- Record: found
- Abstract: found
- Article: found
Through the Eye of the Other
Abstract
This article seeks to apply Derrida's deconstruction of elements constituting national identity as established under colonial power to the study of Bassam Tibi, Fouad Ajami, and Bernard Lewis' work on Arab identity. This approach allows the emergence of colonial and neo-colonial elements underlying these authors' understanding of what Edward Said identified as the “Arab condition.” Analyses show that both Arab authors' definition of Arab identity has been heavily influenced by colonial powers in a threefold manner: early colonization of the Arab lands by the Ottomans until 1920, European colonial rule during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and finally, the impact of living in the West. The article also highlights how the colonial power, exemplified in the work of Bernard Lewis, chooses to view the colonized “other” and often changes this view in accordance with political expediency.
Content
Author and article information
Notes
Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), and The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (New York: Modern Library, 2003).
This aspect is borne by Derrida's own experience, which he describes when his family as Jews were offered the French nationality, only to have it revoked during World War II (WWII) under the Vichy government. Derrida acknowledges that although this was done by an administration that was politically biased, it nevertheless left him with the feeling that identity as nationality can be given and revoked at will, but a language, a culture, a way of life, cannot.
Compare from a feminist perspective, Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam (London: Yale University Press, 1993).
In this view, Tibi appears to be reiterating the late-nineteenth-century arguments put forth by Ottoman and Arab Nationalist writers such as Al-Afghani and Al-Kwakibi.
Tibi, The Crisis of Modern Islam , page 8, and Gustav E. von Grunebaum, Kulturbild und Selbstverständnis des Islam (Zurich: Artemis & Winkler Verlag, 1969), pages 118–119—see also von Grunebaum, Modern Islam: The Search for an Identity (New York: Vantage, 1964), page 33.
Salam Hawa, “Globalized Islam: Arab Identity Sous Rature.” Globalization and Autonomy Online Compendium , June 2006, http://www.globalautonomy.ca/global1/article.jsp?index=RA_Hawa_GlobalizedIslam.xml. In this article, I outline in detail the extent to which Ottoman colonization of the Arab and Muslim lands has perverted not only the culture, but equally all practices associated with Islam, more particularly the barring of all Arabs from gaining access to formal education and therewith political power and the ability to self-govern.
See analyses of Bernard Lewis' Islam in History: Ideas, Men and Events in the Middle East (London: Press Alcove, 1973) and The Political Language of Islam (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1988).
Sadeq Al-Azm, Al Naqd al Dhati Ba'd al Hazima (Self-Criticism after the Defeat) (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Tali'ah, 1970).
See also reference to these movements by Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone Press, 1996). Huntington suggests that the governments of Arab nations promoted anti-Western stance and backed fundamentalist movements in order to safeguard their own illegitimate and tyrannical regimes, see, pages 110–120.
Muhammad Jalal Kishk, Al Naksa wa al Ghazw al Fikri (The Setback and Cultural Invasion) (Beirut, Lebanon, 1969), and Al Marksiyah wa al Ghazw al Fikri (Maxism and Cultural Invasion) (Cairo, Egypt, 1965).
Albert Hourani, History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991); Hourani, describing the extent of this bureaucracy, states, This system of control was reproduced throughout the empire. As new lands were annexed, governors were appointed for important cities and their hinterlands and garrisons of imperial troops were placed in them; later, the numerous local governments (sancak) were brought together in a smaller number of larger provinces (eyalet). The provincial government was like that of the central one in miniature: the governor had his elaborate household, his secretaries and accountants, and his council of high officials meeting regularly. (217).
Hourani, History of the Arab Peoples , page 219.