Occidentalisms in the Arab World: Ideology and Images of the West in the Egyptian Media 9780755609246, 9781848854765

Citation preview

Voor mijn moeder

Acknowledgements

I was fortunate enough to have been admitted to a research institute that was not only entirely dedicated towards my main field of interest but also staffed with the best and kindest people, who made the whole place an efficient and pleasant house of knowledge. I greatly appreciated the freedom granted me in my work by my supervisor, Professor Asef Bayat, and the institute. It is unfortunate and even absurd that today the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) no longer exists. Despite the establishment of a new institute (ISIS: the Interuniversity Research School for Islam Studies), I don’t think anyone will deny that closing down ISIM amounted to sheer destruction of academic capital. Institutional matters put aside, heartfelt gratitude and warm feelings are directed towards certain people, only some of whom I can name: Adel Abdel Moneim for his invaluable suggestions; Ismail Elmesalawi for showing me around a library that I hope more people will come to know about; Johan Weststeijn for going over the manuscript in all its stages, and cheering me up whenever the need arose. And most importantly Gali, for marrying me, which has nothing to do with the present thesis, but I find it warrants mentioning nevertheless.

A Note on Transliteration

In transliterating Arabic names and titles I have opted for a simplified transliteration based on the transliteration used at the Library of Congress, without diacritical marks and writing [g] for gîm instead of [j]; in which emphatic consonants and the pharyngeal [h] are not distinguished from their more common counterparts; and in which ayn and alif are written as [‘] and [’] respectively. A more elaborate transliteration would clutter the page and would do so needlessly, since the Arabist reader will read the words properly regardless of the transliteration, while the non-Arabist reader has no use for knowing the difference between sâd and sîn. Final tâ marbûtah is always written as -ah (even in genitive constructions).

Foreword

From what I have noticed in the past years, during discussions with fellow researchers, it is almost inevitable that one becomes changed by one’s research. I do not mean to sound disparaging but to show how research can steer the researcher as much as the researcher steers the research. I remember reading about the case of a medical student working on syphilis, who admitted to having grown a certain affection for those persistent little microbes. I cannot say I have fallen in love with the topic of my research of the past four years, but it did change the way in which I look at certain things. Analysing the ways in which people speak and write about ‘the West’, that is, analysing Occidentalism, has become a second nature. Reifications of a monolithic West, or discussions of US–EU rivalry, or the West as devoid of spirituality or the West as harbinger of lofty political philosophies (and implementing a foreign policy that does not match these): even if it is merely in half a sentence, I take note of it. And how often I take note! It seems indeed as if there is an increasing trend to typify the West, to describe it in an attempt to control and steer its power. More and more books are published – in the West as elsewhere – that seek to enlighten the reader about what the West means, what Western values are, how Western civilization began. Clearly then, the West has become a topic of inquiry. In this book I provide the reader with the findings from my research into how this inquiry is conducted in contemporary Egypt.

xiv

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

I start from the premise that no image is free from distortion. It is a truism that images of the other (alterities) are always co-determined by images of the self (identities). I am therefore not interested in checking the truth of Egyptian intellectuals’ images of the West: I am interested rather in how these images serve a discursive purpose. This book is therefore not exactly the reverse of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), in which the author not only uncovered the distortions of the image of the Orient and explained why this image was thus distorted, but also decried this distortion vociferously. Do I then not decry anything? In fact I do. I lament the gap between intellectuals on either side of the Mediterranean. The fact that Egyptian and other Arab intellectuals are rarely heard in the West allows for the continuation of misunderstandings and wilful distortions among all parties concerned. It is, however, particularly the Egyptian and perhaps the wider Arab intellectual scene that suffers from this isolation. While in the West whole libraries are filled with books warning against essentialism, many of the most prominent Egyptian intellectuals do not seem worried at all that their writings on a monolithic West may be misleading. Also within a Western context it is common to find (auto-) references to some selfexplanatory West. Either we are presented with the idea of the West as some ancient force of civilization, that needs to stand firm to the point of creating a kind of ‘United States of the West’ (Nemo, 2004), or the West is materialistic, racist, sexist or otherwise evil, sometimes unseemly enough in combination with a forceful rejection of similar essentializations of Islam and the Orient (Abdo, 2000). If apart from description and analysis my research does have an objective, it is to give wings to the observation that essentializing the West is as grave a mistake as essentializing the Orient, Islam or the Arab. Perhaps this book is not so much unlike Said’s then, after all. Yarêt.

1 Introduction

‘You cannot investigate all these answers to the question of the West, evaluate them, and then refuse to point out the weaknesses and strengths of each answer. You should make it clear as to who is right.’ ‘Usâmah was not pleased. The Azhari student who had come to assist me in my research was disappointed when I told him what kind of results I expected from my research into Occidentalisms. ‘Usâmah’s expectation was that my research would not merely catalogue contemporary Egyptian understandings of the West but also correct the mistakes, provide insights into the nature of Western civilization and thus finally enable the reader to lay to rest an old yet pressing matter: what is the West? While this book may be useful for an Egyptian audience eager to find new ways to think about the West, this is not its main topic or objective. This book is not concerned simply with the West: rather it is concerned with how the West is perceived and constructed in Egypt. It starts from the premise that images are subjective and therefore diverse, hence the plural noun in its title: Occidentalisms. ‘Usâmah’s reaction made me understand that I should make it clearer that the study of Occidentalism is a descriptive and analytical endeavour, not a prescriptive one. His reaction also illustrated the importance attached to ‘understanding the West’ in present-day Egypt. The ferocity with which Egyptian intellectuals discuss, dismiss or extol the West is a clear sign that the West is a topic of importance. This alone would be sufficient reason to research the ways in which

2

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

this topic is treated in public debates. A wider look that transcends the Egyptian intellectual scene yields equally forceful motivations for the present research: since the end of the Cold War international relations have come under new strains that often involve ‘the West’ actively or passively. Western media reports on relations between the West and the Muslim world tend to give the impression that the latter is overwhelmingly and incurably hateful towards the former, which can easily lead to irrational fear and a blanket rejection of that seemingly hostile world. In such a situation it may be helpful to advance a more discriminating approach to understanding how the West is perceived. While Western discourse concerning ‘the Orient’ in whatever shape or form has been the object of much academic scrutiny, which is often traced back to Edward Said’s Orientalism,1 much less attention has been paid to the manners in which the West, not the East, is perceived and constructed. As I hope this study will show, this relative lack of academic interest is unfortunate and needs to be addressed. While perhaps unsatisfying to some, there is merit in ‘mere’ description of the world around us. If the present book is accepted as a good start to a process of cataloguing contemporary Egyptian understandings of the West, I would feel that it was worth the trouble of writing it. This is, however, not the end of my ambition. So far, the study of images, identity and alterity has focused on European or, more broadly, Western settings. The study of Occidentalism in Egypt could provide more diverse material to be used in understanding how images, identities and alterities are created and used in general, thus contributing to more broadly applicable theories. The need to understand how people imagine themselves and their Others is, I believe, a universal need. Limiting myself to just the two countries closest to me, the Netherlands and Egypt, one finds that there is a striking similarity in that in both countries a public debate is entertained where questions of identity and alterity are of central importance.



Introduction

3

Occidentalism There is a certain ironic twist in the quantitative discrepancy between studies of Orientalism and studies of Occidentalism. Many of the studies into Western images of the East tend to criticize these Western images for being Eurocentric. Yet looking at the sheer mass of publications on Western images – when compared to the modest number of studies into non-Western images – we must conclude that also in this field of image studies, there is a certain preference for studying a Western rather than a non-Western actor. Therefore one could argue that the plethora of studies of Western images of the Orient, when compared to the infant status of the study of Occidentalism, betrays an ironic Eurocentrism, reminding researchers engaged in the study of Occidentalism of the ease with which one tends to forget the subjectivity of one’s position. Studies of Occidentalism are as diverse as they are few, and as a result even the meaning of Occidentalism is contested. ‘Occidentalism’ is the main topic in little over a dozen publications available in European languages. The major Arabic publication in this field is Hasan Hanafî’s Introduction to the Study of Occidentalism,2 but we will find in our discussion of Hanafî’s work that his use of the term has mostly remained peculiar to him. To his credit however, we should note that he was the first to engage with the term.3 The earliest publication after Hanafî’s Introduction was Xiaomei Chen’s article on Occidentalism as a counter-discourse employed by Chinese opposition circles, which was consequently expanded into a monograph published in 1995.4 Chen’s work will be discussed below in more detail but for now it will suffice to say that to Chen Occidentalism is a discourse of imagining and constructing the West. Also published in 1995 was James Carrier’s study of the problem of stereotyping and essentializing the West in anthropology.5 Starting from Said’s analysis of Orientalism as a Western discourse of ‘othering’ the East through essentialization, Carrier couples this notion with Western essentializations of the West (‘Occidentalism’), and with Eastern essentializations of the West (‘ethno-Occidentalism’) and Eastern

4

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

essentializations of the East (‘ethno-Orientalism’). While Carrier, an anthropologist, does use the term Occidentalism in its meaning of ‘(stereotypical) images of the West’, the actors responsible for these Occidentalisms are themselves Westerners, and more specifically Western anthropologists. In other words, Carrier’s concern is with anthropology and the way in which Occidentalism influences the work of anthropologists. It is remarkable to see that when attention is finally paid to Orientalism’s ‘opposite’, the typical actor here is still Western. When the non-Western acts, in this case by stereotyping East or West, this action is described by simply adding a prefix: ‘ethno-’. The preferred description in my opinion would be to refer to (auto-)Orientalism and (auto-)Occidentalism, thereby avoiding the impression that Western actions are necessarily the standard against which other actions are qualified. If Carrier’s terminology is questionable, his description of the process of imaging and imagining is to the point, especially for the attention he pays to questions of power. While there is a formal symmetry in the model of selving and othering, Carrier warns that there is no substantive symmetry, because of an unequal distribution of power: the West is more free to construe an image of the Other than the Other is free to construe an image of the West, for Westerners are better positioned to ‘correct’, for instance, a Melanesian essentialization of the West than the other way around.6 This question of power and in particular how it relates to influencing images of the West is one of the questions this research is concerned with. Findley’s lengthy article on Ahmed Midhat is the first European discussion of Occidentalism to take us to the Middle East.7 Inspired by Chen, Findley shows us how a late nineteenth-century Ottoman traveller to Europe creates an image of the West on his own terms, but governed by universal rules of selving and othering. Findley traces the development of what he terms an Occidentalist counter-discourse, which was to become an important component of anticolonial nationalism.8 A second work on nineteenth-century Occidentalism is Mohamed Tavakoli-Targhi’s Refashioning Iran.9



Introduction

5

Here we have a critique of the standard historiography of the modernization of the world as a consequence of (or even synonymous with) Westernization, thus assuming that before contacts with the West were established, the non-West (whichever part of it) was not experiencing a significant dynamic of its own. Seeking to break away from de-historicizing implications of Westernization theories that are ‘predicated upon the temporal assumption of non-contemporaneity of European and non-European societies’,10 Tavakoli-Targhi views ‘modernity as a global process that engendered various strategies of self-fashioning’. Said’s latest critic, Varisco, has noted in his review of Refashioning Iran that this book should first of all be read as a critique of Said, more specifically Said’s blindness to or disinterest in Oriental agency in shaping their European Others.11 The next publication on our topic of inquiry is Snodgrass’ study of nineteenth-century Japanese strategies of identity and alterity in relation to European dominance. Similarly to Tavakoli, Snodgrass engages with Said as she seeks to show that the non-Westerner played a constitutive role in Orientalism and indeed entertained an Occidentalism.12 She argues that the Oriental did have agency in shaping his identity and alterity. I would argue with Snodgrass that ‘Orientalism is after all not … a particularly Western sin but a case study of the more general process of the way one culture forms images of another’.13 In defining Occidentalism Snodgrass takes care not to suggest that this could be a genuine mirror image to Orientalism, because of the differences in the extent to which the two discourses are backed up by economic, cultural, political and military power.14 The most recent work on Occidentalism (the present excluded) is Wagner’s PhD research on the identification of the West in Japanese and Malaysian novels.15 Wagner points at the ambiguity of the term Occidentalism in that it often refers to either Westernization (emulative Occidentalism) or to anti-Westernism (Occidentalism as anti-hegemonic discourse). Given her background –comparative literature, from a postcolonial perspective – it is to be expected that Wagner engages with Said. Some may oppose the use of the term

6

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Occidentalism, pointing out, first, that Said’s Orientalism was and is a uniquely European phenomenon borne out of the European propensity to categorize the world according to binary oppositions, and, second, that Orientalism’s sine qua non was and is its enabling and supporting of imperialism, which has no counterpart in ‘Occidentalism’. Without negating the importance of the difference in power relations (cf. Carrier, Snodgrass), Wagner argues that Said would not oppose her endeavours and makes the case for a serious study of Occidentalism: In one of his last interviews … Edward Said stressed the need to expose the Occident as well as the Orient as cultural constructs: ‘I say even the notions of the Occident and the Orient are ideological fictions and we should try to get away from them as much as possible.’ In this, he significantly retracted his earlier caution that ‘no one is likely to imagine a field symmetrical to Orientalism called Occidentalism.’ (Said, Orientalism 1978 p. 50) As postcolonial theories have been variously redefined, disputed, and drawn into new debates over the last decades, the study of Orientalism has nevertheless become counterpoised by important, yet largely undirected, gestures towards the analysis of a discourse that can very aptly be termed Occidentalism.16 It should be clear from the discussion above that most studies of Occidentalism are not concerned with the Middle East. That is the more surprising since studies concerned with Orientalism are, in the tradition of Edward Said, typically focused on this region. It is then a timely endeavour to conduct a study of Occidentalism in Egypt, but not before one remaining publication on Occidentalism is discussed. The book that has not so far been mentioned is in fact the most widely distributed work on Occidentalism, to the extent that it has informed the popular understanding of the term.17 This is



Introduction

7

unfortunate. Occidentalism was published in 2004, two years after its authors had published an article in the New York Review of Books.18 In the article, the Anglo-Dutch sinologist Ian Buruma and the Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit defined Occidentalism as an antiWestern ideology shared by a number of aggressive, irrational death cults, notably Nazism, Japanese nationalism and other contemporary fascisms, the regime of Pol Pot and, in a milder form, Marxism in general. According to the authors, what the world is witnessing today in radical Islamic violence is a reincarnation of that old, irrational hatred of the West. Eventually, the thesis laid down in the article was developed into a book, the full title of which was Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies.19 In a sense, the authors understand Occidentalism to be a reversed Orientalism-according-to-Edward Said. Occidentalism is based on the perceived need to distance oneself from the Other, in order to claim a sense of superiority. In the case of Occidentalism, that Other is the West. So what does the Occidentalist view make of the West? Margalit and Buruma identify four overlapping animosities at work in Occidentalism. First, there is the dismissive attitude to The City, understood to be a rootless agglomeration of arrogant and cold materialists, as opposed to rural men, who are firmly in tune with nature and tradition, whose blood and sweat have mixed with the soil of the land, which they plough and know as their own. Second, Occidentalism is opposed to ‘the mind of the West’, in particular its science and rationalism. Third, there is the disgust with the bourgeoisie, understood to be a collection of mediocre men of no principle but the quest for profit and comfort. Last, there is the hatred directed against the ‘Infidel’. This last element is new to the book: in the article the fourth element of Occidentalist hatred was reserved for feminism. Having thus identified their concept of Occidentalism, the authors then forage through history on a search for conflicts, violence and ideologies that exemplify one or more of these animosities. This, in a nutshell, is the theory and the method of Margalit and Buruma’s Occidentalism – and both spell trouble.

8

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Resentment of ‘the city’ is not an uncommon phenomenon: especially outside the cities there exists – alongside other, more positive appreciations – the notion that cities are places where violence, corruption, prostitution and generally unorthodox behaviour are rife, and where ‘anything goes’. Yet it is difficult to see how and why Margalit and Buruma understand this anti-urban sentiment to be an element of Occidentalism. To them, it is significant that Maoist terror, directed against the cities and seen as the ultimate victory of the rural over the urban, was also directed against the West. The West is then partly identified as an urban phenomenon. Presumably, that is how anti-urbanism is considered by Margalit and Buruma to be an ingredient of Occidentalism. The aversion against the ‘mind of the West’ consists of a hostility to the Enlightenment-borne phenomena of modern science and rationalism. Here the authors incriminate all romanticists who regret the Entzauberung der Welt as potential Occidentalists. Cited is T.S. Eliot’s Choruses from ‘The Rock’, where Eliot’s annoyance with the godlessness of the ever-growing city of London suddenly becomes suspect. By the same token, Dostojevski’s representation of a scientist West is drawn into the odious sphere of Occidentalism. These notions (and dismissals) of a rigidly rationalist, soulless West are not far from radical Islamist views of the West – according to Margalit and Buruma. Leaving the bourgeoisie aside for the sake of brevity, we are left with discussing the hatred of the Infidel. Here, Margalit and Buruma do not shrink from heading straight for the Lord. Think of Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah, the urban abodes of unbelief that so famously met with the wrath of God. Fascinating as these biblical tales of divine destruction may be, their purpose in Margalit and Buruma’s book is unclear. Perhaps it is in order to show that this anti-urban component of Occidentalism is as old as the bible. In any case, Osama bin Laden is evidently keen on fighting people he refers to as infidels, which completes the Occidentalist circle. Occidentalism, then, is the hatred of a West, perceived to be a perverted, soulless and weak bastion of



Introduction

9

urban unbelief. The authors contend that the present anti-Westernism that emanates from the Muslim world fits this definition. So is all criticism of the West and things Western Occidentalism? Is every romantic, every anti-capitalist and every fundamentalist an Occidentalist? The authors warn that this is not so. The difference lies in the presence or absence of bitterness and rancour. For resentment and rancour, so the authors suggest, lead to the dehumanization of the West. In other words, Occidentalism is not simply a critical mode of thought, but a hatred that does not acknowledge its Western enemy’s humanity.20 This aspect is crucial in order for Margalit and Buruma to label something ‘Occidentalism’, for it makes the difference between a composed critique and an irrational blind hatred. Ostensibly, it is according to this criterion that Occidentalism does cover Nazis, Japanese nationalists, Islamic radicals and Dostojevski, but not T.S. Eliot or God. This theory of an anti-Western ideology of hatred is not very solid, partly because the authors appear to have selected their material in order to suit their theory, rather than the other way around. What counts as ‘the West’ to Margalit and Buruma remains quite vague throughout the book: in one place they let capitalism and liberal democracy take the place of the West, in another, the United States are representative. Then there are the examples from the biblical past, where Babylon appears to function as some sort of ‘proto-West’, under attack by an Occidentalist God. What the authors have done is simply to scan history for defiant responses to a whole array of developments which they associate with their own ephemeral notion of Westernness. Reactions to urbanization, imperialism, growing wealth, Enlightenment, capitalism, secularism – they all fit into the repository of Occidentalism. The authors have thus created a hopelessly wide heading. That is a pity, for Occidentalism in the sense of ‘imaging and imagining the West’ is an interesting area for research, of growing importance, in need of serious scholarly engagement. It is therefore all the more regrettable that the aforementioned studies into this field have apparently

10

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

been lost on Margalit and Buruma, for nothing suggests that they have taken note of them. But what then, is the use of Margalit and Buruma’s deviant Occidentalism? Potentially, it is of great political use. After all, all criticism of America, the West and modernity can now be filed under one and the same heading: the dangerous, dehumanizing and irrational hatred of the West. Although Margalit and Buruma warn against such abuse of their argument, this warning does not convince. For they too belittle the more concrete grievances people might hold against the West: [A]nti-Americanism is sometimes the result of [American] support of … say, Israel … or of whatever goes under the rubric of ‘globalisation’. Some people are antagonistic to the United States simply because it is so powerful, … or resent the U.S. for helping them, or feeding them, or protecting them, in the way one resents an overbearing father. But whatever the U.S. government does or does not do is often beside the point. [Occidentalism refers] not to American policies, but to the idea of America itself.21 The notion that, ‘essentially’, (Muslim) anti-Westernism has no link to concrete Western policies is not new. Bernard Lewis wrote the same in his oft-quoted article ‘The roots of Muslim rage’.22 As I have argued before, it could be dangerous to think that one’s enemies live in an impermeable bubble of irrational hatred, where one’s own actions remain unnoticed.23 In opposition to Margalit and Buruma’s endeavour, one of the objectives of the present research is to describe and explain the ways in which the West is perceived and constructed, in such a way as to make these images intelligible rather than seemingly mystical. So far, the literature I have mentioned is concerned with theorizing Occidentalism as a concept. There is another kind of literature of relevance to this research that does not theorize as much as it directly engages with the question how the West is imagined in the Arab



Introduction

11

world, without discussing the concept of ‘Occidentalism’. These studies can be divided into those in which the focus lies on Arabic literature, on the one hand, and those in which the focus is on what we might call ‘public discourse’, on the other. There are relatively many publications of the first kind, mostly focusing on how the West is an important topic in modern Arabic fiction. I would like to limit myself to mentioning the most recent such publication, namely Rasheed El-Enany’s Arab Representations of the Occident.24 Enany provides a historical overview of how the West has been imagined and how it has functioned in modern Arabic novels and poetry. Enany argues that Arab literary history shows a general development in which the West was initially, in the pre-colonial phase, perceived as a source for inspiration and emulation. The colonial phase is then predictably marked by signs of duress: the encounter with the Western Other cannot be seen separately from the West’s imposing on the Arab world. The postcolonial phase is initially characterized by pride borne out of the early nationalist enthusiasm in the young Arab nation-states. This is followed however by the second postcolonial phase, which sets in as of 1967 and is marked by the sense of being ‘humbled’. The final two chapters are concerned with the reception of America, and the work of woman authors in the Arab world and their literary representations of the West. Though he avoids the term Occidentalism, Enany suggests that the topic of his study could be seen as a reversed Orientalism. The difference however, is great: If Orientalism, according to Edward Said, provided the conceptual framework, the intellectual justification for the appropriation of the Orient through colonialism, the representations of the West I have studied in this book would, by contrast, seem to suggest in my view a different story; one not of appropriation but of emulation. And if Orientalism was about the denigration, and the subjugation of the other, much of the Occidentalist images explored here will be seen to have been about the idealization of the other, the quest for the

12

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

soul of the other, the desire to become the other, or at least to become like the other.25 The above quotation already hints at the conclusion to Enany’s study. Enany states that ‘with few exceptions, Arab intellectuals, no matter in which period, have never demonized the European other or regarded him in sub-human terms’.26 With regard to the present research, it will be of interest to see to what extent Enany’s postulation holds up in the face of our analyses of contemporary non-fictional texts. Finally, mention must be made of research in the field of images of the West in Arabic non-fiction texts. In this area, few publications stand out. Noureddine Afaya’s L’Occident dans l’imaginaire arabo-musulman27 endeavours to answer the question ‘what the West means to Arabs and Muslims’. Afaya works from the understanding that there are two main modes of thought in the ‘Arabo-Muslim’ world: Islamist and liberal.28 By analysing texts from the Arab world (in particular those of Muhammad ‘Abduh and Taha Hussayn) he describes various images of the West in the Arab world in general. By not limiting himself to a specific time period or specific part of the Arabo-Muslim world, it becomes hard for Afaya to focus his findings. Consequently, Afaya’s work is more of an essay than the product of systematic research. Second, the Lebanese political scientist Nassib Samir El-Husseini, working from Canada, published an interesting study entitled L’Occident imaginaire: la vision de l’Autre dans la conscience politique arabe.29 He provides a very rich overview of images and themes regarding the West in the Arab world. According to El-Husseini there are multiple images of the West, varying from a ‘mythological West’ to an ‘idealised West’ and a ‘rejected West’. Elaborating upon the multiplicity of images will naturally also have its proper place in this study, but in addition to this I have attempted to use my findings to produce a description of the processes behind these various images and the purposes the images serve. Knowledge of the process of image-making and an understanding of how images serve certain purposes combine into a more thorough comprehension



Introduction

13

of the meaning of the images, in this case, of images of the West. This takes us to the theoretical literature that is concerned with notions of ‘selving’ and ‘othering’.30 Theories, approaches and methodologies A complicating factor in this research is that it touches upon a number of interrelated, but distinct academic fields, each with its own methods, idiom and theories. The theory that lies at the base of this study draws mainly on imagology, a subdiscipline in literary studies, and discourse analysis, mainly developed from a social science point of view. I do not in principle favour imagology over discourse analysis or vice versa. Rather, I have made grateful use of both approaches. The nature of the research is such that it necessitated adaptations of existing approaches. Imagologists and discourse analysts may therefore recognize sections from their fields, but differently shaped. Imagology From the 1950s onwards, literary stereotypes of national identities began to be systematically studied in European comparative linguistics. To this day, it has remained mostly a European, and more particularly a French and German, enterprise. This field of study, known as imagology or image studies, is concerned with the portrayal of national identities in literary (fictional) texts. Imagology is almost entirely concerned with European literature. Apart from discerning the images of national identities, imagologists are interested in gaining insight in the genesis of such images. Imagology does not try to establish the truth of the image. It is not up to an imagologist to study the extent to which one author was right in portraying some nation in a certain manner. Rather, an imagologist is interested in the textual background to such portrayal. In the words of the Dutch imagologist Joep Leerssen:

14

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

In actual practice this means that, in studying national stereotypes and alleged ‘national characters’ or national reputations, an imagologist is not concerned with the question whether that reputation is true, but how it has become recognizable. That interest (not in ‘truthfulness’ but in ‘recognizability’) means that images are studied, not as items of information about reality, but as properties of their context. If somewhere we read that the British are individualists, the first question we ask is not: ‘is that true?’; rather, the questions are all about the (con) text, e.g.: Who is saying this? What audience is the author addressing? Why is it important for this author to make this point? What are the political circumstances at the time this text was written? How does the author attempt to convince the reader of the validity of his claim? How does this image of British individualism fit into the text as a whole … ?31 Broadly speaking, this imagological approach is employed in the present study. Yet some aspects will be different because for one thing, the circumstances of this research are different. Studying British images of Irishness or French stereotypes of Germans may at first sight appear quite similar to studying Egyptian images of the West. To a large extent it is. But the accumulated findings of imagologists refer all to images of a European nation created by members of another European nation. Although the underlying logic of imaging the Other may well follow universal rules of identity and alterity politics, the present study is dealing with an actor (Egyptian authors) and an object (the West) that have a history not readily comparable to any history among European nation-states. In addition, the whole concept of ‘the West’ is rather more problematic than the concept of the British, the Irish or the Egyptians. It is at this point that the field of discourse analysis becomes of interest.



Introduction

15

Discourse analysis Any definition of discourse analysis32 will probably be challenged by most scholars involved in it. Compared to imagology, discourse analysis is rather more all-encompassing of both written and spoken language, focusing on the social relevance of linguistic behaviour of human beings. Drawing on Van Dijk’s understanding of discourse analysis, we can see how the gaze in discourse analysis proceeds from the text into social reality and vice versa: ‘We are … interested in the actual processes of decoding, interpretation, storage, and representation in memory, and in the role of previous knowledge and beliefs of the readers in this process of understanding.’33 It is this interest that leads one to pay attention to what is not said or written, seeking to expose that which is left implicit. Of great relevance to discourse analysis (again, following Van Dijk’s approach) is the theoretical assumption that the manner in which people interpret language behaviour is steered by ‘ideologies’ that function as ‘frameworks of interpretation’.34 Discourse analysis is of interest to this research for various reasons. Contrary to imagology, it is based on working with non-fictional material, specifically with texts as produced in the news media: media texts feature prominently in this research. Its insistence on not merely describing but also explaining aspects of a text is crucial to this research, in which I seek to provide insights into the rationale behind the presence and absence of certain images of the West. To this end, the aforementioned concept of ‘ideologies’ needs to be explicated. In order to do this, it is imperative to discuss the Foucaultian concept of discourse as employed by Said. On discourse: ideology and power This study is an analysis of how the West is perceived in Egyptian public discourse. In order to analyse these perceptions we have no alternative but to go to what is declared in writing or speech in Egyptian society. In studying the statements concerned with the West,

16

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

I discern a number of ideological backgrounds from which actors produce their statements, namely Islamism, liberalism, and leftistnationalism.35 These viewpoints have – to some extent – an internal consistency. As a consequence, the statements that are produced from each ideologically framed viewpoint fall within certain limits of what is deemed acceptable according to the ideology in question. In other words, there is a certain ideological range, a cognitive area the boundaries of which cannot be crossed without negating the basis upon which the ideology is built. This description of ideology may remind many a reader of the concept of discourse as variously defined by Foucault and – notably for this study – Edward Said. By far the most influential work on ideologically charged images of ‘the Orient’ is Edward Said’s Orientalism. His criticism of the academic field that studies ‘the Orient’ was based on the notion of discourse, much in the Foucaultian sense of the word.36 Discourse is here to be understood not as a collection of texts describing a given object but rather as constituting that object.37 In Said’s view ‘the Orient’ was and is an invention of Orientalism, which purports to describe this Orient, but is in fact no more than a discursive practice informed by European ideals of Western supremacy and the benevolence of imperialism. Orientalism’s relation to the actual Orient exists not so much in its description of this part of the world but rather in the consequences of the Orientalist discourse for European imperialist policies. Said thus argued that this discourse should be understood as having a crucial relationship to power. The accomplished Orientalist is invested with academic authority, and is therefore regarded as able to declare what is the Orient. But Said also argued that the discourse of Orientalism (or: the practice of the discipline in general) was – consciously or not – subservient to colonial interests. Orientalism explained/declared not the Orient for its own purposes but with the purpose of legitimizing the imperial order, an order which it had made possible to begin with. While there are differences between my research and Said’s Orientalism, both studies are concerned with the relationship between discourse and power.



Introduction

17

Another author whose work is instrumental in clarifying the use of both ideology and discourse in this study is Xiaomei Chen. Her publications on Occidentalism38 cover research very similar to that of the present study. She has studied Chinese representations of ‘the West’, and discerned various discourses. In particular, she finds that there is an official discourse of Occidentalism, as well as an anti-official discourse of Occidentalism. On the one hand, there is the image of the West as pictured by state authorities following Maoist orthodoxy. Unsurprisingly, these images are rather negative, as the West is presented as a hopeless realm of exploitation, deprived of righteousness and progress. On the other hand, there are the images of the West as set forth by critics of the regime. These images are exactly the opposite of the official Occidentalism: the West is praised and its culture is portrayed as the example for China. China itself is portrayed as decayed. This second imaging of the West, Chen argues, should be understood as a counter-discourse, where a certain appreciation of ‘the West’ is crafted by dissidents who employ this appreciation in their rejection of the oppressive regime. The images are however not ‘really’ about the West, they merely constitute a way of thinking of the West that serves to prop official or anti-official ideology. Neither the official nor the dissident Occidentalism have anything to do with attempts to convey what life in Western Europe or America is actually like, they have everything to do with an internal, Chinese struggle for power. There are a few problems with the theoretical approaches of the authors discussed above. To varying degrees, they claim that discourse is an intellectual vessel from which it is hard or even impossible to escape. As Said put it in Orientalism ‘a European or American studying the Orient … comes up against the Orient as a European or an American first, as an individual second’.39 That European or American was (is?) trapped in the discourse of Orientalism: ‘I believe no one writing, thinking, or acting on the Orient could do so without taking account of the limitations on thought and action imposed by Orientalism.’40 This is what one would call discursive determinism. This

18

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

becomes highly problematic when we realize that Said also claimed that Orientalism’s ‘descriptions’ of the Orient had in fact nothing to do with ‘the real Orient’, or in other words, the discourse was not influenced by reality. The discourse of Orientalism was shaped by necessities, desires and interests on the part of the imperialist-colonialist culture that dominated the regions under study. Thus an image of the Orient was shaped that served the desire to see justification of colonial rule over the natives, who were in everything the opposite of the producers (and consumers) of Orientalism. In other words, the Oriental was lazy, dangerous, sensual (to the point of being perverted), and in need of guidance (more specifically, in need of foreign domination). Said’s insistence on the lack of correspondence between the reality of the Orient and the postulations of Orientalist discourse is not in tune with Foucault or Chen. Foucault and Chen stick more to an understanding of discursive determinism that keeps silent about reality. Discourse has its own ‘reality’ and they ignore the (lack of ) correlation with the truth, either because the truth cannot be known, or because one is interested in the interpretation of a discourse, not in the interpretation of reality. However, by shutting out the possibility of an impact of experiences from reality on discourse, Foucault, Said and Chen exclude a likely explanans for the changes in the content of discourse. In a most enlightening article in Critical Inquiry,41 Douwe Fokkema analyses the use of discourse by Foucault, Said and Chen. I would argue alongside him for a less deterministic approach to discourse. Of course discourse as a habitual mode of interpretation disciplines the production of texts, speech, and even thought. But discourses nevertheless change over time, and although Foucault recognized this, he never explained how this happened. As will be argued in this study, experiences in real life can and do make crucial contributions to the course of development of discourses. If we do not allow for concrete experiences shaping the way people think, there is no hope for understanding how and why people change their minds.



