of Thebes, represents on the other. Antigone was absolutely deter-

mined to bury her murdered brother, regardless of happenstance or
cost. Her motive was her great love for her brother and her unshake-
able belief in the need to bury the dead, as decreed by the gods.
Antigone addresses her sister Ismene as follows.24
Go thine own way; myself will bury him.

How sweet to die in such employ, to rest,–
Sister and brother linked in love’s embrace–
A sinless sinner, banned awhile on earth,
But by the dead commended; and with them
I shall abide for ever. As for thee,
Scorn, if thou wilt, the eternal laws of Heaven.
King Creon, on the other hand, was motivated by a noble, patriotic emo-
tion when he ordered punishment against the brother who bore arms
against the city and was killed at its gates. He was also sincere in his
attempt to uphold the rule of law and to restore order to the city of Thebes
after the chaos that had swept it. It was, therefore, incumbent on him to
be firm, to insist on the thorough execution of his orders and directives,
and to threaten with extreme punishment whoever violated the law. All
of these measures were natural and necessary in Thebes, a city that had
suffered the calamities of war, disease, and chaos before Creon took the
reins of government. The result was the tragic conflict between the tem-
poral requirements and needs of the city, as represented in the character
of Creon, and the divine requirements, as represented in the character of
Antigone. In the end, everyone endured death, despair, and tragedy.
When Creon asked Antigone, “And yet were bold enough to break the
law?” She answered:
Yea, for these laws were not ordained of Zeus,
And she who sits enthroned with gods below,
Justice, enacted not these human laws.
Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man,
Could’st by a breath annul and override
The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven.
They were not born to-day nor yesterday;
They die not; and none knoweth whence they
Sprang.
196
Chapter 10.indd 196 12/10/10 3:39 PM

I was not like, who feared no mortal’s frown,

To disobey these laws and so provoke
The wrath of Heaven. I know that I must die,
E’en hadst thou not proclaimed it; and if death
Is thereby hastened, I shall count it gain.25
If we were to consider the story of Abraham from such perspective, we

would discover that it contains a contradiction similar to the one that
Sophocles depicted in his play. There is no doubt that Abraham suffered
tremendously as a result of the contradiction between his respect for
the emotional requirements and moral obligations of paternity on the one
hand and the imperative to submit to the divine order that decreed the
slaying of his son Isaaq on the other. Abraham loved his son more than
he loved himself and he performed his paternal duties superbly well. But
what could he do when his love for his son and his paternal duties were
incompatible with the requirements of total obedience to God’s order and
with his absolute religious duties to his God?
It must be admitted that Abraham’s ordeal is charged with the elements
of tragedy and its tensions to a larger degree than is Antigone’s, because
the basic contradiction in Sophocles’ play was between temporal author-
ity and the eternal orders of Heaven. Each side of this contradiction has
its own independent origin. As for Abraham, the two sides of the contra-
diction revert ultimately to the same origin, God. When Antigone obeyed
the orders of Heaven she disobeyed the orders of temporal authority. But
when Abraham submitted to God’s order and placed the knife on his son’s
neck, he disobeyed the absolute moral norms that God had bestowed upon
man: Rules that govern fathers’ treatment of sons and vice versa. In other
words, when Abraham obeyed his God from the religious standpoint, he
was obliged to disobey him form the moral standpoint.
Iblis’ ordeal is not qualitatively different from the ordeal of either
Antigone or Abraham. He had a direct divine order to prostrate him-
self before Adam and at the same time he was under the requirement
of divine will that called for the profession of tawhid, sanctification, and
praise of God and that prohibited prostration before anyone but the eter-
nal God. Iblis submitted to the requirements of divine will and thereby
disobeyed the order to prostrate himself. He was thus expelled from
paradise, damned, and foreordained to absolute despair of returning
to paradise. However, Iblis’ tragedy was bigger and more catastrophic
197
Chapter 10.indd 197 12/10/10 3:39 PM

than Abraham’s ordeal, which turned out not to be a tragedy, because

Abraham was able in the end, to slay a ram in place of his son Isaaq.
The contradiction that Iblis faced was not between the duties of religious
obedience and those of moral obedience but rather between the duties of
obedience to the divine order only. Expressed otherwise, Iblis confronted
God in direct and compromising self-contradiction, thereby becoming a
victim of this contradiction and of the stand that he, Iblis, had chosen and
assumed.
A careful examination of Antigone reveals more than a conven-
tional heroine who represents all good, truth, and beauty, whereas her
adversary represents the opposite of such qualities. Likewise, a subtle
understanding of the story of Abraham in its humanistic dimensions can-
not but reveal that his attempt to slay his son was not simply an abomi-
nable crime incompatible with the simplest axioms of humaneness and
morality.
The same is true of the story of Iblis. A careful examination of his
ordeal and of his disobedience of the prostration order reveals more than
an embodiment of rebellion, evil, and sin. Furthermore, if we consider
matters from a different perspective, we will have no doubt that Iblis
was disobedient and a denier. Yet, we should not forget that his denial
(juhud) was the most sublime form of sanctification of God and the grand-
est example of commitment to the reality of tawhid. Iblis sinned when he
argued with his God, but it was God who permitted him to argue and
who listened to him when he said, “I am better than him. Thou createdst
me of fire, whilst him Thou didst create of clay.” Here, Iblis’ tragic char-
acter is manifest as a mixture of innocence and sin, beauty and ugliness,
right and wrong, and good and evil. Iblis possesses all these attributes,
just as do the heroes of the great tragedies of literature. Iblis had to reject
prostration totally. Likewise, Orestes had to kill his mother and Hamlet
to kill his uncle. Like Orestes and Hamlet, Iblis had to suffer the resulting
tribulation, pain, and despair. All of these heroes found themselves on
the horns of a dilemma. They are at once in the right and are not right.
Only those who are intrepid, robust, and of heroic mettle can endure such
tragic tension.
3) For further elucidation, we should differentiate between two kinds of

tragedy: The “tragedy of alienation” and the “tragedy of fate.” Here
I am suggesting that Iblis’ ordeal clearly represents those two kinds
198
Chapter 10.indd 198 12/10/10 3:39 PM

of tragedy. Misfortune in the tragedy of alienation is the result of

separation from a “fixed situation” that the hero had been associated
with but then found himself dissociated from. The works of Milton,
Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Camus (in his book, The Stranger) are good
examples of the tragedy of alienation. As for Iblis’ alienation and its
tribulations, al-Hallaj describes it in the words of Iblis as follows:
He isolated me, left me alone, confused me, expelled me, lest I associate
with the faithful; prevented me from those who are jealous on account
of my jealousy. He transformed me on account of my confusion; con-
fused me on account of my estrangement; made me haram (unlawful) on
account of my companionship; disfigured me on account of my praise;
excommunicated me on account of my abandonment; abandoned me
on account of my disclosures (with Him), exposed me on account of my
connection (to Him).26
Imam al-Maqdisi described Iblis’ alienation and misery in Iblis’ words as

follows:
And to perfect my misery I asked to be reprieved (till the day of resur-

rection). So, I became the laughing stock of those in the Presence. I pine
away when I hear those who invoke and repeat His name; I am rent
when I see those giving thanks to Him. I run away from the shadow of
one, and from the pure deeds of another. One burns me with his breath,
while the other disables me with his strength. When the repentant
repents he breaks my back and when the stray one returns he shortens
my life. All that I built with the disobedient in a slumber is demolished
by repentance in a slumber. I am in interminable woe, unalterable war
and a sorrow that lasts long.27
Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi’s splendid description of alienation applies aptly

to Iblis’ situation:
O Ye! The stranger (gharib) is one whose sun of beauty has set; one
who is estranged from his loved ones and from his censurers; one who
speaks and acts in strange ways. The stranger is one whose descrip-
tion says: One ordeal after another, whose title indicates: One trial after
another; and whose truth shows in him time and again. Oh, mercy on
the stranger! His journey extends without arrival, his tribulation lasts
199
Chapter 10.indd 199 12/10/10 3:39 PM

without wrong, his hurt intensifies without fail, his suffering magnifies
to no avail.28
Sophocles’ King Oedipus and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet are con-
sidered to be among the best works on the tragedy of fate. Sophocles’
play reveals how fate took its inevitable course, how all prophecies
were realized, and how all efforts by Oedipus and Jocasta to escape
their dark fate failed. An examination of Iblis’ ordeal from a similar
perspective shows that he also was subject in all his deeds to God’s
preordained fate just like any creature of God’s kingdom, as stated in
the following holy tradition (hadith qudsi, a Muslim tradition in which
God Himself speaks, as opposed to hadith nabawi, an ordinary pro-
phetic tradition):
The pen was the first thing that God created. He said to it, “Write.” The
pen replied: “What do I write?” God said, “The fates of everything until
the Hour of Resurrection. He who dies believing otherwise is not one
of Mine.”29
Al-Hallaj too expressed this truth in a very famous line of poetry about
Iblis: “He dropped him, hands tied, into the open sea and said to him,
Beware! Beware! Do not get wet.”
In other words Iblis was subject in his circumstance, choice, expul-
sion, damnation, and disfigurement to the ordinances of the Divine
Will and to the inescapable fate that He had decreed. He was com-
pelled by God’s wisdom, as they say, and overwhelmed by God’s will,
as attested to by God’s words: “Lo! We have created every thing with a
fate” (Koran 54: 49).
Al-Hallaj wrote the following on Iblis’ submission to his fate as divinely
decreed:
The Truthful, may He be praised, said to Iblis, “The choice is mine, not
yours.” Iblis answered, “All choices, and mine as well, are Yours. You,
Creator, have made the choice for me. If You have forbidden me from
prostrating myself [before Adam] it is because You are the All Invincible.
If I misexpressed myself, it is because you are the All-Hearing. If you
want me to prostrate myself before him I am the obedient. Of all those I
know knowYou, none knows You better than me. Do not blame me, for
I am not to blame. Protect me, Lord; I am all alone.”30
200
Chapter 10.indd 200 12/10/10 3:39 PM

I must point out here that not everyone who has been wronged by fate
and crushed by predestined decree is a hero. Nor is anyone who finds
himself in a tragic ordeal – such as Iblis, Antigone, and Abraham – a
tragic character. It depends to a large extent on the quality of one’s reac-
tion to one’s ordeal and on the nature of one’s response to one’s destiny.
Antigone’s sister, Ismene, for example, was well aware of the conflict
that led Antigone to her tragic end. However, we cannot under any cir-
cumstances consider Ismene a tragic personality because her response
to that conflict was negative, and she totally surrendered to the flow of
events. That is the reason why she counseled prudence, raised doubts,
and expressed fears, which proves that hers was not the mettle of heroes.
The same applies to the angels whose “mark of them is on their foreheads
from the traces of prostration” (Koran 48: 29).
It would be interesting to make a comparison, here, between Iblis’ atti-
tude and that of Adam. Adam disobeyed God just as did Iblis. If God had
willed Adam not to disobey, Adam would not have disobeyed, nor would
God have reproached him for his disobedience. Adam did not evince any
positive reaction [to God’s reproach] but rather said, “Our Lord! We have
wronged ourselves. If Thou forgive us not and have not mercy on us,
surely we are of the lost!” (Koran 7: 23).
As for the tragic hero who fought his destiny like King Oedipus did,
he would not have said “I have wronged myself,” because he knew full
well that it was his ineluctable fate that had wronged him. Iblis, on the
other hand, responded positively to God’s reproach, saying, “My Lord!
Because Thou hast sent me astray, I verily shall adorn the path of error
for them in the earth “ . . . , thereby denying that he had wronged him-
self or that he was responsible for his destiny and his end. Once again,
al-Tawhidi’s description of the stranger applies to Iblis: “He has no excuse
so he may be excused; he committed no offense so he may be pardoned;
he committed no disgrace so he may be forgiven.”31
Adam was afraid of admitting this truth when God reproached him,
whereas Iblis argued with God and attempted to defend his act and to
justify his choice, although he was aware that there was no escape from
the fate that God had preordained for him. As such, he was comparable
to Oedipus and Jocasta when they attempted to escape their ominous
destiny, even though they knew that their failure was expected and
inevitable. Iblis, however, remained positive, in attitude and deed, even
after he was damned, as proven by his reaction: “Verily, I shall adorn
201
Chapter 10.indd 201 12/10/10 3:39 PM

the path of error for them in the earth and shall mislead them every one”
(Koran 15: 39).
The heroes of the great works of tragedy in world literature were thus
made of the same mettle as Iblis and their tragic personae were modeled
after him. No wonder that such tragic characters were either in direct
contact with Satan or that they had clear Satanic characteristics. It is no
coincidence either that the great tragic characters are most often drawn
from groups of eccentrics, saboteurs, rebels, infidels, deniers, and mur-
derers. It is for that reason that legal trials abound in famous tragedies.
Examples of authors and such literary works are those of Aeschylus,
Kafka, The Brothers Karamazov, and Camus’ novel The Stranger. It is pos-
sible to consider the argument that took place between Iblis and God in
the Koran as a speedy court-martial in which Iblis was given a chance
to defend himself before God delivered a verdict that was already in
force.
4) In investigating the nature of tragedy, it is difficult not to touch on the

subject of the emotion of pride and the role that emotion plays in the
life of tragic characters. Pride assumes special significance because
of the opinion that attributes Iblis’ refusal to prostrate himself before
Adam to the motive of pride and boasting. The Truthful (God) said to
Iblis when He expelled him from paradise: “Then go down hence! It
is not for thee to show pride here, so go forth! Lo! Thou art of those
degraded” (Koran 7: 13).
In order to comprehend the true nature of Iblis’ pride, we must distin-

guish between pride in the sense of arrogance and “tragic pride,” which
characterizes the great tragic personae. That is not to say that the tragic
hero cannot be arrogant. However, this reprehensible quality, arrogance,
remains accidental and contingent in relation to his heroism and trag-
edy. Hubris and quixotic pride can only elicit pity and ridicule; tragic
pride imposes a serious attitude toward the hero, and great admiration
and appreciation for him, even if his attitude is contrary to our princi-
ples and attitudes. For that reason, pride has always been an important
incentive that has motivated tragic characters, from King Oedipus to Ivan
Karamazov.
The essence of tragic pride is manifest in the hero’s refusal to remain
passive in the face of what he considers to be a challenge to his duty,
202
Chapter 10.indd 202 12/10/10 3:39 PM

status, and dignity, even though he knows that such challenge is part of
his fate and that his pride will lead him to destruction, despair, and death.
Oedipus, Antigone, and Iblis came to this end. Adam, on the other hand,
did not possess that kind of pride, and had he been predestined to become
a tragic character he would not have proclaimed, “Our Lord! We have
wronged ourselves. If Thou forgive us not and have not mercy on us,
surely we are of the lost.” From this we deduce that Iblis’ pride did not
derive from empty arrogance, nor from insolence toward God, but rather
was tragic pride that prompted him to seek refuge in God from God’s fate.
Iblis did not change his attitude toward God even after he was expelled
from paradise and damned by God. He still acknowledged God’s omnipo-
tence and was afraid of Him and would not accept another deity but Him
as is evident from the Koranic verses which say: “And the hypocrites are
on the likeness of the devil when he telleth man to disbelieve, then, when
he disbelieveth (Iblis) saith, ’Lo! I am quit of thee. Lo! I fear Allah, the Lord
of the worlds” (Koran 59: 16). Also, on the evidence of Iblis’ answer when
he made an oath before God: “Then, by Thy might, I surely will beguile
them every one, save Thy single minded slaves among them” (Koran 38:
83). Iblis thus demonstrated that nothing was more precious to him than
God’s might, even after he was eternally damned. Moreover, Iblis excluded
God’s devoted servants (“single minded slaves”) from his oath as if he
were trying to prove his appreciation of God and his sincere loyalty to the
Lord of the worlds, even after he was expelled and cursed. Not only was
Iblis an alien but he was also an alien in his alienation as al-Tawhidi stated.
In the conversation that he imagined between Moses and Iblis, al-Hallaj
describes Iblis’ attitude toward God after he received eternal damnation
as follows:
Moses said to Iblis, “Do you mention His name in praise (dhikr)?” Iblis
replied, “O, Moses, the thought does not invoke God’s name. I am men-
tioned and He is mentioned, His mention is my mention and my men-
tion is His mention, can the mentioners be save with one another? My
service to Him is now purer, my time is more free and my praise is more
distinct. In time past it was my good fortune to serve Him, but now I
serve Him for His good fortune.”32
Imam al-Maqdisi had an unconventional view of Iblis’ destiny and pride,

influenced by Al-Hallaj’s viewpoint. He said,
203
Chapter 10.indd 203 12/10/10 3:39 PM

