The Middle East Through Orientalist Perspectives

It all started with this:

Then led to this:

I found the western perspective on such events:

and finally, one with Western doctrines:

Geraldine Heng in “A Great Way to Fly” mentions that Orientalism is “a Western discourse which the Eastern state rides in its flawless manipulation of a projected feminine image” (868). However, Edward Said argues that Orientalism is found in our Western viewpoints of Middle Eastern cultures that revolve around irrationality, alarming acts, unreliable leadership, anti-Western attacks, and untruthful beliefs. These notions about the east are created based on what we are taught about the East. I, primarily, want to focus on the accusation and stoning of women in the Middle East and how when we, as a Westernly indoctrinated society, react when we get the news that executions of these sort are still very much active. Said writes: "The hold these instruments have on the mind is increased by the institutions built around them. For every Orientalist, quite literally, there is a support system of staggering power, considering the ephemerality of the myths that Orientalism propagates. The system now culminates into the very institutions of the state. To write about the Arab Oriental world, therefore, is to write with the authority of a nation, and not with the affirmation of a strident ideology but with the unquestioning certainty of absolute truth backed by absolute force." He continues, "One would find this kind of procedure less objectionable as political propaganda--which is what it is, of course--were it not accompanied by sermons on the objectivity, the fairness, the impartiality of a real historian, the implication always being that Muslims and Arabs cannot be objective but that Orientalists. . .writing about Muslims are, by definition, by training, by the mere fact of their Westernness. This is the culmination of Orientalism as a dogma that not only degrades its subject matter but also blinds its practitioners." When we build our beliefs around such barriers, as a Western society we stereotypically assume that all who are Middle Eastern are similar in belief and standing (the same example of what happened right after the attack on 9/11).

Said mentions that Orientalist thinking is a rejection of cultural constructions, and racial as well as religious prejudices. Orientalism becomes the removal of the differences between 'the West' and 'the Other'. If that is the case, then how does one accept and challenge the ideals that many Middle Eastern people follow (that, too, is Orientalism)? Said argues that rejection of Orientalist thinking does not entail a denial of the differences between 'the West' and 'the Orient,' but rather an evaluation of such differences in a more critical and objective fashion (our interpretations of the East). 'The Orient' cannot be studied in a non-Orientalist manner; it takes much more to analyze the Orient through Western lenses.

Heng, Geraldine. "A Great Way to Fly." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 861-69.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Print.