Introduction

19

The West: origins, inclusions and exclusions Since the concept of the West is central to this research, it is of interest to discuss its origins and semantic evolutions. We are not concerned with the West in its meaning of the cardinal point where the sun sets. Rather, we are concerned with the West as a comprehensive geopolitical, or even metageographical concept, referring to a spatial structure that is part of our intellectual furniture when we think of the wider world. In other words, we need an assessment of the conceptual background of the West, in its meaning similar to the meanings of other metageographical concepts such as the ‘Orient’, or the ‘Third World’. Though far less studied and not nearly as hotly debated as these contested and ‘Eurocentric’ labels, we will find that the concept of the West is certainly equally problematic. Before proceeding it should be noted that this section is only intended to trace the emergence of the concept of the West, both in the West and in the Arab world. While this entails an overview of what countries or regions are included in the various definitions of ‘the West’, this section stops short of analysing the value judgements attached to it. This is left to the later chapters. Origins of ‘the West’ English etymological dictionaries inform us that the West was first used in a meaning different from its directional meaning42 during the First World War, when it referred to the Allied powers.43 In French l’Occident was not in use until after the Second World War, when it started to designate the NATO alliance.44 German poses somewhat of a challenge when it comes to tracing early ideas of the West, since multiple words are involved that have a more complex history. Apart from Westen German employs the words Okzident and Abendland. These latter two words arguably were used ideologically from the late eighteenth-century, to refer to ‘the European countries with their deep historical ties and shared cultural heritage, as opposed to the older Orient’.45 For more thorough research on the notion of the

20

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

West there are two major studies available: Bonnett’s The Idea of the West (2004) and Lewis and Wigen’s The Myth of Continents (1997). The Myth of Continents is a captivating critique of the way in which the largest components of geography are conceived in the Englishspeaking world (particularly the US) and passed on (however poorly) from generation to generation. Among other similar ‘myths’, the authors discuss the myth of the West as a chronically underdefined category. The Idea of the West is a clear study outlining the enormous utility and flexibility of the West in discourses past and present, the world over. In the writings of Hegel, Marx and others, Bonnett finds an embryonic West, an idea of still unclear power, defined in relation to the East. As do Lewis and Wigen, Bonnett places the emergence of the West as ‘a central idea, a ubiquitous category in the articulation of the modern world’46 in the time frame between the 1880s and the 1920s. He suggests that the idea of the West came in order to replace the concept of ‘white civilization’. This concept of whiteness, Bonnett argues, became problematic after the 1880s because European imperialist endeavours sought to impose the culture of the metropole upon the colonized peoples. If this culture was defined as ‘white’, it could not possibly be adopted by non-white peoples. The more flexible concept of Western civilization was more inclusive, and hence came to be favoured over the concept of white civilization. Christopher GoGwilt, in an appendix (to a study of Joseph Conrad) entitled ‘A brief genealogy of the West’ suggests that the West as an age-old idea emerged as a consequence of the Russian intellectual debate between the so-called ‘slavophiles’ and ‘westerners’. This debate, which emerged in the 1860s, consisted of those who stressed a Russian spiritual identity opposed to a soulless, materialist Europe (the ‘slavophiles’), and those who stressed the European character of Russia (the ‘westerners’). GoGwilt argues that this debate came to influence West-European thought at around the turn of the century, and spurred the notion of Western civilization as a dynamic culture bound to the future, as opposed to Eastern civilizations, considered stagnant relics of the past.47



Introduction

21

Bonnett also makes the point that ‘the West is not a Western invention’.48 Not only did Russian intellectuals discuss the West in ways that would emerge only later in Western Europe, but elsewhere also, suggests Bonnett, the West became an idea of central importance before it did in the West itself. This indicates that it may be wrong or at least one-sided to continue the tradition of ‘emphasiz[ing] the way the West acts and the non-West reacts’, when it comes to discussing how the world is imagined. When it comes to ideas of the West, Bonnett is convincing in his assessment that this is ‘not merely a Western creation but something that many people around the world have long been imagining and stereotyping, employing and deploying.’49 When we look for the earliest Arab references to the West, we find that also Arab intellectuals discussed the West as a social, political and cultural reality and indeed unity, from very early on. The Arab ‘West’ Probably the earliest references to al-gharb, ‘the West’ in the metageographical sense of the word, are to be found in the 1880s in various articles in an Arabic scientific journal from Syria, Al-Muqtataf.50 Although these articles were written mainly in Syria, and thus indeed to the east of Europe (as a consequence of which Europe could be referred to as ‘the West’ in the cardinal sense), these articles refer not simply to countries to the west of Syria. These articles are concerned with a civilization, a culture that is different from the civilization and culture of the authors. In addition, the use of the term ‘the West’ (for Europe) is accompanied by the use of al-sharq, ‘the East’, for one’s own culture and civilization, as we see in articles with titles such as Tadhbîr al-sharq wa tadbîr al-gharb (‘The wastefulness of the East and the economization of the West’); Abnâ’ al-sharq fî al-gharb (‘The sons of the East in the West’); Nagâh ahl al-sharq fî al-gharb (‘The success of Easterners in the West’).51 By the end of the nineteenth century, the concept of the West as more than the political and cultural collective of major European powers (in particular England and France), rather

22

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

than merely one of the four cardinal points, had spread sufficiently through the Arab language for the Egyptian author Al-Muwaylihi to refer extensively in his Hadîth ‘Îsa ibn Hishâm (‘The Tale of Isa ibn Hisham’, published between 1898 and 1900) to ‘Western civilization’, ‘the West’, ‘Westerners’, ‘Western domination’ of politics and economy, and ‘Westernization’. This leads us to conclude that the West as a civilization or geopolitical concept was conceived in the Arab world no later than towards the end of the nineteenth century. Since the emergence of a metageographical West in the West itself is placed in the period stretching from the 1880s to the 1920s (and mostly in the latter two decades), we could say that the emergence of the West as a central concept emerged in Arab thought either before Western thought came to adopt it, or simultaneously with Western thought. A question that presents itself in this regard is whether the Arab concept of the West also contributed to the emergence of this concept in Europe, as is argued for the Russian case by Bonnett and GoGwilt. Here we can only put forward this question. To answer it will require a different study. From geography to civilization The West is a vague concept. The fact that it is essentially a relative word already spells trouble. It becomes worse when the relativity of the word remains implicit or is even ignored. All would agree that England is Western, and that Morocco is not, yet Morocco lies more to the west than England. In America, people think of Europe as being part of the West and consider China to be quintessentially Eastern. Few would stop to think that in the cardinal sense of the words east and west, it is exactly the other way around. In the thought of East and West, we find that despite subdivisions in Near East, Middle East and Far East there are no similar divisions in the West, and the centre is conspicuously absent. Between East and West there is no territory. East and West are divided not by space but by borders, and when the question is put forward where the borders between East



Introduction

23

and West lie, the answer will be different according to time, place and person. During the Cold War the concept of the West was informed by the struggle between capitalism and communism. In his map of civilizations AD 1952, the British historian Arnold Toynbee produced a West in which not only Western Europe, the Americas and Australasia were included, but also Greece, Turkey, Japan and South Africa.52 Yet how do we understand the concept of the West in our post-Cold War era? If we understand the West to constitute the developed, (post-) industrialized world (what was once referred to as the ‘First World’), then Japan would be included in it but South Africa might not. But what if the West constitutes a ‘civilization’, that is, a cultural-historical subset of humanity? Then we may consider South Africa Western, rather than Japan. Similarly, there are South American countries which are not part of the Western developed world, but many would – as Toynbee does – consider them part of Western civilization. If we were to seek advice in the most famous contemporary publication on civilizations, Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, we find to our surprise that South America, Japan, Turkey, South Africa and Greece are no longer part of the West. In Toynbee’s mind, these sections of the world formed part of the West, yet now they constitute – according to Huntington – respectively (part of ) the Latin American, Japanese, Islamic, African and Orthodox civilizations.53 In short, despite the widespread use of the West as a concept, actually providing a map of the West is a most risky endeavour. Similarly, Arab concepts of the West have always been vague when it came to pinpointing it on the map. The early Arab concept of algharb denoted not so much specific countries (though England and France were incontestably the major constituents of the West) but rather a more vague idea. The early Arab West should be understood as a civilization advanced in science, superior in its military might, and harbourer of various philosophies concerning progress, equality and civil rights. Understandably then, we see Arab authors already at the end of the nineteenth century thinking of America as somehow

24

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

being part of the West. In 1891 the Tunisian author Al-Sanûsî brings America and Europe together in his concept of the ‘technological West’, after witnessing the 1889 Paris World Exhibition.54 Japan, on the other hand, has been considered both as part of the West as well as being part of the East. The earliest modern Arab references to Japan we find – again – in the late nineteenth century. The journal Al-Muqtataf published at least two articles on modernizing Japan: Mustaqbal al-mashriq (‘The future of the East’)55 and Taqaddum al-Yabâniyyîn (‘The progress of the Japanese’).56 In both cases, Japan is portrayed as a steadily modernizing country, but claimed as being an integral part of the East.57 This perception of Japan as an inspiring example of an Eastern and non-Christian, yet modern and powerful, nation has continued until modern times.58 On the other hand, there were those who saw in Japan something seemingly quite different. If it is allowed to leave the Arab scene for a moment and pay attention to the Turkish ‘westernizing’ intellectual Ziya Gökalp, we find that his presentation of the Japanese success is an example of how a non-Western, non-Christian nation can overcome its weakness and become Western, even European. Writing in 1923, Gökalp stated that ‘[today], Japan is accepted as a European power, but we are still regarded as an Asiatic nation’.59 It is a stunning example of how the West can be understood as an ideal to aspire to, a kind of arena of political and cultural prominence to which a nation may come to belong regardless of where on the globe it is physically located. This approach renders the West (and even Europe) detached from geography. Interestingly, we find related developments in thinking of the culture of the Self. In nineteenth-century Japan, Japanese westernizers disassociated Japan from Asia, insisting that Japan was not really part of the ‘real Asia’ (thus broadening the way for Japan to consider herself Western).60 We see exactly the same process at work in Egypt at the turn of the century, when Egyptian nationalists insisted that Egyptians are not really Arabs; rather, their ancestors were the ancient Egyptians, who informed and took part in the Greek civilization, the cradle of



Introduction

25

the West. As far back as 1878 the Egyptian monarch Ismail exclaimed, after many years of remodelling Egypt’s infrastructure as well as his own lifestyle after European examples, ‘Mon pays n’est plus en Afrique, nous faisons partie de l’Europe maintenant.’61 It was in a similar vein that Taha Hussein wrote in The Future of Culture in Egypt (first published in 1938) that the Egyptian mind is not Oriental but European. In all these cases – Japan portrayed in the Arab world as Eastern yet modern; Japan portrayed by Gökalp as ‘ex-Eastern’ and (thus) modern; Japan portrayed by Japanese as not Eastern and hence more susceptible to modernization; and Egypt portrayed as European – we can see a fascination with the West in which the West is an example so powerful that it would be detrimental to one’s culture if it were not emulated. Geography is irrelevant in this understanding of the West. An integrated approach If the previous pages have served to refer to earlier studies of Occidentalism and the various approaches that are at our disposal, the following pages should clarify what kind of approach is adopted in this research, and what is meant by the various terms used in this book, such as discourse, ideology and Occidentalism. The aims of this research necessitate a selective amalgam of both imagology and discourse analysis. The method and the theory adopted in this study make use of both approaches. In this research I aim to get to know and understand the ways in which ‘the West’ is perceived and how images of the West are related to certain ideologies in contemporary Egypt. I have decided to pursue this goal by analysing a limited body of non-fiction texts. I have selected writings by Egyptian authors of various ideological persuasions. Writings belonging to particular ideological discourses in Egypt will be analysed in their relation to each other (within the discourse and between the discourses). I am not particularly interested in the extent to which statements about the West are true or false, but rather in the rationale behind them, the motivations for

26

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

them, and the extent to which they deviate from or corroborate with other statements in one discourse or another. This does not mean to imply that I believe that the validity of statements (or ‘reality, ‘truth’) cannot be known, and it certainly does not mean that I believe reality (‘real facts’) about the Other has little to nothing to do with the way in which people think of this Other. The method of analysis adopted here will take the reader beyond the text’s surface. Statements such as ‘Egypt must adapt to the modern world’ or ‘democracy is heresy’ are not interpreted in isolation. They are not simply classified as pro- and anti-Western respectively. Neither have I automatically classified them as ‘pro-modern’ and ‘anti-democratic’. Rather, the context (of the text and the discourse) is taken into account before a concluding interpretation of the text is given. ‘Freedom’, ‘democracy’ or ‘the West’ are words that to their users can have a variety of meanings, and those meanings do not always appear on the surface. For example, ‘freedom’ can mean being free from foreign domination but it can also mean licentiousness; ‘feminism’ can be interpreted as women’s emancipation or as a doctrine that says women should have lots of sex with many different men before and after marriage. Similarly, when it comes to possible meanings of ‘the West’, I am not so much interested in what a text declares at the surface, but rather in the meanings behind what is apparent. My understanding of Occidentalism is straightforward and universal: Occidentalism is both the activity of constructing an image of the West, and the result of this activity (the image itself ). Anyone can engage in this activity. In order to distinguish between Western Self-images and non-Western images of the West (i.e. the West as Other), I would suggest referring to Western Occidentalism as ‘autoOccidentalism’. I do not presume Occidentalism to have a specific content, be it positive or negative. I do presume it to be stereotypical, in the sense that I presume it to stand in a dialectical relationship with images of the Self. (In the case of auto-Occidentalism, the relationship may be with images of the Other.) In other words, I seek out images in which the West has taken the place of the typical Other.



Introduction

27

As is well known, images of the Other will always be connected to the image of one’s Self. Although this means that the image is always a distortion from reality, I will argue that the image is never entirely detached from reality. Real experiences of real facts are ingredients for images of Orient, Occident, British or Egyptian alike. Post-Cold War This research is focused on the period after 1989. While I was still preparing the proposal that lies at the basis of this research, a perceptive friend of mine was unhappily surprised by my choice of the fall of the Berlin Wall as a determining event in the research. Possibly suspecting me of entertaining an unseemly Eurocentric point of view, he asked, ‘Why don’t you select a date that is closer to the Egyptian experience?’ My answer, then and now, is as follows. The ‘Iron Curtain’ was not only a physical barrier which prevented the population of the Eastern block from leaving communist utopia. Rather, it symbolized the division of the world in the capitalist West and the communist East. It is true that a vast proportion of the world population was part of neither West nor East: the so-called Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) counted 47 member states at its first conference in 1961 (most prominently Egypt, Yugoslavia and Indonesia), and ever more states joined the NAM in the decades that followed. Yet the conflict between the great powers was of equally defining importance to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), for it was this conflict which made the establishment of the NAM feasible. The criteria for a state joining the Movement consisted mainly of conditions assuring that the aspiring member state is (politically, militarily) neutral ‘in the context of Great Power conflicts’. It is then fair to say that the whole world was caught up in the logic of the conflict between West and East. For decades, the two great powers, one referring to itself as ‘the (free) West’, the other claiming to consist of a collection of communist ideal states, have made impressions on people the world over. In Egypt, as everywhere else, those impressions

28

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

forced people to make images of the sender of those impressions. While making those images, people necessarily thought in the context of the conflict between the great powers. As that conflict ended in so graphic a manner with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the revolutions throughout Eastern Europe in 1989, the context in which images of the West had been crafted until then changed drastically, in Egypt as much as anywhere else. It is for this reason that 1989 is a fitting starting point for research into contemporary Occidentalism. Three ideological contexts It is difficult to categorize the intellectual landscape in Egypt. The long-established lack of political freedoms has stifled the proliferation of credible political opposition parties. The lack of press freedoms smothers the display of intellectual debates which otherwise could be monitored freely. Cultural and political life in Egypt and the wider Arab world appears to be in a state of confusion which can be traced back to the Arab defeat against Israel in 1967,62 and suffered another blow with the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the bipolar system. The convulsions spawned by the attacks of 11 September, 2001 have only exacerbated regional instability.63 A conventional division employed both within and outside the Arab world is between ‘Islamist’ and ‘secular’ discourses.64 Others have opted for a more distinguishing categorisation comprising Islamic, leftwing, nationalist and liberal trends.65 I was tempted to follow the dichotomous division in Islamist and secular discourses (or ‘trends’ or ‘currents’ as some would have it), because the various secular discourses do not publish nearly as much on ‘the West’ as does the Islamist discourse. The relevant works of Marxists, nationalists and liberals combined do not even match the amount of relevant Islamist works. I did not want to write a whole separate chapter on liberal views of the West, then another on leftist views, if the material to base any analysis on, was too scarce. However, in the end I have decided not to join all the secular discourses together. As time went



Introduction

29

by, I found more and more liberal, Marxist and nationalist material of relevance to the research, and the differences between for instance the Marxist Galâl Amîn and the liberal Ridâ Hilâl66 were simply too big to allow me to treat them under one and the same secularist heading. My categorization is threefold: an Islamist discourse, a liberal discourse and thirdly a leftist-nationalist discourse. I have been troubled with this latter hyphenated discourse, as I was tempted to follow Abu-Rabi’ in his fourfold categorization mentioned above. Yet as has been observed by Abu-Rabi’, these discourses are not mutually exclusive.67 I have found that the leftist and the nationalist discourse are often hard to distinguish. This is not strange given the Nasserist legacy in Egyptian politics, in which socialism and Arab nationalism are combined. Indeed, in my research material, I have found the two to cohabit a single discourse comfortably, and have therefore opted for the hyphen. Special emphasis will be placed on the differences and similarities between the images as constructed within the different discourses, for the differences and similarities can tell us what is the strength of the discourse in shaping the image, and help us understand the way in which the image was created. The material There are countless books and articles that contain images of the West. A short reference to Western ‘double standards’ in an op-ed about weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East is relevant to this research, as is a discussion of perceived ‘crusaderism’ in Washington, or a text using globalization and westernization synonymously. Obviously it is impossible to read or even collect all the relevant material. The material used in this research should be seen as a sample. While working with texts has the advantage that the material is available for scrutiny by others, and remains uninfluenced by the research, there is the danger of bias in the selection of the texts. To compensate for this, I have turned to a third party to collect material on my behalf. This third party is the small company called Mahrusa,

30

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

an independent provider of media services that has catalogued newspaper articles published in Egyptian and Arab regional newspapers going back to the 1980s. I requested three volumes of newspaper articles on the topic of Egyptian, Arab and/or Islamic cultural and political relations with the West, Europe or the United States. This amounted to over 300 mainly op-ed articles. I specifically requested that the newspapers from which the selection was to be drawn, would cover the various political points of view, thus including leftist, nationalist, liberal, and Islamist outlets. Not only did this yield a collection of articles over which I had exerted no bias, it provided me with articles many of which I could never have found myself, for newspaper archives in Egypt leave much to be desired. However, while I have exerted no bias over the collection made by Mahrusa, there may be a bias on the part of Mahrusa’s cataloguing and subsequent selection. Partly in order to spread any possible bias, I have in addition to Mahrusa’s collection, collected material myself. I added these articles to the corpus of texts, partly found on the websites of Egyptian newspapers (e.g. Al-Ahrâm, Al-‘Arabî, Al-Usbû‘, Al-Masrî al-Yawm, Al-Sha‘b; see the bibliography for URL addresses) and Arab satellite channels (Al-‘Arabiyyah and Al-Gazîrah), partly in the media archive of the American University in Cairo (AUC). In addition to the newspaper articles I have analysed around forty books published after 1989, written by Egyptian intellectuals of the various ideological persuasions, along with a few works written by non-Egyptians which have had an impact on intellectual discussions in Egypt (Shâkir Nâbulsî and George Tarâbîshî). Nearly all of these books were found in bookshops or at bookstalls in Cairo during my sojourns there in the winter of 2005 and the summer of 2007. Three authors are particularly well represented in this collection: Galâl Amîn, Ridâ Hilâl and Muhammad ‘Imârah. I have taken these authors as representative of the leftist-nationalist, liberal and Islamist discourse respectively, and they will be treated in depth in order to get a deeper understanding of how images of the West play a role in their work and respective ideologies. A private meeting with Galâl



Introduction

31

Amîn helped to further understanding of his work. It was not possible to meet with Muhammad ‘Imârah or Ridâ Hilâl, in the latter case because he disappeared in August 2003, and has most unfortunately not been seen or heard of since. Hasan Hanafî has so far only been mentioned cursorily, and here is where I would like to explain why. He was the first to publish a lengthy study of what he called istighrâb or Occidentalism. Hanafî’s work on Occidentalism is part of a large project in which the Egyptian philosopher aims to establish the intellectual foundations for a progressive Islamic revival. This project, entitled ‘heritage and renewal’ (al-turâth wa al-tagdîd), entails (1) a reassessment of the reception of the Arab-Islamic tradition, (2) a reassessment of the reception of Western tradition, and (3) the establishment of a new frame of mind that is geared to cope with contemporary reality. The first of these three pillars was dealt with in Heritage and Renewal: Our Position Towards the Old Heritage, published in 1980.68 Shortly afterwards came the publication of the first and last issue of a journal entitled Al-Yasâr al-Islâmî, or ‘the Islamic Left’. The Islamic Left is still the ‘ideology’ associated with Hanafî. Then in 1991 Hanafî published his Introduction to the Science of Occidentalism.69 This work has received much attention in both the Arab world as well as in Europe. In order not to cause any confusion, it should be made clear in advance that Hanafî’s use of the term Occidentalism is rather different from the uses discussed so far. Hanafî calls for the establishment of an academic field that is concerned with studying ‘the West’, hence Occidentalism, analogous to Orientalism. According to Hanafî, the Arab world (and even more broadly speaking, the ‘Third World’) suffers from a hermeneutical captivity resulting from Western imperialism. The West automatically considers itself the measure of all things, and it is itself the chief measurer. It does not allow others to measure it, nor does it allow for measures other than its own to be used. Over the past two centuries, the Arab world has in fact come to adopt – either willingly or under duress – the Western gaze upon its Self and the world, which make it

32

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

impossible for the authentic Arab and Islamic traditions to play their parts in the present. Hanafî’s intention with Occidentalism is to challenge the status quo by reversing ‘the gaze’: Occidentalism is the other side of Orientalism, its counterpart, or better still its opposite. While Orientalism is the vision of the (Eastern) Self as glanced through the (Western) Other, Occidentalism aims to untie the double historical knot between Self and Other …70 In other words, Occidentalism as an academic discipline would transform the West from being a student into being an object that is studied. It would break the standard of the West as a seemingly universal viewpoint. Hanafî’s call for recognition of the multiplicity of points of view, or the relativity of Western concepts, seems to befit the postmodernist agenda of multiculturalism and cultural relativism. Yet, surprisingly, Hanafî argues against postmodernism as a fallacy.71 I have asked Hanafî as to how he reconciles his rejection of postmodernist thought with his call for Occidentalism which must be understood as a form of cultural relativism. Hanafî turns out to be somewhat ambivalent in relation to the relativistic approach. He argues for relativism in relation to the Western tradition, but rejects it when it threatens to touch on the Arabic-Islamic heritage.72 This and other real or seeming contradictions have troubled various commentators on Hanafî’s work, most recently, and most ferociously, George Tarâbîshî.73 While both Hanafî and Tarâbîshî will be mentioned later on in this book, it should be clear from this point on that Hanafî’s employment of the term Occidentalism is different from the way it has been employed since, and different from how it is employed in the present study.



Introduction

33

Dangers Any research into the creation and use of images is in danger of producing skewed results for the simple reason that the researcher tends to over-represent the more dramatic, the more extreme imageries, for the simple reason that these images are most apparent, most easily found. For example, when researching images of Catholicism in America, most of the readily available material will be found to have been written from either a decidedly pro- or anti-Catholic viewpoint. The researcher will recapitulate discussions in the American media around the time of the election of president Kennedy (the first Catholic US president), and most of the relevant articles for this research will be critical of the prospect of a Catholic president, calling into question the supposed problem of any Catholic’s ‘dual allegiance’. The more factual reports on Catholics and the Catholic church in America are simply not as interesting for the research: it is rightfully assumed that there is a near infinite amount of factual reporting on the topic, but what the researcher is looking for is something else, namely engagement with Catholic reality, be it against or in favour of the object, but not indifferent to it. Perhaps another example is due. When researching the image of America in Dutch political and cultural discourse, the research is in danger of leading itself almost exclusively to those politicians and commentators who have outspoken views of America: socialists (e.g. SP) and conservative pseudo-liberals (such as Geert Wilders) will provide fiercely negative (imperialist!) and jubilantly positive (defender of freedom!) images respectively. The mainstream is in danger of being ignored in the research because the mainstream politicians and commentators are not so concerned with America to let it play an important role in their discourse. Some of the criticism of Edward Said’s Orientalism was directed at Said’s selection of texts, which excluded, for instance, all German scholarship on the Orient. To the extent that this criticism was justified, it may be explained by the problem I am describing here: German scholarship on the Orient was largely descriptive and factual, with a heavy focus on linguistics. This would yield few results for any study into images of the Orient,

34

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

when compared to the French and British focus on society and culture. In addition – and apart from Said’s inability to read German – Said may have been discouraged from adding German Orientalism to his workload for the reason that Germany did not entertain an Oriental imperialist policy for Said to link to German Orientalist scholarship. The risk of producing skewed results is similarly present in a research into Occidentalism. In this research the risk partly hailed from the fact that it is mainly Islamists who write directly about the West, publishing works with wonderfully transparent titles such as ‘Islam and the West’, ‘Islam and the Other’ or ‘Western Civilization and Islam’. While these publications were found without too much trouble, I had to go out and exert a genuine effort to find publications dealing with the West written by intellectuals from other trends: nationalists, leftists or liberals. (This excludes Ridâ Hilâl and Galâl Amîn, whose works were known to me from the early stages of the research.) Another danger to the research, related to the one mentioned above, is when we focus exclusively on the one image of our interest. When we only look at how the West is described, and disregard the context, we run the risk of misrepresenting the images. All media have a certain style, certain conventions: these must be made clear along with the images we find in this media. When we find a newspaper article saying that the West is a pestilence ravaging the youth, this may seem at first glance rather alarmist. Yet, when we look further and find that this newspaper also has headlines that run ‘Egyptian Government is spreading cancer in the country!’,74 then we may more readily assume that the article about Western pestilence befits the style of the newspaper, and its image of the West is to some extent governed by this newspaper’s agitative style. One could compare this example with Islamophobic articles in English tabloids: they do not have the same meaning as they might were they to be published in any of the broadsheets. This risk of misrepresentation has been taken into account in this research. I have tried always to provide the context of



Introduction

35

any publication, not only in terms of ideological background (which in any case is a central element of the analysis) but also questions of style of the publication (or author) as well as the time frame in which a certain text was published. The following chapter is concerned with how ‘the West’ has been understood and portrayed in modern Egyptian history since the French invasion of 1798 until the end of the Cold War. Works of key authors such as Al-Gabartî, Al-Tahtâwî, Muhammad ‘Abduh, Sayyid Qutb and Gamal Abdel Nasser, are re-read with an eye on the representations of the West in these texts. This provides material with which to compare my ultimate findings diachronically, to the extent that it will enable the recognition of topoi, stereotypes and rhetorical strategies that result from the analysis of contemporary texts. The chapter is therefore not intended to be an entirely novel interpretation of Egyptian intellectual and ideological history, but should nevertheless be informative in its particular arrangement and foci on specific authors and works. The analyses are presented chronologically and placed within their historical context. In so doing, the chapter traces the development of the meaning of ‘the West’ in Egypt, and presents the reader with an understanding of Egyptian positions vis-à-vis the West that goes beyond the commonplace and scarcely illuminating description of Arab views of the West as being ‘ambiguous’. It is argued that from this reading of modern Egyptian intellectual history five major constructions of the West, or ‘Occidentalisms’ emerge. These Occidentalisms refute the idea – at least for as far Egypt is concerned – that the Islamic world has been consistently dismissive of (or at least reticent in) adopting Western immaterial culture. The Occidentalisms, as typical representations of the West, may also be of use in understanding the various ways in which the concept of the West is imagined in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world since the end of the Cold War. Chapter 3 is geared to present Egyptian post-Cold War texts that relate to the West in whatever shape or form. After a short introduction the three aforementioned ideological backgrounds are treated

36

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

separately, in each case leading up to a discussion of one of its protagonists. That means that the discussion of leftist-nationalist discourse culminates in an inquiry into the works of Galâl Amîn, followed by a discussion of Islamist discourse on the West that leads up to an analysis of the writings by Muhammad ‘Imârah, and finally the liberal discourse is engaged with, epitomized by an assessment of books written by Ridâ Hilâl. While Chapter 3 is largely descriptive, Chapter 4 examines the findings in depth, by drawing parallels between times and places, by differentiating between text and society, and most importantly by focusing on the element of power in explaining various phenomena in Egyptian Occidentalism. This eventually provides a thorough understanding of the differences and similarities between Occidentalism and Orientalism. Finally, the main findings of the research are summarized in the conclusions. By the end of this thesis it should be clear among other things that Occidentalisms, or images of the West, come in highly varied shapes and are influenced by both ideology and real facts on the ground, and that therefore anti-Western sentiment should not be explained without having recourse to Western policies.

2 A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

Introduction The sight of the people of Berlin chiselling away at the wall that had separated the German nation for nearly three decades provided the world with the most graphic display of the end of the Cold War. As the East–West conflict ceased to be, the concepts of ‘East’ and ‘West’ soon seemed to lose the meaning they had carried since the end of the Second World War. In the new uni-polar world some argued that the end of the Cold War was the definitive victory of liberal democracy as the sole credible system of government. In this view mankind had arrived at the end of history, after which there could be no major ideological rivalry.1 Others pointed at the Islamic world where many appeared not to hail the universalization of the world after the image of the victorious West.2 This latter point of view gained the upper hand and a new binary opposition has emerged in the worldview of many: an opposition between the West and Islam. From the framework of this dichotomy, people in the West have started to display an interest in what the Muslim Other thinks of the West. More precisely, the interest is focused on why there is ‘Muslim hatred’ of the West. And in particular the terrorist attacks of 11 September, 2001 were followed

38

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

by the frantic search for an answer to the question ‘Why do they hate us?’.3 The most popular answers to this question usually employ essentializations and fail to provide a proper insight into the history of appreciations of the West in the Islamic world. These answers relate that Islam has since its inception been a force consistently hostile to Christendom, Europe and the West. It is argued that when Europe did away with medieval misery to create the splendour of the Renaissance and fostered the Enlightenment, the Islamic world remained blissfully unaware, and fatally uninterested. It is suggested that this lack of curiosity is part of the Muslim worldview, where the realm of unbelief is regarded as naturally inferior by divine logic. Certainly the primary author of this point of view is Bernard Lewis: ‘[T]he Renaissance, the Reformation, the technological revolution passed virtually unnoticed in the lands of Islam, where they were still inclined to dismiss the denizens of the lands beyond the Western frontier as benighted barbarians.’4 Apart from statements suggesting that the Islamic world has always rejected the West, there is also the idea that Islamic hatred of the West is essentially unrelated to actual policies of Western powers. Again, we can refer to Bernard Lewis, who grants that Western interference in Muslim countries may rightfully be criticized, but states that in the end ‘something deeper is involved than [such] specific grievances’, and he suggests it is ‘something in the religious culture of Islam which inspired … a dignity [which] in moments of upheaval and disruption, when the deeper passions are stirred, … can give way to an explosive mixture of rage and hatred ….’5 This idea that the key element nurturing the divide between the West and its Muslim critics, is essentially an irrational hatred against the ‘Infidel West’, has also been used recently by Margalit and Buruma in their publication on ‘Occidentalism’.6 A third and related argument that aims to ‘explain’ Islamic animosity against the West states that Islam is simply incompatible with Western values such as democracy and human rights. This view is often illustrated by referring to how the Muslim world has supposedly



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

39

reacted to the rising prominence of Europe in modern times. In this view, the Islamic world, particularly the Ottoman Empire, consistently selected only the material riches and techniques of the West, steering clear of adopting any immaterial, cultural and philosophical fruits of the European Renaissance. The theory that the apparent confrontation between ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’ has more to do with an immutable Islam than with historical peculiarities, and that Muslim societies consistently held back any encroachment of Western influence (military and other technical matters excepted) is difficult to maintain when we review the historical reactions in the Muslim world to Europe’s rise. From various fields criticism has been directed at the idea that the Ottoman Empire and the wider Islamic world had closed itself off from Europe, and was reticent when confronted with Western ideas. Specialists in the field of Ottoman history have argued that the Ottoman Empire should be regarded much more as a European empire than is commonly the case,7 and consider, for instance, the foundation of the Turkish Republic to be not so much a revolutionary break with the Ottoman past as the completion of an internal Ottoman process of modernization.8 Other studies, concerning Arab travel literature dating back to the sixteenth century, reveal that relations between the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean were more intense and mutually advantageous than previously believed.9 Moreover, some recent publications recall attention to the theory that the European Renaissance could never have taken place without intensive cultural exchanges with the southern Mediterranean.10 While these publications imply that Arab appreciations of the West could not have been as monolithic as has been suggested, they do not focus on these appreciations or images. If we are to proceed beyond the observation that images of the West have been ‘ambiguous’, we should pay close attention to the descriptions of the West as they have come to us from the Arab world in recent history. In this chapter I argue that the historical development of Egyptian appreciations of the West shows that the aforementioned

40

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

preconceptions of how the West has been viewed from ‘the Islamic point of view’, are flawed, at least as far Egypt is concerned. I argue that from the analysis of the history of constructing the West in Egypt emerge five ‘Occidentalisms’, or five typical ways in which the West is perceived and portrayed. These Occidentalisms are as follows: the ‘Benign West’ – the perception of the West as an exemplary region of which not only its science, technology and material wealth, but also its application of principles of justice, equality and democracy are admirable; the ‘Malign West’ – the West perceived as the oppressive and racist (neo-)colonial power; the ‘Weak West’ – the West as ‘paper tiger’ about to collapse because of its immoral culture and mindless materialism; the ‘Appropriated West’ – the representation of the admirable qualities of the West as having their origins in the (Islamic) Self; and lastly, the ‘True West’ – the image of the West in which negative qualifications (such as imperialism) are duly recognized but superseded by a belief that another, better, and ‘true’ West behind the negative façade exists. Enchanté: Al-Gabartî The French invasion of Egypt in 1798 is commonly accepted as a breaking point in Egyptian history and the beginning of Egypt’s modern age.11 This should, however, not be misunderstood to mean that prior to 1798 there were no contacts between Egypt and Europe. While thus not to be described as ‘first contact’, the French invasion of 1798 did herald a series of developments of great importance that were intimately linked to developments in Europe. As such it is suitable to start an investigation into Egyptian perceptions of the West with the reactions to this event and its aftermath. A common point of reference is the Cairene religious scholar ‘Abd Al-Rahmân Al-Gabartî (1753–1825/6), whose Chronicle of the Period of the French in Egypt12 is a remarkable eyewitness account of the French episode in Egypt. The first remarkable thing about the chronicle is its title. It refers to ‘the French’ (Faransîs), not to ‘the Franks’. In choosing this appellation AlGabartî shows himself aware of, and promotes the awareness among



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

41

his readers of, the differences between the various European nations. This befits the general precision with which Al-Gabartî has worked. The author shows himself to be very well aware of the wider political meaning of the French invasion and its strategic importance, witness the following exposé on how the British are involved in this matter: The story of these English is that they are the enemies of the French people, and that the French, when they attacked the Venetians, at Venice and Leghorn and other places, also intended to attack the English but they could not reach them by land. So they fought them on the sea but were unable to withstand them, for the English are known for their strength and valour in sea battles, while the French are just the opposite. So the French knew that they could not achieve their ends against the English except through India, and (of course) there is passage to India only through the Red Sea, and the English are aware of this, and when they found that the French had taken possession of Alexandria and had crossed Egyptian territory, they were certain that the French would get to them afterwards from that direction and then they would undoubtedly be in constant need of supplies and soldiers (to India).13 Not only did Al-Gabartî dispense with the use of the term Franks, he didn’t even refer to the French as Christians. Napoleon pretended to be some sort of a near-Muslim, and tried to prove this by pointing at how the French had attacked Rome and conquered the Crusader kingdom of Malta. This was undeniable, but still no proof that Napoleon was Muslim. Al-Gabartî concluded that the French were neither Muslim nor Christian. They did not believe in God at all, or at least not in religion.14 This was a new category to Al-Gabartî’s audience, a new kind of unbelief. Al-Gabartî was among the first to try to make sense of this, and that he had to do so while facing the military superiority of these unbelievers, of course informed his description of them.