He (God) said to me, “Prostrate yourself before someone other than I.”
I said, “No one but You.” He said, “I curse you.” I said, “No harm done.
If You draw me near You, then You are You.” He said, “You do that in
arrogance and vainglory.” I said, “Lord! Whoever has known You for
an instant in his lifetime, or has been with You for a moment through-
out his life, or accompanied You in your love for a while, surely can be
proud. Just imagine how much more proud would be one who spent
his whole lifetime with You and who built monuments out of your love.
How many times have I day and night professed your oneness. How
many times have I learned privately and publicly the lessons of your
sanctity and praise? Traditions and signs witness for me, the abodes
know my right and the night and day believe me. Where was Adam
when I was the imam of the angels, the preacher to all the cherubim, and
the leader of your close companions? I have worshipped You since time
immemorial, and You have willed for me since time immemorial. When
the signs of your will appeared, the traces of worship disappeared. The
legist (mujtahid) missed in his judgement. The master lost his high rank
and the arrow of fate (death) unmistakably struck his heart. Whether
I prostrate myself before Adam or not, worship You or not, it is inevi-
table that I return to preordained fate. You have created me of fire and it
is inevitable that I return to fire. “Thereof We created you, and thereunto
We return you (Koran 20: 55).”33
SECTION FOUR
In the previous pages, I treated the predicament of Iblis on many levels. I

began with the popular traditional viewpoint; then I described his ordeal,
and then I specified the tragic aspects of his character and attitude. There
is no doubt that as we move from one of these three levels to the other,
Iblis’ reality as well as the numerous facets of his character become more
distinct and profound. This does not mean that our understanding of Iblis’
character on the tragic level will reveal his reality completely and in full.
The reason is that his character is not as much the product of dramatic
literary imagination as it is the offspring of pure religious imagination.
Our tragic view of Iblis will, therefore, remain deficient and will reveal
only part of his truth. A treatment of Iblis on a purely religious level
204
Chapter 10.indd 204 12/10/10 3:39 PM

would, however, complete our picture of him and would reveal his real
and ultimate status in the order of creation. The main reason compelling
me to make such a statement is that tragedy, in its definitive and absolute
sense, cannot exist within the framework of the three Semitic religions.
It is impossible for religion to accept tragedy in its definitive form
because divine providence encompasses the universe completely and
leads it to the ultimate ends that God had chosen for it. That is why it is
natural for religion to claim that it can surpass tragedy, no matter how
afflicting it is, and that it can solve all the complexities involved in it, if
not in this worldly life then in the hereafter. The tragic view of events, for
instance, requires that heroes suffer grave, absolutely irreparable losses,
symbolized often by death or total despair. Heroes are also required to
suffer undeserved and unwanted disaster and torture.
Religion, on the other hand, rejects such a tragic logic and maintains
that the pious will someday be recompensed for the losses they suffer,
just as God compensated Job for the disasters that had befallen him, and
rewarded him for his long patience. Whereas losses suffered by evildoers
are the just punishment they deserve because of their sins and evil deeds,
as indicated by the Koranic verse: “And whoso doeth good an atom’s
weight will see it then, And whoso doeth ill an atom’s weight will see
it then” (Koran 99: 7, 8). Even the tragedy of death is, according to reli-
gion, only but a temporary loss that signifies transition from the temporal
world to the eternal abode. In other words, religion accepts tragedy only
as a transitory, temporary phase. Subsequently, Iblis’ tragedy must be a
temporary one and will someday come to an end.
After this reference to the limitations of the tragic view of Iblis’ charac-
ter, I would like to pose the following question: Why was Iblis ordered to
prostrate himself before Adam? More precisely, why did God put him in
this predicament? The answer is that God wanted to test and try Iblis just
as He did Job and Abraham and other pious men after them. The refer-
ence to Iblis’ trial is clear in what he said to his God: “My Lord! Because
Thou has sent me astray, I verily shall adorn the path of error for them
in the earth,” and “Now, because Thou has sent me astray, verily I shall
lurk in ambush for them on Thy Right Path.” That is, Iblis will lead people
astray, tempt, and test them just as God had sent him astray, tempted,
and tested him. Iblis was an archangel and the orator of the cherubim.
God wanted to test him, and so he ordered him to prostrate himself before
Adam in order to determine his adherence to the essence of Oneness and
205
Chapter 10.indd 205 12/10/10 3:39 PM

his devotion to his mission of sanctification and glorification of God. Iblis

proved that he was willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of his pro-
fession of one God. Al-Hallaj says of Iblis:
Of all the angels, Iblis was the most knowledgeable of prostration, the
closest to what Is, the most exerting of efforts, the most honoring of
vows, and the closest to the Worshiped One. The angels fell prostrate
before Adam for the purpose of assisting him; Iblis refused to prostrate
himself before Adam because of the long time he had spent observing
God.34
And just as God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice the most pre-
cious thing he had for His sake, God similarly tested Iblis by asking him
to sacrifice the dearest thing he had for the sake of his God and Beloved.
One of the characteristics of a religious test is that it thrusts the one who is
tested into a forbidding and unbearable predicament. Consequently, his
reality is distinctly revealed, without distortion or falsification. The main
idea that I would like to present here is that Iblis had successfully passed
the test that God had put to him. This truth becomes evident on the basis
of the following considerations:
1) Abraham passed the test because he suspended his paternal duties

and his human and familial commitments in order to obey divine
orders and fulfill his duty to his God at whatever cost. We can simi-
larly say that Iblis passed the test because he suspended the partial
duties of obedience in order to submit to divine will and adhere
to his absolute duty of acknowledging the oneness and sanctity of
God.
2) Just as the divine order transformed the slaying of Isaaq from a mere
vicious crime into a great sacrifice and an unparalleled gift, Iblis’
adherence to his absolute duty transformed his refusal to prostrate
himself before Adam from mere disobedience to a most sublime form
of sanctification a creature has ever given to God.
3) In fact, the divine order rendered Abraham’s paternal duties and

human commitments into trial-duties, if obeyed Abraham would
have failed the test. Similarly, Iblis’ partial duties became trial – duties
206
Chapter 10.indd 206 12/10/10 3:39 PM

in relation to the absolute duty. Had Iblis submitted to them, he would

have failed the test.
4) Abraham did not behave like an ordinary human being with regard
to his paternal duties but rather behaved in the manner of proph-
ets and saints, thus revealing his reality through the trial. Likewise,
Iblis did not behave like the angels in the face of his partial duties
toward God but followed the conduct of saints, the pious, and the
closest men of God, thus revealing his truth in its full purity and
pristineness.
5) It is clear that divine trial is the cause of the affliction, agony, and
despair that the tested one suffers. Abraham’s strong desire to save
Isaaq and keep him was the cause of his agony and misery. Had it
not been for this intense desire, his test would not have received
much attention, because Abraham would have offered his God
something only slightly precious, something whose loss would not
have been a great disaster. So it was with Iblis’ trial. When God
tried him, Iblis had an intense desire to obey the order of prostra-
tion before Adam, and it was extremely painful for him to sacrifice
such desire for the sake of adhering to the truth of the oneness of
God. Otherwise, Iblis would have sacrificed something for which he
originally had had very little desire. Both Iblis and Abraham knew
that God was testing them and was asking of them the most diffi-
cult and precious sacrifices of all. But no sacrifice was too difficult
for them for the sake of God. For that reason, Iblis refused to pros-
trate himself before Adam, and Abraham rejected all paternal and
human relations.
When we treated Iblis’ predicament on the level of tragedy and compared

it to the story of Abraham and to the play Antigone, we mentioned that
Abraham’s predicament failed to reach the level of tragedy because of
that famous scapegoat (lit., ram) and because of the impossibility of the
existence of real tragedy in religion. We also mentioned that Antigone’s
predicament follows that of Abraham in importance because it represents
a real tragedy. As for Iblis’ predicament, we considered it the ultimate
tragedy because it gives expression to tragedy in its most explicit form,
utmost limit, and most profound meaning.
207
Chapter 10.indd 207 12/10/10 3:39 PM

However, when we study this subject on the level of religious trial, we

are obliged to change this classification and replace it with a new one that
is harmonious with the logic of religion and its stance vis-à-vis tragedy. If
Iblis’ reality could have been manifested on the level of tragedy only, our
chief concerns would have ended with the earlier classification.
The new classification places Antigone’s predicament at the lowest
rung of the ladder, because her trial imposed on her the choice between
an order by temporal authority as against divine orders, each order origi-
nating from a different source. On the other hand, Abraham’s trial was
more potent and meaningful because it gave him a choice between a direct
divine order and his paternal duties and human and moral commitments,
which Abraham thought were sacred and sent down from Heaven. In
other words, Abraham’s choice was between two orders that emanated
from the same source, God.
With regard to Iblis’ trial, it is the ultimate trial of trials, the most
significant, and the most bitter, because it forced him to choose
between the requirements of divine will on the one hand and the direct
divine order on the other. That is to say, Iblis did not have to choose
between the temporal and the eternal as Antigone did, nor between
the divine and the moral as Abraham had to, but between the divine
and the divine, between the eternal and the eternal. For that reason,
Iblis’ trial was unbearable, his disaster immeasurable, and his despair
indescribable.
One of the basic components of a successful religious trial is the total
ignorance of the one who is being tried, of the result of the trial, and
whether the issue of such a trial will be in his favor or not. Had Abraham
suspected for a moment that he would be slaying a ram in place of his son
Isaaq, his predicament would not have been a trial but a farce. Had Job
expected compensation for his patience through the disasters that God
had inflicted upon him, thus enduring great distress in the hope of reap-
ing the ease that would succeed it, his trial would have lost its meaning
and substance and he would have failed the test. And had it ever occurred
to Iblis that his damnation was not eternal or that his ultimate end was
not hell and a terrible fate, his predicament would have turned from a
tragedy-laden trial to a farce. In other words, one condition of a success-
ful trial is the undoubting, firm belief of the one who is being tried that
his trial would have a tragic end. How great his joy will then be when
he finds out that the trial has a happy ending, as happened to Abraham
208
Chapter 10.indd 208 12/10/10 3:39 PM

when he recovered his son and to Job when God gave him back all his
wealth and children a hundredfold.
Since God rewarded Abraham and Job for their patience and adher-
ence to their absolute duty toward Him, we can deduce that He will also
reward Iblis for his success in passing the test and for his sacrifice and will
compensate him for suffering a tragic loss and for enduring hardships,
agony, and estrangement. But if this conclusion is correct, why did, then,
God damn Iblis until the Day of Judgment? The answer is simple: He
damned him until the Day of Judgment because the trial itself required
it. Had Iblis believed that his damnation was temporary and that there
was hope that he would return to paradise, his trial would have lost its
meaning and substance. This is so because his adherence to the reality
of Oneness, despite his total despair of salvation, is the proof of his suc-
cessful passing of the test. This is similar to Abraham’s despair of sav-
ing his son Isaaq. Placing the knife on his son’s neck was solid proof of
Abraham’s passing of the test to which God had subjected him. In other
words, the eternal damnation does not disclose Iblis’ real fate much as it
forms an integral part of his trial.
As for Iblis’ real fate, it had to remain a secret concealed from him until
it was time to divulge it, just as Isaaq’s fate remained a secret concealed
from Abraham until it was proper time to disclose it. Furthermore, Iblis
could not be damned forever, especially after successfully passing the
test, because such a situation would constitute a real and major tragedy
in the universe. Religion’s logic, as I have repeatedly mentioned, never
allows that.
Just as our understanding of Iblis’ character on the level of tragedy does
not explain his total reality, so is the case with our treatment of his charac-
ter on the level of trial and affliction. We must bear in mind, though, that
the level of trial draws us more explicitly and profoundly to his reality
than any of the other above-mentioned levels. In order to comprehend the
total reality of Iblis and his actual place in the universe, we must define his
direct and essential relationship with the divine will. No matter how hard
I looked, I could not find a better expression of Iblis’ relationship with the
divine will than that of Imam al-Maqdisi’s, who said through Iblis:
He created me as He willed. He brought me into being as He willed.

He used me as He willed. He preordained for me what He willed, so
I could not bear to will except what He willed. I never exceeded what
209
Chapter 10.indd 209 12/10/10 3:39 PM

He willed, nor have I done except what He willed. If He willed, He

would restore me to what He willed and would guide me with what He
willed. But thus He willed, and I was what He willed. Who then would
be my support against fate, and would stand to protect me from des-
tiny? But whatever pleases Him of me, I very gladly accept. Oh! What
is one to do? One whose head is in the grip of Divine subjugation (qahr),
his heart in the hand of Divine Decree, and his present state stems from
the judgment of eternity (qidam). It is all over. The pen has dried.35
In other words, Iblis was the making of divine will, subject to its decrees
and executor of its demands. When Iblis chose refusal and rebellion, he
only chose what God had chosen for him from the beginning. Iblis was
used by what God had willed for him, caught in the grip of His subjuga-
tion. As such, command and interdiction (al-amr wa-’l-nahy) are null and
void as far as Iblis is concerned, even though the pretext that was used to
expel him was based on command and interdiction.
Further explaining the true position of Iblis and God’s purpose of
expelling him, Imam al-Maqdisi continues to say on behalf of Iblis:
O Listener, do you think that I mismanaged? That I rejected predestina-

tion (taqdir)? That I was changed by the change? Nay. By His exalted
might and His splendid omnipotence, I have not. But He has created
the beautiful and the ugly (good and evil), the straight and the correct,
combining the thing and its opposite in order to demonstrate His per-
fect omnipotence. And things are only known through their opposites.
At first, He had me teach the virtues to angels in the heavenly host, and
adorn the orbits with these virtues. I was the teacher of Oneness (taw-
hid). When the children in the school of knowledge read their lessons
in Oneness and learned the alphabet-letters of His sanctifications and
glorification, He transported me from heaven to earth to teach them the
opposite of that, to adorn the vices and show them to them. Through me,
the beautiful and the ugly (good and evil) were thus known, the straight
and the correct were distinguished. I am in both heaven and earth, the
master of knowers and teacher of teachers. I am of inimitable power and
observer of the Presence of Wisdom. Who then is closer to His Presence
(hadrah) than I? Who is more renowned in His mention than I? I have all
the honor that He mentioned me, even though He damned me. I have
all the pride that He reprieved me, even though He expelled me. By my
knowledge of Him He denied me . . . Happiness disappeared because of
210
Chapter 10.indd 210 12/10/10 3:39 PM

separation. You think it is separation? If I had dropped in His estima-

tion, I fell into the heart of the heart of Estimation.36
SECTION FIVE
I shall devote this section of my study to finding an acceptable religious

interpretation for some of the paradoxes that occurred in the previous
sections of the lecture and to answering some outstanding important
questions. Following is a classification of the most important of these
paradoxes and questions:
1) When I posed the question, why did God order Iblis to prostrate him-
self before Adam? I answered it by saying that God wanted to test and
try him as he tested and tried Abraham and Job after him. The new
question that arises before us now is: Why does God test His angels
and his people when He knows everything they divulge or conceal?
Can we, for example, specify any of the divine attributes that calls
upon God to test His people? Rather, to which one of these divine
attributes should we ascribe such a tendency to test people?
2) When we distinguished, at the beginning of this lecture, between Will

and Command, we mentioned that God sometimes orders something
while He would have willed to realize something else. I wonder, is
there a religious explanation for this paradox in God’s behavior?
3) We have also seen that Iblis was caught in the grip of God’s power
and was totally subject to the fate willed and decreed for him, like
the rest of His creatures. Hence, the effect of divine command and
interdiction is nullified as far as Iblis is concerned. If this be true,
why then did God expel Iblis from paradise on the pretext of com-
mand and interdiction? In addition, God has since eternity predeter-
mined who would go to heaven and who would go to hell. Religious
proofs that support this statement are numerous. I shall cite, by way
of example, only the following holy hadith: “God Almighty seized a
handful and said: this goes to paradise with my blessing, and I care
not. Then He seized another handful and said: this goes to hell, and
I care not.”37
211
Chapter 10.indd 211 12/10/10 3:39 PM

But despite all that, God revealed scriptures and sent messengers
and charged them with commands and interdictions and distinguished
between halal and haram (lawful and unlawful). What is the benefit of all
this for those who are compelled by His wisdom and who are manipu-
lated by His preordained fate?
4) If God is the Creator of all things and the One who predetermines
good and evil for His people, why then does He want people to
believe that Iblis is the cause of all evil and sin? And why does He
want to burden Iblis with the sins of those He had created evil and
made to do evil? Can we explain this paradox by ascribing it to any of
the well-known attributes of God?
I believe that the divine attribute that we are searching for to answer these
questions is that of cunning (makr: plotting, scheming). Following are
some Koranic verses that illustrate the nature of this attribute:
• “And they (the disbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemed (against

them): and Allah is the best of schemers” (Koran 3: 54).
• “And when those who disbelieve plot against thee (O Muhammad)

to wound thee fatally, or to kill thee or to drive thee forth; they plot,
but Allah also plotteth; and Allah is the best of plotters” (Koran
8: 30).
• “And when We cause mankind to taste of mercy after some adversity

which had afflicted them, behold! they have some plot against Our
revelations. Say: Allah is more swift in plotting. Lo! Our messengers
write down that which Ye plot” (Koran 10: 21).
We also find that some other verses ascribe to God a similar attribute, that
of mocking, as in the following verse: “Allah (Himself) doth mock them,
leaving them to wander blindly on in their contumacy” (Koran 2: 15).
Some verses stated the same meaning without mentioning or specify-
ing divine cunning, as in the following ones:
1) “And let not those who disbelieve imagine that the reins We give
them bodeth good unto their souls. We only give them rein that they
212
Chapter 10.indd 212 12/10/10 3:39 PM

may grow in sinfulness. And theirs will be a shameful doom” (Koran

3: 178).
2) “And when We would destroy a township We send commandment

to its folk who live at ease, and afterward they commit abomination
therein, and so the Word (of doom) hath effect for it, and We annihi-
late it with complete annihilation” (Koran 17: 16).
3) “Lo! The hypocrites seek to beguile Allah, but it is Allah who begui-
leth them” (Koran 4: 142).
We deduce from al-Tabari’s interpretation of the above-mentioned

verses the following:
a) Cunning (makr) implies mocking and beguilement.38

b) Cunning implies disclosing something for someone and at the same
time harboring something else for him: “God shows mankind judg-
ments (ahkam) in this world contrary to what He has for them in the
afterlife.”39
c) God gives people their reins; that is, “He prolongs their life, happi-
ness, and influence, so that when they have felt peaceful and secure
He can suddenly doom them.”40
d) When God said: “And when We would destroy a township We send
commandment to its folk who live at ease, and afterward they com-
mit abomination therein, and so the Word (of doom) hath effect for
it,” He had willed the destruction of the township. But lest God’s
folk held an allegation against what He had willed, He resorted to
cunning. Thus, He ordered the township folk, who lived at ease, to
act sinfully and go astray so that it would appear to all that they had
deserved such destruction, when the truth of the matter is not so.
In his famous book Qut al-Qulub, Abu Talib al-Makki explains the idea of
divine cunning by tying it clearly to divine testing of people:
He related to us on the authority of Abu Muhammad Sahl, said he:

I perceived as if I had been ushered into paradise where I met three
hundred prophets. I asked them: What was the most frightening thing
you ever dreaded in life on earth? They said to me: An evil ending out
213
Chapter 10.indd 213 12/10/10 3:39 PM

of God’s cunning which is indescribable, indiscernible, and inscrutable.

