Entry #4

The past week myself and my facilitating  partner covered orientalism and discussed it with our group. This was after reading fragments of Wael Hallaq’s “Restating Orientalism” guided by our professors. Orientalism was something new to me, however I’ve found that many aspects of it are connected to colonialism and stereotypical racism. The term orientalism itself was created by Edward Said, characterizing it as “a specific patronizing Western European (and American) attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies, thus having a negative connotation” (source). They way I see orientalism is the depiction of the world through more of a European stance, the colonizers if you will. It’s information that was collected on cultures some during their colonization, where in my opinion they were seen as “the other”. Through this we can find that prominently Arab-Islamic world cultures and countries are alienated while Europeans consider themselves as superiors.

Relating back to Hallaq’s “Restating Orientalism”, he mentions aspects of this superiority writing “When Robert Boyle stated that “man was created to possess and to rule over nature, he surely did not mean any man but the European, for non-Europeans, in Boyle and even in the “freedom philosopher” John Locke, did not unconditionally belong to the category of humanity, at least not this one” (p. 86). The quote furthers the depiction of European and American superiority complexes. Interestingly this is found in many movies such as Disney’s “Aladdin” (1992), where the opening lyrics of “Arabian Nights” is as follows:

“Oh I come from a land, from a faraway place
Where the caravan camels roam
Where they cut off your ear
If they don’t like your face
It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home”

The lyrics depict a savage and brutal stereotype on the existent western orient stereotypes, the lyrics were later changed to:

“Where it’s flat and immense

And the heat is intense

It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home”

Though these lyrics depict a western orient stereotype some could argue that the story had both an Arab hero and heroine, refuting it’s orientalism. But the issue to me lies in the fact that the movie didn’t consider how this would affect Arabs, and they way they’re viewed. This becomes extremely harmful and dangerous when all Arabs become stereotyped as terrorists for example. From personal experience, people who have never visited arab societies still have the image of the Middle East from movies such as “Aladdin”.

According to Edward Said on orientalism, through years of orientalism he noticed that information in books would be consistent as opposed to evolving when it came to covering cultures. He also noted that information would remain consistent and taken as facts mainly because writers had never been there. Creating a cycle of over generalized and reproduced misinformation. During our group discussion, western orient stereotype generated was related to the banking concept of education, where past information is strictly passed on.  To me this ends in the serotyping of people simply based on their culture or religion, completely disregarding them as individuals.

Relating back to points from our discussion, we discussed the concept of religion relating to morality which I found really interesting. One of my classmates believed that religion did not influence being more moral, as some people in her life were religious but treated people horribly. Others related it to”fitrah”, the arabic word for natural constitution. In Islamic theology people are “born with an innate inclination of tawhid (Oneness), which is encapsulated in the fitra along with compassion, intelligence, ihsan and all other attributes that embody the concept of humanity.” (source). To me morality can be influenced from diffrent aspects of people’s lives, it can be the way they were brought up, for religious reasons or just how they are as a individual. Thus I don’t believe that religion only would create morality, though it can influence it and for some be the sole reason they are moral.