42

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Al-Gabartî expresses shock at the fact that the French could have taken control of Egypt. In describing the French conquest, he portrays the Mamluke soldiers as having been weaklings, whereas he likens the French to the brave fighters in the early days of Islam.15 This should not be construed as some kind of self-criticism, for AlGabartî does not consider himself to be in any way connected to the Mamluke fighters. As a religious scholar he belongs to a social class that stands apart from the Turkic military strata of Egyptian society. In a way, his text could be given an escapist interpretation: ‘We Muslims were not served by a proper defence, we have been betrayed while those who have won were fighting like real Muslims.’ Understood in this vein, the idea that Islam is superior remains valid, even in the face of unbelievers’ victory over Muslims. The difficult task of reconciling the dogma of Islamic superiority with the fact of French superiority treads a fine line between humiliation, admiration and contempt. On numerous occasions Al-Gabartî is very excited by what he is shown by the French scientists, and allows himself to be enlightened by them, yet when he is startled by some experiment, he is laughed at for his ignorance. Then, in turn, when an experiment of the French scientific mission fails to deliver what was promised (an air-balloon would fly, but didn’t), Al-Gabartî takes his revenge and ridicules the experiment.16 It has been suggested that the Muslim world after it had achieved its heyday consistently failed to appreciate that beyond the Muslim world there could be beneficial knowledge and practices. Only in case of a military defeat did the Ottoman authorities think to adopt the enemies’ devices that had facilitated its victory. In other words, only when it really had to, it adopted a ‘thing’. The idea of obtaining knowledge from beyond the realm of Islam or the notion that it could be useful to learn from unbelieving peoples was supposedly unacceptable because it went against the age-old adage which said that Muslims are superior. This view is not corroborated by the contents of Al-Gabartî’s account. Al-Gabartî not only displays a fascination with the content and method of French science, he also



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

43

speaks favourably of the French way of dispensing justice. When he writes of the distinction between ‘good justice’ and ‘bad justice’, he provides a case of Mamluke justice (summary execution) as ‘bad’ whereas he praises the way the French dispensed justice on the murderer of Kleber (sentenced to death after a trial) as being a prime example of ‘good justice’. In a later edition of the chronicle (‘Agâ’ib al-âthâr) Al-Gabartî even includes the complete transcript of the court proceedings.17 If the Muslim point of view was such that it was unthinkable that non-Muslims could have something of value to Muslims, we would never expect Al-Gabartî, a traditionally-trained Azhar scholar, to write with such calm and balance about the French occupation of his country, even displaying admiration of certain aspects of the French ways of life. A promise is born: Al-Tahtâwî Governor Muhammad ‘Alî (ca. 1768–1849), practically the independent ruler of Egypt as of 1805, sought to ‘modernize’ his army and his administration. Students were sent to Paris to learn the secrets of European strength. In 1826, the first group of forty-four students were sent off to Paris, among these the group’s imam, the 24-year-old Egyptian Rifâ‘ah Râfi‘ al-Tahtâwî. Al-Tahtâwî (1801–1873) is a crucial figure in the intellectual phase which Hourani has labelled the ‘first generation’ of Arab thinkers engaging with modern Europe, or the generation between 1830 and 1870.18 In this period Arab exposés of Europe were intended to inform the Arab populations of modern science and progress. Al-Tahtâwî and others of his generation such as the Tunisian Khayr al-Dîn and the Maronite Butrus al-Bustânî, gained knowledge of the scientific and societal achievements of Europe, and wrote to inform a public that was largely ignorant of this. Al-Tahtâwî was a student of Hasan al-‘Attâr, who had consorted with the French during their presence in Egypt. In particular, Al‘Attâr had visited the scientific centres, where he first caught a glimpse

44

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

of the advances in European knowledge. Thus, to Al-Tahtâwî, the notion that Europe had something important to offer was not revolutionary. Al-Tahtâwî’s account of his stay in Paris was an important book, for it provided the Egyptian reader with a firsthand report of what Europe and France in particular had to offer. Also, it provided a posture to adopt in the face of European supremacy in so many fields. Takhlîs al-ibrîz fi talkhîs Barîs,19 which could be loosely translated as ‘The extraction of the finest lessons from a summary account of Paris’, was intended to educate a wide and diverse Egyptian readership. The students were sent off by Muhammad ‘Alî himself, with the assignment to learn as much as possible of all that could benefit Egypt.20 The Extraction begins with the description of leaving Cairo for Alexandria. Although Al-Tahtâwî had never been to Europe, Alexandria strikes him as European. Not only are there many foreigners and do the people speak a kind of Italian (then the Mediterranean lingua franca), also the buildings are to him quite unlike anything anywhere else in Egypt. Why would Al-Tahtâwî write this? We know from a passage further up that the Europeanness of Alexandria he considers a good thing, which suggests that this is a way of telling the readers that Egypt is capable of becoming like Europe, and that it probably should. On numerous occasions, Al-Tahtâwî puts great effort in explaining why he and his group were sent to Paris. Apparently, he feels the need to justify his presence in an infidel land. His justifications are derived from religious precepts, explaining that knowledge knows no religion, but that Islam urges Muslims to acquire knowledge. Al-Tahtâwî refers to the hadith ‘Acquire knowledge, even if it be in China’, and reminds his readers that China is an infidel land. Acquiring knowledge from beyond the lands of Islam is thus permitted. Al-Tahtâwî provides two divisions of the world, one based on civilization and another on Islam. The first division is an explanation of the differences between the societies that are barbarian and the societies that are highly civilized and those societies that are in between these. Here, Al-Tahtâwî expresses the idea of progress, and,



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

45

surprisingly, he suggests progress is made through manmade knowledge. God does not come into play in his division between barbarity and civilization. For instance, the first step from barbarity to a higher form of human organization is made when a cave man notices how a falling rock falls on another rock, creates a spark and causes fire. If the man then understands that he can use this knowledge to his advantage and make his own fire, advancement has been made in his society. Similarly, higher stages are reached, apparently without God ever doing anything. The second division of the world is based on Islam. The Asian continent ranks highest, because here Islam has its roots and its largest group of followers. Second is Africa, because all of North Africa is Muslim and even some regions further south are inhabited by Muslims. Third is Europe, because its Eastern regions form part of the Ottoman Empire, even though most of the people there are not themselves Muslim. America ranks last, for there, there are no Muslims at all. If the intention was merely to list the four continents according to the number of its Muslims, it would have been a rather pointless exercise. But the real point of this listing is made when Al-Tahtâwî illustrates what this list does not mean: ‘The above has been established from the point of view of Islam … One cannot say that most of this relies on superiority, since by itself it [that is, ‘Islam’, RW] does not lead to excellence and virtue.’21 The listing was thus intended to tell the readers that Islam and ‘excellence and virtue’ do not necessarily go together. In general, Al-Tahtâwî is very pleased with what he sees in Paris. First and foremost, he is taken in with the scientific advances, and states unequivocally that ‘The best of science is in the land of the Franks’.22 Also, people are very clean (to which observation he adds that people in Holland are reported to be even cleaner),23 transport and the mailing system are incredibly effective, and people strive to improve their work constantly. Al-Tahtâwî praises the benefits of newspapers to educate the people, the intelligence of the people, and after a visit to a royal palace he concludes that ‘The basic principle with the French is that everything is done for the sake of beauty

46

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

and elegance, rather than for [excessive] ornamentation, the outward show of wealth or vainglory’.24 As for the negative qualifications Al-Tahtâwî applies, they are few and far between. The search for profit may have beneficial effects, it also leads to greed. In general, the French are not generous, but Al-Tahtâwî adds a few things that could explain this: ‘Admittedly, generosity is quite rare in civilized countries. … Also, they believe that giving something to someone who is capable of working induces him not to concern himself with earning a living.’25 Elsewhere, Al-Tahtâwî explains the French lack of generosity by saying that ‘generosity is peculiar to Arabs’.26 The way the French treat ‘their women’ is also not to Al-Tahtâwî’s liking, as the men are like slaves to their women, and he quotes a French source saying that ‘The French treat [women] like spoilt children’. Yet the lack of jealousy means not lack of honour, for indeed ‘when their women misbehave, they are the most malicious of men against themselves and against those who have betrayed them with their women’.27 Al-Tahtâwî’s insistence on the honourableness of the Franks must be seen as an implicit rejection of the famous medieval chronicler ‘Usâmah ibn Munqidh (1095–1188), who wrote: The Franks possess nothing in the way of regard for honour or propriety. One of them might be walking along with his wife and run into another man. This other man might then take his wife to one side and chat with her, while the husband just stands there waiting for her to finish her conversation.28 Then, after providing a few anecdotes indicating the average Frank’s lack of jealousy in this regard, Ibn Munqidh concludes: ‘Now consider this great contradiction! They have no sense of propriety or honour, yet they have immense courage.’29 Clearly, Al-Tahtâwî is aware that his readership associates jealousy with honour and feels the need to prevent his readers from concluding that the Franks are without honour.



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

47

Of course there was also the general flaw in the French in that they were no Muslims. This inspired Al-Tahtâwî to compose the following verses: Is there another place like Paris where the suns of knowledge never set where the night of unbelief has no morning? Forsooth, is this not the strangest of things?30 The fact that at first sight supremacy went hand in hand with unbelief could lead to the conclusion that unbelief leads to supremacy. Perhaps it was in order to prevent people from coming to this conclusion that Al-Tahtâwî regularly contrasts the French with the Copts. The French are intelligent, ‘unlike the Copts, who have an inclination for ignorance’, and the French are clean, ‘as opposed to Copts’.31 It may be that these references were not so much intended to spite the Copts as to demonstrate that the superiority of the French had nothing to do with the fact that they were unbelievers. Perhaps the only serious problem Al-Tahtâwî had with his Parisian experience was that some of the finest minds in Paris believed that there was no God at all, and considered religion a dangerous figment of the imagination. These are ‘extreme rationalists’ who believe that scientists are more useful than prophets.32 As much as Al-Tahtâwî appears to have been enthralled with the rationalist approach to science, he could not allow for atheism. That The Extraction was not only intended to educate but also to instruct is evident. One of the most remarkable parts of the book is the inclusion of a translation of the entire French constitutional Charter, the central French code of law of 1814, amended in 1830. Even more so than Al-Gabartî, Al-Tahtâwî is concerned with the concept of justice, and clearly believes that Europe may hold important keys to a new judicial system in Egypt. That the inclusion of the Charter was intended as instruction becomes the more clear when we see that in one passage Al-Tahtâwî added to the text. Where the

48

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Charter states that Ministers cannot be accused except pour fait de trahison ou de concussion, Al-Tahtâwî’s translation speaks of ‘treason, corruption or misappropriation of funds’.33 Apparently, Al-Tahtâwî felt the need to ‘complete’ this particular article of the Charter. Such a need would not arise unless he thought of the Charter as a model for Egypt. The Extraction is a message to Egypt, saying among other things that if anyone still thought that Europeans hated Muslims, they were wrong, for the French are free to enjoy the religion they choose, including Islam. If anyone still thought that the Europeans were ferocious Crusaders, they were wrong, because most of the French people do not believe in the church anymore. (Indeed, what is seriously wrong with some of them is that they believe in nothing at all.) In sum, Tahtâwî’s appreciation of Europe cannot be squared with the theory that Muslims found it hard to learn from infidels. Neither does Tahtâwî limit his recommendations of Western culture to material things. Rather, Tahtâwî is quite open-minded and enthusiastic about both material and immaterial elements of European life. In The Extraction we mainly find images of a good West, where Egypt can and should learn from. In the fields of education, science, public administration and the judiciary, Egypt should look to Europe. Two ugly truths meet As time progressed, Egyptian intellectuals no longer needed to inform people of modern Europe, for in many ways Europe was simply brought to Egypt. Much of this had been the work of Khedive Isma‘îl, who wanted to modernize not only the military, public administration and the education system but also society, the urban fabric (architecture and public spaces), the economy and his own lifestyle. Cairo and Alexandria acquired enormous new areas, built according to Parisian models with neo-classical apartment buildings. Foreign investors and the local bourgeoisie established splendid warehouses. French, Italians, English and other Europeans were training



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

49

officers and ran schools. Architects from Italy, France and Belgium were contracted to fill the allées and piazzas. The spectacular Opera House was built and the derelict Mosque of Al-Husayn, sanctuary of the saint’s head, was replaced by a mosque in neo-Gothic style. Cairo came to be called ‘Paris on the Nile’. As is well known, Egypt could not afford all this, at least not in the way in which Isma‘îl arranged the finances. In 1876 France and Britain stepped in when Egypt proved bankrupt. Henceforth all Egyptian government spending would be subject to approval by foreign commissioners charged with satisfying international creditors to the Egyptian state. Not long after, opposition forces rallied behind the slogan ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’, establishing an early form of nationalism in Egypt. Fearful of this development (which became famous as the ‘Urâbî rebellion), and out of concern over access to the Suez Canal, the British occupied Egypt in 1882. This new situation called for a new approach to understanding Europe. Al-Tahtâwî’s call for modernization was argued on the basis of an understanding of modernization as something Egyptian authorities would develop. After 1882 this was no longer the case. In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, it transpired that those who stood most to gain from modernization were the foreigners and the Turkish elite, and that on the losing side were the ulema and the Egyptian masses, who – contrary to the promise of modernity – had no say in how they were ruled. From a religious perspective, it could not be maintained that modernization was unproblematic, because the position of the Muslim authorities (the ulema and the religious schooling system) had been fundamentally changed. Social conventions had changed, too. The way people dressed, the language they were speaking, the manner in which the sexes interacted, these were cultural elements closely associated with religion, and these manners had now changed, and they changed in accordance with what was the European fashion. In the eyes of some people, there was no good reason for the people of Egypt to change in these respects. Substituting the turban for the hat did not increase a man’s intellectual ability,

50

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

and though it was useful to know French there was no reason why this language would have to be preferred to Arabic. In other words, although Europe still contained the promises held out by Al-Tahtâwî, it could now also be seen as a political menace as well as a danger to the cultural integrity of Arabs and Islam. Gamâl al-Dîn al-Afghânî Perhaps the first to articulate this two-sided appreciation of Europe was the enigmatic Gamâl al-Dîn al-Afghânî. Gamâl al-Dîn, born in Persia, pretended to be an Afghan in order to mask his Shiite background.34 Referred to as a fundamentalist avant la lettre, but also claimed by Arab nationalists as well as Muslim reformers, Al-Afghânî is a difficult character to understand. Nikki Keddie’s An Islamic Response to Imperialism is the only work to date that provides a thorough overview of Al-Afghânî’s thoughts based on his Arabic as well as his Persian and French writings. From Keddie’s study it appears that what Al-Afghânî said or wrote depended very much on what kind of public he envisioned. A casual reading of his works would then lead to the conclusion that he was extremely opportunistic. When speaking in Istanbul he extolled the ambitions of the reforms (tanzimat) that were being implemented. When directing himself to an uneducated Muslim public he would speak of the glory of Islam and the dangers of foreign encroachment. In Paris, he wrote a letter to the Orientalist Ernest Renan, in which he commends Renan for his analysis that the Muslim religion is a disaster for science and development, yet adds that this does not mean that Islam in itself is hostile to science and development (this distinction will be dealt with below). In Egypt he encouraged Egyptians to take pride in their pre-Islamic, pharaonic heritage. When addressing Muslim youth in India, he stressed that these youth are part and parcel of the great Indian history, whose vedas and sastras (both Hindu religious texts) were at the root of the Code Romain, which in turn spawned all the modern European law codes.



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

51

It seems impossible to reconcile these stances, except if we understand it in light of Al-Afghânî’s overall concern: foreign political domination. Afghânî supported all resistance against imperialism. Where a (pan-)Islamic trend united people against colonial powers he supported this trend; where it was a nationalist movement that achieved this Afghânî supported nationalism. It appears that Islam to Al-Afghânî was a rallying call, a political instrument which could serve to bind masses of people together to fight (mainly British) imperialism. That is also how we should understand the contents of his letter to Renan.35 When referring to ‘the Muslim religion’ Al-Afghânî meant the current state of affairs in the Muslim world and the dominant religious practices. This ‘Muslim religion’ Al-Afghânî deemed a disaster, yet ‘Islam’ as an ideal (as an ideology more than a religion) has been of service when it first lifted the Arabs out of a state of barbarism, then grew to become the most powerful and advanced culture in the world. For Islam to be able to do so once more, it had to be transformed into both a modern anti-imperialist ideology as well as a civilizational project. Seeking this transformation of Islam into a political device and a civilizational concept, Al-Afghânî created the beginning of a new Islamic discourse that was informed not only by religious arguments but by political arguments, and aimed at developing an image of a Muslim anti-imperialist Self and an infidel imperialist Other. Because Al-Afghânî also sought to modernize the Muslim world, and since the Western, European, imperialist Other was ‘modern’ and advanced in science and public administration, a blind rejection of the West was unfeasible. The conflict between a desire to Westernize or modernize and a need to avoid identification with the West was one of the roots of the contradictions in Al-Afghânî’s writings.36 To resolve this conflict, modernization was couched in religious terms, something which we already saw in Al-Tahtâwî’s Extraction. For AlAfghânî, the religious couching of the call to modernization lay in his promoting the rehabilitation of Muslim medieval philosophy, which

52

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

put reason over literalist revelation, and would enable modernization in an ‘authentic’ fashion. This much sought after ‘authenticity’ would continue to be of primary importance in the modernization processes in the Muslim world and later in the developing world in general.37 Muhammad ‘Abduh During his Egyptian sojourn, Al-Afghânî had no student more talented than Muhammad ‘Abduh. ‘Abduh was to become the first great Muslim reformer of modern times, and played a central role in Egypt from the late 1870s until his death in 1905. As Al-Afghânî, ‘Abduh felt that the pace and manner of modernization was a danger to the religious, cultural and moral integrity of Muslim societies, which already had strayed from the path of ‘true Islam’. In 1869, when ‘Abduh was twenty years old, Al-Afghânî first visited Cairo. ‘Abduh went to see him and was enthralled. When in 1871 Al-Afghânî came to Cairo to settle, ‘Abduh became his most devoted student. Soon after, ‘Abduh began to study Arab philosophy, and started writing on social and political topics. After graduation he became a teacher at Al-Azhar and at Dâr al-‘Ulûm, a school for Azharis wishing to add modern sciences to their education. His journalistic writings earned him the position of editor-in-chief of the official newspaper Al-Waqâ’i‘ al-Misriyyah. At the time, Egyptian politics was characterized by a power struggle between the British, the royalists and the Egyptian nationalists. Opposition forces were varied. There was a military wing of Egyptian officers and soldiers who sought to break through the Turco-Circassian control over the top positions, there were the religious conservatives who opposed the modernization process infringing on their traditions and status, and there were those who out of nationalist or religious sentiment opposed the British assumption of power in Egypt. Only when the British bombarded Alexandria and occupied Egypt in 1882 did the opposition unite. Because ‘Abduh was one of the leaders of the nationalist wing of the opposition, he was arrested, tortured and eventually exiled for three



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

53

years. Through his writings as a journalist and his private and public teachings, he had become a well-known, respected and influential figure. Upon his return he was made a judge, and in 1899 became mufti of Egypt. ‘Abduh simultaneously aimed at making Islam compatible with the changed and changing world and making the process of change conditional to precepts of ‘true Islam’. This meant that Islam had to be released from the shackles of tradition and stagnation (taqlîd and gumûd) and that society and its modernization had to be made subject to a set of as yet to be formed Islamic principles. To do so, ‘Abduh did not shy away from being inspired by European sources, and went to Europe as often as he could ‘to renew himself ’.38 From this we may infer that ‘Abduh perceived Europe to be an indispensable source for his work. Yet contrary to Al-Tahtâwî, he was very much aware of the inherent dangers of the increasing trend of Europeanization. He perceived a gap between ‘old Egypt’ and ‘new Egypt’. Justice was one of ‘Abduh’s main concerns, as it was to AlGabartî and Al-Tahtâwî before him. But ‘Abduh stressed that there could be no salvation in importing European laws to Egypt, because specific laws are based on specific historic trajectories and principles commonly understood by those who are governed under these specific laws. In other words, societies must engender their own laws if they are to be just societies. In The Message of Unity, one of ‘Abduh’s main publications, we find an interesting reference to the West. ‘Abduh mentions the Crusader period, and asks ‘why did they come, and with what they leave?’. ‘Abduh tells of how the Westerners were initially filled with hatred of Islam, indoctrinated as they had been by religious leaders in Europe. Yet as the Westerners dwelled in the Levant, surrounded by Muslims, they found that reality did not correspond to their prejudices. The Westerners found Islam to go hand in hand with freedom of religion, science, justice and art. They discovered that freedom of thought and the quest for knowledge were means of the religion, rather than incompatible with it. They learned from the Muslims and not long

54

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

after, their ideas changed and the desire to learn grew among the Westerners. The desire to break the chains of tradition emerged. Subsequently, Protestantism emerged, along with various smaller sects. These schools of religious thought, ‘Abduh stresses, were either very similar to Islam or even identical to it except for the acceptance of the role of Mohammed.39 In this small discussion of the Crusader episode, there is much of relevance to our study of Occidentalism. ‘Abduh suggests that Westerners, before they came into contact with Islam, were rather uncivilized, hatemongering fanatics. Only when they got into contact with the refined culture of Islam did their minds open to freedom, science and the arts. Here, ‘Abduh essentially presents Western civilization as a civilization that was spawned by Islam: he appropriates Europe from a cultural-historical point of view, thereby creating an image of the West that may be termed an appropriated West, in which the West’s Otherness is essentially denied.40 By constructing this image of the West ‘Abduh clears the way for Muslims to freely adopt and adapt from the West. In a way, by locating the origin of Western civilization in Islam ‘Abduh makes the West ‘halal’. Al-Muwaylihî Someone who worked with both Al-Afghânî and Muhammad ‘Abduh, was Muhammad al-Muwaylihî (1868–1930). Al-Muwaylihî was of a distinguished family which had suffered the negative consequences of Muhammad ‘Alî’s modernization schemes. Al-Muwaylihî was a nationalist and was exiled after the quashing of the ‘Urâbî rebellion. He went to Italy where his father was working for the abdicated Khedive Isma‘îl, who was living in exile with his son prince Ahmad Fu’âd. Al-Muwaylihî learned some Italian, Latin and French, travelled to Paris, London and Istanbul and collaborated with his father in setting up newspapers. In Paris, Al-Muwaylihî and his father met up with Muhammad ‘Abduh and Gamâl al-Dîn al-Afghânî, and worked together to create the periodical Al-‘Urwah al-Wuthqâ. This



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

55

newspaper is the primary source for the writings of Al-Afghânî, and was in its time of great influence in the Middle East. A final characterization of Al-‘Urwah al-wuthqâ awaits a more comprehensive study of all its editions, but from what Nikki Keddie has unearthed in her study of Afghânî’s contributions to the journal we may surmise that its stance was anti-colonialist, more specifically anti-British, as well as pan-Islamic. In 1887 Al-Muwaylihî returned to Cairo to work as a journalist, and in 1898 was among those responsible for the launch of the newspaper Misbâh al-sharq. In this newspaper Al-Muwaylihî published articles under the title ‘A period of time’ (Fatrah min al-zamân) between November 1898 and June 1900. Collectively, the articles of ‘A period of time’ were published as a book in 1907 under the title ‘The Story of Isa bin Hisham’ (Hadîth ‘Îsâ ibn Hishâm).41 ‘The Story of Isa bin Hisham’ was written in a genre that was new to Arabic literature. Partly rhyme, partly prose, it combined the classic Arabic genre of the maqâmah with the European genre of the novel. As such, it was the stepping stone to the writing of Arabic novels and therein lies much of its importance.42 For this research, however, its content is of greater concern. The story is told from the perspective of ‘Îsâ ibn Hishâm (a fictional character), who relates of how he encountered a basha crawling from his grave. The basha served under Muhammad ‘Alî and wrongfully assumes that life will have remained the same. ‘Îsâ is the basha’s guide in this world, which has changed so much since the basha passed away. The story is set in the same period as the articles were published, between 1898 and 1900. By providing ‘Îsâ with a companion from the past, ignorant of modern times, Al-Muwaylihî creates a meeting point between past and present, which makes it possible to criticize modern times from the perspective of tradition. Yet Al-Muwaylihî’s world is not nostalgic, for the picture the basha draws of his own time is not very alluring either. True to his mentor ‘Abduh, Al-Muwaylihî is not pleased with the established religious centres of knowledge, in particular Al-Azhar.

56

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Right at the beginning of the book, ‘Îsâ explains his presence at the graveyard as follows: ‘I am an author and I came here (to the graveyard) to find inspiration by visiting the tombs. I find it more effective than listening to sermons from pulpits’.43 Having established his position vis-à-vis tradition, most of the rest of the story is devoted to criticizing those elements of society in which ‘Îsâ’s time differs from the basha’s. Those elements combined could best be termed modernity or Westernization. We find that Al-Muwaylihî advocates a critical view of both blind imitation of the traditions and blind imitation of Europe. To Al-Muwaylihî, justice and equality are key concepts. The book shows very clearly how Egyptians are taking a back seat to Turks and foreigners in the military, trade and public administration. Notably, Copts are not singled out, contrary to what we saw in the writings of Al-Gabartî and Al-Tahtâwî. This could be explained by Al-Muwaylihî’s nationalist convictions, which entailed an understanding of Egypt as undivided by religious differences. A confrontation between the basha and a man tending to a donkey shows Al-Muwaylihî’s understanding of the problem with equality in Egypt. The donkey man is playing a trick on ‘Îsâ and the basha, by forcing his services upon them without them wishing it. The basha is outraged and wants the donkey man beaten up for his insolence. The donkey man reacts by saying, ‘Oh begging your pardon sir! Who do you think you are … anyway? We’re living in an age of freedom when there is no difference between great and small men, amir or donkey man.’44 Here, Al-Muwaylihî’s presentation of equality in Egypt – one of the results of European influence – gives a mixed message. On the one hand, the reader is pleased that the basha is not getting his way: his insisting on beating up the donkey man is a reminder of the way in which the elite used to be able to quash the common people. Yet the donkey man is not a pleasant character. He is a nuisance, and the reader can understand why the basha is annoyed. When the donkey man says there is no difference between him and an amir, the reader probably does not



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

57

agree that this is just, although he knows that, technically speaking, the donkey man is right. Al-Muwaylihî seems to suggest that this problem of a just principle having adverse effects is caused by blind imitation of the West. The principle of equalité in itself is valuable but if simply imported it leads to misunderstanding and not to justice. The changes are pushed through too fast, and they are not made suitable for Egyptian society. We see an analogy in the way a doctor explains to ‘Îsâ and the basha how and when modern medicine can be beneficial, and when it leads to disaster: [Good doctors], [w]hen they practise medicine [in Egypt] … only use medicaments which suit the inhabitants of hot countries, not those which suit people in cold climates. They carefully avoid medicines prepared to suit the disposition of Western peoples which don’t suit the constitution of Oriental races …   I’ve been told by learned men in the profession that doctors in Egypt must choose medicines and other medicaments of the most gentle potency, so as not to cause any discomfort to the Egyptians’ constitution … as a result of taking them. They shouldn’t risk using all the medicine listed in Western manuals on medicine, since most of them are designed for bodies with a strong build and vigorous stamina, as opposed to what is usually the case with Egyptians. Doctors should select only the gentlest of [medicaments, and] lessen the dose.45 In other words, innovations from abroad should be made to fit the situation at home rather than be blindly imitated, as Al-Muwaylihî sees happening in the Egypt of his time. Al-Muwaylihî conjures a friend of ‘Îsâ to explain why things have gone wrong in Egypt: The major cause for all this change is the rapid penetration of Western civilization into Eastern countries and the way in which people in the East are behaving like the blind, emulating

58

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Western people in every conceivable aspect of their lives. In so doing, they’re not enlightened by research, nor do they use analogy or consider issues in a sensible fashion. They pay no attention to incompatibility of temperament, differences in taste, or variation in climates and customs … We’ve destroyed our houses with our own hands. We’re like Western people living in the East, even though in different ways of life we’re as far apart as East is from West.  Basha: That may all be true … [b]ut I can’t understand why Eastern people … haven’t … given a moment’s thought to the idea of returning to their authentic classical heritage, the old way of life? In that sphere they’re pre-eminent; they don’t have to adopt foreign customs and spend every single moment imitating other people the way they do now.   Friend: … The only reason I know to explain that is that they are utterly arrogant and dismissive, something that stems from their attitude to the glorious past and the long period of negligence, indifference, slackness and feebleness that it engendered. They chose to ignore the past, neglect the present and take no interest whatsoever in the future. … Instead, they were happy to take over this veneer of Western civilization which was readily available to them without any bother or effort.46 The above quotation shows part of the solution of Egypt’s problems, which according to Al-Muwaylihî consists of a reformulation of the core values of the endogenous heritage. In ‘Îsâ’s words, what is needed is a reassessment of the sharia, in order to make it compatible to the new Egypt. Because those traditionally responsible for justice (the ulema of Al-Azhar) failed in answering the changing situations, the child (endogenous justice) was thrown away with the bathwater (the old-fashioned and corrupted judiciary), so to speak, and European secular laws were consequently imported. But a reassessment of the endogenous Islamic sources was not enough to solve the problems. The book ends on a surprising note:



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

59

Basha: How I wish I could visit Western countries, learn about the bases of Western culture in both their external and internal aspects, and investigate things in detail. But that’s a big project, one that would involve a lot of trouble.   ‘Îsâ: My dear amir don’t despair! One day, you may achieve your wish. I’ve still got it in my mind to take you on a journey to Western countries so that we can gather the fruits of knowledge and research. If that is what you’d like to do, then I’ll make some preparations.   Friend: God willing, I’ll be able to come with you.47 And so the West is still a crucial source to Al-Muwaylihî. The problems of Egypt are twofold: first, a crisis of Arab Muslim culture and second, the poor grasp of modernity, understood to be a Westernborn phenomenon. To solve the first problem, one needs to go to the Arab Muslim sources, and to solve the second, one needs to go to Europe. And such is the view of the West. The West is Europe, and in particular Paris and London. It is the indispensable source for an undeniably needed modernization. It has spawned political and philosophical thought the fruits of which need to be reaped. Yet it is also contemptuous of the Oriental races, and is oppressive wherever it is allowed to oppress, such as is the case in Egypt. If we take the above three authors to be representative for Egyptian thought between 1870 and 1900,48 we see that the West in this second time frame is understood to be European, advanced, alluring but also dangerous. It cannot be said that the West is only accepted as a source for technical knowledge and material wealth, and as a danger to all matters of culture and religion. The ambiguity in the appreciation of the West cannot be described in such a clear-cut manner. Rather, the West is considered a source for both the material and the immaterial renaissance of Egypt, while it is also recognized as a threat to those Egyptians so enthralled by the West that they fail to appreciate the riches of their own heritage, renounce these riches and consequently become copies of Europeans. In addition,

60

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

the West as a set of political entities is perceived as a danger to the aspirations of the Egyptian people. The British occupation of Egypt and the French occupation of Algeria made clear that European states act according to their own economic logic, and peoples in the Arab world were subject to the scheming of these European states. The European facts on the ground told a story of occupation that could not be reconciled with the stories told by the European philosophers and their concepts of freedom and justice. Contrary to Al-Tahtâwî, who viewed Europe as little less than a promise, the authors of the second generation were aware that their plans for a material and immaterial renaissance would have to take Europe into account not only as a source but also as a political obstacle. In addition to that, they perceived a danger in those Egyptians who were ignorant of their own heritage and thought all they could need was in Europe. Intellectual thought in the period between 1870 and 1900 was full of confusion. Just as the British invasion had brought together all sorts of opposition groups in an alliance against King Tawfîq and the English, also various streams of thought were articulated as if they were one. With hindsight, we can say that religious nationalism and Egyptian nationalism were an impossible combination. But at the time both were calling for independence from the English, and both were arguing for modernization of education and judicial reforms. We can see how various ideas and intellectual motifs that would emerge in later times had simply not yet fully crystallized in this earlier period. That is the only way we can understand, for instance, that the Egyptian nationalist Al-Muwaylihî allows ‘Îsâ to ridicule the Egyptomania that had resulted in the establishment of Egyptological museums. ‘Îsâ mocks these and says that not Ibis and Isis should be on display, but rather copies of the works of Al-Gâhiz, Al-Farâbî, Ibn Rushd and Ibn al-Rûmî.49 We would not expect this from later Egyptian nationalists from the early twentieth century, who had developed a taste for ancient Egypt as a central binding element between the nation’s Copts and Muslims.