God’s cunning is infinite, because His will and His judgments have no
purpose. An example of that is the famous account about the Prophet
and Gabriel who both wept out of fear of God. God revealed to them the
following: Why do you cry when I have secured you? They said to Him:
But who is secure from Your cunning? Had they not known that His
cunning was infinite because his judgment has no purpose they would
not have said to Him: but who is secure from Your cunning? Although
He had said to them that He had secured them. His reassuring words
should have ended His cunning, and they should have seen the end
of His cunning, but they were afraid from the rest of His cunning that
was concealed from them. It was as though they were afraid that His
words: “I have secured you against my cunning” were also a cunning
on His part. They were afraid that He was testing them as He did with
His companion Abraham, when the mangonel catapulted him in midair
and Abraham said: “Sufficient unto me is God, my Lord.” Gabriel inter-
vened with him asking, do you need anything? Abraham answered no,
living up to his words: “Sufficient unto me is God”, thus confirming
word with deed.41
We can state, after this quick review of the idea of divine cunning that
the good will that God had shown Iblis was different from the fate, pre-
dicament, and ending He had willed and harbored for him. That is to
say, God practiced His cunning against Iblis by ordering him outwardly
to prostrate himself before Adam while inwardly Willing him to disobey
the order so that He would have a pretext against him, to do anything He
wished to him, and carry through the fate he had preordained for him.
The order of trial, then, was only an instrument of divine cunning whose
objective was to execute the decrees of divine will and justify them before
His creatures. It will thus all look acceptable to them and they will not
have a pretext against Him for what He has done to them.
As Abu Talib al-Makki has said, there is no purpose to His will and to
His decrees. Divine cunning intervenes to make things appear to people
different from what they actually are, i.e., to make the divine will seem
as if it had objectives, justifications, and reasons. Accordingly, God prac-
ticed His cunning against the angels by making it appear to them as if
Iblis had been expelled from paradise for a notable reason, disobedi-
ence. Had it not been for this cunning arrangement, the angels would
214
Chapter 10.indd 214 12/10/10 3:39 PM

have regarded the expulsion of their chief [Iblis] an enormity greater

than the enormity of Him saying: “Lo! I am about to place a viceroy in
the earth.”
Furthermore, it would have been difficult for them to bear with the
decrees of divine will, or to face such decrees directly without the inter-
vention of that cunning and its justifications and explanations. That is
why God expelled him from paradise on the pretext of command and
interdiction, not on the plea of carrying out His will against him.
Similarly, it is more appropriate for people, from a practical point of
view, to believe that Iblis disobeyed His Lord’s order, and hence, he was
expelled on account of that rejection. For, if people were truly to believe
that God had preordained Iblis’ miserable destiny since eternity, their
minds would be unable to withstand the wisdom of such an act, and
they would lose their minds and would cease to believe in His justice
and mercy. I therefore believe that Imam al-Maqdisi was absolutely right
when he wrote the following about Iblis:
If someone erred, people would say Iblis made him fall into error. If
somebody forgot something, people would say Iblis made him forget.
If somebody did something wrong, they would say this is Iblis’ doing.
I am thus the bearer of sinners’ offenses, and the bearer of the heavy
burdens of the sinful.42
We have seen how Abu Talib al-Makki associated Abraham’s trial with
divine cunning, because when Abraham was about to fall into the fire,
he completely entrusted himself to God by saying: “Sufficient unto me
is God, my Lord.” God wanted to test Abraham’s adherence to His trust
(tawakkul), so He schemed against him by sending Gabriel to offer him
help. That is to say, God sent Gabriel to entice Abraham to renounce his
trust of God. But Abraham refused Gabriel’s help, passed the test, and the
fire thus became coolness and peace upon Abraham. Put differently, God
had since eternity willed Abraham to be one of the people of Paradise
and one of His pious prophets. He, therefore, tested him so that none of
His creatures would raise objections against Him for the kind of fate and
destiny that He had willed for Abraham.
As for Iblis, God had since eternity wanted him to be the teacher of
Oneness of God in the heavenly host and the teacher of evil and sin on
earth. That is why God tested Iblis and schemed against him so that none
215
Chapter 10.indd 215 12/10/10 3:39 PM

of His creatures would have a pretext against the miserable destiny that
He had willed for him.
Although God had since eternity decided who would be the people of
Paradise and who would be the people of Hell, He nevertheless sent mes-
sengers, revealed holy scriptures, filled them with command and interdic-
tion, and distinguished between halal and haram. He did that in order to
make it clear to His people that their happiness and misery depended on
their behavior and choices, on following His prophets, and on adhering to
His laws. As a result, they would have no pretext against Him regarding
the fate that He had preordained for them any way. For, “Allah verily send-
eth whom He will astray, and guideth whom He will,” and “He will not be
questioned as to that which He doeth, but they will be questioned” (Koran
21: 23). This means that God’s sending of messengers and holy scriptures
and His distinguishing between halal and haram are no more than tools of
His cunning in order to carry through the decrees He had already willed
for people. This is similar to the situation of the township that God wanted
to destroy, so He ordered its affluent folk to lead a dissolute life and to His
prolonging the good life of some people so they could further indulge in sin
and He would then inflict upon them a humiliating doom. Although Iblis
was compelled by God’s wisdom and was totally powerless and helpless
vis-à-vis His Lord, God did not carry out His will against him and damn
him until after He cunningly tested him by ordering him to lay prostrate
before Adam. It thus appeared to everyone that Iblis was responsible for
his act and therefore deserved that punishment.
We have repeatedly contended that God was the creator of good
and evil, as indicated by the following holy tradition: “God, may He be
exalted, says: there is no deity besides me. I created good and preordained
it. Blessed are those whom I created to do good, created good for them,
and caused them to do good. I am God and there is no deity but I. I cre-
ated evil and preordained it. Woe unto those whom I created to do evil,
created evil for them, and caused them to do evil.”43
It is due to His cunning that people believe the opposite of that and
attribute faults and shameful deeds either to themselves, as Adam did
when he said: “Our Lord! We have wronged ourselves,” or to Iblis’
deception and temptation. It is also God’s cunning that leads people to
ascribe good, justice, and mercy to Him, as Adam did when he said, “If
Thou forgive us not and have not mercy on us, surely we are of the lost!”
In addition to that, it is proper for people, from a practical point of view,
216
Chapter 10.indd 216 12/10/10 3:39 PM

to generally believe that God has an enemy, the cursed Iblis, the source
of all evil, error, and sin. Because were they truly to believe that God was
the source of all their disasters and afflictions, their minds would not be
able to endure such fact, they would lose their minds, and disbelieve in
God and his blessings.
Imam al-Maqdisi wrote the following in the name of Iblis:
And now, God has made me the reason for the existence of error, and
the cause of betaking command and interdiction. In reality, there is
no cause for His command, no consequence for His judgment, no
reason for the distancing of His enemies and no relevance to the close-
ness of His saints. God Almighty is not in need of His creatures. He is
self-existent. He is the caretaker of His people. The good deeds of the
doers of good are of no use to Him, nor do the misdeeds of the evil-
doers harm Him. His command was carried out; His judgment was
executed. His pen went dry with what exists in His Kingdom. . . . If He
willed, He would punish; and if He willed, He would pardon. He does
not have to confirm His threats. He alone is the master of His threats.
It is up to Him to punish for no reason or to make happy for no rela-
tion or gain.44
If Adam could ascribe fault to himself or to Iblis who tempted him and
to ask his God for forgiveness and mercy in keeping with Jesus’ counsel:
“Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is
God’s,” to whom should Iblis ascribe his disobedience and refusal? Or as
Iblis himself said, “Since I am Adam’s Iblis, I wonder who is my Iblis?”45
Naturally, Iblis referred his refusal to its real and ultimate source by say-
ing: “Now, because Thou hast sent me astray”, thus giving unto God that
which is God’s, and gave nothing unto Caesar (Adam), because Caesar
owned absolutely nothing as far as Iblis was concerned. And Caesar had
no power or strength to have anything ascribed to him.
If we were to elaborate on a comparison between Adam’s position and
that of Iblis, we would discover that if Iblis was the first tragic hero in
the universe, then Adam was the first opportunist. That is because Adam
refused to take a definite position vis-à-vis the contradiction between the
divine command and the divine will, prompted by a desire for salvation at
any cost, as evidenced by his reply which we have already cited. If it turns
out at the end of time that the divine command is correct and Adam is
217
Chapter 10.indd 217 12/10/10 3:39 PM

really responsible for his own disobedience, Adam would have, then, con-
fessed to his guilt and asked for God’s pardon when he said: “Our Lord!
We have wronged ourselves”, thus keeping open the chance of salvation
on this side of the choice. At the same time, if the divine will turns out to
be correct, and Adam is not really responsible for his disobedience, He
would have again saved himself by resigning himself to the will of God
and trusting all to his mercy and forgiveness (like Abraham) in adding: “If
Thou forgive us not and have not mercy on us, surely we are of the lost.”
In other words, when Adam referred the action to himself and assumed
responsibility for his disobedience by saying: “Our Lord! We have wronged
ourselves,” he acted as a free-willist and as such disavowed that God had
preordained that injustice and willed it for him. But, when Adam added: “If
Thou forgive us not and have not mercy on us, surely we are of the lost!”
he acted as a predestinarian clinging to divine mercy which is connected to
divine will, and as such disavowed responsibility for the injustice, because
in this case God would have predetermined since eternity whether He was
going to have mercy on Adam or to punish him. Meanwhile, the injustice
would be God’s pretext against Adam (in case he wanted to punish him in
eternity), and Adam would have no pretext against His Lord. Thus, Adam
tried, out of precaution, to save himself through both free-willism and pre-
destinarianism at one and the same time, since he was not certain which one
would ultimately turn out correct.
As for Iblis, he took a definite position by saying: “Now, because Thou
hast sent me astray,” referring nothing to himself but rather referring
everything to its real source, the divine will. By so doing, Iblis was a sin-
cere predestinarian and did not try to take advantage of free will as Adam
did for his own safety and salvation.
Some legists have refused to ascribe imperfection to divine will. They
contend that Iblis is the source of evil and the creator of sin (macsiyah),46
deeming God too exalted for creating evil and preordaining it for His
people. This opinion (ijtihad) is more in conformity with philosophical
theories that influenced Muslim thinkers than with the purely religious
approach to the subject. Since we are now treating Iblis’ character and
position in the universe on a purely religious level, we cannot adopt the
aforementioned opinion, especially that it attributes to Iblis not only the
ability to distort and to cause mischief but also to create and originate.
This is unacceptable from a religious point of view. If Iblis had wanted to
create sin, God would have been capable of preventing it. Since God did
218
Chapter 10.indd 218 12/10/10 3:39 PM

not prevent it, we can then deduce that the existence of sin is in confor-
mity with His eternal will.
5) We have already cited Abu Talib al-Makki’s statement that “the end is
of God’s cunning, which is indescribable, indiscernible, and inscruta-
ble.” This should remind us of the ultimate end that I forecast for Iblis
when I said that God will reward him for passing the divine test and
will return him to Paradise when this universal drama nears its conclu-
sion. Following are the reasons and considerations that have prompted
me to conclude that Iblis’ end will be a happy and satisfactory one:
• Iblis’ tenacious adherence to the reality of Oneness was unparalleled.

Therefore, he cannot come to an end in Hell, in accordance with the
holy hadith that states: “God, may He be exalted, said: I am God. There
is no deity but I. Whoever acknowledges my Oneness shall enter My
bastion, and whoever enters my bastion shall be secure from My pun-
ishment.”47
• Iblis passed God’s test and patiently endured the disaster that befell
him as a result. Therefore, his ultimate reward is guaranteed, as indi-
cated by the holy hadith that states: “God, may He be exalted, said: If
I test one of my believing creatures and he praises Me and patiently
endures My affliction, he shall awaken as free of sin as when his
mother gave birth to him. God will say to His scribes (hafazah): I have
shackled this slave of Mine and tested him, so [you must] reward him
as you used to before the test.”48
• Had it not been for this foreseen happy ending for Iblis, his ending
would have been a real and ultimate tragedy, which cannot be accepted
by religion’s logic, as we have already seen. Since the ultimate end is
of God’s cunning, He made Abraham and Job believe that the result
of their test would be contrary to what it actually was and contrary to
the result that God had wanted it to be. That is to say, the decrees that
God had shown Abraham and Job at the beginning of the test were
different from the ones He had harbored for them regarding its end-
ing. This assumption applies to Iblis, since God’s cunning requires that
Iblis firmly believe that his end will not be anything but miserable and
desperate. We thus deduce that Iblis’ damnation was not an expression
219
Chapter 10.indd 219 12/10/10 3:39 PM

of the real end which God had willed for him but was divine cunning
whose objective was to carry out the decrees of His will against him.
Let us suppose for the sake of the argument that I am right about what
I said regarding the reality of Iblis, his end, and his final destiny. What
consequences does such a supposition entail with respect to our personal
view of Iblis?
First, I believe that we must drastically modify our traditional view
of Iblis and effect a crucial change in our conception of his character and
position. Secondly, we must rehabilitate him to his true position: that of
an angel who has wholeheartedly and in all sincerity devoted himself to
the service of his God and who has carried out the decrees of His will with
utmost care and precision. Lastly, we must desist from heaping abuse
and insults on him, forgive him, seek forgiveness for him, and ask people
to think well of him, after we have falsely and slanderously made him
responsible for all faults and abominations.
I feel also that it is my duty to warn you that forgiving Iblis and reha-
bilitating him issue in significant consequences that do not immediately
occur to all. Such a step obliges us to change many of our religious views
and traditional beliefs about this worldly life and the hereafter. In order
to give you a simple idea about the grave consequences that a pardon
of Iblis might entail, I shall quote a funny and beautiful story written by
Tawfiq al-Hakim, “al-Shahid” (“The Martyr”).
Tawfiq al-Hakim relates in his story that Iblis decided one day to turn
to God in repentance and to refrain from wrongdoing so that he could
dedicate himself to doing good and to following the right path. Iblis
went to the Rector of al-Azhar to repent at his hands and embrace The
True Religion (Islam) with his guidance. The following dialogue ensued
between Iblis and the Rector of al-Azhar:
“Satan becoming a believer? This is great, but . . . ”
“What? Is it not the right of people to embrace God’s religion in

droves? Is not the following verse in God’s Holy Book: ‘Then hymn the
praises of thy Lord, and seek forgiveness of Him’? Here I am! I hymn
God’s praises and seek His forgiveness. I want to embrace His religion
in all purity and sincerity. I want to become a Muslim, a good Muslim,
and I want to be an example for those who follow the right path.”
220
Chapter 10.indd 220 12/10/10 3:39 PM