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

61

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the various streams of thought visible in the works of ‘Abduh and Al-Muwaylihî split up into separate intellectual currents, each developing its own relation vis-à-vis the West. Most prominent among these were, as we will see, Islamic reformism (or fundamentalism, Islamism) and liberal Egyptian nationalism. A major cause of worsening relations between the West and the Arab world was the First World War and the subsequent developments, specifically the Sykes-Picot Agreement. For Arab intellectuals it became difficult to remain enthusiastic about Europe. Muhammad Rashîd Ridâ, a key figure in early Islamism described this disenchantment in no uncertain terms: ‘Europe has destroyed all the good reputation it had in the East … Nobody believes the word of the Europeans anymore, nor does anybody trust them or even perceive them to be qualified to exercise justice and virtue.’50 Intellectual centrifuge Al-Wafd and the liberal modernizers At the outbreak of war in 1914, the Ottoman Empire chose to side with the Central Powers. England responded quickly and reasserted its control over Egypt, replacing ‘Abbâs Helmî II for the more malleable Husayn Kâmil (who was given the title ‘sultan’, to spite the sultan in Istanbul); Egypt was declared a British protectorate. Following the armistice, a group of Egyptian nationalist politicians led by Sa‘d Zaghlûl (1859–1927), a former Azhar student and disciple of Al-Afghânî and ‘Abduh, requested to send a delegation to London to discuss the future of Egypt. Their request was denied and promptly the situation escalated into resignations of Egyptian ministers, riots and the arrest and banishment of Zaghlûl. Notably, this 1919 Revolution, as it is called, specifically targeted British establishments, not generally European or ‘Western’ targets.51 In Zaghlûl’s absence, the British ceded independence to Egypt, or more in particular, to Sultan Fu’âd (who had succeeded Husayn Kâmil upon the latter’s death in

62

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

1917), who crowned himself king of an Egyptian parliamentary democracy in 1923. When Zaghlûl returned to Egypt in the same year, he transformed his activist circle into a political party: the Wafd (the ‘delegation’). For decades to come, the Wafd would be the most popular political party in Egypt. The men who established the Wafd were typically prominent aristocrats, members of the urban bourgeoisie. Theirs was a middleclass attitude, moderate, conservative.52 The Wafd was a thoroughly nationalist party, its explicit party line consisting first and foremost of the call to remove the British from Egyptian politics. For although the protectorate had formally ended, so-called ‘capitulations’ were still in place, meaning that foreigners had economic advantages over Egyptians and enjoyed a favourable legal position. In addition, British ‘advisers’ to the palace and several ministries remained in place, not to mention the military control the British still enjoyed. Consequently, there was ample reason for a nationalist party to focus on the foreign, British presence. In addition, the Wafd’s nationalist stance fitted in well with the time, the world witnessing a general rise in nationalism partly as a consequence of Allied wartime propaganda for self-determination. In particular, US President Wilson’s Fourteen Points had had a massive impact in Egypt.53 Indeed, the Egyptian delegation to the peace talks in Paris in 1919 valued the Fourteen Points and the US in general as a useful ally in its demands for national independence.54 The constitution of 1923 was largely based on the Belgian model, entailing two elected parliamentary chambers (with some royal privileges). Although claiming to speak for the entire Egyptian nation, and although indeed it enjoyed broad support until the late 1940s, the Wafd cadres never ceased to be aloof from the common peoples’ daily concerns. It always remained a rather elitist organization. For most intellectuals of the time, and for the people of the Wafd, ‘the West’ was not a very foreign entity. Europe was the world in which Egyptian politicians operated, England was merely a political adversary. To the bulk of the Egyptian people the culture of the Wafd and the culture of the British were perhaps equally challenging. The



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

63

difference was that the British were non-Muslim foreigners, where the men of the Wafd were (Muslim or Coptic) Egyptians. The nationalist ideology of Egypt in this era specifically means Egyptian nationalism, as opposed to Arab nationalism. With the splendid riches of the pharaonic past scattered throughout the country, and marvelled at in situ or in museums worldwide by scores of Europeans and Americans, Egyptian nationalism adopted the pharaonic past as a constitutive element of the Egyptian national identity. Historical novels were written, set in the pharaonic past, architecture freely adopted elements from ancient Egyptian temples, and the ‘Blue Shirts’, the short-lived paramilitary youth wing of the Wafd, were telling themselves that their organization was modelled on the traditions of Ancient Egypt.55 In doing so, Egyptian nationalists were not only setting Egypt apart from the Arab and Islamic world, they also underscored their demands for self-rule: the pyramids of Giza were sufficient proof that the people of Egypt were capable of governing themselves. Yet simultaneously, by adopting the pharaonic charm the Egyptian nationalists were also following the fashion of contemporary Europe: Egyptomania. The politics of the Wafd, although executed by men taught by Muhammad ‘Abduh and well versed in the writings of Al-Afghânî, differed from their religious teachers in that religion was simply not their concern. As they perceived it, there was no problem with European cultural influence, there was simply a problem with the presence of the British in Egypt:56 they were occupying seats belonging to Egyptians. In other words, there was no conflict of cultures or ‘moralities’ between the Egyptian nationalists and the Europeans. If there was a cultural conflict, it was between the Egyptian masses and the Egyptian modernizers, most of whom were liberal nationalists. Already, in 1899 and 1900, Qâsim Amîn, also an associate of Muhammad ‘Abduh, had published The Liberation of Women and The New Woman. These two publications, the first of their kind, are illustrative of the manner in which a separation of minds was forced upon the Egyptian intelligentsia. In The Liberation of Women, Amîn

64

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

advances the cause of female ‘emancipation’57 by using arguments drawn from the Quran and Sunna. The harsh criticisms from religious circles which befell him after publication led him to write The New Woman, again arguing for female emancipation, but this time basing his arguments on Western models. Apparently, Amîn figured that while his religious arguments were not accepted, his arguments based on the strength of Western nations could not be denied. Perhaps the apex of such Europe-centred literature was achieved in 1938 by Taha Husayn, who in that year finished writing The Future of Culture in Egypt. As an exponent of the ‘liberal age’, Husayn advocated civil rights and liberties and a democratic form of government, and was concerned with education and social justice. Husayn was no stranger to Islamic traditions (he had enjoyed a thorough and successful training at various institutions of religious training, among which was Al-Azhar), but in The Future he does not set Islam apart as an element which divides Egypt from the non-Muslim world. Rather, he brings Muslim Egypt and Europe together. Egypt, as a Mediterranean country, is part of the Mediterranean culture, and shares ties with Greece, in particular. As such, ‘the Egyptian mind is not Oriental’,58 and Egypt in general is not part of the East. Similarly, Husayn argues that Islam is very close to Christianity. Consequently, Egypt is in essence a European country, and therefore it need not surprise that ‘the Egyptian ideal in practical life is the European ideal’ and that its ‘spiritual life in its various manifestations is purely European’.59 Of course, also in The Future we find references to European borrowings from Islamic/Egyptian civilization in the Middle Ages. In other words, Husayn in fact denies the West exists as an entity different from Egypt, thereby removing the possible concerns as to losing one’s identity. If anything, Europeanization will help the Egyptians regain their identity. Although his arguments are different, Husayn essentially adopts the same strategy as ‘Abduh: he draws the West into the sphere of the Self, appropriating the West by redefining the Egyptian identity and Western alterity in order for them to merge into one unit.



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

65

But when Taha Husayn wrote The Future, his views had already passed their peak of popularity. Most people associated Europe with imperialist exploitation. There was still an English presence in Egypt, and people started to be tired of the gradual approach taken by the Wafd. In addition, there were those who did not believe at all that Europe had a praiseworthy culture. To some, Europe was a cultural danger to a Muslim nation such as Egypt. These criticisms had been voiced as early as the 1920s by people such as Muhammad Rashîd Ridâ, and by the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1929. In the 1930s religion became an important topic in political debates, but there was a sharp difference between these voices and those earlier heard of Muhammad ‘Abduh and Al-Afghânî. The Muslim nationalists and the Egyptian nationalists had parted ways, and they both changed along the way. Muhammad Rashîd Ridâ ‘Abduh and Al-Afghânî would probably not have approved of how their views were stretched to advance a wholly secular politics, where Islam is a personal matter of small consequence or made subservient to the interest of society. Yet other students stretched their views to propose religious and political developments that were no less distant from their original masters. One of Muhammad ‘Abduh’s students later in life was Muhammad Rashîd Ridâ (1865–1935). Born in Syria, educated in arguably reformist religious circles, he was greatly moved when he first acquired copies of Al-‘Urwah al-Wuthqâ, the Islamic reformist publication produced by Al-Afghânî and ‘Abduh in Paris.60 In 1897, Rashîd Ridâ moved to Cairo to become a student of ‘Abduh, who died eight years later. Al-Afghânî died in the same year Rashîd Ridâ arrived in Cairo. Immediately upon arrival, Ridâ started publishing Al-Manâr, the periodical that shows most clearly his views down through to the end of his life (upon which also Al-Manâr expired). Ridâ is perceived as the link between the early reformist message of Al-Afghânî, ‘Abduh and others on the one hand, and the beginnings

66

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

of ‘political Islam’ or ‘fundamentalism’ in the 1930s, most notably the Muslim Brothers, on the other.61 The difference between these two ideologies suggests that Rashîd Ridâ is a crucial figure in the transformation from reformism to fundamentalism. Strangely, much of the literature fails to appreciate the role of Rashîd Ridâ in this development.62 Similarly to ‘Abduh and Al-Afghânî, Ridâ was concerned with the matter of Muslim weakness and stagnation versus European strength and progress. In order for the Muslim world to regain its strength, reform was necessary. In order to begin a reform one first needs to have a clear idea of what has gone wrong. Whereas Al-Afghânî and ‘Abduh appear not to have put so much effort into analysing in what historical period the Muslim world ‘strayed from the right path’, Rashîd Ridâ pinpoints the start of decay with clarity: after the first four rightly guided caliphs, things went downhill. Now, in order to once again flourish as a truly Muslim nation, Muslims had to emulate the ways of that pristine time of glory. The salaf, to Ridâ, were the first few generations of Muslims. After 661 ad (the year Mu‘âwiyyah of the Omayyads gained control of the ummah), only a handful of brave Muslim scholars (Al-Ghazzâlî, Ibn Taymiyyah) every now and then achieved the clarity of mind to write something down which might be of use to Muslims of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. This was however in contrast to ‘Abduh, who understood the salaf to include also the ulema of later times. The core working material for the Muslim reformist thus comprised the Quran, hadith and the igmâ‘ (consensus) of the early salaf. In his proposals for reform, Rashîd Ridâ pointed at the difference between man–God relations and man–man relations. The regulations concerning the first relationship are fixed and cannot be changed. The relations between human beings however, are subject to the times. Thus different times will pose different challenges in this respect. To solve these, one first had to go and see if the Quran and hadith had anything to say about them. Only if the Quran and hadith were silent on the topic, only then could igtihâd be employed,



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

67

provided that it is guided by the principle of maslahah (well-being, advantageousness) to the Muslim ummah. Here, again, Rashîd Ridâ narrows the confines within which Islamic reform should – in his view – take place. The ideological difference between Ridâ and ‘Abduh has been consistently downplayed (see previous note). In part this may be because ‘Abduh is best known by many in the Arab world (and beyond) through the biography written by Rashîd Ridâ, in which Ridâ of course does not focus on the issues where ‘Abduh’s views were inconsistent with his own.63 In turn, the biography of Rashîd Ridâ was written by his friend Shakîb Arslân,64 who as a nationalist did not stress the differences between Ridâ’s religious revivalism and the secular modernist thought inherent in his nationalism. This may explain why Abduh’s progressive outlook is underestimated, while Ridâ’s compatibility with secular modernism is overestimated, and thus why Abduh and Ridâ are perceived to be more similar than they really were. A very useful study of Rashîd Ridâ for the purposes of this research has been made by Shahin.65 Shahin distinguishes three phases in the development of Ridâ’s thought, in particular concerning his relation to the West. Initially, Ridâ is greatly influenced by the copies of Al-‘Urwah al-Wuthqâ, and is particularly impressed by the writings of Al-Afghânî. Ridâ adopts Al-Afghânî’s vigorous anti-imperialism and starts thinking of the ways in which the Islamic world should regain its strength. Yet when Ridâ comes to Cairo, he submits to ‘Abduh’s conviction that it is better to gradually arrange for improvements in the Muslim world, and that one should work with the British and steadily regain control of the country. Ridâ conforms to this approach, and even backs the quasi-feminist writings of Qâsim Amîn, allowing Amîn space in various editions of Al-Manâr.66 He is also explicit that British colonialism is not as bad as other colonialisms: the French and the Dutch are particularly cruel, as opposed to the British, who are more sensitive, and in some ways better rulers than some of the rulers Egypt had before colonialism.67 As far as there

68

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

is criticism of the West and Westernization, it is phrased in much the same terms as we have found in Al-Muwaylihî: criticism of blind imitation, disrespect for one’s own heritage, and so on. The third phase sets in with the First World War. The inconceivable brutalities committed in Europe changed the image of Europeans. It turned out that Europe was not the bastion of civilization, despite its scientific advances and appealing political philosophies. Additionally, the Anglo-French betrayal of the agreement with the Arabs had significantly soured relations. These developments led Ridâ to turn away from the gradualist approach, and thence he espoused an ardent, even violent stance against foreign rule of Muslim lands. Modernization and reform were still goals, but Ridâ allowed much less that these should be inspired by Western examples. Because the differences in the mindsets of ‘Abduh and Rashîd Ridâ have been downplayed, little effort has been put in explaining these differences. One might suggest that it was the shock of the abolition of the caliphate in 1923 that made Rashîd Ridâ turn to an idealism of a revival of the caliphate: a significant departure from ‘Abduh’s approach. However, Ridâ already finished writing his work on the caliphate (in which he calls for a united Islamic state) before the existing caliphate had been abolished. Shahin seems to suggest it was the war and Europe’s betrayal of the Arab revolt that made Ridâ change his mind.68 Possibly, but if we look at the oath that Ridâ drafted for the leaders of the Arab revolt we can see that the text is already laden with thoroughly religious idiom: there is hardly any nationalist sentiment to be found.69 Interestingly, Ridâ was a great admirer of Japan, because in Ridâ’s view the Japanese were doing exactly what the Muslim world should do: to adopt the technology of Europe but leave all that is immaterial. The Egyptians were doing exactly the opposite, Ridâ complained: when in Paris or London to study, they took courses in theoretical and social sciences (and misbehaved terribly), while the Japanese students specialized in practical and applied sciences. In Ridâ’s view, the Japanese were truly modernizing, while the Egyptians were merely



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

69

Westernizing. The Japanese victory over the Russians in 1905, and the current state of affairs in Egypt, showed clearly which approach was the more beneficial.70 This is not the place to dedicate page after page to analysing what moved Rashîd Ridâ to advance a religious and political programme different from what one would expect from a student of ‘Abduh. It is merely noted that Ridâ, after the death of Muhammad ‘Abduh, turned toward a more conservative line of Islamic reformism in which there was a stronger emphasis on Islamic purity rather than on adaptation to the modern world. This conviction was also to be found in the mother of Muslim fundamentalist organizations, the Muslim brotherhood, founded in 1929. The Muslim Brotherhood Mitchell, in his work on the Muslim Brothers, shows how the Brothers’ worldview revolved around three pillars: Islam, Egypt and the West. Mitchell points out that the Brotherhood’s image of the West was twofold: the view from within and the view from without. Western civilization as viewed from within was a rather impressive, well-arranged and commendable civilization. Respect for individual freedoms, workers’ rights, and effective democratic institutions were admired, as was the manner in which the authorities were accountable to their peoples, and, again, the level of justice and equality was described as being superior to what was found in some Muslim countries. Yet this was the view one might adopt when residing within the West. Egypt, as all the world outside the Western metropoles but within their economic and military reach, experienced a wholly different West, where the commendable principles were not applied.71 Geographically, the West to the Brothers consisted of both the capitalist and the communist world, their common denominator being that they were both materialist. But for Egypt, the capitalist and particularly the Anglo-Saxon West was the more relevant. The positive aspects of the West alluded to above were mainly in relation

70

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

to this capitalist West: the virtues of the communist world were perceived to be mainly a matter of outward appearance. From a strictly ideological point of view, one could say that the Brothers were less far removed from the capitalist West than from communism, but the Brothers’ focused their criticism on the capitalist West, because it was this West that had invaded their daily lives and was transforming their society. This West, ‘thrown at the East’,72 became the quintessential enemy. Then we find an interesting development in publications of the Brotherhood and its members: the return of the Crusaders. Although authors such as Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) and Hasan al-Bannâ (1906–1949) would readily admit that European countries were no longer being ruled by the church, they insisted that when the West moves out of its own European (or American) confines and into the Muslim world, in the words of Qutb ‘the Crusader spirit which runs in the blood of all Westerners’73 resurfaces. This development was new. Since at least the French invasion of 1798 Egyptian authors had recognized that Europe had fundamentally changed since the times of the Crusades. From the first written reactions to the European advance over the Muslim world there had been a dualistic element in the appreciation of this new Europe, but neither Al-Gabartî, nor after him Al-Tahtâwî or Al-Afghânî, and certainly not Muhammad ‘Abduh, had ever presented such a deep-seated hatred against Islam on the part of the West, and never had such a hatred against the West been displayed as in these anachronistically phrased writings of the Muslim Brothers. Already in early Brotherhood discourse we come across the Occidentalist stereotype I would call the Weak West: the West understood as being at the point of collapse. Mitchell quotes Al-Bannâ as saying in 1936, ‘The civilization of the West’, proudly strong in its science, and for a period able to subjugate the world, is now ‘in bankruptcy and decline’, its political fundamentals destroyed by



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

71

dictatorship, its economic systems racked by crisis, its social order decaying. … The time has come for the East to rise again.’74 Al-Bannâ was of course not quite original in saying this, for both Marxist ideology and Spengler’s Untergang des Abendlandes75 had propounded similar messages of the West as a spent force. Rashîd Ridâ had had little contact with Europeans, and he was never as keen as ‘Abduh on travelling to Europe. Yet despite this and his inability to read French or English, he still had knowledge of European writings, through translations which were being published at an ever increasing rate in his time.76 Hasan al-Bannâ never went to Europe, but did profess to have read Spengler, Spencer and Toynbee during his studies. Yet the most influential writer of the Brotherhood was Sayyid Qutb. Perhaps indicative of the fact that America had superseded Britain and France as the supreme Western power, Qutb spent two years studying educational methods in the United States of America, from 1948 to 1950. On his way back to Egypt he visited England, Switzerland and Italy. In the 1930s Qutb had written poetry, fiction and literary criticism, associated with liberal modernists such as Taha Husayn and ‘Abbâs al-‘Aqqâd, and joined the Wafd party. Yet gradually he became more critical of secular politics and liberal intellectuals, and it has been suggested that for this reason he was sent off (by the Ministry of Education) to America: so that he would see for himself and be convinced of the wonders of the West.77 If this indeed was the objective, it backfired. Upon his return from abroad, Qutb intensified his association with the Muslim Brothers, started contributing to the Brothers’ weekly Al-Ikhwân al-Muslimûn, and took charge of the propaganda section. Clearly, his American experience had not agreed with him, for in America he saw mainly immorality, sinfulness and licentiousness.78 The writings of Sayyid Qutb that in the long run were to have the most influence were not those he wrote in his early Brotherhood years. His most popular works were those he wrote in prison, some years

72

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

after the revolution of 1952, when the Revolutionary Guard and the Muslim Brotherhood had become sworn enemies. The most popular discourse of those days however, was not that of jailed Muslim Brothers, nor that of Wafdist liberal intellectuals, but that of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Before proceeding with Qutb’s views of the West, we should therefore pay attention to the West according to Nasser. The West according to Nasser Even though unmistakeably a dictator, Gamal Abdel Nasser was perhaps the only Egyptian leader in modern history who could for many years rightfully claim to be speaking for the Egyptian masses. The Nasserist discourse, furthermore, enthralled people throughout the Arab world, as it became the primary manifestation of the ideology of pan-Arabism. Because of its strong socialist leanings it was embraced by sections of European left-wing activism and it could count in general on support from revolutionary anti-imperialist circles all over the world. The characterization of the Cold War as a struggle between East and West seems confusing in our days. When thinking of East and West, the association most likely to come to mind today is ‘the clash of civilizations’, in which ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’ are perceived to be two colliding civilizations. During the Cold War, however, civilizations were not considered useful political concepts. When we listen to the Nasserist discourse today, it does not strike us as anti-Western, because the discourse consists of idiom common to Western politics: nationalism, socialism, development, independence, freedom. The Philosophy of the Revolution79 by Nasser is the primary document for the early stages of Nasserist thought. Written shortly after the revolution, the document does not enter into specifics of the political practice. It is intended as a general outline, as ‘landmarks on the road’,80 as a collection of principles and ideological guidelines that are aimed at informing the reader as to what the revolution hopes to achieve and how it believes it may succeed in achieving those



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

73

objectives. The Philosophy is a fascinating document full of remarkable passages and equally remarkable omissions. Some of the choices Nasser made while composing the document can be clearly related to his military background, such as the motto he gives to the revolution: Discipline, Unity and Work.81 On several occasions we can discern a profound concern with social matters, most clearly when the revolution is characterized as being twofold: a political revolution and a social revolution. Religious invocations are scant: merely a handful of references to God are scattered in passing. Indeed, the author does not insert religion even where it would be most logical: the document is not preceded by the common invocation bi-smillâh al-rahmân al-rahîm, and on page 29 we read: ‘[All this] was not my will … it was the will of fate, the will of our people’s history and a stage through which they are passing today’.82 This ‘stage’ Nasser refers to is an indication of his belief in progress, which is also clear in passages such as: ‘the national struggle is a process, steadily accumulating the works of each generation’. Nasser places the beginning of this history in the reign of Muhammad ‘Alî. With the coming of Muhammad ‘Alî Egypt’s ‘modern awakening’ began, but modernization proceeded at a pace impossible for the people of Egypt to keep up with. In Nasser’s words, when Egypt desperately needed a breath of fresh air after having been suffocated for centuries, ‘a raging hurricane assailed him, and [consequently] fever began to devour his feeble body’. 83 This characterization of Egypt as a feeble body unfit to consume all of modernity (in itself a blessing) at once, reminds one of the doctor in Al-Muwaylihî’s Hadîth ‘Îsâ ibn Hishâm (see above). Long before the revolution, Europe or ‘the West’ had become a common concept that featured in political discourse in Egypt. European powers had been so influential in Egyptian politics, and in Middle Eastern politics in general, that it was difficult to maintain a political discourse which ignored these powers, in particular the power of England. In The Philosophy however, the West is given little attention. Where Nasser discusses the powers opposing the revolution, he mentions three groups, all internal: the big landowners, the

74

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

‘old politicians’ and a large number of government officials. In fact, nowhere in The Philosophy does Nasser choose to discuss specific Western countries. Instead, only a short reference to imperialism points out that the revolution has enemies abroad.84 Later sources for the Nasserist discourse such as Nasser’s public speeches display a continuation of the above assessments. For example, one momentous speech, occasioned by the tenth anniversary of the revolution, focuses on development, progress and the future.85 There are practically no religious incantations. By far most of the speech is dedicated to either internal matters of economy or inter-Arab relations. The speech is filled with exhortations to ‘this generation’, which is presumed to be uniquely placed by the providence of history to build a strong, united Arab nation. To the extent that foreign powers are addressed, the focus lies – unsurprisingly – on England, France and Israel. These three countries had invaded Egypt in 1956 over the Suez conflict. Israel is treated separately from these three, and is associated with imperialism. (Yet Nasser also mentions that Israel first received weapons from the Soviet Union.) France is given relatively little attention, as most of the attention goes to England. Nasser states that England and France have not accepted that Egypt has broken out of their spheres of influence: ‘we declare that independence is independence, that freedom means freedom and that in no circumstance will we be in a sphere of influence’. Notably, in the whole speech, the term ‘the West’ is not mentioned at all. America is mentioned twice in passing, which is surprising because at the time of the speech it was clear to all that the United States was ‘the leader of the free West’. One more interesting feature of the speech is that Nasser appropriates the concept of democracy: ‘[Our successes] are built on the basis of true social justice and true democracy, not on false democracy, or reactionary democracy.’ As will be discussed later, this distinction between ‘true’ manifestations and ‘false’ manifestations of a concept is a recurring feature in Occidentalist discourses. When looking at the way in which the West was represented in Nasserist discourse, it should be noted that generalized references to



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

75

‘the West’ were not as numerous as references to specific countries, to a large extent informed by disappointment and anger over political decisions by the countries in question (in particular England, France and the United States). The image of the West in general was twofold. On the one hand the West was seen as the better alternative in light of the so-called East–West conflict, because the capitalist democracies of the West allowed for nationalism and religion as cornerstones of society, whereas the communism of the East was fixated on materialism.86 On the other hand, the West was the harbourer of classical imperialism, ‘neo-colonialism’ and lastly, the primary force behind Israel.87 In conclusion, one could say that from a post-Cold War point of view the Nasserist discourse was to a large extent congruent with left-wing discourses in the West, except for that Western left-wing (in particular European left-wing) discourse generally had less problems with communism’s anti-nationalist and anti-religious message. Additionally, Western leftist circles could be quite supportive of Israel, perceiving Zionism as a kindred socialist ideology. Sadat The state without ideology The government of Sadat was a major departure from the politics Egypt had followed since the revolution. Political liberalization (later withdrawn), the dramatic severing of ties with the Soviet Union (1972), economic reforms in the direction of a free-market economy (from 1974 onwards) and eventually the US-assisted unilateral peace deal with Israel in 1979 (prompting Egypt’s isolation from the rest of the Arab world and the inflow of American financial assistance) changed the face of Egypt internally and externally: even the name changed from the United Arab Republic to the Arab Republic of Egypt. In the Nasser years dissenting opinions were effectively smothered. Islamist protagonists were simply repressed, but the liberal current suffered a perhaps more detrimental fate. The economic policies of

76

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

the revolution involved the nationalization of much of the economy, the expulsion of foreign (trading) communities, and made foreign investment practically impossible. These policies amounted to a near complete destruction of the class of society most inclined to liberalism: the small but influential middle class of shopkeepers, traders and entrepreneurs.88 In other words, the ‘natural habitat’ of liberalism had vanished in Egypt, and consequently liberalism waned. Another contender for the sympathy of the Egyptian people, the Islamic current, made its comeback under Sadat. Sadat, fearful of the left, encouraged in particular the Muslim Brothers to re-emerge in public life. Seen from this angle, Sadat formulated a liberal Western-allied policy which would best fit and most appeal to a class which had been dismantled by his predecessor, and while pursuing these policies, he encouraged the strengthening of the Muslim Brothers, even though they had an ideology which was fundamentally opposed to Sadat’s foreign policy. In contrast with the Nasser period, Sadat rule was more a question of Realpolitik than of ideology. This has had its effects on the content of opposition discourse. With regard to constructions of the West in the discourses of the opposition, these were influenced by the relations the regime had with Western powers. Those relations changed drastically under Sadat and have remained stable since: to this day Egypt is a major ally of the United States in the region. The Islamic revival The most important opposition discourse that emerged after Sadat took control of government was that of the re-emerging Islamists. For that reason we should return to Sayyid Qutb. Qutb was hanged in 1966, but when Sadat allowed the Muslim Brothers to gain prominence Qutb’s writings also re-emerged. As we have seen above, Qutb had turned to the Muslim Brothers after his return from the United States. Probably his most important work was Milestones on the Road.89



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

77

Milestones is a pamphlet, an Islamist manifesto intended to show the course of action to the avant-garde of ‘true’ Islam. The world, according to Qutb’s analysis, has not witnessed true Islam for over a thousand years. In all history there was only one short period in time when Islam truly existed, and that period was the period of the prophet himself and the four rightly guided caliphs who succeeded him. After that, the Islamic sources were mixed with Greek philosophy and logic, Persian thought, Jewish traditions and Christian theology. Subsequent generations of Muslims tapped from these diluted, tampered sources and therefore did not constitute true Islamic civilization. Qutb concluded that at present the world, including the so-called Islamic world, is in a state of gâhiliyya (heathenism; an ‘age of ignorance’; the pre-Islamic era of barbarism). Qutb argues that the world is in dire need of new guidance. Communism has been defeated: the atheist ideology has been tried, but at present there is not a single country left in the world that is truly Marxist. Qutb is not surprised, because, in his words, the Marxist system goes against human nature.90 Similarly, the West is at the end of its tether: ‘This is most clear in the Western world [itself ], which no longer has “values” to give to humanity, and which is no longer convinced in its heart, that it deserves to exist.’91 And so, Qutb concludes: ‘It is essential for humanity to have a new leadership!’92 The idea that the West is suffering from moral bankruptcy reminds of what Al-Bannâ wrote: that the West is in decline. But the difference is crucial. Qutb does not say that the West will crumble and be on its knees any time soon. Qutb exclusively refers to a moral deficit of the Western world, and does not foresee that this shall impact the material and technological riches of the West in any way. Quite to the contrary, he foresees a continuing material strength in the West: ‘The present ummah is not capable of extraordinary performance in material creativity, [of the kind] that would make onlookers turn their heads, and establish her world leadership in this respect. The European ingenuity is much ahead [of us] in this field, and [our]

78

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

material superiority over [the West] is not to be expected – for at least the first coming centuries!’.93 A number of things here are particularly interesting. Qutb’s assertion – in 1964 – that communism has been defeated is striking. In his time, this must have appeared as wishful thinking, but after the Arab–Israeli war of 1967 it became part of a wider point of view in the Arab world. The defeat suffered by the Arab armies was a blow to the regimes that had sent them: in particular Nasser’s Arab socialist regime and Syria’s Soviet-allied Ba’ath regime. Pan-Arab nationalism and socialism had been defeated in 1967, and consequently the leftwing secular parties in the Arab world entered a period of crisis.94 Thus left-wing ideologies had been discredited in the Arab world long before the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. What Qutb has to say about the Western alternative is remarkable in a different way. His statement that ‘the West itself knows that something essential is missing from it’ was never part of a general Arab or Egyptian understanding of the West. Rather, it appears to be connected to the kind of romantic or spiritualist thinking one could encounter in Western thought as of the nineteenth century, that regrets the Entzauberung der Welt and seeks spiritual solace in the face of mind-numbing materialism. Often, people have turned to the exotic, especially the East for this spiritual rescue.95 This idea of a dichotomy between Western material knowledge and Eastern spiritual wisdom we could perhaps connect to Qutb’s expectations regarding the Muslims’ incapacity to compete with ‘the Western creative mind’. Qutb almost seems to encourage the idea of a division of labour between East and West: one will deliver spiritual and moral guidance, the other will continue to enrich the world with material riches and scientific advances.96 When Sadat allowed the Islamists to re-emerge into Egyptian society, it was in order for them to combat the leftist opposition. Yet the Islamists were never exclusively anti-leftist. Islamist thought had always spoken out against both right-wing and left-wing secularism. When Sadat proceeded on a pro-Western course, and closed a



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

79

unilateral peace with Israel, the Islamist opposition recognized that it was little use to continue criticizing their fellow opposition on the left. Their main concern was how Egypt had ‘sold out’ on the cause in Palestine and how it was opening up to Western political and economic influence. Simply put, when the president was socialist (Nasser), the Islamist opposition was actively anti-socialist and passively anti-Western, and when the president became a Western allied liberal (Sadat), the Islamists became actively anti-Western liberal and passively anti-socialist. Five Occidentalisms The views of the West, as we have seen above, were formed on the basis of multiple sources. Often partly informed by ideological necessities and dogmatic rigour, partly constructed to fit propagandist rhetoric, the perceptions of the West are always also shaped by realities on the ground involving an ‘actual West’. In most cases, the ingredients are mixed and come into play in various guises. So we find Al-Gabartî struggling with French scientific superiority: he departs from his traditional view of the world in order to praise French knowledge and the French judicial system, but he is also faced with humiliation by French scientists, and when the possibility arises where he can ridicule the French he does not hesitate. In Al-Tahtâwî’s Extraction we find the first major case in which a portrait of the West is provided not merely in order to inform but also in order to instruct. Interestingly, we find a hint that Al-Tahtâwî deliberately altered his picture of Europe in order to suit the political needs he perceived in Egypt. In so doing, Tahtâwî establishes a rhetorical practice in which images of the West are instrumentalized discursively. In this beginning, it was an image of how things should be done. We see that another, distinctly negative image of the West emerges gradually, as Western imperialist forces find their way into the Arab world. The claim that the negative image of the West is practically unrelated to the actual West should therefore be discarded.97 Historical events where

80

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

European or Western powers intervened in Middle Eastern politics to the detriment of Arab peoples (those most important in Egypt would be British de facto rule between 1882 and 1923, the SykesPicot treaty, the Suez War of 1956, the Baghdad Pact) have played a substantial role in the formation of Occidentalisms in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. Analysis of the historical attitudes towards Europe or the West also shows that it is rather simplistic to argue that the negative image of the West comes from feelings of resentment among Arabs (or even more generally: Muslims), who supposedly have never gotten over the shock that Muslims were surpassed by non-Muslims.98 The idea that Arabs, out of a misplaced sense of cultural and religious superiority, never accepted the idea that it may be imperative to adopt knowledge and practices from so-called unbelievers belies history as glanced at through the texts analysed above. We have seen that at the first sight of Western supremacy, Al-Gabartî praises the sophistication of the French men of knowledge, acknowledges the bravery of the French soldiers and refers to the French judicial system as an example of good justice. Later, Al-Tahtâwî (again, a religious scholar) paints a picture of Europe as being a great example for the people of Egypt. Only when Egypt is under British domination, when European Christian missionary workers are found throughout the country, when common Egyptians find themselves to be fourth-rate citizens, coming only after the British administrators, the foreign trading communities and the old Turkish elite, only then do negative images of Europeanization appear, and even then these are mostly confined to the British presence. More ‘sweeping’ anti-Westernism, where negative qualities are applied and criticism is levelled not against specific governments but rather at ‘the West’ as a whole, we encounter only in the second half of the twentieth century, when Arab nationalism reaches its apex under the leadership of Nasser. Yet Nasser reproached the West from an anti-imperialist perspective not uncommon in the West itself. Only after the demise of Arab nationalism do we see the rising popularity of protagonists of the Islamist



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

81

persuasion who promote the perception of the West as not merely a political but also a cultural, even religious adversary. For anyone to suggest that these negative images of the West are the result of Muslims being unable to accept Western superiority would be simplistic. Certainly the historical development of the Egyptian perception of the West since 1798 suggests that Occidentalisms in Egypt are not formed by anything typically Arab or Islamic. Neither are they cut off from the reality of the West. It has been argued that the Arab-Islamic world – out of the sense of superiority alluded to above – has limited its borrowings from the West to material imports, or the adoption of the use of ‘things’. European philosophical wealth was ignored, but modern weaponry, factories and engines were readily imported.99 From the analysis of the historical texts we can see that this view is mistaken. Again we could begin with Al-Gabartî and Al-Tahtâwî, both of whom pointed at French legal procedures as an inspiration for modernizing justice in Egypt, despite the fact that matters of justice are highly related to immaterial culture and specifically religion. This reference to Europe as a model for one’s judicial system continued: when Egypt gained independence in 1923 it adopted a constitution based on that of Belgium. Also in the arts, the political elite and intelligentsia in Egypt, as elsewhere in the Arab world, were in tune with the European fashions in music (Verdi’s Aida was commissioned by the khedive himself ), architecture (see Cairo’s downtown area, Heliopolis, Garden City, or the Corniche of Alexandria), philosophy (Arab intellectuals of the early twentieth century would normally have read such works as those of Rousseau, Comte, Spencer and Mill, among others)100 and literature.101 The historical overview of Occidentalism in Egyptian thought makes it clear that there have been various kinds of Occidentalisms, depending both on the period in which an Occidentalism was constructed as well as depending on the ideological outlook of who is creating the image. Yet in all their diversity, some characterizations belong together, and so we can distinguish certain kinds of Occidentalisms. The first such Occidentalism to appear historically is one

82

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

that is filled with admiration for the West, or what I would call the ‘Benign West’. The Benign West is the West often found in Al-Tahtâwî’s Extraction.102 It is the West (in casu Europe) of both material and immaterial progress. In this West humanity comes to fruition like nowhere else. Not only its science, technology and material wealth, but also its application of principles of justice, equality and democracy are admirable. It is the West where responsible governments uphold both personal freedoms as well as a communal spirit among their wellmannered peoples. Although Al-Tahtâwî’s Extraction is one of the primary texts to locate this Occidentalist type, we also find the Benign West presented elsewhere. Al-Gabartî praises Western justice and valour in warfare and in the twentieth century, more than anyone else Taha Husayn made use of the idea of the Benign West. This image of the West is often used (certainly by Al-Tahtâwî and Husayn) to criticize and/or instruct one’s own society. In opposition to the Benign West is the image of the ‘Malign West’.103 It is the West as seen from the perspective of Egyptians under English-dominated rule. It is the West of the French occupation of Algeria, the West of the Sykes-Picot agreement. These representations of the West as wicked do not necessarily preclude the positive typifications found in the Benign West: in the West one may still see the admirable side described above. But that Benign West is – if recognized – only seen in the ‘metropoles’, not in the colonies and protectorates. The image of the Malign West emerges when the West ceases to be a civilization at a distance. When representatives of Western civilization force their way by political interference and military occupation, when the British in Egypt withhold the admired qualities of the West from the people of Egypt, then the notion emerges of a West of double standards. It is the imperialist West, the West as enemy. Yet the image of a wicked West did not emerge all of a sudden. It took a long time before the icon of an evil West was formulated. Throughout the period between 1888 and



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

83

1923, when Egypt was a British protectorate, animosity was mostly directed against England, not against the West or Europe in general. Only when Western countries came together in a political alliance – because of the Cold War – did it become feasible to think of the West as a unified political unit. As El-Husseini has also remarked, the ‘rejected West’ (El-Husseini’s term) is not exclusively to be found in Islamist writings.104 Images of the West as evil in the second half of the twentieth century came from two ideological currents: the secular (state, official) Nasserist discourse (dominant until 1967) spoke of an imperialist, capitalist West intent on subjugating the Arab world, whereas the Islamist (opposition) discourse (gaining prominence as of the 1970s) spoke of an infidel West seeking cultural imperialism, a racist West dominated by Zionists, and/or a fanatical anti-Islamic West of Crusaders. Both the Benign and the Malign West are majestic. They are both a picture of a towering entity, be it a great ideal to aspire to, or a formidable enemy. The third Occidentalism or the ‘Weak West’ counters this notion of Western supremacy. It is first found in Hasan al-Bannâ’s description of the West as being in decline. From there on, it has returned time and time again. It is the West as a ‘paper tiger’, an image that aims to take away the awe with which the West is often regarded. The Weak West is a comforting image, for it can take away the unpleasant thought that the other is superior to oneself. Interestingly, it is often found in Islamist discourse that also speaks of the Malign West. In other words, while in a text the West may on the one hand be portrayed as close to collapse, it may simultaneously be portrayed as ‘the Great Satan’, responsible for virtually all that is going wrong in the Islamic world. So the notion of an almost all-powerful West is coupled with the notion of a Weak West. Sayyid Qutb found a way to harmonize these two contradicting images for he presented a Weak West in a different way. Qutb presented a West yearning for an Eastern spiritual rescue, a West ‘at the point of collapse’ and in need of moral help. Yet this morally bankrupt West was still seen to be strong in the material sense.

84

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

While there have been times when the political and economic reality suggested that Western civilization had come to a halt or had even collapsed (the First World War, the 1920s), there have been other times when the argument for a Weak West was much less convincing. In such times another Occidentalism can be of service: the ‘Appropriated West’. The Appropriated West is the representation of the admirable qualities of the West as hailing from the Self, which often involves an historical argument. Often, this means that the West is presented as being Islamic (or Arabic) in origin, or as being a part of Islam as practiced by non-Muslims. We find it often in topics dealing with Islam and science, where the general conclusion is that all Western science can eventually also be found in the Quran, or that all Western science is an outgrowth of medieval Islamic input. Also the commendable aspects of democracy, capitalism and communism may in this vein be claimed as Islamic: Islam simply unites the best aspects of these concepts. The message in this Occidentalism is that one need not lose oneself in admiring the West, for that which is good in the West is not foreign to oneself: it is to be found in Islam, and often it is even extracted from Islam. The underlying message is of course that those aspects of the West that are claimed as ‘Islamic’ are deemed ‘good’. In Al-Tahtâwî’s Extraction we find an appropriated West as being not Islamic, but Arab: Al-Tahtâwî refers to the French insisting on their liberté and explains that already a long time ago the Arabs displayed a high estimation for freedom. In order to substantiate this claim, he quotes lengthily from a story of a (pre-Islamic) Arab Lakhmid king having a discussion with the king of Persia. In this discussion the Arab king boasts of the Arab refusal to submit to a central leadership. Additionally, a story from the early Islamic period is cited, in which ‘Umar ibn al-Khattâb punishes ‘Amr ibn al-‘Âs for having enslaved free men. ‘From this’, Al-Tahtâwî concludes, ‘it becomes clear that the love for freedom has also been part of the Arab character from ancient times.’105 So here Al-Tahtâwî aims to prove that the French propensity towards freedom is not foreign to the Arabs, but rather a shared value. Finally, to illustrate



A History of Occidentalism in Egypt

85

the Occidentalism of the Appropriated West, one could also think of Muhammad ‘Abduh’s remark on Islam and the West: ‘In the Arab World, I see Muslims without Islam, in Europe I saw Islam without Muslims.’106 Where the Benign, the Malign and the Weak West are the most straightforward and stereotypical of the Occidentalisms mentioned here, the Appropriated West mentioned above is more complex in that it denies that any identity–alterity logic is at play in the Self ’s relation towards the West. It does not allow pointing at the West as an Other. Equally complicated is the fifth and final Occidentalism to be mentioned here, the ‘True West’. The ‘True West’ recognizes negative aspects of the West such as imperialism, but evokes the image of a ‘real’ West beyond this negative façade. That West behind the façade is portrayed as the True West, and consists of the appealing writings of French philosophers, constitutionalism, progress and the ideal of democracy and equality. It is the desired West that one would like to see come to fruition. In Egypt, the notion of such an idealized West – despite its ill-boding exterior – was particularly strong in the British period, when people opposed the British presence in Egypt, but still clung to the ideals of progress and development which were associated with Europe. As put by Hourani: while the nationalists condemned British or French policy, the conclusion they drew was not that England or France was intrinsically bad but that they were being untrue to themselves. The appeal was to the ‘true’ England and France, and the expectation was that sooner or later they would reassert themselves and understand that their interests were in harmony with those of the Arabs.107 The True West is a sort of ideal, often expressive of a hope that the true face of this powerful outside force is friendly. In more recent times we find this notion of the True West expressed after the fall

86

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

of the Berlin Wall. With the communist threat gone, some argued, the West can finally be a truly honest broker in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.108 This expression of hope implies that the West is essentially in favour of the Palestinians, but was never in the position to force (or even make known) its true will. This is to be discussed in the next chapter. The Occidentalisms listed above do not exclusively belong to particular political modes of thought, and they do not mutually exclude one another. In one and the same discourse one can find examples of both the Appropriated West and the Benign West (such as in Al-Tahtâwî and ‘Abduh), and the concept of the Malign West can be found among Islamist as well as among nationalist or left-wing authors. Neither do specific Occidentalisms exclusively belong to a specific period in time. Though the Benign West was clearly dominant from the early nineteenth century roughly until the 1920s, it did not disappear afterwards. Similarly, the Weak West never left the scene of intellectual imagination after it first emerged in the 1930s. The only clear limit to the applicability of the Occidentalisms is that there was a time when they did not exist yet. But when they emerged, they stayed on. The question is whether the five Occidentalisms described above continue to be present in Egyptian writings today. That is one of the questions that the following chapters seek to provide an answer to.

3 Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

Introduction ‘East and West will be no more.’ Such was the assessment of the semi-governmental newspaper Al-Masâ’ on 18 November 1989.1 The developments in the USSR had been a topic of discussion for quite some time in the newspapers in Egypt, as anywhere else in the world. The newspapers of this period display a great degree of excitement at the revolutionary events in Eastern Europe and Moscow. In general, the tone of reporting is joyful and eager. Already in May 1988 one could read articles hinting at the demise of communism. On 27 May Al-Akhbâr published a column reporting on the decision in the USSR to cancel the laws concerning maximum income.2 The columnist interprets this development as signalling the end of communism. Interestingly, communism is presented as a mistaken ideology because of its incompatibility with God’s laws. It was inevitable that it should fail as a system, because such is what one would expect of anything that goes against God. This is certainly not the only instance where the fall of communism is presented as some kind of divine justice. That same month another columnist argued in Al-Gumhûriyyah that the reforms pursued by Mikhail Gorbachev were the result not of choice but rather of necessity.

88

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

The writer argues that people will only be ruled by tyranny for a limited time, and time has run out for the USSR. The repression referred to is specifically the religious repression of pious Christians and Muslims.3 It is interesting to see that, in the view of the Egyptian press, when the Cold War ended it did not end with a specifically ‘Western’ victory. Rather than understand the demise of the communist world in direct relation to the strengths of its Western adversary, commentators focused on inherent weaknesses of the communist system, and shared in the victory over this system by dwelling on the superiority of Islamic values over communist values, or by stressing how the new developments would liberate devout Muslims from decades of communist oppression. The demise of the USSR is in some way claimed as a victory of the Self over the communist Other. This Self is sometimes guised as Muslim or Arab, or more generally and vaguely as all freedom-loving and God-fearing people. At this point in time the Islamist discourse had not yet become dominant and the thought of a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam had not yet emerged. We know now that the fall of the Soviet Union was understood by many salafi-jihadists in Afghanistan to be a victory for militant Islamism and a stepping stone to confronting the remaining superpower, and that this thought was to spread throughout the Muslim world in the years to follow. But in Egypt in the period immediately following November 1989, this thought was not entertained except perhaps by a very few. Though the thought of a clash of civilizations had not yet occurred, this does not mean that commentators did not contemplate the geostrategic consequences of the developments of the winter of 1989. Memories of the colonial period (not to mention the postcolonial war of 1956) continued to impact on relations with Europe, and the United States’ support for Israel was universally lamented. But this does not mean that commentators considered relations between Egypt (and the wider Arab world) and the West to be inherently and necessarily antagonistic. In this regard, the



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

89

end of the Cold War was initially hailed as a great opportunity to bring Arab and Western interests together. The previously mentioned article in Al-Masâ’ carried the strapline ‘The Arabs will be the first to profit from the latest turn of events – Unification of Europe serves the Palestinian case’. The article speaks enthusiastically of the developments and while it expresses happiness for the peoples of Eastern Europe, and congratulates them with achieving ‘freedom’, it also – as the title suggests – sees great possibilities for the Arab world. It is specifically hopeful about economic collaboration between economic zones such as the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab Cooperation Council and the Maghreb Union, along with an expected Euro-zone inclusive of Eastern Europe. Apart from economic possibilities, it suggests that with the passing of the Cold War, America will readjust its policy towards Israel in the direction sought by the Arab world. American support for Israel is understood to have been a Cold War-induced policy, and as the Cold War dissolves, so will the American reasons for siding with Israel against the Palestinians. However, other reports were much less optimistic, foreseeing a struggle against an America which could be expected to try and maximize its global power now that its adversary had fallen.4 These more discordant voices would grow stronger soon after Saddam Hussein sent his army to Kuwait, as a consequence of which America and other Western countries sent their armies to the Gulf: in little over a year, Egyptian media switched from celebrating the end of the Cold War, to lamenting the existence of a unipolar world. While the end of the Cold War was discussed with relatively little reference to the West, imagining the world instead to be a clean slate with neither East nor West, and with new opportunities for all, discussions of the Gulf War in the Egyptian media provide us with a new use of the term ‘West’. On 26 September the government daily Al-Gumhûriyya connects the crisis in the Gulf (Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait, Western armies had not yet moved in) to the unification of Germany, which was scheduled to take place a

90

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

week later on 3 October. This serves as self-criticism in which the West plays a role, but the West is here identified in a manner that is different from Cold War practice: ‘the sight of Germany, which will celebrate its return to unity come third of October, uncovers the civilizational difference that still separates us from the West … There they were able to learn from their experience, arriving at the truth that still eludes us.’5 For the first time in this media corpus, we see the term ‘West’ being used not in the sense of the capitalist world in opposition to the communist East, but as a certain civilizational unit. Also interesting is the ease with which the author suggests a historical continuity to this idea of a civilizational difference: ‘it still separates us … the truth that still eludes us’. For the author to write of the Arab world and the West as two distinct civilizations in so historicist a manner may be striking having seen that in the preceding period the Egyptian media hardly identified the West as a civilization. Yet the idea of a Western civilization was of course not new. The West was merely most relevant in terms of its economic system, because it was this system that served as the central element in the struggle between East and West. But from a culturalist point of view the West was always also a culture or civilization distinct from the Arab world (for the more nationalistminded) or the Muslim world (for those more Islamist-minded). This culturalist understanding of the West became dominant in the course of the 1990s, and its most natural intellectual habitat would be among Arab nationalists and Islamists. Indeed the Islamist daily Al-Sha‘b reported on the American-led war to liberate Kuwait in terms of a war against Islam,6 while the Nasserist Al-‘Arabî in its September 1992 issue features what is to my knowledge the first Arab reference to the notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’,7 almost a year before Samuel Huntington’s article in Foreign Affairs. And so, as indicated by the previous paragraph, we have come to the point where it is best to start focusing on specific discourses. First, a discussion of the discourse emanating from authors and outlets with a leftist-nationalist background is due. This is followed by



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

91

an analysis of Islamist Occidentalisms and finally attention will be paid to the liberal trend in the Egyptian ideological landscape. My confidence in this division notwithstanding, I would like to stress, as I did in the Introduction, that these discourses or ideological trends should not be seen as hermetically sealed compartments. Both media and individual authors can be ideologically broadminded, and a typification as ‘liberal’ or ‘Islamist’ therefore indicates that a liberal or Islamist discourse features more prominently in any given intellectual’s work, rather than exclusively. Leftist-Nationalism ‘Does the West fear the Muslims?’ was the title of the above-mentioned article in Al-‘Arabî. The author, Muhammad al-Rumayhî, reacts to an article written that same month in the International Herald Tribune, which was said to argue that the war against communism was of secondary importance compared to the West’s wars with Islam, which started thirteen centuries ago and have not ceased since.8 Al-Rumayhî couples this article with a contemporary event in which Islamic groups in Brunei demanded that the government stop the import of certain ‘anti-Islamic car tyres’, reportedly because they had perceived a cunning strategy of evangelization which involved a crucifix-shaped tread design on the car tyres in question. Al-Rumayhî’s point is clear: the Tribune’s op-ed and the row over the evangelizing tyres are equally expressive of religious paranoia: [On the one hand], this war … between Islam and the West appears similar to the wars Don Quichotte fought against the windmills … but at the same time it is also a real war … The author argues that there lies a danger in the continuing reports that hint at a confrontation between the West and Islam. He refers to Francis Fukuyama’s association of Islam with fascism, and mentions a Time issue in which the cover article asked ‘Should the West fear

92

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Islam?’, and various other American and European expressions of a concern with the relations between Islam and the West. The author is concerned as well, but for different reasons. The expressions of Western fear of Islam are mistaken. After stating that there is ‘a struggle of civilizations, not of religions’ the author explains himself by referring to the Turkish experience: Ataturk believed that the confrontation with the Western challenge necessitated making use of the same weapons as used by the West, therefore he abolished the Islamic caliphate in order to establish the national state. … [And] the Turkish people who substituted the tarbush for the hat, have kept their Islam and held on to their faith, and the mosques of Istanbul and Ankara continue to teem with believers. And this forces us to contemplate two facts: firstly that in the West Muslims and Islam are being mixed up … The second fact is that a similar mix-up is present at the other side … where some Islamist groups confound so-called Islamic ways of political and social expression with Islam as a religion, and these [groups] attempt to declare apostate any Muslim state or society that does not adhere to their kind of political and social expression. As a solution to the confusion of Islam and Muslims, and of Islam and politics, Al-Rumayhî reminds us of Ataturk’s example in establishing a strong national state which, he emphasizes, does not contradict with the exigencies of religion. In such a setting, civilizations can compete freely, benefiting from each other’s strong points in an open cultural dialogue. The struggle or competition between civilizations is thus emphatically not conceived of as necessarily violent or otherwise negative: the danger is perceived to lie in the misconception entertained by some in the West that Islam is the new enemy. We will see later in this chapter that fear of Western anti-Islamitism would play an increasingly important role in Occidentalist discourse of the various ideological trends. In the early 1990s, however,



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

93

the leftist-nationalist trend had not yet adopted such a culturalist approach. Rather than contemplation of cultural differences, one typically finds economic and political arguments used in discussions of the relations between the Arab world and the West in the postCold War setting. An example from the periodical Al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabî can illustrate the sense of excitement, opportunity but also caution over the new situation: The possibilities for cooperation between the Arab nation (watan) and the European countries, or between the Arab League and the European Community or future European Union, are truly present. Equally, there are mutual interests. The question remains and it needs to be answered: does Europe truly want this [cooperation]? Or are these thoughts and suggestions mere fantasy and imagination? And this matter also applies to the Arab region. Does she want this and is she prepared for it … ?9 This focus on the strictly political and economic aspects of world politics would give way to culturalist assessments in which religion plays a central role. In 1996, the same journal published an article by ‘Abd Allah ‘Abd al-Dâ’im entitled ‘The Arabs and the world between clash and dialogue of cultures’.10 In this article the author (a member of the Institute for Arab Unity Studies) argues that there are two dangerous tendencies in the world today. The first danger lies in an animosity against nationalism. While nationalist idealism has had undesired consequences in certain times and places, the author warns against ‘throwing away the baby with the bathwater’ and stresses that nationalism is the only real ideology that can stand up against the present situation in the post-Soviet era.11 This argument for nationalism is followed by a discussion of the second danger: anti-Islamitism.12 Here we see how the topic of ‘Islam in danger’ is adopted in nationalist discourse. Indeed, the cultural background to global problems is considered of central importance as the author

94

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

states that ‘[t]he problem of the world system is a problem with a cultural basis’.13 It is also interesting to see how the idea that the West is anti-Islamic is here presented as an obvious truth: ‘The Western culture, as we know, entertains since the days of old many delusions that present Islam as a historical and traditional enemy to the West.’ In other words, it is considered a well-known fact that the West views Islam as its enemy. While not nearly as much as Islamic publications, since the 1990s leftist and nationalist publications have begun to discuss the West largely as a culture or civilization.14 In the examples cited so far this is done in a well-argued manner. There are other outlets, however, where the same basic message is presented (the West is anti-Islamic), yet in rather more scandalous a fashion. The weekly Al-Usbû‘ is known for its history of character assassinations but it has equally used its capacity for incitement against the more ephemeral notion of the West. The weekly Uktûbar started publishing articles embracing the uncritical black-and-white understanding of the West opposing Islam no later than in 1997.15 In order to present a more thorough understanding of how the West can be conceived in a leftist-nationalist discourse the following section will analyse the work of Galâl Amîn (b. 1935). The works of Galâl Amîn16 In 2002 the first Arab Human Development Report was published. This UNDP-sponsored report, drafted by a team of prominent Arab scholars and intellectuals, analysed with great candour what it perceived to be the major problems in the contemporary Arab world. While the report was praised by many for its clear assessment of three ‘deficits’ in the Arab world (freedom, knowledge and women’s emancipation), some vehemently opposed the report for serving Western interests. Rather than elaborating on what was wrong with the Arab world the authors would have done better to focus on the oppressive role of external actors. By neglecting to do so the report was only



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

95

of service to ‘the West’.17 One of the more prominent Arab intellectuals to attack the report was the Egyptian economist Galâl Amîn, of the American University in Cairo. Amîn is a noteworthy intellectual, if only for being one of the very few Arab authors whose non-fiction books are translated to European languages. In particular his Whatever Happened to the Egyptians?18 and its sequel Whatever Else Happened to the Egyptians?19 have been relative bestsellers in both their Arabic and English editions. The increasingly normal perception of the West as anti-Islamic is adopted by Amîn in his The Era of Arab- and Muslim-bashing: We and the World after September 11, 2001.20 According to its introduction, this book is about exposing the ways in which Arabs and Muslims are victims of a consistent and well-organized slander campaign, evidently connected to Zionist circles. This campaign aims to weaken the Arab-Muslim position globally but it also seeks to destabilize Arabs and Muslims, by taking away their belief in themselves. The Era then seeks to counter this slanderous operation, and hopes to ‘put a halt to Arabs’ and Muslims’ lack of confidence in themselves and the justness of their case’.21 As will become apparent further below, The Era has sections that are written in a rather polemical, not to say agitative, style. The intensity of the adopted style should be seen in light of the American-led war in Iraq, which around the time of publication had been furnishing the Egyptian media with images and stories of a bloodshed rarely witnessed. Amîn devotes one chapter to the war, in which among other things he questions the American motives for going to war and dismisses the notion of a clash of civilizations. Yet interestingly, he finishes the chapter as follows: But all this is of little importance, in my opinion, when compared to something which I consider to be the greatest catastrophe taking place today … , it is in my view the greatest disgrace [fadîhah] to modern Western civilization: [namely] the unprecedented use of immoral methods, the silencing of

96

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

the opposition voices, the brainwashing … of the people to a devilish degree. … This is the truly frightening truth: more [frightening] than the stealing, the killing, the invading.22 For Amîn to focus on internal developments of Western societies, developments in which principles of democracy and human rights appear to be compromised, is remarkable. For Amîn to refer to these developments as a ‘disgrace’ suggests that Amîn had expected something better from the West as he knows it: one needs to have grace, for it to be taken away. This is not the only instance where we see Amîn standing closer to the notion of Western idealism than he lets on at first sight. In the chapter entitled ‘Egyptian television and American democracy’ Amîn writes of his experience with an Egyptian state television channel. Amîn gave an interview in which he was critical of the idea of the American dream, but the footage that was eventually broadcast had his negative comments deleted: the Egyptian regime at this point in time did not like to facilitate criticism of America. After relating this anecdote, Amîn closes with the rhetorical question: ‘So is that the splendid era of “democracy” that they speak of? Men, women and children echoing “yes, yes, yes” because they are not informed and do not hear anything else?’ Again, Amîn criticizes ‘American democracy’ not on the grounds of democracy being wrong in principle, but rather the opposite: he criticizes a given practice on the grounds that it is fundamentally undemocratic. In a rather straightforward straw dog fallacy, this unseemly practice is then referred to as ‘American democracy’ and consequently ‘American democracy’ is criticized for being not genuinely democratic. Whereas criticism of Western images of Islam or critiques of the Anglo-American war in Iraq are nothing extraordinary, Amîn expresses some other views that are not quite as commonly argued: The events of September 11, 2001 have helped the American administration … in realizing their plans [for extending their



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

97

control over numerous parts of the world]. There is hardly any difference of opinion over this. If there were any difference of opinion over whether these events were a golden opportunity exploited optimally by the American administration, or created in order [for the American administration] to exploit them, then I would tend to support the latter view.23 Galâl Amîn has repeatedly stated his disbelief in the responsibility of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda or any other group of Arabs or Muslims for what happened on 11 September in New York and Washington. Amîn even expresses his amazement at the fact that the conventional explanations are believed at all, since ‘logically speaking’ it is ‘highly unlikely’ that Osama bin Laden or other Arabs or Muslims were responsible.24 The arguments Amîn furnishes his anti-thesis with are surprisingly weak: it is ‘not logical’ for a rich Saudi youth to turn against America; it is suspicious that the leaders of Al-Qaeda still have not been caught; and, as a matter of course, it goes against the rules of criminal behaviour to commit a crime that will not yield the criminal a profit. In other words, since it is Arabs and Muslims who have suffered as a consequence of 9/11, it is likely that enemies of the Arabs are the real culprits. Another book in which Amîn relates his disbelief in the conventional history of 11 September is The Fairytale of Progress and Backwardness.25 This is Amîn’s most recent book to have been translated into English, and it is of interest to take note of some remarkable differences between the Arabic original and the English translation. In the original Arabic version Amîn relates how George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has had a profound impact on the way in which he sees the world: I read the book once again after the events of September 11, because I didn’t believe what was said, [namely] that a group of Arab and Muslim terrorists had planned and executed this attack, in order to raise Islam and to take revenge on the United States and Israel.

98

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

If we then have a look at the translation, we find something quite different: Then I read the novel again after the events of September 11, when I also could not believe what was said about the terrorist group that mounted the attack, that it was all made up of Arabs and Muslims, who planned and executed their operation for the greater glory of Islam or as an act of revenge against America and Israel or in envy of ‘the American way of life’. They certainly failed to attain any of these goals.26 With minimal means the English version manages to soften the original message: instead of rejecting the basic components of the ‘orthodox’ history of events as in the Arabic original, the English version has additional components to the story that make it more reasonable to doubt it. This is not the only discrepancy in the translation, as will be noted further down. For now however, it serves to point at a certain dualism in Amîn’s work. In both The Era and Fairytale, it is clear that Amîn is concerned with the Egyptian (or more broadly, the Arab and Muslim) Selfimage. In Fairytale Amîn literally speaks of the need to cure the region of its ‘Khawâgah complex’, or the sense of inferiority in comparison with the European and the American.27 In his attempt to repair the Arab sense of self-esteem Amîn has a tendency to reject nearly everything that does not fit the image of a noble, well-to-do Arab world. This can lead to almost paranoid postulations. To Amîn, the disgraceful plunder in Baghdad (in the immediate aftermath of the American invasion) must have been part of the greater ploy to defame Arabs and Islam, for the footage of looting Iraqis served the American invaders by providing the world with such images of Arabs and Muslims as would support the invasion.28 To a large extent, Amîn defines the West in economic terms: capitalism and imperialism are its hallmarks. The end of the Cold War has left the world with a new situation, Amîn argues, in which



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

99

capitalism has re-emerged in its original crude form. While during the Cold War capitalism was diluted, our present era is characterized by the kind of capitalism that was prevalent when Karl Marx lived.29 More surprising in Amîn’s work is his tendency to speak in absolute terms. A rather black-and-white thinking governs various passages in which Amîn characterizes Islam, the Arab world and the West. In the final chapter to The Era Amîn discusses the dialogue between Islam and the West, and in particular the efforts by Muslims to improve the image of Islam in the Western world. Amîn is not impressed with these efforts and ridicules ‘the sight of an assembly of our great writers and intellectuals gathering in a luxurious hall of one of Cairo’s greatest hotels, in order to discuss how to improve the image of Islam in the eyes of the West’.30 The Western affront against Islam is so great that it is humiliating to approach such a West to ask for an exchange of views: ‘the language used these days by the Westerners when they speak of Islam and the Muslims is not the kind of language that arouses the desire to try and improve the image of Islam in their eyes, rather it is of the kind that raises anger and fury’.31 This dramatic separation between the West and Islam and the impossibility of either side drawing nearer, is repeated in even starker terms in the closing statements of Khurâfah. After having discussed the difference between reform (good) and modernization (bad), Amîn writes: There are of course some people who have lost all hope … for the possibility of reaching reform … Yet there are others who continue to carry hope, and they base this hope … on their trust in the vitality and strength of the Arab-Islamic heritage … There are [others] who base their hope on the possibility of conflicts re-emerging in the modern world itself … as has happened before several times and was sometimes combined into world wars. These conflicts always offered opportunities … to other cultures in the world, [opportunities] to preserve their existence and realize their revival.  But there is another source of hope for the non-Western

100

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

cultures to realize the reform they desire, … and that is what has struck the Western civilization with weakness. [The West] is going through a phase that has all the hallmarks of old age. … Even the very [people] whom this civilization belongs to, they have started to lose confidence in their civilization, and in its superiority … In such circumstances it is possible for opportunities to increase, [opportunities] for a reform that is independent of modernization and renews hope for realizing true progress that does not ignore the evident aspects of the ummah’s heritage. What we have here is a clear example of the stereotype of the Weak West. In this case, the idea of a faltering West is even presented as a necessary precondition for the Arab-Muslim world to rise again. It is almost as if Amîn sees the West and Islam as communicating vessels: the weakness of the one occasions the strength of the other. But there is another side to Galâl Amîn. While he has written about the West in rather hostile terms, expressing an eagerness to see the West’s demise, at the same time it is hard to see him as detached from the very Western civilization he supposedly despises. If we look at his sources, we find they are almost exclusively Western. On the rare occasion where Amîn makes use of his cherished Arab heritage, it is normally as a romantic footnote, such as when he refers gratuitously to Ibn Khaldûn, Ibn Rushd or other great names of Islamic civilization. Sometimes his critiques of Western media or politics might as well have been written by any left-wing pundit writing for the Independent or the Guardian. Apart from Amîn’s training, his private life is also highly intermingled with a Western cultural context. Amîn’s wife is British and the Amîn family has spent much time in the English countryside. The impression one gets from his recent autobiography32 is that the West is part of Amîn’s home territory. His critique often sounds exactly like Western self-criticism.33 Given then Amîn’s intimate association with Western cultural contexts on the private, the professional and the intellectual level, one could question



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

101

the sincerity of the passages where he expresses an overall hostility. The discrepancies between his Arabic and his English publications give reason to believe that he tailors his work to what he presumes are his audience’s needs. One could even think that one should see Amîn’s attempts to wash the Arab world clean of the responsibility for 9/11 as part of his campaign to uplift the gloomy spirits of his Arab readership. I asked Galâl Amîn about this during an interview, but he insisted that he genuinely does not accept the conventional history, and stands by what he wrote in The Era and elsewhere.34 Islamism One most obvious and fundamental difference between a Marxistinclined intellectual such as Amîn on the one hand, and the average Islamist intellectual on the other, is the tendency of the first to explain societal phenomena through economic arguments, while the latter tend to stress immaterial aspects of society in order to explain its ills and strengths. This difference is also shown by an analysis of Islamist appreciations of the West, as the following section should show. While its intellectual origins may be traced to at least the late nineteenth century, the Islamist current’s popular rise is commonly placed in the 1970s. Partly filling the void left by the demise of Pan-Arabism, partly facilitated by political support from Anwar al-Sadat, and financially assisted after the oil boom brought unprecedented wealth to the Arabian peninsula, the rise of Islamism in Egypt and the wider Arab world cannot be ascribed to any single factor.35 However, one factor that is generally assumed to be of central importance is the desire for ‘authenticity’.36 The authentic Self is specifically – though not exclusively – in the Islamist press understood to be (1) intimately linked to Islam and (2) under attack, more specifically under attack from ‘the West’. Part of the logic behind this perceived Western attack upon Islam lies in a notion that emerged shortly after the end of the Cold War, namely, that after the demise of communism, the West ‘needed’ a

102

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

new enemy. The first instance after the Cold War in which the West is portrayed as an enemy of Islam is during the first Gulf War. Islamist dailies such as Al-Sha‘b, Al-Muslimûn or Al-Nûr were consistent in their coverage of this war as one in which Islam was under attack. There is even some eagerness in this regard. On 10 February 1995, Al-Sha‘b wrote, ‘NATO defines “Islamic fundamentalism” officially to be the new enemy instead of Communism’. Al-Sha‘b was wrong. In fact NATO Secretary-General Willy Claes had indeed spoken of Islamic militancy as a threat perhaps even greater than communism, but he did not speak on behalf of NATO when he did. His statements caused an uproar as a consequence of which Claes had to retract his words. This is not the only instance where we find Islamist press promoting the idea of Western anti-Islamic aggression. Claes’s words were similarly used in an article by ‘moderate Islamist’ Fahmî Huwaydî, who compared the 1995 NATO meeting to the Council of Clermont in the year 1095, the founding moment of the Crusades.37 More examples of the eagerness with which the West is hailed as an enemy can be found in Zaynab ‘Abd al-‘Azîz’s The Western Stance Towards Islam.38 This book is exemplary of the alarmist discourse employed in many of the Islamist discussions of contemporary Western culture, witness the jacket blurb: We live in times when the truth is no longer hidden. We see now that there is not only a struggle between Islam and the West, but also that this is a struggle of religious fanaticism. To understand this, it will be enough for us to see Western extremism at work in its position towards Israel, the suffering of Palestinians, the concocted Gulf War, and the war of annihilation against Muslims, which has already started in Bosnia.39 Apart from the dramatic style of the text, it is remarkable to see how Bosnia features in this litany of Western misdeeds against Islam. In



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

103

the Egyptian media in general and in Islamist circles in particular it is not uncommon for the war in former Yugoslavia to be presented as a Western attack on Islam/Bosnians.40 The hostility between NATO and the Serbian aggressor is either simply forgotten or suitably ignored, in order to be able to sound the alarm bells over the Western onslaught. This may be indicative of the aforementioned eagerness to see signs of Islam being treated unfairly. We can see more such eagerness in the following complaint of ‘Abd al-‘Azîz, in relation to her discussion of the Vatican document Nostra Aetate (the 1965 document on the relations with non-Christians), on which she writes: ‘It is remarkable that [the treatment of ] Islam comes, by way of order, [only] after the Hindu and the Buddhist beliefs [have been dealt with].’41 So ‘Abd al-‘Azîz expresses her dismay at the fact that the editors of Nostra Aetate have decided to discuss relations with Islam only after the discussions of relations with Hinduism and Buddhism. She expresses her disappointment and a sense of not being taken seriously. Yet when we have a closer look at the document in question, we see that Nostra Aetate does not discuss religions in order of their decreasing importance, but rather in order of their increasing importance to Vatican history: a proper reading of Nostra Aetate shows Islam being treated as the Vatican’s second-most important religious Other, coming only after Judaism.42 But it appears that the author is not really interested in what it is that Nostra Aetate has to say. Neither is she genuinely interested in what is supposed to be the topic of her book: the Western position vis-à-vis Islam. While the first edition of the book was published in 1993, a third edition was published in 2003, and yet the foreword to this edition does not mention 11 September 2001. Instead of an update on how Western views of Islam have been influenced rather negatively by the Al-Qaeda attacks, she postulates simply that the more time passes, the more she is proven right. In general, the book expresses a sense of extreme indignation. For a supposedly serious academic (she is consistently referred to as a professor of history, though it is not clear at what university) to

104

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

cry foul over the fact that in European tradition it is customary to refer to Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina by their Latinized names (seen as a refusal to acknowledge Arab-Islamic achievements!), or to consider it exemplary of the West’s cunning trickery that Muhammad is referred to in Italian as Mahometto (falsification of the prophet’s name!) would normally be indicative of either hysteria or ignorance at best.43 Perhaps, however, we can find a purpose to these and similar accusations. Their purpose may lie in that they serve the overall intention of this book, which is not so much to inform about the Western view of Islam but rather to instruct people to distrust ‘the West’ and to strengthen ‘Islamic solidarity’ by painting the picture of a monolithical Western war party intent on the annihilation of the Muslims. An author of the same stripe as Zaynab ‘Abd al-‘Azîz is Zaghlûl al-Naggâr. Al-Naggâr is trained as a geologist but is mainly occupied with writing about Islam and science, in such a way as to use science to corroborate the Quran. He appears on television regularly and is counted among the Ikhwâniyyîn (those who are with the Muslim Brothers). Al-Naggâr was criticized in January 2005 for being among those who linked the tragedy of the tsunami to a supposed immorality on the part of the people in South East Asia.44 In one of his recent books he is concerned with the manner in which the relationship between Islam and the West is treated in the Western world. In Islam and the West in the Writings of the Westerners45 the author promises the reader that he will disclose the conspiracies of the West against Islam. His knowledge of the conspiracies comes quite simply from his reading of books written by ‘the Westerners’. Surprisingly, in Al-Naggâr’s assessment one of the most dangerous books that has been published in the West about Western-Islamic relations is Graham Fuller and Ian Lessing’s A Sense of Siege: The Geopolitics of Islam and the West (1995).46 Al-Naggâr writes that, while this is the most dangerous book, there are many other Western books touching upon Islam which are similarly harmful and seek the prevention of any Islamic resurgence. Among the books mentioned in this list is Richard Nixon’s Seize the