The Rector of al-Azhar began to ponder the consequences. If Satan were

to become a Muslim, how would the Koran be recited? Could people still
say: “I seek refuge in God from accursed Satan”? If this verse were to be
abrogated, then it would follow that most verses of the Koran would have
to be abrogated. Cursing Satan and warning people against his evil deeds,
abominations, and temptation do occupy a sizable proportion of God’s
Book. How could the Rector of al-Azhar accept Satan’s embracing of Islam
without damaging the whole structure of Islam? The Rector of al-Azhar
raised his head, looked at Iblis, and said, “You have come to me with some-
thing I have no power over. This is far beyond my authority and capability.
I do not have what you seek. I am not the right authority in this matter.”
“Then to whom should I go? Are you not the chiefs of The Religion?
How then do I reach God? Is that not what those who want to draw
near God do?”
The Rector of al-Azhar kept silent for a moment, scratched his beard,
and said: “You have good intentions. There is no doubt about that! But
despite all that, I must tell you frankly that my specialty is to lift high
the word of Islam and to preserve the glory of al-Azhar. It is not my
specialty to put my hand in yours.”
In other words, the Rector of al-Azhar realized the necessity of Iblis’

existence for the promotion of religion and for preserving its institutions.
Were Satan to disappear, religion’s existence and continuity would be
unnecessary and unjustifiable. And as Al-Hakim says in the same story:
“How can Iblis be erased without the extinction of all those images,
myths, meanings, and themes that have saturated people’s hearts and
stimulated their imaginations? What would be the significance of the
‘Day of Judgment’” if evil were erased from the face of the earth? Would
the adherents of Satan who had followed him before his belief in Islam
be punished? Or would their misdeeds be erased so long as Iblis’ repen-
tance had been accepted?”
After Iblis despaired of the Rector of al-Azhar, he went directly to

Heaven and spoke with Gabriel. Iblis asked Gabriel to intercede with
God for him so he could obtain forgiveness and acceptance of his repen-
tance. The following dialog took place between Iblis and Gabriel:
“Yes, indeed! But your disappearance from the earth would bring down
pillars and shake walls, would obliterate features and confuse lineaments,
221
Chapter 10.indd 221 12/10/10 3:39 PM

would efface colors and destroy traits. Virtue has no meaning without the
existence of vice . . . no meaning for right without wrong, for good without
bad, or white without black, or light without darkness, or good without
evil. Only through your darkness can people see God’s light. Your pres-
ence on earth is necessary so long as earth remains a place of descent for
those sublime attributes that God has bestowed on his human creatures!”
“My existence is essential for the presence of good itself? My dark

soul should remain dark so it can reflect God’s light? I shall be content
with my loathsome lot for the sake of preserving good and for the sake
of God’s purity. But would people’s wrath still pursue me and damna-
tion be stuck to my name despite the noble intentions and the good faith
that reside in my heart?”
“Yes! You must remain cursed until the end of time. If damnation
were removed from you, then everything would collapse.”
“I beg your forgiveness, O God! Why do I have to bear this onerous

burden? Why was I given this frightful fate? Why don’t You make me
now one of Your simple angels so I can be allowed to love You and love
Your light, and be rewarded for such love with compassion from You
and praise from people? Here I am! My love for You is incomparable
and nonpareil. My love for you requires this sacrifice which is not per-
ceived by angels nor is known to people. My love for You compels me
to accept wearing the cloak of disobedience against You and to appear
as if I were rebelling against You. My love for You necessitates that
I endure Your damnation and people’s curse of me. A love, You do not
allow me even the honor of claiming, or the joy of associating with? A
love, if concealed by ascetics, would fill their hearts with light. I conceal
that love, but its light refuses to approach my heart.”
“Iblis wept, left Heaven in obedience and descended to earth in total

submission. But a suppressed sigh burst out of his breast as he pen-
etrated the sky; a sigh reechoed by the stars and celestial bodies. It was
as though the stars and celestial bodies had banded together to utter
that bleeding scream:
“I am a Martyr! . . . I am a Martyr! . . . ””
222
Chapter 10.indd 222 12/10/10 3:39 PM

NOTES
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
1. Delivered at the Asia-Africa Institute of the University of Hamburg, 23 June
2005, on the occasion of receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the Faculty of
the University.
2. Hasan Hanafi, Introduction to the Science of Istighrab (Occidentalism), Al-Dar
Al-Fanniya, Cairo, 1991 (881 pages).
3. Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Free
Association Books, London, 1987.
4. For Hanafi’s reply see the Egyptian weekly magazine Al-Musawwar, 16 May
1997. For ‘Asfour’s critical assessment see Al-Hayat newspaper, 7 July 1997.
5. Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its
Enemies, Penguin Press, New York, 2004.
6. See Adonis’ collection of essays published under the title: Fatiha li Nihayat
al-Qarn, Dar Al-‘Awda, Beirut, 1980, pp. 212–240. Adonis confuses on purpose
the two senses of “modernity” in Arabic, (Hadatha), i.e., modernity in general
and modernism as a literary movement of the twentieth century.
7. See my essay, “Islamic Fundamentalism Reconsidered: A Critical Outline of
Problems, Ideas and Approaches,” South Asia Bulletin: Comparative Studies of
South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, vol. 13, no. 1–2, 1993 and vol. 14, no. 1,
1994.
8. This point is also noted and discussed by the British author and critic Jonathan
Raban in his book, My Holy War: Dispatches from the Home Front, New York
Review of Books Inc., New York, 2006, pp. 36–39.
9. Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism, Verso, London, 2002.
10. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, 2001.
11. Salmna Rushdie, “In Good Faith: A Pen Against the Sword,” Newsweek,
12 February 1990.
12. Jonathan Raban, Arabia through the Looking-Glass, Fontana/Collins, Glasgow,
1980, p. 19.
13. William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, Penguin Books, London, 1995 (first
published, 1930).
14. Daryush Shayegan, Cultural Schizophrenia: Islamic Societies Confronting the West,
Al-Saqi Books, London, 1992, p. 4.
223
Notes.indd 223 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
15. Malise Ruthven, Islam in the World, Oxford University Press, New York, 1984,
p. 111.
16. Leila Ahmed, A Border Passage: From Cairo to America – A Woman’s Journey,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1999, pp. 127–28.
17. Seven Types of Ambuguity, p. 24.
18. Stuart Chase, The Tyranny of Words, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938.
19. Ibid.
20. Charles Kay Ogden and Ivor Armstrong Richards, The Meaning of Meaning,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1956 (first published 1923).
21. Arabia Through the Looking-Glass, pp. 18–19.
22. See his The Specter of Marx.
23. See Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, University of Chicago Press, 1972.
24. Edward Said, Orientalism, Vintage Books, New York, 1979, p. 321.
25. The Spirit of Terrorism, pp. 77–79.
26. Hadi Al-‘Alawi’s articles on the subject (in Arabic) are to be found in the
Palestinian weekly magazine Al-Hurriyah, Damascus, 9 March 1988, 29 July
1990 and 3 March 1993. See also my book in Arabic: Beyond the Tabooing
Mentality: Reading the Satanic Verses, Dar Al-Mada, Damascus, 1997, pp. 53–109,
414–422.
27. Al-Hilal Books No. 465, Cairo 1989. See also Beyond the Tabooing Mentality,
pp. 85–107.
CHAPTER 2
1. Our translation of the Arabic text. The excellent English translation by Roger
Allen does not succeed here in expressing the actual cultural distance that
separates the two speakers as can be grasped in the original text.
CHAPTER 3
1. See for example, Laudan’s (1984) Science and Values.

2. Said devoted several pages of his 1978 Orientalism, in the chapter “Orientalism
Now”, to a critique of Lewis (see Said, 2003, pp. 314–320).
3. However, this is not to suggest that the two are equivalent. Sadik’s (1981)
Marxist critique of Said’s “post-modernist” Orientalism, is a case in point.
4. To quote Said (2003, pp. 106–107): “What we now need, said Gibb is the tradi-
tional Orientalist plus a good social scientist working together: between them
the two will do ‘interdisciplinary’ work.”
5. To quote Gellner (1992, pp. 46–47): “ . . . in social anthropology fieldwork
became increasingly more difficult and uncomfortable. Under the colonial
system, the widely employed method of indirect rule preserved neat, conspic-
uous, ritually highlighted social structures; but in the post-colonial world the
existence of archaic structures was frequently denied by the new authorities,
224
Notes.indd 224 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
and local administrators were hostile to extraneous researchers. Their ideol-

ogy precluded the recognition of archaic structures, their interests were threat-
ened by the presence of independent outsiders, free to report whatever they
liked. The disillusion with the scientistic aspiration and the inconveniences,
conceptual and political, of trying to find things out on the ground made it
terribly attractive to turn to hermeneutic-relativist-subjectivism.”
6. See for instance Said’s ‘Travelling Theory’ in The Edward Said Reader,
pp. 195–217.
7. I have in mind for example, Winstedt’s non-essentialist view on Malay
indolence, where he ascribed Malay indolence to a feudal social and power
structure in which peasants are not materially rewarded for hard work. See
Winstedt (1961).
8. For example the remarks made by Syed Naguib Al-Attas (1993) on Islam
(Sufism) in the Malay world, on how Sufism was responsible for inculcating a
rational attitude among the Malays. Naguib (1993, p. 173) wrote: “Islam came
to the Archipelago couched in Sufi metaphysics. It was through tasawwuf that
the highly intellectual and rationalistic religious spirit entered the receptive
minds of the people, effecting a rise of rationalism and intellectualism not
manifested in pre-Islamic times. This emergence of rationalism and intellec-
tualism can be viewed as the powerful spirit that set in motion the process
of revolutionizing the Malay-Indonesian worldview, turning it away from a
crumbling world of mythology . . . to the world of intelligence, reason and
order.” Although it is true that Islam has to some extent replaced magical and
animistic beliefs among the Malays, Naguib’s remarks about Sufism inculcat-
ing a rational attitude among the Malays, seems to me untenable, in view
of the mystical world-view which it holds, and its ‘supra-natural’ approach
toward causality.
9. Foucault in fact compared his enterprise – which is an analysis of the history
of thought – with that of Kant’s critique of reason, but with the difference that
his interest is in the socio-historical, and not the conceptual or logical a priori.
(See Hanne Andersen, 2001, p. 13)
10. See endnote no. 11 in this chapter, on this point.
11. To quote Lewis (1982, p. 48): “ . . . Mr. Said represents Orientalism as an imperi-
alist by-product, in which the British and French provided the material and set
the tone, and in which the Germans and others did no more than “elaborate”
on the “major steps” of their British and French predecessors. But if Arabic
studies in Germany, and for that matter in Holland, began as early as in France
and earlier than in Britain, and moreover reached at least an equal level of
competence and originality, without any imperial Arab connection, his thesis
falls to the ground.”
12. In fact the Syrian scholar Sadik J. Al-Azm wrote an article with a similar title.
See his “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse,” in Khamsin, vol. 8, 1981,
pp. 5–26. In the article Sadik criticized Said for what he calls Said’s ‘Reverse
Orientalism’, in which scholars like Said, who wrote on the Occident, make
225
Notes.indd 225 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
the same kind of mistakes which the western scholar writing on the Orient
made. In his critique of Edward Said, Sadik took a leftist position, defend-
ing Marx against Said’s ‘bourgeoise’ critique of Marx, with its priviledging
of the epistemological/mental/superstructure, over the economic base/insti-
tutions. In fact the journal Khamsin in which Sadik’s article was published,
has the full title, Khamsin: Journal of revolutionary socialists of the Middle East,
indicating its leftist orientation. But regardless of its leftist leanings, Sadik’s
critique of Said was fair-minded, and was not overtly ideological to the point
of bias. In fact Sadik was quite right in pointing out Said’s over-emphasis on
the ‘epistemological’, at the expense of the economic-institutional, in his anal-
ysis of the impact of Orientalism on colonized states. As for Sadik’s Marxist
philosophy, a similar assessment was made by the historian of Islamic phi-
losophy, Majid Fakhry (2004, p. 391) when he wrote: “A serious attempt at
expounding and defending Marxist doctrine is contained in a book written
by a Syrian intellectual, Sadik J. Al-‘Azm, entitled Critique of Religious Thought
(1969). In this book, Al-‘Azm examines the ‘supernaturalism’ of traditional
thought and argues that it is incompatible with the modern scientific outlook
. . . The author’s viewpoint is identified with the ‘scientific, materialist concep-
tion of the world and its evolution,’ reducible according to him, to dialectical
materialism which marks the culmination of the whole scientific and philo-
sophical evolution of human thought.”
13. For a more detailed account of Zakariyya’s views on Muslim intellectuals in
general, see Zakariyya (2005).
PART TWO
CHAPTER 5
1. Sussan Siavoshi: “Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears
of Conspiracy.” (Review). IJMES, vol. 30, pp. 272–274, 1998, quotations
pp. 272/274.
2. Farideh Farhi: “Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of
Conspiracy.” (Review). IJMES, vol. 31, pp. 454–457, 1999, quotations
pp. 454/457.
3. E.g. Rebecca Moore: “Reconstructing Reality: Conspiracy Theories about
Jonestown.” Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 200–220, 2002, citation
p. 203, also to be found as prepublication on the internet: http://jonestown.
sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Articles/conspiracy.htm – (21 June 2005).
4. Paul Taylor: “Reuters, 11 April 2003”, Baghdad’s Easy Fall Fuels Arab Conspiracy
Theories. http://www.drumbeat.mlaterz.net/April%202003/Arab%20con-
spiracy%20theories%20fueled%20041103a.htm – (15 June 2005).
5. MEMRI (The Middle East Media Research Institute): Special Report 08. Januar
2002, p. 1.
226
Notes.indd 226 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
6. Cf Hannes Stein’s “Praise of Conspiracy Theories”: “Wenn Sie mich fragen,

aus welcher Quelle die Konspirationstheorien besonders reichlich sprudeln,
dann antworte ich ohne Zögern: aus dem Internet. Dieses Medium ist wie
für sie gemacht [. . .]. Es gibt sogar eine Website, mit deren Hilfe Sie sich
Verschwörungs-theorien nach Gusto auf den Leib schneidern lassen können!
Man gibt bei ‘Turn Left’ eine ethnische Minorität, einen abstrakten Begriff und
ein bedeutsames historisches Ereignis und noch ein paar andere Daten ein”
(Endlich Nichtdenker! Handbuch für den überforderten Intellektuellen (mit prak-
tischen Übungen), Berlin: Eichborn, 2004, p. 114)
7. Hizb-ut-Tahrir: The Crusader’s Animosity, p. 2. http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.
org/english/books/state/chapter_41.html – (15 June 2005).
8. “[. . .] their [the Internet conspiracists’, KH] meat and potatoes is exploiting
rumours, innuendos and wild stories.” (Moore: “Reconstructing Reality”,
p. 209. Moore uses “conspiracism” and “conspiracist” as synonym for “con-
spiracy theory” and a respectively a personalised phrase, e.g. pp. 202, 205.)
9. Rudolf Jaworski: “Verschwörungstheorien aus psychologischer und aus his-
torischer Sicht”, Verschwörungstheorien: anthropologische Konstanten. Hrsg. von
Ute Caumanns und Mathias Niendorf, Osnabrück, 2001, pp. 11–30, cf. p. 14:
“Verschwörungstheorien weisen wiederum fließende Übergänge zu anderen
massenpsychologisch relevanten und verwandten Erscheinungen auf wie
z.B. zu Gerüchten, Verratsvorstellungen [. . .].”
10. Jean-Noël Kapferer: Gerüchte: das älteste Massenmedium der Welt, Leipzig,
1996, p. 343. (Rumeurs, les plus vieux média du monde, first published in Paris,
1985, rev. ed. 1995; I saw the paperback edition of 1987). I could not see
the American translation by Bruce Fink (Rumours: Uses, Interpretation and
Necessity, 1990).
11. Bassam Tibi: “Der importierte Hass”, Die Zeit, vol. 7, 2003.
12. Bassam Tibi: Die Verschwörung, Hamburg, 1994, p. 147 (If not indicated other-
wise, my translations).
13. Die Verschwörung, Hamburg, 1994, p. 29.
14. Tibi characterises Islamic “fundamentalism” as failed attempts to modernise
in many publications.
15. Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe: From the Waldensians
to the French Revolution, Barry Coward and Julian Swann (eds.), Aldershot, 2004.
16. Thomsen, Christian W.: “‘Man-Eating’ and the Myth of the ‘New World’:
Anthropological, Pictorial, and Literary Variants”, In: Changing Conceptions of
Conspiracy, Carl F. Graumann and Serge Moscovici (eds.), New York: Springer,
1987, pp. 39–70.
17. Niklas, Luhmann: “Kausalität im Süden”, Soziale Systeme, vol. 1, no.1, pp. 7–28,
1995, citation pp. 17–18.
18. “Kausalität im Süden”, p. 28.
19. Daniel Pipes: “Dealing with Middle Eastern Conspiracy Theories.” Orbis: A
Journal of World Affairs, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 41–56, 1992, citation p. 42, also to be
found on the internet: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/214 – (15 June 2005).
227
Notes.indd 227 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
20. Daniel Pipes: The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy, 2nd ed.,
New York, 1998.
21. The Hidden Hand, p. 10.
22. The Hidden Hand, p. 377/378.
23. Daniel Pipes: Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes
from. New York, 1997.
24. Conspiracy, pp.14–15.
25. Conspiracy, pp.144–146.
26. “Reconstructing Reality”, p. 209.
27. Cf. “Pipes gives us the profile of a conspiracy theorist and by inference the
profile of a Muslim Middle Easterner. this person, according to the author,
is humorless, politically extremist, self-centered, and non-analytical [. . .].”
(Siavoshi: “Daniel Pipes” p. 273.) In my opinion, the hypothesis that lacking
humour is a kind of defining characteristic of Islamists or fanatics in general
is a projection.
28. The German title is “Lexikon der Verschwörungstheorien” (2nd ed. available
in 2004).
29. Jaworski: “Verschwörungstheorien”, cf. p. 15: “Der Verlockung, sich von
einem grenzenlosen Entlarvungseifer hinreißen zu lassen, hat auch Daniel
Pipes nicht ganz widerstehen können.”
30. Hidden Hand, p. xi. Pipes quotes Laqueur that conspiracist-terrorists are
“neither funny nor tragic”, so they are lacking a sense of humour (Conspiracy,
p. 26). I think this reflects on the researcher’s state of mind after the initial
stage of fascination.
31. Daniel Pipes and Hilal Khashan: “Diana and Arab Conspiracy”, Weekly
Standard, 10 November 1997. http://www.danielpipes.org/article/290 –
(15 June 2005).
32. There are other concepts that might work in the same way as well. You could
reduce the methodological problems in other fields of research if you decide to
abandon conspiracism and the associated problems of falsehood, modernity
etc. whereever you do not really need this concept. E.g. modern magic and
witchcraft are discussed in terms of conspiracism by several ethnographers in:
Transparency and Conspiracy, Harry G. West and Todd Sanders (eds), Durham,
London: Duke University Press, 2003. A recently published book concentrates
on intrigues as a literary device and mentions conspiracism of global scale
under the heading “Weltintrigen” (“world intrigues”). Cf. Peter von Matt: Die
Intrige: Theorie und Praxis der Hinterlist, München, Wien: Hanser, 2006, Chapter
xxvii: “Der Weltintrigant”, pp. 245–250. Von Matt characterises the imagined
world intrigues as counterdrafts to the world of science (p. 245).
33. Kapferer argues against the “psychiatrisation de la rumeur”, Rumeurs,
pp. 19–22.
34. Daniel Hellinger quotes Anita Waters’ recommendation “that we reserve
judgement on the truth of conspiracy theories and employ an ethnosociologi-
cal approach.” Daniel Hellinger: “Paranoia, Conspiracy, and Hegemony in
228
Notes.indd 228 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
American Politics”, In: Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion

in the New World Order, Harry G. West and Todd Sanders (eds.), Durham NC,
2003, pp. 204–232, cf. p. 208. Cf. Lars-Broder Keil and Sven Felix Kellerhoff:
Gerüchte machen Geschichte: folgenreiche Falschmeldungen im 20. Jahrhundert,
Berlin: Links, 2006. The authors underline the virtues of rumours as “false
reports” in some cases of German history, e.g. the fall of the Berlin Wall.
35. Cf. Karin Hörner: “Der Begriff Feindbild, Ursachen und Abwehr,” Das Schwert
des Experten. Hrsg. von Verena Klemm, Karin Hörner (eds), Heidelberg:
Palmyra, 1993, pp.34–43. Cf. Hans-Joachim Neubauer: Fama: eine Geschichte
des Gerüchts, Berlin: Matthes & Seitz, rev. ed. 2009 [1st ed. 1998]. The ambiguous
title indicates Neubauer’s approach: rumours are anonymous and notorious.
36. Sadik J. Al-Azm: “The View from Damaskus,” in: The New York Review of Books,
47 (2000), Nr. 10 (June 15), pp. 70–77, citation p. 70, also to be found on the
internet: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/46 – (20 June 2005).
CHAPTER 6
1. The term “conspiracism” is perhaps most relevant here; thus its prominence
ahead of competing terms such as “conspiracy theories”, “conspiracy theo-
rizing”, or “conspiracy rhetoric”. “Conspiracism” implies a broader, yet, for
the purposes of this discussion, a more precise definition that encompasses
both the trend of developing “conspiracy theories” and the use of “conspiracy
rhetoric”. In effect, it is the act of using conspiracy theories, for whatever pur-
pose. By implication “conspiracism” covers a broad set of conspiracist actors
(the state, political elites, political leaderships, social forces, and marginalized
or disenfranchised individuals, among others). Arabic language uses the term
naz ariyyah al–mu’ã marah to apply both literally to a “conspiracy theory” and
also to “conspiracism” in the sense meant here, even though there is no exact
Arabic equivalent for “conspiracism”.
2. This is especially true of the sequel to his first book (Ostrovsky, 1994) where
the claims and allegations he makes border, at times, on the absurd. The book
also provides greater detail on his dismissal from Mossad as a case officer,
which he effectively blames on an internal conspiracy against him.
3. “Arab Nationalism here is taken to be a sense of shared, secular identity
among peoples considering themselves to have a common sense of ‘Arab’
ethnos, developing initially out of the works of (often Christian) intellectuals,
including George Antonius, Nasif al-Yaziji and Butrus al-Bustani, and later
developed by more politically–active individuals such as Michel ’Aflaq, the
Damascene Christian founder of the Ba’ath Party which would later rule
Syria (1963–) and Iraq (1968–2003). Under an ideological conglomeration that
would later become known as ‘Nasserism’, the Egyptian leader Gamal abd
al-Nasser (president 1954–1970) became the leading figure in the Arab World
– he was at his popular political peak from 1956 to 1967 – and a key espouser
229
Notes.indd 229 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
of Arab Nationalism. In contrast, Pan–Arabism is taken here to be an ideology

that moves beyond Arab Nationalism to not only call for ‘unity’ among Arabs
based on their shared ethnos, but also the creation of a single, Arab nation–state
in the Middle East. In Arabic the term al-qawmiyya al-’arabiyya, literally mean-
ing ‘Arab Nationalism’ is used essentially interchangeably for both terms.”
4. The term al-infitãh al-intãji could also be read as “industrial opening” or
“industrial reform” but has the meaning here of a “productive al-infitãh”.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 7
1. M. Thalib and Haris Fajar, Dialog Bung Karno-A.Hassan (Jakarta: Sumber Ilmu,
1985).
2. Nurcholish Madjid, Islam, Kemodernan dan Keindonesiaan (Bandung: Mizan,
1989); M. Rasjidi, Koreksi terhadap Drs. Nurcholish Madjid tentang Sekularaisasi
(Jakarta: Bulan Bintang, 1972); Bachtiar Effendy, Islam dan Negara: Transformasi
Pemikiran dan Praktik Politik Islam di Indonesia (Jakarta: Paramadina, 1998);
Allan Samson, “Indonesian Islam since the New Order” in Readings on Islam
in Southeast Asia, compiled by Ahmad Ibrahim, Sharon Siddique and Yasmin
Hussain (Singapore: ISEAS, 1985), p. 167; Harun Nasution, Islam Ditinjau
dari Berbagai Aspeknya (Jakarta: UI Press, 1986); Abdurrahman Wahid, “The
Nahdlatul Ulama and Islam in Present Day Indonesia” in Taufiq Abdullah
and Sharon Siddique (eds.) Islam and Society in Southeast Asia (Singapore:
ISEAS, 1988), pp. 175–185.
3. Ridwan Saidi, Menggugat Gerakan Pembaruan Keagamaan (Jakarta: SIP, 1995).
4. Daud Rasyid, “Meluruskan Akidah, Menangkal Muktazilah” in Saidi,
Menggugat, pp. 240–243.
5. www.Islamlib.com; Gatra, 1 December 2001.
6. Among the Radios; Radio Attahiriyah FM (Jakarta), Radio Muara FM (Jakarta),
Radio Star FM (Tangerang), Radio Ria FM (Depok), Radio Smart (Manado),
Radio DMS (maluku), Radio Unisi (Yogya), Radio PTPN (Solo), Radio Mara
(Bandung), Radio Prima FM (Aceh).
7. For DDII, see R.William Liddle, Islam, Politik dan Modernisasi (Jakarta: Pustaka
Sinar Harapan, 1997), p. 37; Liddle, Media Dakwah Scripturalism: One Form of
Islamic Political Thought and Action in New Order Indonesia, cf., Greg Barton,
Gagasan Islam Liberal di Indonesia (Jakarta: Paramadina, 1999), p. 33.
8. Adian Husaini, Islam Liberal: Sejarah, Konsepsi, Penyimpangan dan Jawabannya
(Jakarta: Gema Insani Press, 2002); Adnin Armas, Pengaruh Kristen-Orientalis
terhadap Islam Liberal (Jakarta: Gema Insani Press, 2003); Hartono A. Jaiz,
Menangkal Bahaya JIL & FLA (Jakarta: Pustaka al-Kautsar, 2004).
9. Husaini, Islam Liberal, pp. 81–221; Armas, Pengaruh, pp. 23–98; Jaiz, Menangkal,
pp. 27–50.
230
Notes.indd 230 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
10. Charlez Kurzman (ed.), Wacana Islam Liberal, Pemikiran Islam Kontemporer
tentang Isu-isu Global (Jakarta: Paramadina, 2001).
11. Budhy Munawar Rahman, “Mengembalikan Kerukunan Umat Beragama” in
Republika, 24 June 2000; Sukidi, “Teologi Inklusif Cak Nur”, Kompas, 2001.
12. Husaini, Islam Liberal, p. 130.
13. Ibid.
14. Tempo, 19–25 November 2001.
15. Armas, Pengaruh, pp. 32–34.
16. Compare with Ulil Abshar Abdallah, “Menyegarkan Kembali Pemahaman
Islam” in Kompas, 18 November 2002.
17. See Ibid.
18. Armas, Pengaruh, pp. 32–33.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Husaini, Islam Liberal, p. 171.
23. See www.islamlib.com. 2001; Armas, Pengaruh, pp. 3–22.
24. Armas, Pengaruh.
25. See Husaini, Islam Liberal, p. 6.
26. Jaiz, Menangkal Bahaya, pp. 54–55.
27. Husaini, Islam Liberal, pp. 13–14.
28. Jaiz, Menangkal Bahaya, pp. 18–26; 27–38; 87–100; 143–165;245–251; 288–290;
Husaini, Islam Liberal, pp. 1–40; 81–128; 169–200.
29. Husaini, Islam Liberal, p. 110 and p. 122.
30. Iskandar P. Nugraha, Mengikis Batas Timur dan Barat: Gerakan Theosofi dan
Nasionalisme Indonesia (Jakarta: Komunitas Bambu, 2001), pp. 47–62.
31. Husaini, Islam Liberal, pp. 123–124.
32. Ibid.
33. Sidik Jatnika, Gerakan Zionis Berwajah Melayu (?, 2001), p. 196.
34. Cf. Husaini, Islam Liberal, pp. 122–123.
35. Compare with Todd D. Nelson, The Psychology of Prejudice (Boston: Allyn and
Bacon, 2002) pp. 7–9; see also Calvin S. Hall and Lindsay Gardner, Psikologi
Kepribadian (Yogya: Penerbit Kanisius, 1978), pp. 245–248.
CHAPTER 8
1. I would like to thank Schirin Fathi and Christian Oesterheld for their com-
ments on this paper. All remaining errors and mistakes are of course in my
own responsibility.
2. For an overview on the debates of Orientalism cf. MacFie (2000).
3. This paper is not so much concerned with content-related aspects of Indonesian
violence. For a qualitative discussion of publications on violence in Indonesia
cf. Purdue (2004).
4. KITLV Collections Library (2005), http://www.kitlv.nl/home/Library/.
231
Notes.indd 231 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
5. For an introduction into the modern history of insular Southeast Asia, includ-
ing Indonesia, cf. Tarling (2001).
6. For an introduction into the debates on Sino-Malay literature cf. for example
Lombard (1990) and Maier (1990).
7. For a contemporary Indonesian rendition of that war cf. Wiwi Kusliah
(1999).
8. The publication of 1936 is a translation of a German-language book of 1932.
9. A good impression of Indonesian perceptions of this period can be obtained
from the reports in the press. Cf. Andi Suwirta (2000) for a study of the newspa-
pers Merdeka (Jakarta) and Kedaulatan Rakyat (Yogyakarta), from 1945 to 1947.
10. For an Indonesian account of the importance of the Renville agreement for
Indonesian independence cf. for instance Tobing (1986).
11. For a more detailed discussion of the concept of “Pax neerlandica” cf. Moedjanto
(2003).
12. Statistisches Bundesamt (1993, p. 44).
13. This book is the result of an exploratory journey of the author to vari-
ous European Orientalist institutions as well as to a number of countries
in the Muslim world. It features a theoretical discussion of the concepts of
Orientalism and Occidentalism, as well as a detailed account of the specific
histories of Islamic studies in Europe and the US, by country and institution.
14. Cf. Cribb (1990).
15. For aspects of that state violence cf. e.g. Cribb (2000) and Siegel (1998).
16. Purdue relates here to Coppel (2001).
17. For a critical analysis of the research agenda of the Cornell school cf. Philpott
(2000).
CHAPTER 9
1. I would like to thank Arndt Graf for many invaluable suggestions and hours
of intensive discussions.
2. Ali Banuazizi in “Letter from the President” in: Middle East Studies Association
Newsletter, May 2005: 3.
3. The past three quotes have been taken from http://www.aljazeerah.info/
Opinion%20editorials/2003%20Opinion%20Editorials/May/ consulted on
3 June 2005.
4. http://web.archive.org/web/20050326085210/http:/www.arabmediawatch.
com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=436, last accessed April
18, 2010.
5. In a letter from Yigal Carmon to Juan Cole, dated 8 November 2004 and to
be found under Tuesday, 23 November 2004, “Intimidation by Israeli-Linked
Organization Aimed at US Academic – MEMRI tries a SLAPP” on Juan
Cole’s weblog: http://www.juancole.com/2004_11_01_juancole_archive.
html, consulted 4 June 2005.
232
Notes.indd 232 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
6. Doing research on this paper, I contacted the MEMRI office in Berlin in order
to acquire firsthand information, particularly as this was used as a major point
of critique on part of MEMRI when confronting their critics. There were three
or four exploratory phone conversations with Mr. Jochen Müller and Mr.
Wahied Wahdat-Hagh in early to mid-June 2005. When subsequently there
is talk of conversations with or information obtained from MEMRI staff in
Berlin, reference is always to these phone conversations.
7. Phone conversation with Mr. Yigal Carmon on 20 June 2005, approx. 5–6 pm
Hamburg time. This and all following reference to Mr. Carmon’s views are
based on this phone conversation and ensuing email correspondence, until
otherwise noted.
8. For example: “An Israeli center said to be specialized in Mid Eastern studies
was opened in the occupied Iraqi capital Baghdad, in a provocative move
seen by Iraqi academics as the beginning of an Israeli scheme to infiltrate the
Iraqi society. ‘Israel opened its center on 1 August at a large rented building
in Abu Nawaas St. overlooking The Tigris river,’ they told IslamOnline.net
Friday, 15 August. The sources, who requested anonymity, said that the center
has already started operation, noting that it was the first Israeli center operat-
ing publicly in Baghdad since its downfall on 9 April. The heavily guarded
building, they said, obtained work permits from the U.S. occupation author-
ity in Iraq and the Pentagon. The Iraqis sources said the center is affiliated
to the Washington-based MEMRI (short for the Middle East Media Research
Institute), an Israeli association set up five years ago, with offshoots in
London, Berlin and West Jerusalem.” Reactions among Iraqi intellectuals were
sampled, among them: “Israel’s underground goals in the Middle East are not
a secret; this center is, in effect, a façade for intelligence and security bodies
orchestrated by the Mossad (Israel’s intelligence service)” . . . The academic
urged the U.S.-handpicked interim Iraqi Governing Council to immediately
shut down the Israeli center in Baghdad ‘because it will penetrate our security.
. . . It is breaking our hearts to see the Israeli Mossad in Bahdad, the citadel of
Arabs’, . . . ‘Israel will never fulfill its much-pursued dream of establishing a
(Jewish) state from the Euphrates to the River Nile as long as the Arab nation
continues to give birth to heroes every day’ ”. Quoted in: http://www.islam-
online.net/English/News/2003-08/16/article02.shtml, last consulted on 22
June 2005.
9. It should be noted that since the presentation of this paper there has been an
overhaul of the German web presence of MEMRI. It would be immodest to
see a causal relationship to my paper, but it is conspicuous that some of the
recurrently criticized issues have been addressed.
10. For example: the Meyerhoff Foundation supports a project called ELEM –
Youth in Distress in Israel – part of the Schusterman Foundation’s mission
statement reads: “The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation
is dedicated to helping the Jewish people flourish by supporting pro-
grams throughout the world that spread the joy of Jewish living, giving
233
Notes.indd 233 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
and learning”. The Cohen Foundation’s mission is to “provide quality

Jewish summer camps” while the Koret Foundation has a focus on Jewish
Life and Culture that consists of the Koret Jewish Book Awards, the Koret
Jewish Studies Publication Programme, the Young Writer on Jewish Themes
Award and the Koret Synagogue Initiative, apart form a section on Israel
where its “funding has primarily focused on economic expansion and
higher education”.
11. According to an organization called “People for the American Way” and
its “Right Wing Watch” “Bradley has made right-wing inroads in academia
by establishing chairmanship positions, undergraduate and graduate pro-
grams, fellowships, and whole departments at many prestigious universi-
ties. . . . It also has supported and in some cases, had to defend controversial
right-wing recipients of their grants, particularly Charles Murray and David
Brock. Murray, author of ‘The Bell Curve,’ which argues that intelligence is
predicated on race, and ‘Losing Ground,’ whose thesis is that social programs
should be abolished.” Quoted in: http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/
default.aspx?oid=11219#1, last consulted on 22 June 2005.
12. The approximate number of permanent staff was also supplied by Mr. Carmon
in the above-mentioned telephone conversation.
13. Kirchner, in a very detailed study that can be found in full in the internet and
in a slightly altered way, due to a legal suit in inamo has described the politi-
cal and military past of Colonel Carmon. Kirchner, H. “Yigal Carmon – Ein
Leben für die Besatzung.Die politische Biographie des MEMRI-Präsidenten
und Gründers Yigal Carmon” in: inamo 32: 2002.
14. Melman, Y., “Don’t Confuse us with Facts – How Israeli Military Intelligence
botched Assessments of Arafat” In: Ha’aretz, 16 August 2002.
15. made in a private email exchange with me on 16 June 2005. Translations are
mine.
16. For example by Kirchner, Cole and Whitaker.
17. As quoted in: Beder, S. 1995 “SLAPPs – Strategic Lawsuits Against Public
Participation: Coming to a Controversy Near You” Current Affairs Bulletin
72/3: 22–29.
18. ManÁÝ, H. 2004 “Al-ÝÀdÁ’ al-SÁmÐya wal-ÍuqÙq al-InsanÐya” In: http://
www.aljazeera.net/KnowledgeGate/aspx/print.htm, consulted 7 June 2005.
19. These are projects that were being run as of June 2005 and were found on the
English website. The German website has additional and alternative issues
and is in the process of revamping their internet appearance.
20. Carmon, Y. 2003 “Harbingers of Change in the Antisemitic Discourse in
the Arab World” In: MEMRI – Inquiry and Analysis Series, No. 135, 23 April
2003.
21. For example, see Solnick, A. 2003 “An Israeli Arab Initiative to Visit Auschwitz”
In: Inquiry and Analysis Series – No. 136 that takes the visit as a pretext to dis-
cuss all the negative reactions which fall into the usual stereotypical line.
22. in Cole’s weblog, see above.
234
Notes.indd 234 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
23. See for more info the articles on MEMRI by Whitaker, Kirchner and also
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/memri. consulted on 20
May 2005. The archived site can be found under http://web.archive.org/
web/19990220054656/www.MEMRI.org/about.html. Last consulted on 16
June 2005.
24. As quoted in a recently published pamphlet in German (translations are mine),
whose purpose seems to advocate the new emphases of MEMRI. MEMRI 2005
Aus arabischen Medien – Gesellschaftskritische Stimmen im Nahen und Mittleren
Osten, Berlin: iz3w und MEMRI.
25. Dr. Jochen Müller of MEMRI Berlin in stated phone conversation with me.
26. MEMRI Special Dispatch, 31 März 2005, “Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: Interview
zur Arbeit von MEMRI und zu Scheich Al-Qaradawi”. I could not find an
English version of this interview and thus provide the original German ver-
sion here: “Direkt oder indirekt diene Memri den Arabern sogar, indem es
die irreführenden arabischen Stimmen, auf ihre Irrtümer hinweise und die
positiven Stimmen fördere. Auf diese Weise, so Carmon, würde deutlich, dass
‘ja nicht alle Araber wie Osama Bin Laden oder Zarqawi sind’.”
CHAPTER 10
1. Translated from the Arabic by Dr. Mansour Ajam, this essay was originally
delivered as a lecture at the Arab Cultural Club, Beirut, Lebanon, 10 December
1965, and shortly after at al-Muntada al-Ijtima’i (the Social Club) in Damascus,
Syria. An abridged version appeared in the monthly journal Hiwar (Beirut,
January 1966). See also the journal of the Arab Cultural Club, al-Thaqafah
al-cArabiyyah No.2, February 1966. Reprinted in my book Naqd al-Fikr al-Dini
(Critique of Religious Thought), Tali’a Publications, first printing, Beirut 1969.
Texts, views, and ideas marginal to and/or marginalized in Islam’s traditional
grand narrative have been intentionally brought center stage in this lecture.
The heavy rhetorical lecture form was maintained on purpose (author’s note).
2. The translation of the Koran used in this English translation of Al-Azm’s arti-
cle is that of Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious
Koran, Penguin, a Mentor book (no date). (Translator’s note).
3. This derivation of the name “Iblis”from “Iblas”was really an arbitrary fab-
rication of the Egyptian author and thinker Abbas Mahmoud Al-‘Aqqad in
order to Arabize the word “Iblis” and work around its manifest connection
to “Diabolos”. To the best of my knowledge the fabrication and derivation are
baseless. See ‘Aqqad’s book “Iblis”, Kitab Al-Yawm, Published by Dar Akhbar
Al-Yawm, Cairo, 1955 (author’s note).
4. Imam Jamal al-Din ibn al-Jawzi Talbis Iblis, Ed. Muhammad Munir
al-Dimashqi, Al-Nahdah Publishing House, Cairo, 1928.
5. Ibid., pp. 39–44, 65, 73, 82–83.
6. Ibid., pp. 164–165.
235
Notes.indd 235 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
7. Ibid., pp. 45–47.

8. Ibid., p. 126.
9. Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human
Culture, Doubleday & Co., New York, 1953, pp. 102–103.
10. Izz al-Din al-Maqdisi,Taflis Iblis, Matbacat Madrasat Walidat Abbas al-Awwal
(Cairo, 1906), p. 11.
11. Al-Tabari, in his famous Tafsir of the Koran, related the following myth, which
is of great significance to the subject of this essay: God sent Gabriel to Earth to
fetch some clay. The Earth said, “God forbid that you should diminish me or
disfigure me. So Gabriel did not take anything and returned to God, saying,
“O God, the Earth sought your protection so I granted it to it. Then God sent
Michael to do the same thing. The Earth sought God’s protection and Michael
granted it to Earth. Michael returned to God and reported the same answer
as Gabriel’s, whereupon God sent the Angel of Death and Earth sought God’s
protection, the same as she had done the previous two times. The Angel of
Death said, “I too seek refuge in God that I should go back to him without
executing his order. So the Angel of Death took some soil from different parts
of the surface of the Earth – red, white, and black soil. That is the reason why
the sons of Adam are so different. (Tafsir al-Tabari, Ed. Mahmud Muhammad
Shakir, Dar al-Macarif Cairo, vol. 1, p. 459). This story represents the difference
between will and command. God ordered both Gabriel and Michael to bring
him some soil but God willed that the order be fulfilled by the Angel of Death.
So God received what he had willed.
12. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 475.
13. Taflis Iblis, p. 15.
14. Al Hallaj, “Tasin al-Azal wa-’l-Iltibas” in Kitab al-Tawasin, Ed. Louis Massignon
(Paris, 1913).
15. “Tasin al-Azal wa-’l-Iltibas”.
16. Ibid.
17. Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad, Iblis, Kital Al-Yawm, Published by Dar Akhbar
Al-Yawm, Cairo, 1955.
18. Ibid., p. 148.
19. Kitab al-Tawasin, Introduction, pp. 11–12.
21. A group of mujtahidun (legists) say that the son that Abraham was ordered
to slay was Isaaq, while others say it was Ishmael. Al-Tabari discussed the
opinions and arguments of the two groups in his Tafsir and adopted the opin-
ion of those who said it was Isaaq. I shall follow al-Tabari’s conclusion. Tafsir
al-Tabari, old edition, Al-Matbacah al-Maymaniyyah (Egypt), vol. 8 part 3,
p. 49.
22. Kierkegaard considers Abraham’s recovery of his son Isaaq a special religious
ending that elevates the story of Abraham above the level of tragedy in its
known literary sense. For him, Abraham’s persona has surpassed by leagues
the tragic heroes found in world literature. In reality, the story of Abraham
236
Notes.indd 236 15/10/10 6:28 PM

NOTES
falls completely short of reaching the status of tragedy, and his character
remains well below that of the tragic hero for the reasons mentioned above.
24. Sophocles, The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1977, p. 321.
25. Ibid., p. 349.
26. “Tasin al-Azal wa-’l-Iltibas”
27. Taflis Iblis, pp. 36, 37.
28. al-Isharat al-Ilahiyyah, Ed. Abd al-Rahman Badawi (Cairo, 1950), pp. 80–82.
29. Shaykh Muhammad al-Madani, al-Ittihafat al-Saniyyah fi ’l-Ahadith ’l-Qudsiyyah
(Haidarabad, 1258 A.H.), p. 87.
30. “Tasin al-Azal wa-’l-Iltibas”.
31. al-Isharat al-Ilahiyyah, p. 81.
33. Taflis Iblis, pp. 21–22.
36. Ibid., pp. 22–23.
37. al-Ittihafat al-Saniyya fi ’l-Ahadith al-Qudsiyya, p. 68.
38. Tafsir al-Tabari, vol. 1, pp. 301–302.
39. Ibid., p. 303.
40. Ibid., vol. 7, pp. 421–423.
41. Qut al-Qulub (Food for the Hearts), vol. 1, p. 229.
44. Taflis Iblis, pp. 38–39.
45. Ibid., p. 16.
46. Tafsir al-Tabari, vol. 1, pp. 477–488, 508
48. Ibid., p. 10.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. We examined and compiled the bibliographic data mostly from library records.
This is the reason why several articles are listed without page numbers.
237
Notes.indd 237 15/10/10 6:28 PM

Notes.indd 238 15/10/10 6:28 PM
PERSONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF SADIK J. AL-AZM
based on his own handlist, compiled by Karin Hörner and Tanja Strube
BOOKS
1966
، ‫ الطبعة الثالثة‬.١٩٦٦ ، ‫ منشورات اجلامعة األميركية‬: ‫ " بيروت‬، ‫"دراسات في الفلسفة الغربية احلديثة‬
.١٩٧٩ ‫ دار العودة‬: ‫بيروت‬
(Studies in Modern Western Philosophy, Beirut: American University of
Beirut Publications, 1966.)
1967
Kant’s Theory of Time, New York: Philosophical Library, 1967.
1968
‫ دار‬: ‫ دمشق‬، ‫ الطبعة اخلامسة‬.١٩٦٨ ، ‫ منشورات نزار قباني‬: ‫ بيروت‬، "‫"في احلب واحلب العذري‬
.٢٠٠١ ، ‫املدى‬
(Of Love and Arabic Courtly Love, Beirut: Nizar Kabbani Publications,
1968.)
.١٩٧٤ ، ‫ الطبعة العاشرة‬، ١٩٦٨ ، ‫ دار الطليعة‬: ‫ بيروت‬، "‫"النقد الذاتي بعد الهزمية‬
(Self Criticism after the Defeat, Beirut: Tali’a Publications, 1968.)
1969
، ‫ الطبعة العاشرة‬، ١٩٨٢ ، ‫ الطبعة اخلامسة‬، ١٩٦٩ ، ‫ دارالطليعة‬: ‫ بيروت‬، "‫"نقد الفكر الديني‬
.١٩٩٨
(Critique of Religious Thought, Beirut: Tali’a Publications, 1969.)
239
Bibliography.indd 239 10/6/10 7:20 AM

PERSONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SADIK J. AL-AZM
1970
. ١٩٧٠، ‫ دار الطليعة‬: ‫ بيروت‬، "‫"دراسات يسارية حول القضية الفلسطينية‬

(Leftist Studies of the Palestinian Problem, Beirut: Tali’a Publications,
1970.)
1972
The Origins of Kant’s Arguments in the Antinomies, Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1972.
1973
.١٩٧٣ ، ‫ دار العودة‬: ‫ بيروت‬، "‫"دراسة نقدية لفكر املقاومة لفلسطينية‬

(A Critical Study of the Palestinian Resistance Movement, Beirut: Al-Awdah
Publications, 1973.)
1975
.١٩٧٥ ، ‫ دار العودة‬: ‫ بيروت‬، "‫"الصهيونية والصراع الطبقي‬

(Zionism and the Class Struggle, Beirut: Al-Awdah Publications,
1975.)
1977
.١٩٧٧ ، ‫ دارالطليعة‬: ‫ بيروت‬، " ’‫"سياسة كارتر ومنظرو ’احلقبة السعودية‬

(Carter’s Policies and the Ideologues of the Saudi Era, Beirut: Tali’a
1978
.١٩٧٨ ، ‫ دار الطليعة‬: ‫ بيروت‬، "‫"زيارة السادات وبؤس السالم العادل‬

(Sadat’s Visits and the Poverty of the Just Peace, Beirut: Tali’a Publications,
1978.)
1980
Four Philosophical Essays, Damascus: University Publications, 1980.
240

1981
Politics of Religion in the Middle East, London: Ithaca Press, 1981.
.١٩٨١ ، ‫ دار احلداثة‬: ‫ بيروت‬، "‫"االستشراق واالستشراق معكوسا‬

(Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse, Beirut: Al-Hadatha Publications,
1981.)
.١٩٨١ ، ‫ منشورات جامعة‬: ‫ دمشق‬، "‫"قراءات في الفكر السياسي املعاصر‬

(Readings in Contemporary Political Thought, Damascus: University
.١٩٨١ ، ‫ منشورات جامعة‬: ‫ دمشق‬، "‫"مناهج البحث في العلوم الطبيعية‬

(The Methods of Scientific Inquiry in the Natural Sciences, Damascus:
University Publications, 1981.)
1990
.١٩٩٠ ، ‫ دار الفارابي‬: ‫ بيروت‬، "‫"دفاعا عن املادية والتاريخ‬

(Materialism and History: A Defense, Beirut: Farabi Publications,
1990.)
1991
‫ العربية‬: ‫ تونس‬، ) ‫ محمد بن احمودة‬، ‫اثر الثورة الفرنسية في فكر النهضة ( مع مصطفى التواتي‬
.١٩٩١ ، ‫محمد علي احلامي‬
(The Impact of the French Revolution on the Idea of al-Nahda, Tunis:
Al-Arabiya, 1991.)
1992
.١٩٩٢ ، ‫ رياض الريس للكتب والنشر‬: ‫بيروت‬/‫ لندن‬، "‫"ذهنية التحرمي سلمان رشدي وحقيقة األدب‬
‫ الطبعة‬.١٩٩٧ ، ‫ الطبعة الثالثة‬.١٩٩٤ ، ‫ دار املدى‬: ‫ دمشق‬، ‫الطبعة الثانية مع ردود النقاد وتعليقاتهم‬
.٢٠٠٢ ، ‫الرابعة‬
(The Tabooing Mentality: Salman Rushdie and the Truth of Literature,
London/Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 1992.)
English Translation: Themental Taboo: Salman Rushdie and the Truth
within Literature, London: Qubrus, 1992.
241

Farsi translation:
.١٩٩٩ ، ‫ انتشارات سنبلة‬: ‫ هامبورغ‬، ‫"سلمان رشدي وحقيقة در ادبيات" ترجمة تراب حق شناس‬
1993
Unbehagen in der Moderne: Aufklärung im Islam, herausgegeben von

Â�Kai-Henning Gerlach, Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1993.
Dutch translation: Kritiek op godsdienst en wetenschap. Vijf essays over
islamitische cultuur, redacteur Ronald Kon, vertalen nit het Engels en Arabisch
door Sonja Alers, Amsterdam: El Hizjra, 1996.
Italian translation: L’Illuminismo islamico: Il Disagio della Civiltà, Roma:
Di Renzo, 2002.
1995
Mot Hevdvnne Sannheter: Et Korrektiv Til Oppfatninger om Islam

og Muslimer, red. og med forord av Gunvor Mejdell, oversatt Jan Tore
Knutsen, Ina Tin og Oliver Moystad, Oslo: Cappelen, 1995.
1997
‫ مركز الدراسات واملعلومات‬: ‫ القاهرة‬، "‫ حتديد نقدي للمشكالت واألفكار واملداخل‬: ‫"األصولية االسالمية‬
.١٩٩٧ ، ‫القانونية حلقوق االنسان‬
(Islamic Fundamentalism: a Critical Outline of Problems, Ideas and
Approaches, Cairo: Center for Legal Information and Studies about Human
Rights, 1997.)
‫ الطبعة‬، ١٩٩٧، ‫ دار املدى‬: ‫ دمشق‬، "‫ قراءة "اآليات الشيطاني َة" ر ّد وتعقيب‬: ‫"ما بعد ذهنية التحرمي‬
.2001 ‫الثانية‬
(Reading the Satanic Verses: a Reply to Critics, includes the whole debate
over “Salman Rushdieand the Truth of Literature”, Damascus: Al-Mada
1998
.١٩٩٨ ، ‫ مركز الدراسات واملعلومات القانونية حلقوق اإلنسان‬: ‫ القاهرة‬، "‫"العلمانية واملجتمع املدني‬
(Secularism, Civil Society and Other Essays, Cairo: Center for Legal
Information and Studies about Human Rights, 1998.)
242