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

105

Moment (1992). This is interesting, because we will see more references to this publication in other Islamist writings. Perhaps it seems out of place to discuss the work of authors such as ‘Abd al-‘Azîz or Al-Naggâr, as one could argue that these are the fringe figures, rather than the ‘mainstream’. Yet their inclination to faulty argumentation and eager alarmism are not unique to their writings. Such a towering figure as Muhammad al-Ghazzâlî (1917–96), prolific author of a series of popular theology,47 and a well-known representative of Islamist thought, has written extensively about the supposedly invidious nature of the West’s scheme against Islam in no uncertain terms.48 On the jacket of Al-Ghazzâlî’s tellingly titled Darkness from the West we learn that the reader will not finish going through this book without feeling hatred for the secretive West … [and for] the treason [committed by] its followers [who are] among us … and the extent to which those of the poisonous media collaborate in deceiving and misguiding, … and lastly, of the innocence of Islam as regards the accusations that are hurled against it.49 Khalafallah in her sympathetic study of Al-Ghazzâlî, describes him as ‘an extremely emotional and blunt man’.50 The description seems apt. In the work of Al-Ghazzâlî, as in the work of the previously mentioned Islamist authors, there is a clear sense of crisis that is expressed in bombastic terms. Islam is not merely in danger, no, it is in danger of being ‘annihilated’, because the (unqualified, monolithical) West seeks to ‘destroy Islam and the Muslims’. This talk can be dangerous. One incident that is connected to the thought of Muhammad alGhazzâlî is the murder of the Egyptian liberal pundit Farag Fawdâ in 1992. Though Fawdâ had been branded an apostate by an informal group of Azhar sheikhs, it was following a debate with Muhammad al-Ghazzâlî that two gunmen related to Al-Gamâ‘ah al-Islâmiyyah shot him dead. At trial, the court called upon Al-Ghazzâlî as an expert witness. Al-Ghazzâlî obliged the murderers of his intellectual

106

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

opponent by stating that if the authorities do not deal out the appropriate punishment (i.e. death) for apostasy, then responsibility for its execution falls upon any individual citizen. Remarkably, Al-Ghazzâlî’s endorsement of the murder of Farag Fawdâ has been whitewashed more than once. Baker in Islam Without Fear (2003) is so intent on arguing that there is a coherent movement of moderate Islam (al-wasatiyya), in which he includes Al-Ghazzâlî, that he lends credit to the notion that Al-Ghazzâlî was somehow put in a tight spot and didn’t really mean what he said.51 For comparable reasons, Khalafallah states similarly that this incident was in fact contrary to the general line of Al-Ghazzâlî’s thought.52 I would argue contrarily that Al-Ghazzâlî should not have been surprised – nor dismayed – at the murder of Fawdâ, as can be glimpsed from what he wrote about Westernizing ‘traitors’: There are Egyptian Orientalists! They were born in this land of ours, but their minds and hearts have settled in the West … ! They are infidels to Arabism and Islam, collaborators in the Cold War that is waged against us by imperialism … . The primary occupation of these Orientalist [pseudo-]ambassadors [of the West] is … to break down the building of Islam, and to drive out its dignity from [our] souls … And thus they achieve their great aim, [namely to see] Zionism and Crusaderism marching forward shoulder to shoulder in the modern age!!    … [C]omplete liberation requires that we remove this sort of Orientalists from public life just as we removed the armies of the British … . For this horde of [people engaged in] the operation of polluting pens is more dangerous to our future than the conspicuous enemies, because of [the former’s] hypocrisy … Complete liberation [requires] that we cleanse our society of these [people] who have lost it all.53 While Al-Ghazzâlî certainly had popular standing, intellectually speaking he has been considered less successful, exactly because of



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

107

his ostentations. Among the more careful thinkers with an Islamist persuasion we may count Târiq al-Bishrî. If Târiq al-Bishrî differs from the aforementioned authors in terms of style and quality of argumentation, he is similar to them in that he also adheres to the notion of the West and Islam being one another’s opposite. In his The Islamic-Secular Dialogue Al-Bishrî defines the West and Islam as systems, the difference between them being that Islam is based on the acknowledgement of God, while the Western system is based on material, worldly principles.54 This is of course the well-known romantic idea of Oriental spirituality versus Western materialism that is ubiquitous in Arabic writings about the West (and vice versa).55 While Al-Bishrî does not argue that the two systems must necessarily clash, he does see a conflict in principle, as is clear from his explanation for Islamic religious revivalism and extremism. According to Al-Bishrî the Islamic revival was a reaction to a crisis of authenticity, brought about by Westernization. The extreme version of this Islamist activism should then be attributed to an extreme Westernization, much like Newton’s Third Law of action and reaction: ‘Thus the establishment of the Islamist movement was a result of the onslaught of Westernization, and one can say that the extremism of Westernization has given birth to the religious extremism.’56 The above discussion of Al-Bishrî leads into the opaque realm of what has been termed al-wasatiyya, ‘Islamic modernism’ or ‘moderate Islamism’.57 So far there is not a coherent definition of what this is supposed to entail, but the general idea is that an Islamist thought has emerged that is doctrinally pluralist and open-minded, i.e. pluralism and open-mindedness are pursued because (and only to the extent that) it is deemed a religious requirement. One of the intellectuals who was an exponent of moderate Islamic thought is ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-Masîrî (1938–2008). The ex-Marxist professor of English literature made a name for himself as an eminent scholar of Judaism and Zionism in the Arab world, by publishing his eight-volume Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism and Zionism.58 He was one of the

108

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

few Egyptian scholars who combined unrelenting anti-Zionist activism with genuine expertise in Jewish and Israeli affairs.59 In several articles Al-Masîrî has written about the relation between the West and the Muslim world. In an article written for Al-Gazîrah Al-Masîrî adopts a remarkable position towards the West. Initially, he gracefully debunks the various conspiracy theories of Western policy in the Muslim world. Consequently, he proceeds to stress the things Islam and the West have in common. He explains his views on why the West and the Muslim world are experiencing tensions, and refers to the emergence of Islamic minorities and the loss of the Communist threat. Then he proceeds to talk about Western materialism. Al-Masîrî speaks of how modernity has created consumerist gluttony in Western man that is without precedent in human history. Yet this lamentable materialism is not simply a question of an inordinate hunger for products, knowledge and technology. The real problem is that these products, knowledges and technologies are made and used in a manner unrestrained by any values. This is where Al-Masîrî refers to the English term ‘value-free’. Here it becomes interesting: [When we employ an ontological approach], we find that Western modernity not merely ‘employs reason and science and technology [in its dealings with the world]’, but we find that it does so outside all and any humanitarian or moral framework. Therefore, we must define this modernity as ‘dealing with the world by means of the employment of reason and science and technology as cut off from values (value-free).’ … In this framework the world is cut off from values, in the sense that there are no more human, moral or religious standards, so that it becomes hard to distinguish between justice and oppression, between truth and falsehood, even between what is ugly and what is beautiful.60 When Al-Masîrî refers to the English concept of ‘value-free’ (which can be an adjective of science, technology, usually indicating universal



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

109

validity or applicability), he takes it to mean ‘without values’ in the sense of ‘immoral’. This provides him with the opportunity to present to his readership the argument that Western materialism is immoral by its own admission. Even though Al-Masîrî remains poised throughout the article, as the text progresses, it becomes clear that he is very troubled by the present Western-Islamic relations. He states that there are three possibilities for dialogue. First, one could have a ‘dialogue between equals’, which must be under the condition that both parties recognize the other’s humanity. Second, one could engage in a ‘critical dialogue’, in which, when one party does not recognize the other party’s humanity, then the other party should criticize this in order to remind the first party. As a last resort, there is the option of ‘armed dialogue’, in which one whose humanity is denied by the other will forcibly demonstrate its humanity to this other. In Al-Masîrî’s view, present circumstances in the relationship between the West and Islam are so dire that it is time for the Muslim world to move from a critical dialogue to an armed dialogue. One of the magazines in which Al-Masîrî has published is AlManâr al-gadîd, reportedly the ‘new Islamists’’ intellectual outlet and discussion platform. Established in the mid 1990s, it has by and large lived up to its objective of representing a new and inclusivist Islamic voice, where there is also place for some internal soul-searching.61 For example, in an article on Islamist discourse and the West, it is argued that the Islamists are facing a great challenge in finding a new posture vis-à-vis the West.62 The events of 11 September 2001 have made things very complicated for the moderate Islamists. The author argues that while the radicals have chosen all-out animosity against the West and have thus adopted a straightforward, uncomplicated position, the moderates are facing the problem of having to engage with the West in a much more complex manner. For instance, they need to recognize the Muslim presence in the West and admit that it has become an integral part of the West as much as it is a part of Islam. This complicates the moderate Islamist’s position towards the

110

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

West. Also, the author criticizes something he perceives to be typical of Islamist thought: Already since [the days of ] Hasan al-Bannâ Islamists are saying that the star of Western civilization is fading, that the West is heading for the exit, but what has not been understood is that this civilization has a resilience which makes it possible for her to absorb crises.63 Even if it is so that the West is crumbling, then this need not necessarily mean that this would be a joyful event for Islam: ‘the Islamist discourse wrongly believes that the demise of the West will naturally mean the rise of Islam. As if we are by necessity the inheritors of Western prominence.’64 Another example of a call for reform in Islamist thought is an article in Al-Manâr al-gadîd by Al-Masîrî in which he argues against the use of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.65 Al-Masîrî argues that the protocols are a fraud and should therefore not be referred to in the struggle against Zionism: to resort to forgeries would only harm the Palestinian case. Furthermore, he argues that anti-Zionism should not descend into hatred against Jews in general, for that would simply be racism. This is one side to Al-Manâr al-gadîd. Yet it would not be fair to suggest that articles such as those described above form the typical content of the journal. There are articles that are much less expressive of a reformist and relativist agenda. Al-Masîrî’s article explaining why the protocols are a forgery was countered by an article published in the following issue, in which it was argued that the eminent professor was mistaken, and that the protocols were a genuine historical document after all.66 This is typical for Al-Manâr al-gadîd: rather than expressing a comprehensively reformed Islamist discourse, its liberal streak is found in its openness to differences of opinion (including opinions that are themselves not or at least far less accepting of difference). One of the more prominent intellectuals who has been involved with the journal from the very beginning, is Muhammad ‘Imârah.



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

111

The Works of Muhammad ‘Imârah Over the past years increasing attention has been paid to so-called ‘moderate Islamists’ or ‘Islamic reformers’, sometimes referred to as Islamists of ‘the middle way’ as distinguished from ‘fundamentalists’.67 It is suggested that this trend has emerged from within Islamic fundamentalism, and contrary to their radical progenitor the Islamists of the middle way are considered to be willing and able to compete in a liberal democratic setting. Undeniably, the Muslim world cannot be divided in a black and white manner, with undemocratic fundamentalists on the one hand and democratic secularists on the other. Yet one should be careful with imagining that there is a clear Islamic ‘third way’, similar, for example, to the Christian-democratic parties one finds in Europe. Rightfully or not, Muhammad ‘Imârah is one of those Islamic thinkers commonly categorized as ‘moderate Islamist’ (in Arabic the word used is mu‘tadil, meaning ‘balanced’ rather than ‘moderate’). Through his various weekly columns and regular appearances on television, he is a well-known contributor to public opinion. ‘Imârah is an intellectual with some ‘real’ power as well, as he is a member of the influential Islamic Research Academy,68 one of Al-Azhar’s most senior bodies, which has the power to ban books, movies and so forth. Muhammad ‘Imârah (b. 1931) is a former Marxist intellectual who turned to Islamism in the 1980s, when the Islamization of society was becoming evident.69 Unlike many other ex-Marxists, ‘Imârah had already written on religious matters before his conversion to the Islamist trend. Unsurprisingly, his take on Islam during his secular days is quite different from his present understanding.70 A recurring theme in ‘Imârah’s writings is Western hostility against Islam. It is of interest to note that in ‘Imârah’s view, this hostility is multifaceted. It is not to be explained as a result of the Western economic system or out of strategic interests, or other such considerations belonging to the realm of Realpolitik, as we read in his The West and Islam: Who is Wrong and Who is Right?:

112

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

We have chosen a method [in this book] that shows that this war that the West has declared upon Islam … is in fact a war waged by the political, civilizational and ecclesiastical project of the West.71 The reference to an ‘ecclesiastical West’ in the above quotation may raise eyebrows. Similarly to what we saw with Zaynab ‘Abd al-‘Azîz, ‘Imârah argues that, despite secularization, ‘Western hatred of Islam and the Muslims’ has a component in the Christian church. His favourite reference in this regard is ‘the Colorado Conference’. In October 1978 an American evangelical organization held a conference on Muslim evangelization. The proceedings of this conference were published shortly afterwards.72 In ‘Imârah’s view, these proceedings – which were translated to Arabic – show that Islam is in great danger: At the Colorado Conference …, they spoke … of the need to infiltrate Islam, so as to to Christianize the Muslims through [their own] Islamic culture. [And they spoke of ] reliance on the national and local churches in the Islamic East. And [to rely on] the foreign agents of civil-engineering in our Islamic lands … and [to focus] on the women … and on the Muslim students who go to study in the West … Yes, even by means of creating disasters in Muslim societies, in order to shake the victims out of their balance, thus making it easier to take them out of Islam!!73 As ingenious as evangelical efforts may be, the conference papers did not call for creating disasters in the target area.74 Again, a certain Islamist eagerness to witness Western hostility manifests itself. This becomes all the more apparent when we see that ‘Imârah refers to the Colorado publication as ‘the Protocols of the Priests of Christianization’, in an obvious parallel to the absurd Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We see the same tendency to exaggerate or even invent Western



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

113

hostilities in ‘Imârah’s misquotation of the previously mentioned faux pas by Willy Claes, when ‘Imârah states that he had declared that ‘Islam is the enemy that has taken the place of the evil empire of Communism’.75 In another recent publication on Western perceptions of Islam, ‘Imârah provides a small catalogue of what he calls ‘Western testimonies of the ancient and deeply rooted culture of hostility against Islam … and hatred of Muslims [that is present] in Western heritage’.76 While some of the quotations could be seen as genuinely anti-Islamic (such as certain quotations from e.g. Billy Graham, Pat Robertson), others are entirely dependent on the context which is conveniently left out. ‘Imârah warns that these ‘insights’ into Western images of Islam are far from harmless: The Western discourse on Islam … is not merely theoretical talk, not expressive of merely mental images … it does not stop at thoughts or writings or theories, rather it serves to justify the designs for Western domination over the East … . And now that a Muslim presence in the Western societies has grown … in Europe … and America … and Australia – tomorrow the Muslims in these lands will suffer manifold suffering as a consequence of this discourse, they will be excluded from the Western liberal merits and the benefits of civil rights and freedoms, they will be indicted merely for being Muslims, they will be deprived of even the most basic principles of justice … until the Western discourse and actions are ready to submit the Muslims … to a new round of ‘Inquisitions’.77 In this passage ‘Imârah goes further than merely presenting real or imagined anti-Islamic statements. He conjures a picture of an Armageddon for Europe’s Muslims. The objective is obvious. ‘Imârah seeks to convince his Muslim readers that the West hates them, and that they are in danger. In tandem with casting the West as an Islamhating danger, ‘Imârah stresses the perfect Otherness of the West through binary oppositions. Islam and the West are presented as each

114

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

other’s mirror image, for instance in the way they understand certain concepts. In his concise booklet Fundamentalism Between the West and Islam78 ‘Imârah argues that there is a great difference between ‘fundamentalism’ in a Western context and ‘fundamentalism’ in an Islamic context. He argues that fundamentalism in the West entails an anti-modern approach to religious heritage and a literalist posture as regards holy texts. He states that this is indeed a most negative phenomenon, because it denies progress. He then proceeds by insisting that this is incomparable to anything present in the Muslim world. Fundamentalism in this Western meaning simply does not exist in Islam. Rather, the so-called ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ are revolutionary renewers. In order to convince the reader of this difference in meaning he notes that there are in fact many concepts that mean one thing in the West, and something entirely different – even its exact opposite – in the Islamic context. For example, the [political] ‘left[wing]’ in a Western context is associated with poor people, whereas in the Islamic understanding, the concept of ‘the left’ (al-yasâr) has the meaning of ‘the rich and affluent’. Similarly, in the West the [political] ‘right[-wing]’ is the side of backwardness, regression and conservatism, whereas in the Arab and Islamic meaning it is attached to those who are devout and do good works.79 Thus ‘Imârah here creates a binary opposition between West and Islam, in terms of how the Western and the Muslim mind are supposed to understand even basic concepts such as left and right. The objective here is to convince the reader that this is how we should understand that Christian fundamentalism is bad, but that Islamic fundamentalism is good.80 ‘Imârah takes it as a matter of fact that the relations between Islam and the West have always been at best problematic, and at worst bloody. Much as some Western authors tend to think of Islam as a civilization that since its inception has been an opponent of the West (or Europe, Christianity, or the ‘Judeo-Christian civilization’), ‘Imârah portrays the West as a civilization that has never really changed as regards its position towards the Orient (or Islam, or the Arabs). The West, according to ‘Imârah, has always been imperialist:



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

115

The history of Western imperialism in the East precedes the coming of Islam. The Roman and Byzantine West had created … the false idea that for ten centuries condoned Roman and Byzantine oppression and repression of the East and the Easterners, from Alexander the Great … to Heraclius.81 All this ended, explains ‘Imârah, only when Islam came on the scene and liberated the Orient from Western oppression. Since that moment the West has been at odds with Islam. This historical narrative serves two purposes. First, it provides the reader with an image of the West as imperialist per se. The West is imperialist simply because it is in the nature of Western civilization. Second, and partly as a consequence of the first lesson, there is nothing Muslims can do to alter the bad image that the West has of Islam. The West already exercised its oppression over the Orient before Islam emerged, and this is proof that the West would be aggressive towards the Orient regardless of Islam. This point is also made elsewhere in the book, when ‘Imârah stresses that the West has campaigned against Islam long before 11 September, and that clearly 11 September cannot be seen as the reason for Western attacks upon Islam. ‘Imârah focuses on the idea of a religious conflict, in which the West stands opposed to Islam as a revolutionary religion and as an alternative to Western secular political systems. This understanding of Islam as ‘revolutionary’ is something ‘Imârah propagates consistently, and it will be discussed shortly. For now, it suffices to recognize ‘Imârah’s essentialist, a-historical understanding of the West. As may have become clear from the discussions above, ‘Imârah’s work is deeply apologetic of Islam. In both The West and Islam and Islam and the Other the objective is clarified by the subtitles of the respective books: Who is Right and Who is Wrong? (or, more literally: ‘where is the mistake … and where is the correction?’) and Who Recognizes Whom … and Who Denounces Whom? Both books are written from a defensive position, in which Western defamations of Islam are presented only in order to argue that these accusations are

116

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

baseless and in fact better suited to describe the West and/or Judaism and Christianity. ‘Imârah argues that tolerance is something more Islamic than anything else. If there is any civilization that can claim to have invented tolerance, it would be the Islamic civilization.82 Similarly to what Al-Ghazzâlî hints at in Darkness from the West, ‘Imârah argues that the Muslims are treated unfairly by the Jews and the Christians:83 Muslims recognize the divine nature of the Torah and the Gospel and thus respectfully refer to Jews and Christians as the people of the Book. But is this religious tolerance and respect for the Other reciprocated? No, because the Jews and the Christians persist in their denial of Islam as a heavenly religion and refuse to acknowledge Muhammad as prophet. This reasoning is fallacious for obvious reasons. It is not out of theological kindness that Muslims recognize Moses and Jesus as prophets: it is simply part of Islamic orthodoxy, as to deny the previous prophets is tantamount to heresy. It is comparable to Christians demanding of Jews to recognize Jesus as the Christ, in order to reciprocate the Christian acknowledgement of Moses. There are more such weaknesses in ‘Imârah’s argumentation. Seeking to refute the allegation that Islam is a religion of violence, he makes a comparison between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. First, Judaism and Islam are compared regarding their relation to wars that were supposedly fought in the name of each religion and the lives lost in these wars. Tables are produced showing that while the Muslim raids resulted in only 203 casualties (including Muslim deaths), the Bible (!) shows that in Jewish warfare history, no fewer than 1,635,650 people were killed, and this is counting only the non-Jews.84 Following these tables, the Christians are discussed and their experience with holy war is found to be equally expressive of bloodthirst. And so it is argued that Muslim wars for religion were not only just but also surprisingly humane (as very few people were killed), whereas Jews and Christians have killed countless people in the name of their religions. In short, Islam is the better religion. A few things can be said about the argumentation that leads to this



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

117

assessment. First, it is remarkable that ‘Imârah would use the Bible as a historical document to be used at face value, since both his Muslim background and his academic training should caution him against doing so. Second, ‘Imârah conveniently ignores the fact that the Hebrew Bible purports to relate of a time period of several thousands of years, whereas the timeframe upon which ‘Imârah concentrates his assessment of casualties of wars fought in the name of Islam is confined to the formation period of early Islam, spanning less than a century. Still, the figure of 203 casualties is so low that it begs to be questioned. ‘Imârah admits that one might be surprised at this data, especially because no mention is made of the massacre of the Jewish-Medinese tribe of Qurayzah. ‘Imârah explains that he does not include these deaths because they were the result of a judicial ruling, not of war.85 The above arguments for the suggestion that other religions are inherently inferior to Islam do not stand alone in their disingenuousness. In his efforts to denounce Judaism ‘Imârah has recourse to a translated book by Israel Shahak.86 Shahak (1933–2001) was professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, but he is better known for his human rights activism and related criticism of both Israeli policy and Jewish orthodoxy. This is not the place for an in-depth discussion of Shahak, but the extremity of Shahak’s writings and the fact that ‘Imârah makes use of these writings require a succinct typification. Shahak has consistently argued that the halakhah or Jewish law is racist to the point where the non-Jew is denied his or her humanity and right to live. In his argumentation he makes use of quotations from halakhic texts as well as the works of Maimonides. While Shahak’s work may be controversial, this does not mean it is necessarily wrong to refer to this work when discussing Judaism. However, it would be unwise to rely exclusively on Shahak. Unfortunately, with very few exceptions, ‘Imârah relies on Shahak entirely. Page after page is filled mostly with quotations from Shahak, often merely accompanied by one or more exclamation marks.87 When not referring to Shahak, ‘Imârah refers to the Protocols of the Elders of

118

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Zion, on which he states that ‘even if there are some who doubt the story of [the Protocols], [it is] brimful with regulations of unequal handling, and the historical actions of the Jews in their dealings with others are the concretization of these regulations’. On one more occasion, ‘Imârah has recourse to a source other than Shahak. ‘Imârah states that the racist nature of the Jewish religion should partly be traced back to none other than Maimonides, who reformed Judaism into its current shape. According to ‘Imârah, Maimonides’ Mishneh ha-Torah should be seen as ‘the Diwan of Jewish Racism’.88 His source for denouncing Maimonides might as well have been Shahak, since similar statements abound in Shahak’s thesis. Yet the source cited is ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-Masîrî’s Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism and Zionism. The citation however, is faulty. The reference is correct to the extent that it leads us to an entry concerned with Maimonides, but reading this entry reveals a wholly different Maimonides to the one portrayed by ‘Imârah. Quite the opposite to denouncing Maimonides as an ideologist of racist hatred, Al-Masîrî claims Maimonides as a great thinker of the Arab-Islamic civilization, who refashioned Judaism into a mould that could hardly be distinguished from Islam. According to Al-Masîrî, if Maimonides changed Judaism, it was in the best possible direction.89 Part of ‘Imârah’s message is that ‘real’ Islam involves the establishment of a system that is entirely different from currently dominant secular systems. For that reason, Islam requires of its true believers that they will resist the status quo, replacing the Western hegemony with Islam. ‘Imârah agrees with Sayyid Qutb that the West seeks a docile Islam, which is an Islam that may rule on contraception, or on questions concerning the status of woman, but not more: it may not govern, the West will not allow an Islam that resists imperialism. In other words, the Islam that the West allows is a kind of weakened Islam that the West can exploit at will. ‘Imârah argues that it is only just that the Muslim ummah will rebel against this situation, and that is what is commonly called the Islamic awakening. To give a description of the nature of this new Islamic phenomenon, ‘Imârah turns



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

119

to none other than former US president Richard Nixon, by quoting from Nixon’s book called Seize the Moment.90 [The Islamist fundamentalists] are determined to retrieve the previous Islamic civilization, through a revival of the past. They seek to apply the Islamic sharia, and they refer to Islam as ‘religion and state’. Now despite the fact that they look at the past to take from it guidance for the future, they are no conservatives, but rather revolutionaries.91 It is remarkable that ‘Imârah argues his case for the revolutionary nature of Islamic fundamentalism by quoting Nixon. Nixon is not normally considered an intellectual and certainly not a scholar of Islam. Furthermore, it cannot be said that he has a reputation for being particularly honest and trustworthy. In ‘Imârah’s, writings however, Nixon is referred to as a ‘strategic thinker’ (something that is repeated ad nauseam) and Nixon’s negative take on Islam is even presented as if it was ‘the image of Islam in American – and Western – strategic thought in the 1980s’.92 One should not think this use of Nixon a one-off affair, an oddity of little import in light of the mass of ‘Imârah’s writings: in fact, ‘Imârah rarely argues his point without having recourse to Nixon sooner or later.93 Earlier in this book I have pointed out that Zaghlûl al-Naggâr also has recourse to the same book by Nixon. By selecting Nixon to make their point, ‘Imârah and Al-Naggâr provide a striking example of what I would call the typical ‘Western witness’ or a rhetorical stratagem designed to convince the reader of the truth of a statement by putting it in the mouth of a Western figure of authority. This will be elaborated upon in the next chapter. The liberal trend What is ‘the liberal trend’? It has been noted before that it is difficult to understand one intellectual trend without knowing the trends

120

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

with which it competes, as the various trends react to each other.94 As noted in the Introduction, the description ‘liberal’ is applied to an enormously diverse array of intellectuals in the Arab world. In this study, the ‘liberal discourse’ is more strictly defined and refers to a discourse that is permeated by concerns with liberties, human rights and democracy. It criticizes Islamists and Arab nationalists for their real or presumed tendency to oppress differing opinions and ‘unorthodox’ behaviour. In the liberal Egyptian perception, the light was turned on in the course of the nineteenth century, after which Egypt enjoyed rapid economic developments and legal reforms that would have brought her equal to European nations, if only Arab nationalism had not turned the light off; while Nasser may be admired for many things also by liberals, they tend to criticize him for his dictatorial style of government.95 This very positive assessment of the pre-Nasser period is unique to the liberal trend, as leftist-nationalist intellectuals would rather champion Nasser as the leader who rescued Egypt from capitalist exploitation and European imperialism, while the Islamist discourse tends to qualify the period leading up to the revolution as a period of Westernization and loss of identity. A delicate new development in Arab intellectual thought is the trend that is referred to as ‘the new liberals’. Consisting of a group of secularist modernist intellectuals, this trend calls for cultural revolution, specifically in the field of education and religion. The central publication of this phenomenon is Shâkir al-Nâbulsî’s New Liberals: An Intellectual Controversy.96 Although this is not in the main an Egyptian publication (Al-Nâbulsî is Syrian), it is nevertheless of relevance to the Egyptian intellectual scene, because of the controversy it sparked all over the Arab world. New Liberals is organized in such a way as to demonstrate the liberal principle of pluralism: the introduction by Al-Nâbulsî is followed by ten chapters supportive of the new Arab liberalism, after which a dozen chapters are appended in which the liberal trend is attacked. This design is daring, because it not only shows the differences of opinion between the liberals, it also hands to the reader various



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

121

arguments against the liberal discourse. The contributions supportive of the liberal trend are highly diverse: while Al-Nâbulsî adopts an energetic yet composed style, Ahmad al-Baghdâdî’s tone is one of fury and contempt: The liberals are the only ones in the Arab world who have adopted democracy not merely as a system of government, but as a whole lifestyle. They are the only ones to defend human rights and freedom of thought. They respect their others in their humanity without religious discrimination, and they seek to establish … rights for women. …   They do not support Osama bin Laden, they do not join groups that kill and terrorize others in the name of religion, they do not declare anyone an infidel, and they do not try to kill those who choose a different religion, but rather leave the matter to God most high. The liberals – this is to all those of you who are ignorant of this – are the closer to your religion!   Is there democracy and freedom and equality in any state other than in the liberal states? And do the Muslims when they face oppression in their Muslim countries not flee to America and Britain and France, rather than to the Muslim lands in which the call to prayer sounds five-fold day and night? Or did you manage to forget about all this as well?97 While Al-Baghdâdî’s contribution may be atypical in his scathing attack mode, he does touch on a number of issues that are common to the liberal trend. As noted above, human rights and democracy are held to be the sine qua non for liberalism. More pregnant in the intellectual debate is the open liberal reference to Western countries as a model to be inspired by. Unsurprisingly, this leaves the liberals vulnerable to the charge that they are lackeys of the (crusading and/ or imperialist) West. Al-Nâbulsî notes that the liberals are, however, not blind to Western wrongs, as the West is perceived simultaneously as exploitative and imposing on the one hand, and as morally

122

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

commendable in its behaviour and thought on the other.98 This does not convince his detractors, as the anti-liberal contributions freely associate the liberal trend with everything and anything that can be called foreign. The liberals are said to be following the AmericanZionist design, serving Western interests, working for Satan in the philosophy of globalization, and lastly, in a Libyan contribution, Arab liberalism is held to be a Jewish creation. The liberal trend faces in Egypt a peculiar challenge. On the one hand it occupies a marginal position if compared to the dominance of Islamist and nationalist discourse. On the other hand it is also said to be the dominant trend in Egypt and the wider Arab world.99 This impossible combination is the result of a lack of conceptual clarity about the meaning of liberalism. This lack of clarity must partly be blamed on the intellectual climate: regardless of how emphatically liberals stress their commitment to human rights and democracy, their detractors can simply ignore this and criticize the liberals for being undemocratic.100 It seems at times that the intellectual climate is devoid of genuine debate: liberals only read liberals, Islamists only read Islamists, nationalists only read nationalists, and so on. More confusingly, the current regime in Egypt is considered to be ‘liberal’, but this is in the sense of economic liberalism. The weak position of liberal thinkers becomes evident when we read an article by Kamâl Ghibryâl, who was one of the two Egyptian liberal contributors to AlNâbulsî’s volume. In a recent edition of the liberal weekly Al-Qâhirah Ghibryâl writes that the concept of democracy is ill-understood in Egyptian society and that Egypt is not ready for it. He argues for an oligarchy as a stepping stone towards a future democracy.101 The ease with which Ghibryâl breaks with the central binding demand of the liberal trend suggests an inherent weakness of the liberalist persuasion in Egypt.102 A more consistent Egyptian liberal is Al-Sayyid Yassîn. In his recent Democracy and the Dialogue of Cultures103 Yassîn presents a cosmopolitan worldview in which there is a global interdependency of cultures and economies. Interestingly, he rejects the plural



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

123

of ‘civilization’, as in his view there is only one civilization in which – ideally – all the cultures of the world share and to which they all contribute: ‘We are all, in East and West, living in the context of one and the same civilization, that is the scientific, technological and communications-civilization, and we happen to be spread about between various cultures.’104 By denying the plurality of civilizations and focusing instead on the level of cultures, Yassîn suggests a much less confrontational meeting ground for differing worldviews. Also, in his rejection of all essentialism, Yassîn challenges the rivalling contentions according to which the West and Islam or the Arab world are fundamentally and necessarily at odds. While this certainly does not mean that Yassîn is reticent in his criticism of Western relations vis-à-vis Islam, he also refers to those elements in the West which Arab intellectuals could ally themselves with. Against the rise in xenophobia and specifically Islamophobia in Europe, Yassîn suggests that Arabs should assist those in the West who are struggling against this ‘new racism’. Lastly, as a final example of how Yassîn’s liberal perspective challenges the paradigm that says that the West has adopted Islam as its new enemy after 1989, we are drawn to Yassîn’s radically different perception: he states that following the demise of communism the new enemy is poverty. In our globalizing world, borders are opened or become porous and poor people start to come in droves to the rich (Western) parts of the world. According to Yassîn it is this development that is the real concern of the West, rather than the presumed Western preoccupation with an Islamic menace.105 The works of Ridâ Hilâl The story of Ridâ Hilâl, an author illustrative of the liberal trend in Egypt, is troubling and peculiar. On 11 August 2003 Hilâl was due to meet his publisher to hand over the final version of the manuscript of his forthcoming book. The day before the meeting Hilâl called his publisher to let him know that he had added two

124

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

more chapters to the book, and they set a time for their meeting the day after. Hilâl did not show, however. He has not been seen since. The accomplished journalist and author has officially been missing since that day. Theories and speculations abound as to what might have happened and who might be behind Hilâl’s disappearance, but evidence is lacking in all such attempts at explaining the mystery. Fortunately, Hilâl can still be read. Because the final version of the manuscript (including the two additional chapters) was never recovered, the publisher had to settle for the draft already in his possession. This was published as Americanization and Islamization: The Crisis of Today’s Arabs.106 The book is dedicated ‘to those who are moved by the desire to couple Islam with democracy, rather than to be torn apart between Salafi Islamization and consumerist Americanization’. This dedication captures the essence of Hilâl’s thesis, which consists not only of criticizing rigid and forbidding aspects of the Islamist trend but also entails a critique of the materialist direction society has taken under the apparent influence of American consumerist culture. The manner in which Hilâl specifically targets the consumerist or outwardly materialist manifestations of Americanization is reminiscent of Muwaylihî’s criticism of the blind imitation of the West by the late nineteenth-century Egyptian elite, who mindlessly adopted only ‘the veneer of Western civilization readily available to them without any bother or effort’.107 Interestingly, Hilâl contrasts the current process of Americanization with the pre-Second World War process of Europeanization. Whereas today the Arab world is taking but the froth of America, leaving aside its true riches, i.e. its values, Hilâl argues that the previous age of Europeanization was much more constructive: ‘In the period of Europeanization … , Egyptians took from the Europeans the rule of law, constitutionalism, parliament, journalism, theatre and cinema’.108 The result was that Egypt could vie with the most advanced of the world’s nations, and Cairo could face up to Paris or London. This so-called Renaissance-period, Hilâl argues, was eventually frustrated by both British imperialism, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

125

As noted above, this nostalgia for pre-revolutionary Egypt, when Cairo was indeed known as ‘Paris along the Nile’, is common to many liberals in Egypt. Though here the British and the Islamists are blamed for bringing the ‘renaissance’ to an end, in an earlier publication Hilâl implicated Nasser’s Pan-Arabism as a debilitating factor. Hilâl fondly reminds the reader of Taha Hussayn and recalls Hussayn’s thesis of how Pharaonic Egypt fostered Greek civilization and consequently merged with the Mediterranean culture of Rome, and how it played a prominent role in the formation of Christianity. Hilâl supports this identification of Egypt and laments its loss. According to Hilâl, the heritage that Egypt shared with the West was denied in the Pan-Arabist discourse. According to Arab nationalist logic the Pharaonic and the Coptic heritage of Egypt would only serve the divisive elements that seek to rupture Arab and Egyptian unity. Consequently, Hilâl argues, Egypt lost these important parts of her heritage, and the need continues to be felt that Egypt should reconnect to its heritage in order to reconcile with herself and the West.109 The impression one gets when reading Americanization is that Europe or the West in general contain certain highly commendable qualities with regard to governance and personal freedoms, but these qualities are betrayed by Europeans or Westerners in the way they conduct their foreign policy towards the Arab and Muslim world. Hilâl writes that for a solution to ‘the Middle Eastern crisis’ it is merely necessary ‘that America should honour the American values, most prominently the value of democracy’.110 This is reminiscent of the way in which Arab nationalists from before the Second World War attacked European colonialism without rejecting the project of cultural and political Europeanization. As Hourani wrote of this disposition: while the nationalists condemned British or French policy, the conclusion they drew was not that England or France were intrinsically bad but that they were being untrue to themselves. The appeal was to the ‘true’ England and France, and the

126

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

expectation was that sooner or later they would reassert themselves and understand that their interests were in harmony with those of the Arabs. … For the most part too, it was taken for granted that once independent the Arab states should adopt the characteristic institutions of European liberal society.111 In his earlier books also, Hilâl has elaborated on how Western societies and American society in particular have various aspects that conflict with each other. His America: Her Dream and Her Politics112 consists of rewritten notes he made during the time he spent in the United States as a correspondent. Again the dedication is telling, as it refers to those who embodied the American dream (presidents Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson and senator Fulbright) and those who stood opposed to it (presidents Johnson, Nixon and Bush Sr.). Again, Hilâl differentiates between ideal and reality, and he is very outspoken in both his affection for the ideal and his disgust with reality: ‘These are the notes of a writer who senses the reality that America is transforming from a promised land into a crusading state, with the ‘Americanization of the world’ as its mission.’113 In addition, Hilâl notes that there continues to be a stark difference between the people and the government. The American citizen is democratic, believes in individual rights and duties, is generous to those in need and tends toward a simple, honest and uncomplicated life-style (witness the American preference for jeans and T-shirts instead of suits, and fast food instead of elaborate meals). It is the American government however, that commits genocide on the Indians, drops nuclear bombs on Japan and goes to war in the Philippines.114 And yet Hilâl does not dismiss American policies per se. As mentioned above, there were presidents whom Hilâl admired. In Americanization, Hilâl’s last book before his disappearance, he heaps praise on former president Clinton as well, for being a liberal multilateralist rather than a neo-conservative unilateralist. Interestingly, Hilâl specifically mentions the US interventions in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo as praiseworthy.115



Post-Cold War Occidentalism in Egypt

127

A few conclusions can already be drawn on the basis of the present chapter. The ways in which the West is imagined and presented are clearly quite diverse. In particular, when the various discourses are each taken into account it becomes clear that Egyptian public debate cannot be described as simply ‘anti-Western’ or ‘pro-Western’. Even within a single discourse there may well be significant differences in the way the West is imagined, as is clear from the various positions taken by intellectuals of the (‘moderate’) Islamist persuasion. It also transpires that often the West is perceived in a rather complex manner, in which the West is both reproached and admired, and this twofold appreciation does not always fall neatly into the two categories of technology, on the one hand, and values, on the other. A more comprehensive understanding is reached in the next chapter, which offers further analysis of the Occidentalisms.

4 Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms

Historical parallels True to the nature of stereotypes, several of the Occidentalisms mentioned in Chapter 2 proved resilient. The suggestion that the West is a weakened entity that is about to disintegrate is still a recurring topos in both leftist-nationalist and Islamist discourse. Galâl Amîn has recourse to this notion of the Weak West and suggests a causal relationship between the expected demise of the West and the desired Arab and Islamic ascendancy. Such a thought is also common enough in the Islamist discourse for one author to criticize it in an article in Al-Manâr al-gadîd, warning that the Muslims are ‘not by necessity the inheritors of Western prominence’. Also there is a certain continuum in the representation of the West as source of evil, a Malign West that poses as a formidable enemy. Rather similarly to early Islamist appreciations of the West as a cultural challenge and incompatible with Islam, we find contemporary Islamist discourse expressing the same message of Islam and the West as each other’s opposite. Muhammad ‘Imârah (but also Galâl Amîn) has been quite adamant that the West is inherently exploitative, repressive and so on. As I have already argued elsewhere,1 this essentialist approach is in many ways reminiscent of the way in which Western authors such

130

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

as Samuel Huntington or Bernard Lewis have argued that WesternIslamic animosity is an inescapable result of fundamental differences. More broadly, it mirrors the argument that says that policy is not the ‘real’ issue in anti-Westernism.2 Present as well are references to what I have called the ‘True West’ or the perception that behind the apparent manifestation of lamentable Western policies there is an ideal, immaterial West to be inspired by. Ridâ Hilâl’s invocation of the true American values as the sole missing ingredient for Middle Eastern peace is a clear manifestation of this dualistic appreciation of the West. Less prominent in the corpus are the Benign West and the Appropriated West. The topos of Islam as the origin of Western civilization and its concomitant ‘halalization’ of the West seems to have lost its appeal. Open enthusiasm for the West as generally a force for good in this world and an example to emulate is hard to come by. Perhaps the liberal pundit Ahmad al-Baghdâdî could be said to adopt this position but even this is contentious. One’s best chance of witnessing positive appreciations is to focus on discussions of the European Union rather than the more amorphous term al-gharb. For as far as Egyptian authors express admiration for anything related to the Western political realm, it is often for the continuing peaceful integration of the European Union. The overall impression is that, in the course of the last decade of the twentieth century, images of the West have become increasingly critical and increasingly cultural. By this latter development, or the culturalization of Occidentalism, I mean to say that there is a clear tendency to think of the West not primarily as a region with a certain political and economic cohesion and likeness but rather as a different civilization or culture. Concomitantly, to the extent that the West is perceived as a threat or a challenge this threat is understood in cultural terms, rather than in terms of politics and economy. This culturalization of Occidentalism is intimately linked to the rise of the Islamist discourse. As has been mentioned in the Introduction, most of the contemporary publications concerning the West are written from an Islamist point of view. Liberals are more likely to limit



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 131

themselves to discussing specific policies of America or the European Union rather than an amorphic West. Also, leftist intellectuals tend not to refer to the West as much as to globalization. This means that the Islamist trend is the dominant trend in shaping the debates on identity, culture and civilization which have emerged since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, the Islamists are ideally placed for this debate, since they have always been thinking of the West in terms of culture rather than in terms of an economic system: even during the Cold War Islamists continued to think of Western civilization in terms of its presumed materialism, thus considering the so-called capitalist West and communist East to be two sides of the same, Western coin. Often, to think of the West as materialist is to think of the East as spiritualist. We have seen this already with Tahtâwî, Taha Hussayn and Sayyid Qutb, and in the post-Cold War corpus of texts we continue to find ample reference to it, often in relation to a perceived Western moral and/or spiritual crisis. Similarly to Sayyid Qutb’s assessment that ‘the Westerners themselves know that something in their civilization is missing’, we find a diagnosis of the West’s ailment phrased in an issue of Al-Manâr al-gadîd as ‘the Westerners are suffering from a spiritual hunger’.3 This appears to function as a way to place oneself in a superior position in relation to the West. Although the West may be affluent, blessed with democratic and efficient governance and infinitely more advanced in terms of technology and military might, it suffers from a deep and fatal flaw. Conveniently, an (Egyptian) Self is defined as blessed with a natural morality and deep spirituality, and so outshines the Western Other in this field. Thus the West may be militarily strong, and able to produce amazing products, but all this is merely the veneer of a corrupt civilization. However, because this veneer is so forcefully present, it produces a fear of being engulfed by the Other. It is at this point that the concept of authenticity becomes central. In the face of a rapidly Westernizing society, a space is created that will be immune to the encroachment of Westernization, a space that can counter the impression of one’s inadequacy. The ensuing image of the Western

132

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

immoral other was specifically created to contrast with the morally superior ‘authentic’ Arab, Egyptian, Muslim self. This image is by no means peculiar to the Arab world. Much of the Arab critique of the presumed immoral West can also be found in the works of other authors active in other times and places. In Russia, one could think of the debates between the ‘Westerners’ who promoted closer affiliation with European circles, and the ‘Slavophiles’ who argued in opposition against this, insisting that there is a special ‘Russian soul’ that keeps the Russians apart from and indeed superior to other nations not so much in a practical but rather in a metaphysical way that was highly interconnected with the Russian Orthodox religion.4 In Spain, in the mid-twentieth century, Lopez Ibor analysed the Spanish inclination to combine a material inferiority complex with an immaterial superiority complex: confronted with the unsettling truth that ‘Europe’ (at that time, Spain’s ‘Other’!) is richer and technologically more advanced, people would call to mind certain other qualities that are supposed to make up for the conspicuous difference. Ibor argues that this produced a Spanish superiority complex, one that is focused on immaterial issues, or the Spanish ‘way of life’.5 Ideally, both material and spiritual wealth is achieved and held on to. In the Arab world this ideal is often seen to have been realized by Japan. We have seen Japan referred to in this manner by Rashîd Ridâ among others, and images of Japan are similarly used in contemporary discourses. It is mostly – but not exclusively – in a liberal discourse that one finds references to Japan as the example of modernization on one’s own ‘authentic’ terms. Al-Sayyid Yassîn mentions that Western analysts speak of ‘Asian values’ as being instrumental in the success achieved by the Asian tigers such as Japan and Malaysia, even though these Asian values are essentially different from Western values. He then painfully remarks that, so far, the stressing of Islamic values has not led to similar successes.6 Equally obvious is the title of an article by Khalîl al-‘Inânî in the liberal weekly Al-Qahirah: ‘Why did liberalism fail with us … while it succeeded in Japan and India and Malaysia?’7 Even in unexpected places and moments, a reference



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 133

to Japan as an example for Egypt and the Arabs to follow can pop up, for example, in the case of an article on the tragedy of ‘Egypt’s youngest mother’. The Egyptian Gazette of 31 July 2007 reported the case of a 9-year-old girl who had given birth to a child conceived as a consequence of a rape. A spokeswoman for the organization for family values stated that this tragedy is the result of the Westernization of Egyptian society. The people of Egypt should return to their values so that these tragic Western phenomena will be stopped. Then Japan is mentioned as an example. The reader is informed that after the destruction of the Second World War, Japanese society regained itself through collective efforts, and that Egypt should do likewise.8 Between pundit and people Reading the appreciations of the West in the corpus, one wonders what this means for the ‘average Egyptian’. To what extent do the opinions of Galâl Amîn, Muhammad ‘Imârah or Ridâ Hilâl reflect the way other people think? It would be unwise to assume that we can reduce popular opinion to the opinions of public intellectuals. Many people do not engage with discussions of such political weight, for a variety of reasons. Given the lack of press freedoms there is no good reason to assume that the public discourse would be a reflection of public opinion even if people did engage in it. When we want to know what people in Egypt or the wider Arab world generally think of ‘the West’, we would have to have recourse to opinion polls. Surprisingly, for all the talk about ‘the Arab street’ and what is supposed to be discussed there, it rarely happens that reference is made to empirical data that could enlighten us on this issue. This should not deceive us into thinking that such data does not exist. In fact, there is a considerable and growing amount of quantitative research available that can inform us as to worldwide attitudes towards Western countries, policies and social values. One of the bigger names in the survey industry to have engaged with this kind of research in the Muslim world is US-based Gallup, whose

134

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

reports have been picked up by the media every now and then,9 and which are most easily accessed through Esposito and Mogahed’s Who Speaks for Islam?10 Other similar studies are the various polls conducted by Zogby International (also a US-based private research institute).11 The polls typically involve up to a thousand respondents per country surveyed, often a sample taken from the urban population or from households with telephone connection. Apart from the universal problem of non-response, polling results from a country such as Egypt suffer from the additional problem of increased social desirability bias as a consequence of the political culture of repression and censorship. However, to a large extent this bias can be neutralized by focusing on questions unlikely to solicit a disingenuous answer. For example, the affirmation by Egyptian respondents that ‘the government works for the well-being of all the people’ is likely to be influenced by fear of possible consequences in case of a different response. Questions concerning one’s appreciation of American movies, Western policy in the Middle East, European treatment of Muslim minorities and so on are all questions harder to associate with external pressure. Keeping this in mind, both Gallup and Zogby have found that while there is severe criticism of Western (specifically American) foreign policies in the Muslim world, in particular in the Middle East, this does not mean that also American or Western culture is rejected out of hand. This is corroborated and further elaborated upon by research done by the Pew Research Center, though in this case many questions were not allowed to be asked in Egypt.12 Finally, reference must be made to the World Values Surveys, a comparative analysis of survey data concerning political, social and cultural values. In short, the data in this research suggests that Western practices of democracy and human rights are admired in the Muslim world (in short, there is no clash of political values between Muslim and Western publics), but also reveal that there is a growing gap between publics holding traditional values concerning sex (heterosexual, and only in marriage) and gender relations (the male as head of the household)



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 135

and publics who profess equality between the sexes and are accepting of homosexuality. In this latter distinction, Muslim publics are overwhelmingly characterized as traditional, where Western and in particular Western European publics are largely inclined to hold liberal values. The researchers warn, however, that even this dividing line cannot be drawn between the West and Islam, because the traditional values are almost equally strong outside the Muslim world in sub-Saharan Africa.13 What is evident as well from the surveys is that images can vary enormously over relatively short time spans, often reacting to very specific conflicts or actions. According to a governmental report submitted to the US House of Representatives on new directions for public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim world, ‘Surveys indicate that much of the resentment toward America stems from real conflicts and displeasure with policies, including those involving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Iraq.’14 This may sound like a truism to some but, as will be discussed shortly, there have been consistent voices arguing for discursive determinism to the extent that ‘reality’ (i.e. foreign policies by Western governments) does not really influence the perception and image of ‘the West’. The aforementioned report is clear in asserting that such an assumption is mistaken and candid in admitting that American policy has been unhelpful: ‘We have failed to listen and failed to persuade. We have not taken the time to understand our audience, and we have not bothered to help them understand us. We cannot afford such shortcomings.’15 Gender Though the topic of gender is touched upon here and there in this study, it is not a prominent feature. This may come as a surprise, especially to readers familiar with studies analysing the role of the West in modern Arab fictional literature. Particularly well-known is the representation of the West by a woman in travel literature. Countless are the novels and short stories in which a young Arab

136

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

protagonist goes off to study in Europe or the United States, where he is swept off his feet by an enchanting woman. Almost without exception, the woman symbolizes (a part of ) Western civilization. She is beautiful and alluring, but in a manner to which the hero is not accustomed. By displaying her beauty openly, she confuses the hero: has he fallen for a disrespectful woman? In other instances there may be a misunderstanding as to the nature of their relationship: where the young Arab is experiencing true love, the Western lady is merely having an interestingly exotic friend, or a temporary toy-boy. At best she actually falls in love with the Arab student, but when this does occur there is usually the caveat that she sees in him not the aspiring young gentleman but rather a Noble Savage who will save her from a bourgeois life. Not the basis of a healthy relationship. Apart from embodying the theme of differing gender relations between (Arab) tradition and (Western) modernity, such literatures also play with identities and alterities. It is not difficult to see how the woman can function as a stand-in for the West, in all its apparent beauty and inner yearning, kind appearance and ultimate treason. While gender relations are an obvious topos in modern Arabic fiction, it plays a substantially less important role in the non-fictional literature under study in this book. During my defence of the thesis that led to this book I was asked to explain why this is so. In this discussion it was brought to my attention how ‘Abd al-Rahmân alGabartî in fact discusses gender relations among the French: Their women do not cover themselves and have no modesty; they do not care whether they uncover their private parts. Whenever a Frenchman has to perform an act of nature he does so wherever he happens to be, even in full view of people …. They have intercourse with any woman who pleases them and vice versa. Sometimes one of their women goes into a barber’s shop, and invites him to shave her pubic hair.16



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 137

Had it been the case that consequent authors under review here have equally given attention to differing gender relations, I would have made sure to discuss gender relations extensively in this study. However, with the exception of Al-Tahtâwî (whose discussion of gender is duly noted in this study), this is not the case. I would even go further and say that also Al-Gabartî does not really discuss gender relations. His story about the Frenchwoman going to a barber to have her pudenda shaved is a cliché: already the twelfth-century Syrian chronicler ‘Usâmah ibn Munqidh relates this anecdote, in which it is the Frankish crusaders and their women who are thus ridiculed.17 While Gabartî’s description of contemporary events such as the French occupation of Egypt mostly impresses for being very precise, to the point and accurate, this barber tale seems a slip-up. Gabartî’s insertion of this old tale does not indicate his interest in gender relations but rather his disinterest. If the topic really captivated him to some extent, we would expect him to rely on his own experiences of French conduct, or otherwise to employ his critical faculties, as he does when describing most other aspects of the French occupation. Explaining why gender is not more forcefully present as a theme in non-fictional Occidentalist literature, is not easy. I can think of no credible explanation. Whatever the reasons for it, it is clear that also here there is a striking difference between fiction and non-fiction. A purpose for every image I noted in Chapter 2 that images of the West, in particular the five Occidentalisms, serve a purpose beyond what is immediately apparent. They are alterities, used as building blocks in the establishment and observance of ideologies. At this point I would like to recall attention to Xiaomei Chen’s use of the concept Occidentalism as a ‘politically and culturally motivated image of the cultural Other’.18 By bringing together the two varying representations of the West

138

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

in – on the one hand – classical Maoist state rhetoric and – on the other – a reformist television series, the discursive purpose of the representations becomes apparent. This shows us how images of the West played a role in the wider political and cultural struggle in China in the period after Mao’s rule. While the state media furnished the public with an image of Western culture characterized by exploitation, cruelty and general misery, independent media actors started to idealize life in the West.19 Chen makes it clear that the most important objective of both parties is not to inform people about the West but rather to illustrate and bolster a political position. In other words, the images serve a certain purpose, and it is this purpose that drives the choice and coloration of the image. When looking at Egyptian images of the West it becomes clear that the differences between liberal and Islamist appreciations of the West can similarly be explained by ideological requirements and antagonism between liberal and Islamist worldviews. Islamist authors and outlets overwhelmingly convey the image of the West as essentially aggressive and naturally anti-Islamic. It is not difficult to see how this mirage of a Western menace to Islam is useful to try and scare a Muslim population into a loyal, unquestioning Islamic unity. Additionally, I have found that the Islamist discourse spends a lot of effort rejecting not the principles of democracy and human rights, but rather the thought that these principles are practised by the West. From a liberal point of view, the West is often considered a necessary ally for Egypt if Egyptian society is to advance economically and politically in a liberal direction of human rights and democracy. Liberals consequently seek to convey the message that contrary to what the Islamists suggest, Western idealism about democracy and human rights is not just ‘hot air’: democracy is a genuinely functioning political system in Western countries and human rights are indeed respected in the West. Since liberals cannot at the same time be blind to the widely publicized human suffering that is the result of Western foreign policies (tacit or open support for Israeli oppression of Palestinians; ‘collateral damage’ in the wars against the Taliban and



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 139

Iraq; torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo), they have to refer to a West that is not immediately apparent, an ideal West that can only be seen if one pierces through the graphic images of colonial exploitation, imperialist aggression and so on. That is how the liberal discourse refers to an ideal West. The steering function of discourse noted above can help explain how certain remarkable topoi come into being. One such topos is the recurring reference to – among others – Bosnia, Kashmir and even Kosovo as places of conflict where Muslims have been attacked by the West. It has been noted briefly in the previous chapter that it is common to see references to, for example, Bosnia, as a conflict in which Muslims were attacked by the West. At best, the reference is intended to convey the message that when Muslims are attacked, so to speak ‘under Western noses’, the West is reticent to act. But more often the war in former Yugoslavia is referred to as if it was an instance of Western aggression against Islam, as if the Serbians were supported by the West, as if the NATO forces were allied with the Serbian aggressor. While it may be understandable that the American or Anglo-American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are perceived by many as ‘Western’ attacks upon ‘Islam’, it is much harder to see how anyone can view the Yugoslavian conflicts (or Kashmiri violence, or the position of Muslims in China) as instances of Western aggression against Muslims. It is remarkable that this moment where Western and Muslim sympathies in fact overlapped appears not to have been recorded as such in a significant part of the Egyptian media. Obviously, this perception of reality can only be understood in light of the wider ideology that dictates that the West hates Islam, Islam is in danger, Muslims are suffering. The frequency of such manipulations of reality and the crude manner in which they are executed suggest that authors engaged in such manipulations are not very fearful of having their manipulation exposed. Indeed, the conviction that the West is essentially anti-Islamic may easily lead to unawareness of certain misrepresentations or even flat-out errors. But then there are authors who are more than willing to point to

140

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

such mistakes in Islamist or nationalist discourse. The previously mentioned Kuwaiti liberal Ahmad al-Baghdâdî recently used the Kosovar declaration of independence in February 2008 to drive home his message. Al-Baghdâdî notes that after Kuwait and Iraq, Kosovo is now the third Muslim country that has been liberated with the help of the Americans. Even in the face of Russo-Serbian threats, Western countries quickly recognized independent, Muslim Kosovo. Noting that Kosovo does not have oil, Al-Baghdâdî challenges Islamists and nationalists to explain the Western countries’ behaviour in this matter: given that Western involvement in Kuwait and Iraq has been explained with reference to these countries’ oil reserves, how do these critics explain the fact that the West is also assisting poor and oilless Kosovo?20 Similarly, Ridâ Hilâl has rejected suggestions that the Bosnian war was one in which Westerners attacked Islam.21 Another example of ideology influencing perception can be found in the way in which concern for Muslims in Western countries manifests itself. Media in the Arab and wider Islamic world tend to display a great interest in the topic of Muslim minorities in the West. I have noted above that an Islamist author such as Muhammad ‘Imârah displays an eagerness to discover Western hostility against Muslim minorities, in order to confirm his conviction that Islam and the West must inevitably clash. While ‘Imârah refers to discrimination against European Muslim minorities, it is striking how often there is reference to discrimination against Muslims in America. It appears that Islamists especially are reluctant to see or admit that the position of Muslims in the West is more troublesome in Europe than it is in the US. I suggest that this blind spot is the result of the belief in a clash of civilizations. The belief that there is a clash between ‘the West’ and ‘Islam’ logically leads its proponents to think that Western racism against Muslims must be particularly strong in the epicentre of Western civilization, i.e. America. The idea that the topic of racism against Muslims in the West has a discursive or ideological function connected to the belief in a West–Islam clash is strengthened when



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 141

we see that those who draw attention to the fact that it is in Europe (rather than America) where racism against Muslims is particularly problematic tend to be those people who reject the idea of a civilizational clash. For instance, one could think of Al-Sayyid Yassîn, who rejects the clash-theory, and befittingly focuses on European ‘new racism’.22 The limits of discursive determinism If images of the West differ from one another and if it has been established that images tend to serve an ideological purpose, then it must be that these images are determined by the various ideological discourses. Consequently it might seem that the actual behaviour of Western actors can do little to influence the image of the West. Or, to paraphrase Buruma and Margalit, ‘whatever the West does or does not do is often beside the point’. This is a potentially dangerous fallacy. As in Chapter 2, where the development of Occidentalism was shown to be clearly related to colonial, military and political ‘realities on the ground’, we find that more recent history equally shows the significant role played by Western countries’ policies in the formation of perceptions of the West. For all the diversity in thinking of the West in Egypt, some aspects come back again and again, regardless of the spectators’ ideological background. Western countries’ policies regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are universally regarded as a consistent injustice. If we were to recall the quotation from Ridâ Hilâl (‘all that is needed for the crisis to be resolved is that America applies its principle of democracy’), we discern not only a longing for democracy (and an expression of the view that the West is ideally democratic) but also a lamentation against a Western policy that withholds this democracy from Arabs. This should caution anyone against the thought that Western policies are immaterial in the emergence of opposition against the West, or that anti-Western actors live in some sort of impermeable bubble of irrational hatred, where the real world

142

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

remains unnoticed. To fail to see this would be to take up a position alongside someone like Muhammad ‘Imârah, who similarly insists that Western ‘hatred against Islam’ has nothing to do with events such as the attacks of 11 September 2001, and to suggest, in effect, that ‘the hatred is intrinsic, there is nothing we can do, we are victims of a hopelessly aggressive enemy’. Differentiating the West Analysis of the corpus has shown that it is relatively rare for the West to be presented as a genuinely monolithic block. Liberal authors tend to avoid referring to ‘the West’ altogether, referring instead to Washington, or the American administration, or Brussels, or the EU and so forth. As was intimated in the discussion of the work of Galâl Amîn, the more vaguely a construction of the West is employed, the

‘Europe launches the biggest plane in the world’: cartoon published in Al-Hayâh (23 January 2005). The occasion of the presentation of the giant A380 by European airplane manufacturer Airbus is here framed within the context of a power struggle between the EU and the US. The EU is presented as an egg out of which suddenly emerges the majestic A380. The record-breaking civilian aircraft carrier instantly hovers over a startled Uncle Sam, sitting in a fighter plane. The spectator is thus presented with the image of a strong, youthful (witness the egg) and peaceful (civilian) Europe, as a counterweight against the contrasting image of an overpowered, aggressive (fighter plane) America.



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 143

more amenable it is to being blamed for a host of wrongs, varying from Bosnian suffering to the fate of the Uyghur’s in China. And yet it is not quite so common for the West to be presented as if it is one great monolith. Even the works of Muhammad ‘Imârah are interspersed with obligatory statements exculpating the Western peoples from the misdeeds of their political, economic and religious elites, or one comes across the gratuitous admission that ‘not all of them are the same’. While this does not change the overall impression he gives of the West as a life-threatening mass of anti-Islamitism it is still of importance to note that ‘Imârah apparently feels the need to allow for these admissions. More than seems the case with Western understandings of ‘the Orient’ or Islam, Egyptian – and, more generally, Arab – appreciations of the Western world display a more thorough understanding of the differences between one country and the next, between one government and the next, and so on. This should not surprise anyone who realizes that there are more Arab correspondents working in Europe than vice versa, which is, of course, also a reflexion of the imbalance in power relations. One clear distinction that is made is between America and Europe. In the Arab and wider Islamic world the United States of America first emerged prominently in intellectual discussions at the end of the First World War. America had been considered as little more than a cultural extension of Europe ever since the late nineteenth century, but the formulation by President Wilson of the Fourteen Points made for lively debates in Arab intellectual circles, as one of the points, the right to self-determination, was exactly what Arab nationalists were calling for. And so America entered the Arab imagination with positive connotations. Today, roles appear to have been reversed, as America plays the role of hegemon in the Arab world and Europe is considered the Arabs’ potential ally. The European unification process is carefully followed in the Arab world for two reasons. First, the European unification is seen as an example for the Arabs. For almost an entire century Arab unity has remained a slogan more than a reality, while Europe managed to unite

144

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

within a time-span of little more than half a century. Second, as the EU grows stronger, the hope of many in the Arab world is that the EU will break the American hold over the region, force an equitable solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and serve as an economic centre with which the Arab world can trade profitably. These two points make for an image of Europe as one of admiration and hope for the future. This also means, however, that Europe is very often seen not in its own right, but rather within the framework of a power struggle with America. In May 2005 Egypt’s main (semi-governmental) newspaper AlAhrâm started its ‘Europe file’, a new monthly recurring feature of the newspaper. Ibrâhîm Nâfi‘, the Nestor of Egyptian journalism, promoted the new feature in the following terms: [we will focus on Europe], the continent that preceded us in the realization of unification between its countries, and has become one of the major global centres …. With its unification it has forced itself [on to the world] as a central power that cannot be ignored, and that is able to stand up against the US …. In the future, the relations between us and Europe will only increase, economically, politically, culturally and socially …. Europe is sometimes closest to our positions.23 The comparison of EU integration with Arab objectives of unification will be dealt with further below, but here I would like to stress Nâfi‘’s reference to the US and the European position towards it, combined with the suggestion that when faced with a choice between the US and Europe, Europe is considered preferable to Egypt and the Arab world. The same sentiment, applied specifically to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is at work in an article published the day after Al-Ahrâm published its first Europe file. Randah Taqî al-Dîn in Al-Hayâh asks, ‘Where is the voice of Europe and its traditionally most balanced of positions with respect to this conflict? … The Palestinians need a European movement that is active and



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 145

effective.’24 Around the same time an issue of the journal Arabic Affairs was dedicated to ‘the European role in the region’.25 All contributions to the topic discuss in one way or another the relation between America and Europe as a competitive relationship, and one in which there should be no doubt as to which party enjoys the Arab preference: despite historical trauma and present quarrels, it is in the Arab world’s interest for Europe to grow into a stronger, more confident union. Even when the EU is discussed without focusing on its role as potential ally of the Arabs and counterweight against American power, we find that Europe can be used to say something about the political situation in the Arab world rather than about Europe itself. Instructive in this regard is for instance a recent publication by the Lebanese political scientist Hasan Nâfi‘, tellingly entitled The European Union and the Lessons to be Drawn by the Arabs,26 the crux of which he reiterated recently in an op-ed entitled ‘Why did Europe succeed, while the Arabs failed?’: For over a century, the central question on the Arab mind has been ‘Why did the West progress, while the Arabs fell behind?’ Today, this question has changed into ‘Why did the Europeans succeed in performing a lively, effective process of integration, capable of progressing forward, realizing one success after another, whereas we Arabs have failed to even protect our patriotic unity in the presently existing lands and states.27 The author’s primary argument is that the EU’s sine qua non is democracy. He argues that for each and every country which has joined or will join, the main condition has been and will be that the country is genuinely democratic. It is interesting to see that the author argues that the whole European unification enterprise is a project concerned with safeguarding democracy, while in the European Union itself it is widely recognised that the main problem of the EU is the so-called ‘democratic gap’ between the peoples and their European political

146

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

institutions. Unsurprisingly, the ‘lessons’ that the book title refers to can be summarized as follows: if the Arab world ever wants to unite, it must first democratize. In a similar vein, an edited volume by the aforementioned Ibrâhîm Nâfi‘, What is Happening in Eastern Europe?,28 aims at finding out how Eastern European countries have changed their economies and political systems since their liberation from Soviet domination. In particular, the authors are on a quest to understand Eastern Europe’s experience of implementing reforms to introduce political pluralism and an open market economy. Eventually, ‘its aim is to get to know the … lessons [to be drawn from these developments]’ so that these may be ‘of benefit to us Egyptians and Arabs in planning for the future’.29 The contributions are not always mild in the way they compare the European and the Arab experiences with liberalization (in the 1970s, under Sadat, Egypt embarked on economic liberalization). The painful observation is made that in reforming the economy the East European countries have achieved more in ten years than Egypt in twenty-five years.30 In a contribution by ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Sa‘îd, the lesson is phrased as follows: ‘It is clear that the dividing line between progress and retrogression … is the extent of the elites’ agreement on the job ahead for the nation. … That said, what is it that the political elite in Egypt agrees upon?’31 Orientalism and Occidentalism compared As has been noted in the introduction, a comparison between Orientalism and Occidentalism will have to pay attention to power, and more specifically its unequal distribution. James Carrier has stated that this asymmetry entails for example that Westerners are better positioned to ‘correct’ a non-Western essentialization of the West than the other way around.32 The question here concerns how the present research can show us that differences in the distribution of power are of influence in the imaging and imagination processes between ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’.