1999
.٢٠٠٠ ، ‫ الطبعة الثانية‬، ١٩٩٩ ، ‫ دار الفكر‬: ‫ دمشق‬، ) ‫"ما العوملة؛" ( مع حسن حنفي‬
(What is Globalization? Damascus: Dar Al-Fikr, 1999.)
2004
Islam, Terrorism and the West Today, Amsterdam: Praemium Erasmianum

Foundation, 2004.
Il Mediterraneo: ancora mare nostrum? relazioni di Sadik J. Al-Azm (et
al.), a cura di Maurice Aymard, Giovanni Barberini, Sebastiano Maffettone,
Roma: LUISS University Press, 2004.
2005
Religie en Moderniteit/Religion and Modernity: Erasmusprijs

2004/(with Fatima Mernissi, Abdulkarim Soroush, Max Sparreboom),
Samenstelling: Max Sparreboom, Amsterdam: Praemium Erasmianum
Foundation, 2005.
Islam und säkularer Humanismus/Islam and Secular Humanism,
übersetzt von Alexandra Riebe, herausgegeben von Eilert Herms,
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005.
ARTICLES
1964
‫ ص‬، ٩٠ ‫ عدد‬،١٩٦٤ ، ) ‫ بونيو ( حزيران‬، ) ‫ املجلة ( القاهرة‬، "‫"نظريات الزمان في فلسفة كنط‬
.٣٧–٢٤
(“Kant’s Theories of Space”, The Review, Cairo, 90, 1964, June, pp.Â€24–37.)
1965
.١٩٦٥ ‫ أيار‬، ) ‫ الثقافة العربية ( بيروت‬، "‫"الثقافة العلمية واالعتقاد الديني‬

(“Scientific Culture and Religious Belief”, Al-Thaqafa Al-Arabiya, Beirut,
1965, May.)
243

1966
١٥٣. -– ١٤٨ ‫ ص‬،١٩٦٦ ، ‫ متوز ـ آب‬، ) ‫ حوار ( بيروت‬، "‫"الدروز في كتابني‬

(“The Druzes in Two Books”, Dialogue, Beirut, 23, 1966, July–August,
pp. 148–153.)
.٢ ‫ عدد‬، ١٩٦٦ ‫ كانون الثاني ـ شباط‬، ) ‫ حوار ( بيروت‬، "‫"مأساة إبليس‬

(“The Tragedy of Satan”, Dialogue, Beirut, 2, 1966, January–February,
pp. 5–28.)
.١٠٩–١٠٦ ‫ ص‬، ١٢٠ ‫ عدد‬، ١٩٦٦ ‫ ديسمبر‬، ) ‫ املجلة ( القاهرة‬، "‫"املعجم الفلسفي‬
(“The Philosophical Dictionary”, The Review, Cairo, 120, 1966,
December, pp. 106–109.)
‫ ص‬،١٩٦٦، ٢٩ ‫ عدد‬، ‫ أكتوبر‬، ) ‫ مجلة الكتاب العربي ( القاهرة‬، "‫"رأي في املصطلحات الفلسفية‬
.٥٩–٥٩
(“An Opinion about Technical Philosophical Terms”, The Arab Review of
Books, Cairo, 29, 1966, October, pp. 51–59.)
1967
“Whitehead’s Notions of Order and Freedom”, The Personalist:

International Review of Philosophy, Religion and Literature, University of
Southern California, 48, 1967, 4, pp. 579–591.
.١٩٦٧ ‫ شباط‬٦ ، )‫ ملحق النهاراألسبوعي (بيروت‬، "‫"الفكر االسالمي املعاصر‬

(“Contemporary Muslim Thought”, Al-Nahar Sunday Supplement,
Beirut, 1967, 6 February.)
.١٩٦٧ ‫ حزيران‬٤ ، )‫(بيروت‬، ‫ ملحق النهار األسبوعي‬، "‫"الفكر املسيحي املعاصر‬

(“Contemporary Christian Thought”, Al-Nahar Sunday Supplement,
Beirut, 1967, 4 June.)
-١٦٦ ‫ ص‬١٩٦٧ ، ‫ اجلامعة األميركية في بيروت‬، ‫ كتاب العيد‬، " ‫"نظريات الزمان املبكرة في فلسفة كنط‬
.١٩٣–١٦٦ .١٩٣
(“The Early Theories of Time in the Philosophy of Kant”, Festival Book,
American University of Beirut, 1967, pp. 166–193.)
244

1968
“Absolute Space and Kant’s First Antinomy of Pure Reason”, Kant-

Studien, University of Köln, 2, 1968, pp. 151–164.
“Kant’s Conception of the Noumenon”, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical
Review, Queen’s University, 6, 1968, 4, pp. 516–520.
1969
.٣٣–٣٥ ‫ ص‬،١٩٦٩ ، ٦ ‫ عدد‬، )‫ مواقف (بيروت‬، "‫"خمس مالحظات على ثورة يوليو‬
(“Five Comments on the July 23 Revolution”, Mawaqif, Beirut, 6, 1969,
pp. 25–33.)
٧٩.–٤٥ ‫ ص‬،١٩٦٩ ، ٥ ‫ عدد‬، )‫ مواقف ( بيروت‬، "‫"نحو فهم أفضل للفكرة الصهيونية‬
(“Towards a Better Understanding of the Zionist Idea”, Mawaqif,
Beirut, 5, 1969, July–August, pp. 45–79.)
1970
.٤٩–٣ ‫ ص‬،١٩٧٠ ‫ كانون الثاني‬، ‫ دراسات عربية‬، "‫"العرب والنظرة املاركسية إلى املسالة اليهودية‬
(“The Arabs and the Marxist View of the Jewish Question”, Dirasat
Arabiya, Beirut, 1970, January, pp. 3–49.)
1972
‫ ص‬، ١٩٧٢ ‫ أيار‬، ٩ ‫ عدد‬، ‫ شؤون فلسطينية‬، "‫ النصوص األساسية‬: ‫"الفكرة الصهيونية‬
.١٥٥–١٥٢
(“The Zionist Idea: The Basic Texts”, Palestine Affairs, Beirut, 9, 1972,
May, pp. 152–155.)
، ١٩٧٢ ‫ حزيران‬، ١٠ ‫ عدد‬، ‫ شؤون فلسطينية‬، "١٩٦٧ ‫"كتب أجنبية حول معركة اخلامس من حزيران‬
.١٨٣–١٦٠‫ص‬
(“Foreign Books about the June 5 War”, Palestine Affairs, Beirut, 10,
1972, June, pp. 160–183.)
.٠٣٣-٢٠٠ ‫ ص‬، ١٩٧٢ ‫ آب‬، ١٢ ‫ عدد‬، ‫ شؤون فلسطينية‬، "‫"املاركسية والدولة الصهيونية‬
(“Marxism and the Zionist State”, Palestine Affairs, Beirut, 12, 1972,
August, pp. 200–203.)
245

.١٧٤–١٧٢ ‫ ص‬،١٩٧٢ ‫ متوز‬، ١١ ‫ عدد‬، ‫ شؤون فلسطينية‬، "‫ إعادة نظر‬: ‫"الصهيونية‬
(“Zionism Reconsidered”, Palestine Affairs, Beirut, 11, 1972, July,
pp.Â€172–174.)
.١٩٩–١٤٦ ‫ ص‬، ١٩٧٢ ‫ آب‬، ١٢ ‫ عدد‬، ‫ شؤون فلسطينية‬، "‫"الصهيونية في خمسة وسبعني عام ًا‬
(“Zionism after 75 years”, Palestine Affairs, Beirut, 12, 1972, August,
pp. 146–199.)
١٩٧٢ ‫ تشرين الثاني‬،١٥ ‫ عدد‬، ‫ شؤون فلسطينية‬، "‫"تيارات في السياسة العربية وعلم االجتماع العربي‬
.١٩٤–١٩١ ‫ ص‬،
(“Currents in Arab Politics and Sociology after June 1967”, Palestine
Affairs, Beirut, 15, 1972, November, pp. 191–194.)
1973
“The Palestinian Resistance Movement Reconsidered”, The Arabs

Today: Alternatives for Tomorrow, Forum Associates Inc. (Columbus/Ohio),
1973, pp. 121–135.
German translation: “Der palästinensische Widerstand neu durch-
dacht”, Die Dritte Welt, 3, 1974, 1–2, S. 164–178.
.٩٢–٧٣ ‫ ص‬، ١٩٧٣ ‫ نيسان‬، ) ‫ الثقافة العربية ( بيروت‬، ‫"حول ثقافة االستعمار وثقافة التخلف‬
(“On Colonial and Underdeveloped Culture”, Al-Thaqafa Al-Arabiya,
Beirut, 1973, April, pp. 73–92.)
1981
“Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse”, Khamsine, 8, 1981, pp.Â€5–25.

Reprinted in: Forbidden Agendas, London: Al Saqi Books, 1984.
1982
.٤٧-٤٧ ‫ ص‬، ١٩٨٢ ‫ شباط‬، ٤ ‫ عدد‬، ‫ بيروت‬، ‫ دراسات عربية‬، "‫"أدونيس والنقد املنفلت من عقالة‬
(“A Reply to Adonis”, Dirasat Arabiya, Beirut, 4, 1982, February,
pp.Â€47–74.)
.١١٧–١١٥ ‫ ص‬، ١٩٨٢ ، ٨ ‫ عدد‬، ) ‫ ( بيروت‬، ‫ شؤون فلسطينية‬، "‫"إسرائيل والفلسطينيون‬

(“Israel and the Palestinians”, Palestine Affairs, 11, 1972, July, pp. 115–117.)
246

1984
.١٩٨٤ ، ٢٠ ‫ حزيران‬، )‫ واألسئلة الفلسطينية الصعبة" السفير (بيروت‬٨٢ ‫"بيروت‬

(“Beirut 82 and the Difficult Palestinian Questions”, Assafir, Beirut,
1984, June 20.)
1985
‫ ص‬،١٩٨٥ ، ‫ تشرين الثاني ـ كانون األول‬، )‫ دراسات عربية (بيروت‬، "‫"حول الفلسفة احلديثة وتاريخها‬
.١١٧–٧٩
(“On Modern Philosophy and its History”, Dirasat Arabiya, Beirut,
1985, November–December, pp. 79–117.)
1986
.١٩٨٦ ، ‫ متوز‬٥ ، ‫السفير‬، "‫"البيان والتبيني في أحوال التخلف واملتخلفني‬

(“The Conditions of Underdevelopment and its Clarification”, Assafir,
Beirut, 1986, July 5.)
1988
“Palestinian Zionism”, Die Welt des Islams, 28, 1988, S. 90–98.
1991
“Der Friedensprozess und die Golfkrise: ein kritischer Standpunkt”,

Wir sind die Herren und ihr seid unsere Schuhputzer! Der Nahe Osten vor
und nach dem Golfkrieg, herausgegeben von Norbert Mattes, Dagyeli Verlag:
Frankfurt a. M. 1991, S. 182–195.
“The Importance of Being Earnest about Salman Rushdie”, Die Welt des
Islams, 31, 1991, S. 1–49.
German translation in: Lettre International, Berlin, 13, 1991, S. 12–21.
Italian translation in: Lettera Internazionale, Rome, 28, 1991, pp.
22–29.
Swedish translation: Upplysning är inte upplösning, Rabelais, Joyce,
Rushdie och den stridsglada moderniteten, översätting av Maria Ekman,
Stockholm : Svenska Rushdiekommitten, 1995.
247

Republished in: South Asia Bulletin, 11, 1991, 1–2, pp. 1–20, and in:
Reading Rushdie: Perspectives on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie, edited by D.
M. Fletcher, Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1994, pp. 255–292.
1992
“Krieg im Namen Gottes: Dschihad”, Zeit Magazin, 4, 1992, 17 January,

S. 12–20.
“Salman Rushdies Satanische Verse im muslimischen Kontext”,
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Jahrbuch 1990–1991, Berlin, 1992, S. 166–185.
“Wider den fundamentalistischen Ungeist”, Der Islam im Aufbruch?
Perspektiven der arabischen Welt, hrsg. Von Michael Luders, München: Piper
Verlag, 1992, S. 246–260.
1993
“Is the ‘Fatwa’ a fatwa?”, Arab Studies Journal, 1, 1993, 2, p. 3.
1994
“Islamic Fundamentalism Reconsidered: A Critical Outline of

Problems, Ideas and Approaches”, South Asia Bulletin, Part I: 13,Â€1993,Â€1–2,
pp.Â€93–121, Part II: 14, 1994, 1, pp. 73–98.
“Quelle Fatwa?”, Pour Rushdie, La Découverte, Paris 1993. Also in: For
Rushdie : essays by Arab and Muslim writers in defense of free speech,
Anouar Abdallah et al., New York: George Braziller, 1994.
1995
“‘I do want to play games!’: samtal med Sadik J. Al-Azm”, Al-Azm u.a.,
TfMS: Tidskrift for Mellanosternstudier, 2, 1995, pp. 46–54.
.١٩٩٥ ، ‫ شتاء‬، ٢ ‫ عدد‬، ‫ دمشق‬، ‫ النهج‬، "‫"االسالم والعلمانية‬

(“Islam and Secularism”, Al-Nahj, Damascus, 2, 1995, Winter.)
.١٩٩٥ ‫ صيف‬، ٤ ‫ عدد‬، ‫ دمشق‬، ‫ النهج‬، "‫"العلمانية واملجتمع ملدني‬

(“On Secularism and Civil Society”, Al-Nahj, Damascus, 4, 1995,
Summer.)
248

1996
“Fundamentalism in Comparison”, Political Prophets and the World,

Göteborg: The Swedish Rushdie Defence Committee, 1996.
“Is Islam Secularizable?”, Jahrbuch für Philosophie des Forschungsinstituts
für Philosophie Hannover, 7, 1996, S. 15–24.
Reprinted in: Civil Society, Democracy and the Muslim World, Swedish
Research Institute in Istanbul 1997.
Turkisch translation: “Sivil Toplum, Demokrasi ve Islam Dünyasi”,
yayna hazrlayan: E. Özdalga/S. Persson, Istanbul 1998.
“L’islam et la laïcité” traduction de M. Borrmans, in: Etudes Arabes:
Dossiers, 91–92, 1996–1997, pp. 161–189.
“The Satanic Verses as a Literary Manifestation”, Political Prophets
and the World, Göteborg: The Swedish Rushdie Defense Committee,
1996.
1999
“Sur l’Islam, la Laïcité et l’Occident”, Le Monde Diplomatique,

September 1999.
“Westliches Geschichtsdenken aus arabischer Perspektive”, Westliches
Geschichtsdenken: eine interkulturelle Debatte, herausgegeben von Jörn Rüsen,
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1999.
2000
“Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse”, Orientalism. A reader, edited

by Alexander L. Macfie, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000,
pp. 217–238.
“The Satanic Verses Post Festum: the global, the local, the literary”,
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 20, 2000, 1–2,
pp. 44–78.
Dutch translation: “De duivelsverzen post festum: mondiaal, lokaal,
literair”, in: Religie en Moderniteit (with Fatima Mernissi, Abdulkarim
Soroush), Samenstelling: Max Sparreboom, Breda: De Geus, 2004,
p.Â€78–147.
“Syrien und der Friedensprozess”, Lettre International, Berlin, Winter
2000, pp. 33–41.
249

“Owning the future: modern Arabs and Hamlet”, ISIM Newsletter, 5,

2000, p. 11.
“The View from Damascus: Syria and the Peace Process”, The New York
Review of Books, 47, 2000, 10, June 15, pp. 70–77.
“‘The View from Damascus’, cont’d.”, The New York Review of Books, 47,
2000, 13, August 10.
.٢٠٠٠ ‫ سبتمبر‬، ٢٠ ‫ عدد‬، ‫ القاهرة‬، ‫ وجهات نظر‬، "‫"سوريا والسالم‬

(“Syria and the Peace Process”, Weghat Nazar, Cairo, 20, 2000,
September.)
2003
“Globalization and Literature”, History, Culture and Society in India and

West Asia, edited by N. N. Vohra, Delhi: Shipra, 2003, pp. 179–196.
“Det universelle vs. det partikulaere – Tale Ved Princeton University”,
Kritik, 162, 2003, S.148–149.
2004
“Islam, Terrorism and the West today”, Die Welt des Islams, 44, 2004, 1,
pp. 114–128.
“Islam, Terrorismo ed Occidente oggi”, Il Mediterraneo: ancora mare
nostrum?, relazioni di Sadik J. Al-Azm (et al.), a cura di Maurice Aymard,
Giovanni Barberini, Sebastiano Maffettone, Roma : LUISS University
Press, 2004, pp. 79–98.
“Time Out of Joint: Western Dominance, Islamist Terror, and the
Arab Imagination”, Boston Review, October/November 2004, http://Â�
bostonreview.net/BR29.5/alazm.html (07.03.2006).
De Tragedie van de Duivel: op weg naar een liberale Islam, redacteur
Ronald E. Kon, vertalen nit het Engels en Arabisch Sonja Alers, Amsterdam:
Van Gennep/El Hizjra, 2004.
2005
“Dankwoord Sadik J. Al-Azm”, in: Religie en Moderniteit/Religion

and Modernity: Erasmusprijs 2004, Herman Beck (et al.), Amsterdam:
Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, 2005, pp. 56–57.
250

“Islam, Terrorism, and the West”, Comparative Studies of South Asia,

Africa and the Middle East, 25, 2005, 1, pp. 6–15.
“Die Zeit aus den Fugen. Westliche Vorherrschaft, islamistischer Terror
und die arabische Vorstellung”, Wespennest – Islam, 138, 2005.
BOOKS ABOUT SADIK J. AL-AZM
1970
، ‫ املكتب التجاري‬: ‫ بيروت‬، "‫ البرهان اليقيني للر ّد على كتاب "نقد الفكر الديني‬: ‫ جبر همزة‬، ‫فرج‬
.١٩٨٠ ، ‫ الطبعة الثانية‬، ١٩٧٠
(Farraj, Jabir Hamzah: The Positive Proof to Refute the Book, Critique
of Religious Thought)
.١٩٧٠ ، ‫ مؤسسة دار فلسطني‬: ‫ بيروت‬، ‫ الر ّد على صادق العظم‬: ‫ محمد‬، ‫نسر اهلل‬
(Nasr Allah, Muhammad Izzat: The Refutation of Sadik J. Al-Azm)
.١٩٧٠ ، ‫ دار الطلية‬: ‫ بيروت‬، "‫ على هامش "نقد الفكر الديني‬: ‫ عثمان إبن عبد القدير‬، ‫سفي‬
(Safi, Uthman ibn Abd al-Qadir: Notes to Critique of Religious Thought)
1971
١٩٧١. ، ‫ مطبع لبنان‬: ‫ بيروت‬، ‫ محمد حسن الياسني‬، "‫هوامش على كتاب "نقد الفكر الديني‬
(Notes on the Book, Critique of Religious Thought)
2003
.٢٠٠٣ ، ‫ دمشق دار املجد‬، ‫ بؤس احلقيقة في أدب سلمان رشدي و صادق العظم‬: ‫ أحمد‬، ‫عمران‬
(Umran, Ahmad: The Suffering of the Truth in the Literature of Salman
Rushdie and Sadik J. Al-Azm)
ARTICLES ABOUT SADIK J. AL-AZM
1994
Höpp, G.: “Verdient der Islam Dissidenten? Anmerkungen zu

Sadik J. Al-Azm, zur säkularisierten Moderne und zum islamischen
251

Fundamentalismus”, Asien, Afrika, Lateinamerika, 22, 1994, 6,

S.Â€637–651.
Lawrence, B. B.: “Tracking Fundamentalists and those who study them:
a Sequel to Sadik J. Al-Azm, ‘Islamic fundamentalism reconsideredâ•›.â•›.â•›.’”,
South Asia Bulletin, 14, 1994, 2, pp. 41–50.
Urvoy, M. T.: “Un philosophe arabe face á l’histoire de la pensée”,
Horizons Maghrébins, 25–26, 1994, pp. 83–98.
1995
Hallden, P.: “Kättaren fran Damaskus”, TfMS: Tidskrift for

Mellanosternstudier, 2, 1995, pp. 41–45.
2005
Meier, Christian: “Damaszener Feuerkopf. Mit ketzerischer Vernunft

dem Fundamentalismus zu Leibe rücken: Der syrische Philosoph Sadik J.
Al-Azm”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 169, 23. Juli 2005.
INTERVIEWS AND DISCUSSIONS
1993
“Rethinking the Middle East” (3 February 1993), one VHS tape,

recorded by the Fairfield University Media Center.
1997
Talhami, Ghada: “An Interview with Sadik J. Al-Azm”, Arab Studies

Quarterly, 19, 1997, 3, pp. 113–126.
.‫ تلفزيون اجلزيرة‬، )١٩٩٧.٥ .٢٧( ‫ يوسف القرضاوي‬-‫مناظرة صادق العظم‬

(Disputation between Sadik J. Al-Azm and Yusuf al-Qaradawi)
1998
Abu Fakhr, Saqr: “Trends in Arab thought: an Interview with Sadik J.

Al-Azm”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 27, 1988, 2, pp. 68–80.
252

1999
“An Interview”, The June 1967 War after Three Decades, William
W. Haddad (et al.), Washington, DC: Association of Arab-American
University Graduates, 1999.
2000
‫ املؤسسة العربية‬: )‫ صقر أبو فخر) (بيروت‬: ‫"حوار بال ضفاف مع صادق جالل العظم" (أجرى احلوار‬
.2000 ، ‫ الطبعة الثانية‬، 1998 ، ‫للدراسات والنشر‬
(A Dialogue without Boundaries with Sadik J. Al-Azm, conducted by
Saqr Abu-Fakhr)
2005
Meier, Christian: “Der arabischen Welt fehlt die kritische Masse. Ein
Gespräch mit dem syrischen Denker Sadik J. Al-Azm”, Neue Züricher
Zeitung, 23 August 2005.
253

INDEX
Adonis, 5, 12 Cold War, ix, 16, 53, 65, 66, 88

Afghanistan, xviii, 7, 20, 65, 115 Crusades, 15, 78, 79
Africa, xxi, 15, 56, 61, 85, 141, 142
Ahmed, Leila, 10, 224 Derrida, Jacques, xiii, 8, 13, 14, 224
Al-Alawi, Hadi, 22, 224
Al-’Azhar University, 4, 135, 220, 221 Egypt, 4, 6, 15, 23, 25, 30, 33, 34, 36, 38–44,
Alexander the Great, 15 66, 71, 77, 79, 81, 85, 109, 112–115, 121,
Al-Qaeda, 8 124, 125, 174, 223, 235, 236
America, 16, 17, 21, 24, 64, 65, 67, 138, Eliot, T. S., 4
147, 151, 153, 160 Empson, William, 9, 12, 223
American(s), 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 50, 65, English, xv, 9, 10, 12, 57, 74, 76, 78, 92,
88, 89, 95, 97, 102, 103, 109, 123–125, 105, 147, 166, 169, 171, 175, 234, 235
130, 139, 147, 152–154, 158, 160, 168, Enlightenment (or: counter-Enlighten-
170, 174, 177, 228, 233 ment), xiii, 4, 93, 165
Apostasy, 4 Essentialism (or: essentialist), 5, 53, 61,
Arabic, 3, 9–13, 20, 23, 25, 26, 30, 31, 35, 63, 64, 225
42, 43, 57, 71–73, 76, 78, 85, 93, 98,
Farsi, 24, 26, 28, 166–168
115, 132, 166–168, 175, 185, 223–225,
Faust, 10, 181
229, 235
Feminism, xii, 10, 93, 96, 134, 176
Arabs, 3, 15–18, 20, 22, 24, 43, 63, 76, 80,
Foucault, Michel, 4, 50, 52, 53, 58–60,
88–91, 93, 94, 96, 107, 112, 115, 123,
68, 97, 225
175, 176, 178, 233
French, 9, 12, 13, 17, 40, 57, 71, 72–74,
Aristotle, 15, 182
78, 81, 82, 84, 92, 101, 103, 124, 169,
’Asfour, Gaber, 4, 223
225, 227, 241
Baudrillard, Jean, 6, 7, 21, 223
Bergson, Henry, 10 German(s), xv, 20, 57, 61, 75, 79, 92, 101,
Bernal, Martin, 4, 223 169, 172, 177–178, 184, 225
Berque, Jacques, 9 Germany, xii, xv, xvi, 72, 73, 93, 101, 109,
British, 23, 27, 33, 40, 50, 72, 99, 108, 124, 150, 151, 160, 225, 228, 229, 231, 233, 234
170, 223, 225 Greek, 13, 37, 75, 194, 195
Buruma, Ian, 5, 6, 115, 123, 223
Byzantium, 15 Hamid Abuzaid, Nasr, 4
Hanafi, Hasan (or: Hassan), 3, 4, 115, 223
Cartesian, 9 Hannibal, 15
Chase, Stuart, 12, 224 Hardt, Michael, 8, 223
CIA, 19–21, 166 Hazard, Paul, 4
Civilization(s), 5–7, 29, 30, 32, 33, 38–40, Hebrew, 11, 75, 166, 168, 169
42, 46, 47, 64, 67, 68, 132, 141, 146, Heresy, 4, 25, 27
147, 159, 165, 182–184, 223 Huntington, Samuel, 29, 165
255
Index.indd 255 12/10/10 3:40 PM

INDEX
Ibda’, 5 Lukács, Georgi, 10

India, 14, 15, 25, 43, 56, 72, 83, 125, 141,
150, 250 Mahfouz, Naguib, 23
Indonesia(n), 56, 102, 129–139, 141–163, Malay(s), 68, 136, 144, 145, 156, 225, 232
225, 230, 231 Malaysia, 131, 155, 156
intelligentsia, 3 Margalit, Avishai, 5, 6, 115, 123, 223
Iran, 18, 23, 24, 26, 28, 64, 76, 108, 113, Marxism, xii, xiii, 19, 53, 59–61, 66, 109,
114, 117, 123, 125, 167, 175, 177 115, 224, 226, 245
Iranian(s), 18, 23, 108, 109, 167–169, 174 Mashreq, 15
Iraq, 23, 24, 26, 28, 65, 88, 94, 113, 117, Mecca, 6, 133
123, 168, 177, 229, 233 Media, vii, xx, 16, 24, 25, 89, 90, 92, 93,
Iraqi(s), 22, 168, 174, 175, 232, 233 95, 96, 98, 100, 102, 103, 110, 118, 120,
Islam, 6, 10, 11, 15, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 133, 135, 159, 165–175, 179, 180, 226,
26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 40, 227, 230, 232, 233
45, 50, 51, 59, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 74, 75, Mediterranean, 15, 21
76, 78, 79, 80, 83, 91, 93, 99, 112, 115, Mosad, 20
129, 130–135, 137, 138, 171, 176, 177, Muslim(s), 4–6, 11, 15, 20, 26, 27, 33, 34,
182, 220, 221, 224, 225, 229, 230, 231, 51, 66, 68, 80, 83, 88–96, 99, 101–103,
242, 243, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252 110, 115, 123, 130, 132, 134, 136, 141,
Islamic, 4, 20, 23, 29, 30, 32–38, 44, 49, 142, 167, 176, 181, 183, 187, 200, 218,
64–68, 71–73, 78, 83, 85, 86, 93, 96, 220, 221, 226, 228, 232
99, 102, 124, 129–137, 142, 148, 174, Mustafa, Shukri, 6
176–178, 182, 223, 225–227, 230, 232
Islamist(s), 4, 6, 23, 29, 64, 68, 90, 93, Negri, Antonio, 8, 223
103, 108, 111, 115, 123, 228 New Delhi, 14
Israel, ix, xi, xvi, 16, 17, 102, 108, 109, New York, 7, 19, 20, 86, 103, 123
111, 120, 166–171, 173–174, 177–180, Nietzsche, Friedrich, 8
232–234
Istighrab, 3, 223 Ottoman, 15, 107
Istishraq, 3
Italian, 23, 169 Pakistan, 26
Italy, 145 Palestinian(s), ix, xi, xii, xvii, 16, 17, 23,
90, 108, 112, 166, 168, 170, 171, 174,
Japan(ese), 19, 20, 143–145, 155, 157, 169 176, 224, 240, 246, 247
Jesuit(s), 22, 24, 77, 78 Persia(n), 25, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 80,
Jewish, viii, xii, 16, 20, 73, 83–85, 93, 84, 85
108, 133, 136, 169, 177, 233, 245 Plato, 13, 15
Jihad, 6, 8, 20, 21, 76, 133, 174, 177 Prophet Muhammad, 6, 8, 23, 25, 27, 38,
76, 132, 133, 135, 214
Koran, 9–11, 18, 25, 102, 131–133, 174,
183, 186, 187, 189, 191, 194, 195, Raban, Jonathan, 9–13, 223
200–205, 212, 213, 216, 221, 235 Renan, Ernest, 5, 72, 73, 86
Kufr, 4 Richards, Ivor Armstrong, 12, 224
Kurosawa, Akira, 12 Rome, 15
256
Index.indd 256 12/10/10 3:40 PM

INDEX
Rushdie, Salman, vii, x, xi, 5, 8, 22–27, Syria(n), ix, xvi, xvii, 19, 20, 76, 77,
223, 241, 242, 247–249, 251 79, 82, 86, 92, 102, 112, 113, 117, 121,
Ruthven, Malise, 9, 10, 11, 13, 224 124, 125, 135, 174–175, 225, 226,
235, 250
Said, Edward, x, xi, 5, 9, 16, 17, 29,
45–68, 71, 81, 86, 92, 110, 115, 125, 141, Taliban, 6, 115
148, 161, 163, 165, 173, 176, 178–179,
180, 224–226 United States, 10, 16, 17, 19–22, 42, 43,
Saudi-Arabia, 16, 26, 174, 175, 240 105, 106, 108, 116, 118–120, 138, 167,
Semitic (or: anti-Semitic), 5, 103, 105, 170, 169, 171, 173, 174, 178
172, 173, 175, 177–181, 194, 205, 234
September 11, 2001, 6–7, 14, 19–22, Wehr, Hans, 13
65, 168 Whitehead, Alfred North, 10, 244
Shayegan, Daryush, 9, 223
Shi’ism, 18, 22, 25–28, 74, 83, 94, 117, 182 Zionism, vii, xii, 16, 20, 22, 24, 90, 91,
Spain, 15, 80 101, 108, 136, 138, 139, 177, 180, 231,
Sunnism, x, 22, 25, 26, 74, 75, 83, 84, 117 240, 245–247
257
Index.indd 257 12/10/10 3:40 PM

Index.indd 258 12/10/10 3:40 PM

Orientalism and Conspiracy - Politics and Conspiracy Theory in The Islamic World (Library of Modern Middle East Studies) (PDFDrive) PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Orientalism and Conspiracy - Politics and Conspiracy Theory in The Islamic World (Library of Modern Middle East Studies) (PDFDrive) PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Orientalism and Conspiracy - Politics and Conspiracy Theory in The Islamic World (Library of Modern Middle East Studies) (PDFDrive) PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

O R I E N TA L I S M A N D C O N S P I R A C Y

FM.indd i 12/10/10 5:34 PM

LIBRARY OF MODERN MIDDLE EAST

Essays in Honor of Sadik J. Al-Azm

Edited by Arndt Graf, Schirin Fathi

FM.indd iii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by

Copyright © Ludwig Paul, Arndt Graf and Schirin Fathi, 2011

Library of Modern Middle East Studies, Vol 92

ISBN: 978 1 84885 414 7

Library of Congress catalog card: available

Typeset in Perpetua by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd., India

FM.indd iv 12/10/10 5:34 PM

FM.indd v 15/10/10 7:41 PM

FM.indd vi 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Arndt Graf, Schirin Fathi, and Ludwig Paul

FM.indd vii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Although conspiracy theories are widespread also in Western

• case studies on specific conspiracy theories

• the role that conspiracy theories have played in the framework of

• historical, theoretical, and conceptual conditions for the develop-

In addition, the conference also aimed at contributing to a cross-cultural

FM.indd viii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

FM.indd ix 12/10/10 5:34 PM

FM.indd x 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Verses should be seen as a necessary step in modern literature that did

FM.indd xi 12/10/10 5:34 PM

FM.indd xii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

old-fashioned European anti-Semitism and is colored by quotations

FM.indd xiii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Sadik, getting this honorary doctorate from the Asia-Africa Institute of

FM.indd xv 12/10/10 5:34 PM

FM.indd xvi 12/10/10 5:34 PM

FM.indd xvii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

FM.indd xviii 15/10/10 7:41 PM

Sadik J. Al-Azm Born in Damascus, in 1934, philosopher, interna-

Lorenzo Casini (MA SOAS/University of London, 2002; PhD University

Schirin Fathi (PhD Hamburg 1993) teaches at the University of

Arndt Graf (PhD Hamburg 1997; Habilitation Hamburg 2004) is

FM.indd xix 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Germany, since October 2009. Previously, he worked at Universiti

Karin Hörner, born in 1953 in Wuppertal, since 1986 lecturer of Islamic

Robert Irwin read Modern History at Oxford and taught Medieval

J. M. Muslimin graduated in 1995 at the Faculty of Syariah of the State

FM.indd xx 12/10/10 5:34 PM

at the Asia-Africa Institute of the University of Hamburg (Germany) with a

Gernot Rotter, born 1941 at Troppau (Czeckoslovakia), Assistant

Mohd Hazim Shah holds a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies in

FM.indd xxi 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Association. Recently he has edited another book entitled, History,

Tanja Strube, MA, born in 1978 in Hamburg, majored in Islamic stud-

Stefan Wild, born 1937 in Leipzig, 1968–1973, director of the German

FM.indd xxii 12/10/10 5:34 PM

Chapter 01.indd 1 12/10/10 3:32 PM

The topic of “Orientalism and Conspiracy” is complex and this chapter

Chapter 01.indd 3 12/10/10 3:32 PM

And surely enough, his introduction to the science of Occidentalism is