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 147

By referring to an unequal distribution of power I do not mean only or even mainly the superior military capacities of Western armies and their deployment in the colonial past and more recent history. And while important in many other ways, neither the dominant role of Western nations in international organizations nor Western economic prosperity are crucial to the question. A more important difference concerns what I would call ‘soft power’ in the cultural realm. Daily life in Egypt is more touched by Western cultural products and behavioural norms than can be said conversely of the average Western environment and the cultural colorations of its daily life by Egyptian, Arabian, Muslim or ‘Eastern’ actors. During my recent visits to Cairo I regularly took a taxi from downtown to Zamalek, crossing the Nile over the 26th of July Bridge. One morning, as the taxi drove onto the bridge, the top of the first skyscraper into Zamalek caught my eye. A gigantic green billboard had been affixed to the rooftop. On it was written in white letters ‘We need more green in this city’, accompanied by a modestly sized logo of Heineken. This advertisement says a lot about Western cultural pervasiveness. It is an English language advertisement, thereby sidelining those viewers who master only the country’s national language. The slogan is, moreover, a clever play on words, in such a way that the literal meaning simply voices a common upper-class complaint about life in the city of Cairo. Of course, the message it really seeks to convey is that people should drink Heineken’s beer, and perhaps we can even read in it a call for a more liberal alcohol policy. The advertisement brings together various factors of Egyptian society. It is a public call for breaching norms that are held sacred by the great majority of the population. It is a public manifestation of foreign cultural influence, not only in its message (a foreign beer brand) but also in its language and alphabet. Its location (classy Zamalek) and the reference to environmental concern cause the message to be associated with an upper-class life style. It is perhaps telling that shortly after its construction the advertisement was removed, I assume, because of complaints. The point here is that while Heineken could think of

148

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

and execute this advertisement, it is highly unlikely that an Egyptian headscarf company would ever be as bold as to select the rooftop of the City Cinema at the Amsterdam Leidse Square to advertise in a huge Arabic neon sign. There are good economic reasons, obviously, why such a company would not do this, but it is also a reflexion of Western cultural dominance. The force of Western culture is evident also when we see how Egyptian intellectuals often use mainly Western sources to make their arguments, and one particularly striking habit of many intellectuals is their insistence on adding to a term its equivalent in English or French. For example, when Yassîn (2007) writes of al-sûrah he adds the English translation ‘the image’;33 similarly, when he writes of the concept of ru’yah al-‘âlam he adds ‘vision du monde’.34 This suggests that the author first read about these two concepts in English and French respectively, and – even though the Arabic words are perfectly apt to describe what the author means to convey – still deems it necessary to refer to their ‘origins’.35 Of particular importance also in this regard is Galâl Amîn, whose writings sometimes remind one of op-ed articles that might be found in a European newspaper. Sometimes the critique levelled against Western policies is identical with much criticism voiced in the West itself, and it is at this point that there is a certain confusion between Self and Other, between blaming the Other and criticizing the world one is living in, i.e. one’s own world. Subjectively but undeniably, a Western author writing a fiercely critical book about Western global hegemony is perceived differently from an Arab author writing the same book. While the Western author would be considered to be applying self-criticism, the Arab author would sooner be considered to be engaging in bigoted anti-Westernism. This seems logical given that people tend to accept or at least tolerate criticism more readily if it comes from someone who is part of the culture being criticized; but perhaps this logic is ceasing to be as applicable because of the overwhelming presence of Western culture in – in this case – Egypt. The Egyptian intellectual no longer



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 149

operates in an exclusively Egyptian or Arab environment. The Egyptian media is continually monitoring Western media for news about the West but also for news about Muslim communities in the West and for whatever is being said and thought about Islam. Western media are the Egyptian intellectuals’ daily digest, to the extent that it functions as the global media by default. At this point, ‘the media’ are the Guardian, the International Herald Tribune, Die Zeit, FAZ, and Le Monde. The distance between Self and Other is dissolved, but criticism, even harsh criticism, remains. This calls to mind what Enany says on the basis of his study of Occidentalism in modern Arabic literature: Westernism is no longer a mode of otherness; … ‘Westernisation’ can still be an accusatory term in some conservative circles but we must not let emotive rhetoric delude us into thinking that such a charge today in the majority of the Arab world is anything but self-accusation, rather than a criticism of the other.36 In the previous chapter I mentioned the ‘Western witness’ in relation to Muhammad ‘Imârah’s surprising use of Richard Nixon. The Western witness is an often recurring rhetorical ploy that is evidently designed to convince the reader of the truth of a statement by putting it in the mouth of a Western figure of authority. The element of authority is crucial, witness for instance ‘Imârah’s incessant reference to Nixon as ‘the strategic thinker’. In fact, it is an age-old rhetorical strategy referred to in the handbooks as an argumentum ad verecundiam or an argument by authority. The remarkable thing here is that normally such an argument appeals to the authority of a figure evidently respected by speaker and public spoken to. ‘Aristotle himself said it’; ‘Bernard Lewis, the eminent historian of Islam, has said that …’; ‘the Bible says …’; ‘God most high, has said …’. Of course it is not ‘Imârah’s intention to refer to Nixon as a respectable person but merely to make use of a source which is valuable because

150

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

it is such an unlikely source: ‘See, the leader of the West says so himself!’ In many other instances, however, we find that this dualism (of valuable, respectable statements coming from an uncommendable person) is not at work, and the Western witness, especially in Islamist texts is often quite simply an ornament for Islam and a testament to its Truth. In his Islam in Western Eyes37 ‘Imârah states that this book aims to explain that ‘the conflict’ is not between Islam and Western man, or with Western science, but rather with Western organizations of political hegemony, ecclesiastical organizations and the media, who continue a project of slander against Islam that has been going on since the very beginning. This notion is common to ‘Imârah’s work, but his approach in this book is interesting: In this book, after providing the true image of Islam as regards religion, state, ummah and civilization, [the reader is presented with] – Western testimonies of the deep-rootedness of the Western slander against Islam; – Western testimonies (of dozens of authorities of the Western culture) that do justice to Islam in a way that needs to be learnt by the Muslims if they want to retaliate against their aggressors. And so we have documents of Western denunciation of Western slander against Islam, as well as documents of Western equity to the greatness of Islam.’ 38 The structure of the argument is clear. ‘Imârah makes his points (be they against the West or in favour of Islam) exclusively with the help of Western sources. ‘Imârah apparently believes that Muslims cannot defend themselves against Western charges without Western arguments. To dwell upon this use of Western sources is not intended to be pedantic. Rather, it is important to recognize it as another phenomenon induced by unequal power relations, in this case a Western



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 151

hegemonial epistemology. Perhaps some would oppose this characterization by pointing out that to use the words of one’s opponent against him is a universally appreciated rhetorical trick in any debate and not necessarily indicative of any power imbalance. In this case, however, we are not talking about a debate between opponents but rather a monologue in which one author is trying to convince his ‘own’ public. In this setting it pays to have a critical look at which sources are deemed to carry weight. To illustrate this, the following appeal to the Western witness in an article published in the moderate Islamist journal Al-Manâr al-gadîd, may be of use. As already cited on page 109 (note 62), ‘Alâ’ al-Nâdî in his article on the concept of ‘the West’ in Islamist discourse argues that the Islamists should rethink their understanding of the West: Already since [the days of ] Hasan al-Bannâ Islamists are saying that the star of Western civilization is fading, that the West is heading for the exit, but what has not been understood is that this civilization has a resilience which makes it possible for her to absorb crises.39 Yet what comes after this straightforward assessment is remarkable: Now this does not mean that the West is in good shape, after all, the greatest Western philosophers have for a long time spoken of the decline of the West. It is just that it still has qualities and strengths which allow it to lengthen its period.40 Upon close scrutiny, this passage is revealing. Islamist discourse has consistently spoken of Western decline. Witness the continuation of Western global dominance to the present day: history has proven this assessment to be wrong. But Western philosophers have for a long time spoken of the decline of the West, so there is truth in the assessment after all. In short, first the author sees a fallacy in what Muslims have been saying, and then the fallacy is neutralized by referring to

152

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Westerners who have said the same thing. As if by miracle, the problem is solved. The Western witness is always right, even in the face of a near century of historical evidence proving otherwise. Western witnesses can of course be used in various ways. They can incriminate the West or they can testify to the glory of the (Egyptian/Arab/Muslim) Self. They can also be used to say something for which the author lacks the confidence to say all by himself. Conspiracy theories about the attacks of 11 September 2001 are often strengthened by referring to their real or supposed Western origin. When I mentioned to a friend in Cairo the theory of the CIA and/or the Mossad having orchestrated the attacks, and clearly showed my contempt for this theory, which is still rather popular in Egypt as in many other Arab countries,41 I got the reply that ‘this theory was in fact first made by a German scientist’. Somehow, its German origin, imagined or real, made the theory more respectable, the argumentum ad verecundiam in pristine shape. The topic of conspiracy theories warrants serious attention because they are so amenable to functioning as vessels for stereotypes and as I will argue, are also best understood if perceptions and realities of power distribution are taken into consideration. But there is a problem with discussing conspiracy theories. Israel has spread the bird flu virus in the Nile valley to destroy Egyptian agriculture. Israel secretly bombed Western targets in Egypt to drive a wedge between Egypt and the West. America flies its Muslim prisoners to Arab dictatorships to have them tortured there. Israel bombed Jewish targets in the Arab world to scare Jews into migration to the Zionist entity. America wants to create a Gay Bomb that turns the enemy homosexual. Most readers will be surprised to hear that at least three out of these five statements are (or were once) true.42 In this listing, I suspect very few readers will be able to tell fact from fiction, truth from paranoid conspiracy. While there are many loopy theories (evangelizing car tyres spring to mind), some truths are as stunning as many a fantasy, and many of the most unlikely truths took place in the Middle East.43



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 153

While we have seen that even a respected academic such as Galâl Amîn sees it fit to appeal to conspiratorial logic, it would be wrong to think that conspiracy theories go unchallenged in Egypt. The theory denying Arab Muslim involvement in September 11 is most forcefully rejected by those most likely to have some inside information on the topic. Stream of Thoughts was published in 2003 as an exposition of the theological repositioning of the most infamous of jihadist organizations in modern Egyptian history, Al-Gamâ‘ah alIslâmiyah.44 This book, together with The Explosions of Riyad45 was Al-Gamâ‘ah’s first public elaboration on its rejection of violence, starkly contrasting with its record of terrorist violence in the 1990s. In Stream of Thoughts it is argued that the theories involving the CIA or the Mossad to be behind the attacks, are unacceptable to anyone in his right mind … the most famous of those who build these ‘conspiracy theories’ is this one French author [Thierry] Meyssan … who claims that the Americans have committed the acts themselves. Now, this Western author is not important to us, but what is truly sad is that many Arabs and Muslims writing about [9/11] use these conspiracy theories in their explanations. … [The] conspiracy theory is the worst [possible] theory because it hinders the Arab-Muslim mind in becoming a bright light and it impairs it to solve its problems.46 This latter assessment reminds of what has been said of conspiracy theory, namely that it is connected to political apathy.47 I would argue in addition that theories involving a ‘hidden hand’ are particularly appealing to people who are experiencing a strong sense of powerlessness. In the conspiracy theory that it was the Mossad (with or without collaboration with the CIA) who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, one often finds an argument such as ‘no organization in the Arab world today could have executed such an enormously complicated task of this magnitude’.48 This is expressive of a sense of

154

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

ineptitude, more specifically a sense of being inept in relation to the all-too-often-Western Other, and reminds of the ‘inferiority complex’ referred to by various Egyptian and other Arab intellectuals. The use of the term complex suggests a psychoanalytical diagnosis. To use medical terms when describing (part of ) Arab society or to apply psychoanalysis to an entire population, in all its diversity, has been rightfully criticized by Edward Said and others. The inferiority complex I refer to, however, is not claimed to be a medical diagnosis but rather a sociological phenomenon. Various Egyptian and other Arab authors have adopted the task of combating this frame of mind, such as Hasan Hanafî: ‘The science of Occidentalism has the task of removing the historical inferiority complex in the relationship between Self and Other …. Its objective is to do away with the sense of inadequacy vis-à-vis the West in terms of language, culture, science, schools of thought and theories.’49 One who is ferociously at odds with Hanafî is George Tarâbîshî, but if there is one thing on which Tarâbîshî agrees with Hanafî, it is the assessment that Arab intellectuals’ relationship with the West is highly problematic. He argues that the contemporary Arab intelligentsia have been struck by a mental condition which he describes variously as a trauma, a state of shock, narcosis, a collective neurosis.50 Because of its complex of Western superiority, the crux of which goes back to the catastrophe of 1967, the Arab discourse – paraphrasing Tarâbîshî – has retreated into a fantasy world, where desires are treated as if they are facts, and fears are treated as if they are arguments. While Tarâbîshî’s words are among the most painful, he is not the only one not to mince his words. While Galâl Amîn’s The Era of Muslim-bashing is mainly an exercise in ‘reminding the Arabs of their legitimate rights’ (already suggesting a perceived lack of Arab self-esteem), the central message in Fairytale is the rejection of Arab inferiority, more specifically the so-called khawagah-complex, or the Arabs’ sense of inferiority vis-àvis the European or the American.51 In sum, the power relationship in which there is a dominant role for the West governs all these notable differences between Orientalism



Examining Contemporary Egyptian Occidentalisms 155

and Occidentalism. The blurring of the inside and outside categories, the use of Western witnesses and the appeal of conspiracy theories, inferiority and superiority complexes, and the extent of differentiating one’s Other: these matters all require that the power relations are taken into account as a central factor in explaining the dynamics of selving and othering. Furthermore, this chapter shows that it is a fruitful endeavour to analyse texts as regards the image of the West that these texts convey, especially when its discursive function is taken into consideration. The steering capacity of this function should however not be exaggerated, as most images are perfectly relatable to realities, rather than strictly informed by ideological fantasy.

5 Conclusion

This thesis makes the case for studying the manner in which not the East but the West is perceived and constructed, a field of study that is still in its infancy. In a world that continues to be moved by globalization and consequently shows a near universal concern with identity, alterity and authenticity, it is a timely endeavour to engage with images of Self and Other, not only where the West is Self but also there where the West is Other. This study is one of the first to investigate this topic in relation to a part of the Arabic world. By narrowing its focus both geographically (to Egypt) and temporally (post-Cold War), more specific outcomes have been produced, compared to the broad strokes employed by authors such as Afaya, El-Husseini and Enany.1 The process of imagining the West, and the resulting mental construction (or image) of the West, is what I have termed Occidentalism, thereby largely following the example set by – among others – Xiaomei Chen in her work on Occidentalisms in China.2 Contrary to the way in which ‘Occidentalism’ is employed by Buruma and Margalit,3 my definition of the term does not depend on Occidentalism being part of a specific ideological discourse. Occidentalism as understood and employed in my study is applicable to any ‘othering’ of the West, regardless of its discursive environment. In other words, Occidentalism here is not synonymous with ‘anti-Westernism’ and is therefore the preferred definition for those who favour a more universal applicability of the term.

158

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

This research partly fulfils a cataloguing role, not in the sense of being exhaustive but rather in the sense of indicating the scope and diversity of imaginations of the West. The material presented in Chapter 2 in particular shows how key Egyptian intellectuals have appreciated the West in a manner that cannot be characterized as principally dismissive, or only allowing for the material fruits of Western civilization (as has been argued by Bernard Lewis and Daniel Newman, among others).4 I have pointed out that in the earliest extensive coverage of the West (by Al-Gabartî and Al-Tahtâwî) there is already considerable attention paid to education, social customs, aesthetics, and justice. Al-Gabartî praises the libraries of the French invaders and describes French justice in favourable terms; Al-Tahtâwî can hardly hold back his desire for seeing Egypt adopt a constitution such as that of France. I have highlighted these passages to make it clear that at least from the early nineteenth century Egyptian intellectuals have adopted a rather open attitude, not merely towards technological achievements and mechanical aspects of European culture but also towards European norms and values in discursive fields such as law and politics. In short, to think of the appreciation of the West as a dichotomized viewpoint in which material culture is praised while nonmaterial culture is rejected, is generally an oversimplification and often plainly wrong, at least until more recent times. Apart from its descriptive aspect, this book also entails a novel approach in combining image studies and discourse analysis. Image studies has so far been employed within the context of European literary studies, whereas I have adopted it here for the purpose of analysing texts that are more commonly studied through the approach of discourse analysis, namely non-fiction, in particular Egyptian media texts as well as books and articles written by contemporary Egyptian intellectuals. I have questioned how images of the West in non-fictional texts are related to certain ideologies in contemporary Egypt, in particular the liberal, the Islamist and the nationalistleftist discourses. It has become clear that ideological motivations are only partly responsible for shaping images of the West: Chapter



Conclusion

159

2 has shown that the content of Occidentalism changes over time and in doing so follows political events, such as the complication of Occidentalism in Egypt following the British military intervention in 1882. Chapter 3 makes it clear that in present times there is, across the ideological divides, a uniform rejection of Western, mainly American, support for the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. The fact that these grievances are shared among nearly all contemporary Egyptian intellectuals and across the entire spectrum of the Egyptian media suggests again that actual policies by Western powers do matter in shaping the ways in which the West is discussed, and can matter more than ideological convictions and needs. In other words, the facts on the ground do matter, contrary to what has been suggested repeatedly by those favouring the thought that policies are ‘not really’ relevant in explaining anti-Westernism. While the diversity found in the material under research makes it impossible to formulate one single general contemporary Egyptian image of the West it can be said that since the end of the Cold War images of the West have become increasingly critical and increasingly informed by cultural markers. The culturalization of thinking about the West is clearly connected to the concern with authenticity that is itself stimulated by globalization. I have argued that specifically Islamist authors are in a position to discuss the West in terms of cultural criticism, because while secular intellectuals were concentrating on the Cold War struggle between economic systems the Islamist trend was already focusing on nonmaterial issues such as a presumed Western spiritual and moral ‘deficit’, from the days of Hasan alBannâ. It is therefore not surprising that much or even most of the readily available contemporary publications on the West in Egypt are written from an Islamist or Islamic point of view. At the same time, I have made it clear that this spirit/matter dichotomy is by no means peculiar to Islamists in the Arab world, witness the very similar examples of Occidentalism in nineteenth-century Russia and mid-twentieth-century Spain. In these different times and places,

160

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

quite comparable identifications of Self and Other were produced in which the Self was admittedly in a bad shape in terms of wealth and power but eminently superior in terms of the spiritual strength that supposedly resided in the ‘Russian soul’ or the ‘Spanish way of life’. The findings from this research do not correspond well with the assessment that Enany produced on the basis of his study of literary representations of the West. His study of a mass of Arab novels and, to a lesser extent, poems resulted in the conclusion that Arab literary portrayals of the West have been a strategy to ‘grasp the Western spirit’ and certainly not a ploy to attack it. As Enany puts it: ‘With few exceptions, Arab intellectuals, no matter in which period, have never demonized the European other or regarded him in sub-human terms.’5 The present study cannot support this assessment. While the phenomenon should not be exaggerated, demonization of the West is not that exceptional either. It must be acknowledged that there are Egyptian intellectuals whose images of the West qualify to be labelled as incitement. The rather striking difference between Enany’s assessment and mine might be because he focused on literary texts, while I have studied non-fiction. It appears that, compared to the domain of public debate, the domain of literature in the Arab world is populated by authors with views that are more nuanced and less antipathetic towards Western cultures. When researching Occidentalism it is tempting to focus on literary sources, if only because they are so much more enjoyable to read than the average op-ed or monograph. But it would be a waste to ignore the latter type of texts. Arabic non-fiction tells stories that are more diverse than Arabic fiction, and can therefore enlighten us about a broader array of opinions and images. Regardless of this distinction between fiction and non-fiction, it should be clear from the discussion in Chapter 4 that to achieve a comprehensive understanding of how the West is perceived and constructed not by the intellectual elite but by the general population of any country or region requires attention to the data generated by opinion polls. The encounter with hard numbers that speak of



Conclusion

161

people’s norms and values is often sobering, showing that conflict between the West and the Muslim world is far from inevitable, and confirming our position that existing conflicts are about policies rather than principles. The concept of Occidentalism inescapably brings Orientalism to mind, but the two are not each other’s mirror image. For one thing, the content of the mutual images is dissimilar; for example, while the West is commonly understood as being made up of highly distinct components and states (such as the two very different appreciations of America and Europe), Western images of ‘the Orient’ tend to be more generalizing. This and other differences are best understood when the power imbalances are taken into consideration. As it is by now almost universally accepted that knowledge is linked to power, it should not surprise anyone that any set of two ‘knowledges’ or understandings of a mutual Other, in other words, two reciprocating alterities, reflect their respective positions in the balance of power. In the previous chapter I focused on cultural power and the effect of what one could call the globalization of Western culture. For example, the authority enjoyed by Western media has long spread beyond Western publics, and Western media form a primary news source for many an Egyptian journalist or intellectual. The same cannot be said of the media in the Arab world, or any other world but the Western. It should be taken into account that the texts studied here were written by people who were more familiar with the West than one may assume at first. This research has made me aware of the relative scarcity of studies dedicated to modern Arabic intellectuals. Even crucial historical figures such as Al-Afghânî and ‘Abduh are known almost exclusively through less than a handful of European studies published some three to four decades past. Contemporary intellectuals such as Galâl Amîn, Muhammad ‘Imârah or ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-Masîrî remain even more obscure. It seems Abu-Rabi‘ hardly exaggerated when he wrote that ‘[t]he field of contemporary Arab thought is still virgin territory, unmapped by studies in English’.6 If there is any genuine

162

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

interest in how the West is imagined conceptually in the Arab world, then surely it is required also to develop an interest in the intellectual climate in which the imagination takes place. ‘Usâmah, my research assistant whom I mentioned at the outset of this book, enjoined me to write a section on what is true and what is false in the Occidentalisms of the various intellectuals and in the various books and articles under discussion. On the point where ‘Abduh presents an appropriated West, ‘Usâmah wanted to know if this is correct. When I mentioned Sha‘râwî’s statement that the West was spiritually empty, he asked: is that true? While my instant answer would be that this is irrelevant to the research, he is right that I should say something about this topic. Specifically for the nonWestern reader, who has more difficulty (and often more desire!) to draw for him or herself a picture of what the West is, it would be unfair if I failed to present my knowledge and views about where an intellectual is strong or weak in his/her description of the West. However, I cannot say whether Marxists are correct in identifying the West as a bastion of imperialist globalization, or whether the liberals see clearly when they refer to commendable Western ideals of freedom and democracy. This is a matter of debate inside the West as much as it is among the Egyptian intellectuals, and hence merely being from the West does not qualify me to rule between one opinion or the other: I have neither the authority nor the temerity to judge whether John Gray is right or Noam Chomsky, or whether it is Robert Kagan or William Kristol. Similarly, I cannot privilege Ridâ Hilâl’s West above that of Galâl Amîn or Muhammad ‘Imârah. What I have done is to point out consistencies and inconsistencies, flat-out mistakes or, sometimes, wilful misrepresentations and even plain silliness. I have tried to show that even though the West is forcefully present in many ways in Egypt and the region, it is also objectified and imagined in a myriad of fashions, often according to ideological needs, but never entirely detached from the real world that informs peoples’ judgements. He or she who, after reading this book, still seeks to adopt a specific posture vis-à-vis ‘the West’, and



Conclusion

163

a specific understanding of it, will have to choose one for him- or herself. But the reader is warned that images can be harmful, and reminded of a photographer’s wisdom that I feel also applies here, namely that there is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.

Notes

Introduction 1 2

Edward Said, Orientalism, Vintage Books: New York, 1994 (1978). Hasan Hanafî, Muqaddimah fî ‘ilm al-istighrâb, Al-Dâr al-Faniyyah: Cairo, 1991. 3 This does not mean that he coined the term, as the term itself had already been used by Said, 1994, p. 50. 4 Xiaomei Chen, ‘Occidentalism as counterdiscourse: “He Shang” in post-Mao China’, Critical Inquiry, 18 (1992): 686–712; Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China, Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, MD, 2002 (1995). 5 James Carrier (ed.), Occidentalism: Images of the West, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1995. 6 Ibid., p. 10. 7 Carter Vaughn Findley, ‘An Occidentalist in Europe: Ahmed Midhat meets Madame Gülnar, 1889’, American Historical Review, 103/1 (February 1998): 15–49. 8 Ibid., p. 17. 9 Mohamed Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography, Palgrave MacMillan: Hampshire and New York, 2001. 10 Ibid., pp. ix–x. 11 Daniel Martin Varisco, ‘Review of Mohamed Tavakoli-Targhi Refashioning Iran 2001’, H-Net Reviews, September 2002, http:// www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=221631031770217 (viewed 18 August 2008). 12 Judith Snodgrass, Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism,

166

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Occidentalism and the Columbian Exposition, University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2003. 13 Ibid., p. 11. 14 Ibid., pp. 273f. 15 Tamara S. Wagner, ‘Emulative versus revisionist Occidentalism: monetary and other values in recent Singaporean fiction’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 39/2 (2004): 73–94; Occidentalism in Novels of Malaysia and Singapore, 1819–2004 , Edwin Mellen Press: Lewiston, NY, 2005; ‘Occidentalism: Edward Said’s legacy for the Occidentalist imaginary and its critique’, in Silvia Nagy-Zekmi (ed.), Paradoxical Citizenship: Edward Said, Lexington Books: Lanham, MD, 2006. 16 Wagner, 2006, p. 145. 17 See for example the Wikipedia definition for Occidentalism: ‘The term Occidentalism usually refers to stereotyped and sometimes dehumanizing views on the so-called Western world …. The term was popularized by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit …’, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Occidentalism (viewed 27 March, 2008). 18 A. Margalit and I. Buruma, ‘Occidentalism’, New York Review of Books, 49/1 (2002); I. Buruma and A. Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, Penguin: New York, 2004. 19 The following discussion of Margalit and Buruma’s book is based on my review published in Dutch in Eutopia, 7 (May 2004): 91–4; and in English on www.risq.org/article356.html (viewed 4 June, 2008). 20 Buruma and Margalit, 2004, pp. 10ff. 21 Ibid., p. 8. 22 Bernard Lewis, ‘The roots of Muslim rage’, Atlantic, 266 (1990): 47–54, 56, 59–60. However, Margalit and Buruma’s position in relation to Lewis is not so straightforward: witness Buruma’s devastating critique of Lewis in The New Yorker, ‘Lost in translation: the two minds of Bernard Lewis’, 14 June, 2004. 23 Woltering, 2004. 24 Rasheed El-Enany, Arab Representations of the Occident: East–West Encounters in Arabic Fiction, Routledge: London, 2006. 25 Ibid., p. 7. 26 Ibid., p. 9. 27 Noureddine Afaya, L’Occident dans l’imaginaire arabo-musulman, Toubkal: Casablanca, 1997. 28 ‘Liberal’ for Afaya has a very broad meaning; it can be used to refer to free-market idealism but also to Marxist convictions: in this vein it is used nearly synonymously with ‘secular’.



Notes

167

29 Nassib Samir El-Husseini, L’Occident imaginaire: la vision de l’Autre dans la conscience politique arabe, Presses de l’Université du Québec: Sainte-Foy, 1998. 30 Before proceeding to the next section, one last work on Occidentalism needs to be mentioned. Couze Venn works on postcolonial theory and authored Occidentalism: Modernity and Subjectivity (Sage: London, 2000). Venn’s understanding of Occidentalism is rather comparable to ‘Westernization’ in the sense of the emergence of the modern West, or the process of Europe evolving into ‘the West’ as a hegemonial power, p. 80. Venn’s use of the term Occidentalism in this manner is unique to his own work, and is of no direct relevance to the present study. 31 From Joep Leerssen’s website dedicated to imagology: http://cf.hum. uva.nl/images/info/leers.html (viewed 4 May, 2008). The most elaborate overview of theory and practice of imagology is Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen (eds), The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters: A Critical Survey, Rodopi: Amsterdam, New York, 2007. 32 Also: critical discourse analysis (CDA), stressing its character of social activism. 33 Teun A. van Dijk, Racism and the Press, Routledge: London, 1991, p. 47. 34 Ibid., pp. 36ff. 35 There is more on these viewpoints on pp. 28f and elsewhere. 36 Michel Foucault, L’Archéologie du savoir, Gallimard: Paris 1969. 37 Michiel Leezenberg, ‘Edward Said, Michel Foucault en de Islam’, Eutopia, 6 (December 2003): 73–7. 38 Chen, 1992, 2002. 39 Said, p. 11. 40 Ibid., p. 3. 41 Douwe Fokkema, ‘Orientalism, Occidentalism and the notion of discourse: arguments for a new cosmopolitanism’, Comparative Criticism, 18 (1996): 227–41. 42 In tracing the use of the concept of the West, some would go as far back as early modern descriptions of the division of the Roman Empire into the Eastern Empire (Byzantium) and the Western Empire (Rome). Edward Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1788, referred to this division as one between East and West. Yet Gibbon’s references to the Late Roman Empire as ‘the West’ are not quite similar to the modern use of the West. Gibbon’s East and West are merely shorthand for the two sections of the same

168

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

civilization, the same empire. Although these two sections later evolved into two differing Christendoms (one Catholic, one Orthodox), Gibbon essentially uses East and West in their original meaning as cardinal points. 43 Skeat’s An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1906, only mentions the West in its meaning of ‘the quarter where the sun sets’, but Weekley’s Etymological Dictionary of the Modern English Language from 1921 mentions ‘the Western powers’ as a term from the First World War. See also Douglas Harper, Online Etymological Dictionary, www.etymonline.com. This online dictionary is informed by a large collection of (mainly English) etymological dictionaries. 44 See both Le Robert, Dictionnaire historique de la langue française (1992), and Larousse, Grand dictionnaire etymologique et historique (2001). 45 ‘[Es wird] vom Ende des 18. Jhs an … als zusammenfassender Begriff für die historisch und kulturgeschichtlich enger verbundenen europäischen Länder dem älteren Morgenland gegenübergestelt’, Pfeifer, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen (1995), p. 2. 46 Bonnett, p. 25. 47 Christopher GoGwilt, The Invention of the West: Joseph Conrad and the Double-mapping of Europe and Empire, Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, 1995; see the epilogue, ‘A brief genealogy of the West’, pp. 220–42. 48 Bonnett, p. 163, see also p. 2. 49 Bonnett, p. 1. 50 L.M. Kenny, ‘East versus West in al-Muqtataf, 1875–1900’, in D.P. Little (ed.), Essays on Islamic Civilization, E.J. Brill: Leiden, 1976. 51 Ibid. 52 See Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, University of California Press: Berkeley, 1997, pp. 128–30. Concerning the inclusion of South Africa, it may be of interest to note that in his address to the South African parliament in 1966 the British prime minister Harold MacMillan referred to his audience as being one of ‘the nations of the Western world’ (quoted in Bonnett, 2004, p. 129). Bonnett, however, does not see this reference in light of the Cold War logic. Rather, he assumes that the whiteness of the parliament audience is the reason why MacMillan considers them Western. Though I appreciate Bonnett’s analysis of how the concept of the West in the West came in a sense to replace the concept of the white world, I believe it would be wrong to ignore that had the South Africans been communist, the Prime Minister would never



Notes

169

have addressed them as Western. It may not have been sufficient to be capitalist in order to be referred to as Western, but it was certainly a necessary condition. 53 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster: New York, 1998. 54 Muhammad ibn ‘Uthmân al-Sanûsî, Al-istitlâ’ât al-Bârîsiyyah fî ma‘rid sanah 1889, s.n. 1891, p. 92. 55 Al-Muqtataf, VI/3 (August 1881): 144. Note the use of al-mashriq for East, instead of al-sharq. Apparently, at the time of publication there was still no fixed term for denoting the concept of the West. See also the title of another Al-Muqtataf article: ‘alâqât al-mashriq bi al-maghrib (‘The relations of the East with the West’) in Al-Muqtataf, XV/9 (June 1891): 572–6. The use of mashriq and maghrib was bound to lose out against the use of sharq and gharb, because maghrib and mashriq already had fixed meanings: the Western Arab lands and the Eastern Arab lands respectively. 56 Al-Muqtataf, XIII/11 (August 1899): 760–1. 57 After the Japanese victory over the Russians in the war of 1905, this attitude towards Japan, viewing it as an example for the other (colonized or ‘protected’) nations of the East, spread throughout the peoples of Asia and Africa. 58 See Mas‘ûd Dâhir, ‘Al-Yabân bi-‘uyûn ‘Arabiyya’ (‘Japan in Arab eyes’), in Various, Al-Gharb bi-‘uyûn ‘Arabiyya (‘The West in Arab eyes’): 62–89, Kitâb al-‘Arabî, 60: Al-Qahira, 2005. 59 Quoted in Bonnett, p. 71. The quote is taken from Gökalp’s Toward Western Civilization, 1923. 60 Bonnett, pp. 66–70. 61 Moniteur Egyptien, 24 August, 1878. 62 E.g. Fouad Ajami, ‘The End of Pan-Arabism’, Foreign Affairs, 57/2 (Winter 1978): 354–74, argues how the Arab–Israeli war of 1967 was the prelude to the emergence of realist ‘state logic’ instead of ideology; Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi’ states that since 1967 Egypt has no official political ideology; see Contemporary Arab Thought: Studies in Post-1967 Arab Intellectual History, Pluto Press: London, 2004, p. 83. 63 E.g. George Tarâbîshî (Al-Marad bi-al-Gharb, Dâr Petrâ: Damascus, 2005) speaks of a ‘collective neurosis’ of the cultural and political elite in the Arab world; Ibrâhîm Mansûr (Al-Izdiwâg al-thaqâfî wa azmah al-mu‘âradah al-Misriyyah, Mîrît: Cairo, 2006) concerned himself with ‘cultural ambiguity’ in Arab society at large, specifically engendered by the lack of a connection between elite groups and the common

170

64 65

66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

74

Occidentalisms in the Arab World populations; Al-Sayyid Yassîn (Al-Dîmûqrâtiyyah wa hiwâr al-thaqâfât, Mîrît: Cairo, 2007) engages with what he terms ‘the Arab cultural crisis’. E.g. Afaya, 1997; Nadje al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The Egyptian Women’s Movement, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000. Abu-Rabi’, 2004; Abu-Rabi’ in this regard follows examples set by Mahmûd Amîn al-‘Âlim, Al-fikr al-‘Arabî bayna al-khusûsiyyah wa al-kawniyyah, Dâr al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabî: Cairo, 1996, and Fahima Charaffedine, Culture et idéologie dans le monde arabe, Harmattan: Paris, 1994. Galâl Amîn and Ridâ Hilâl are discussed further in Chapter 3. Abu-Rabi’, p. 89. Hasan Hanafî, Al-turâth wa al-tagdîd: Mawqifunâ min al-turâth alqadîm, Manshûrât Magd: Cairo, 2002 (1980). Hanafî, 1991. Ibid., pp. 29ff. E.g. Hasan Hanafî, ‘Hârî Pûtar Gharbî … wa Hânî Gawhar ‘Arabî’, Al-‘Arabî, 18 August 2007. Interview in Cairo, 19 September, 2007. George Tarâbîshî (2005); other critiques of note are Nasr Abû Zayd, ‘Al-Turâth bayn al-ta’wîl wa al-talwîn. Qirâ’ah fî mashrû‘ al-yusâr al-Islâmî’, Alif , 10 (1990); Thomas Hildebrandt, Emanzipation oder isolation vom westlichen Lehrer? Die debatte um Hasan Hanafîs ‘Einführung in die Wissenschaft der Okzidentalistik, Klaus Schwarz Verlag: Berlin, 1998. During my research, I actually came across this latter title, which headed an article concerning the danger of poor hygiene in Egypt’s water supply systems. I have not been able to retrieve the exact source of this publication. Chapter 1

1

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press: New York, 1992. 2 Bernard Lewis, ‘The roots of Muslim rage’, Atlantic, 266 (1990): 47–54, 56, 59–60, refers to a ‘clash of civilizations’, consequently adopted by Huntington in ‘The clash of civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, 72/3 (1993), and later elaborated upon in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster: New York, 1996.

3

Notes

171

The question was first posed by US President Bush in his address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001: ‘Americans are asking “Why do they hate us?”’, see: http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ US/09/20/gen.bush.transcript/ (viewed 13 June, 2006). See also Peter Ford, ‘“Why do they hate us?”’, Christian Science Monitor, 27 September, 2001; Fareed Zakaria, ‘The politics of rage: why do they hate us?’, Newsweek, 15 October, 2001. 4 Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2002, p. 7. 5 Lewis, 1990. 6 Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, Penguin: New York, 2004, p. 8. 7 Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire 1700–1922, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000. 8 Erik-Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, I.B.Tauris: London, 1993. 9 E.g. Nabil Matar (ed. and tr.), In the Land of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century, Routledge: New York, London, 2003. 10 E.g. Gerald MacLean (ed.), Re-Orienting the Renaissance: Cultural Exchanges with the East, Palgrave MacMillan: Houndmills, 2005. 11 E.g. James Jankowski, Egypt: A Short History, Oneworld: Oxford, 2000; Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1983; or in Arabic, Al-Sayyid Amin Shelby, Al-Gharb fî kitâbât al-mufakkirîn al-Misriyyîn, Maktabah al-Usrah: Cairo, 2003. 12 Al-Gabartî wrote three accounts of the French occupation: Târîkh muddah al-Faransîs bi-Misr contains his sketches of the first seven months of the French presence. In the chaotic period between the French departure and the investiture of Muhammad ‘Alî he rewrote these sketches into Mazhar al-taqdîs bi-dhihâb dawlah al-Faransîs. Finally, he fitted his final version of the events in his general, threevolume history of Egypt (‘Agâ’ib al-âthâr fî al-tarâgim wa al-akhbâr), drafted after the installation of Muhammad ‘Alî as governor. Unless indicated otherwise, this discussion makes use of Moreh’s translation of Târîkh muddah, the earliest account and the one most critical of the French: Shmuel Moreh, Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle of the First Seven Months of the French Occupation of Egypt, E.J. Brill: Leiden, 1975. 13 Moreh, 1975, p. 64. 14 Ibid., pp. 42, 47. 15 Ibid., pp. 49f.

172

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

16 Ibid., pp. 112f. See also Shmuel Moreh, ‘Napoleon and the French impact on Egyptian society in the eyes of al-Jabarti’, in Irene A. Bierman (ed.), Napoleon in Egypt, Ithaca Press: Reading, 2003, pp. 77–98, pp. 88ff. 17 Moreh, 1975, p. 91. 18 Hourani, 1983, p. vi. 19 Available in translation as Daniel L. Newman, An Imam in Paris: Al-Tahtawi’s Visit to France (1826–31), Saqi Books: London, 2004. Page references are to Newman. 20 They went to study administration, political science, military and navy courses, natural history, chemistry, metallurgy, mechanics and typography. In addition, Al-Tahtâwî was responsible for tending to his colleagues’ religious needs. 21 Newman, 2004, p. 125. 22 Ibid., p. 99 Unlike Al-Gabartî, Al-Tahtâwî uses the term ‘Franks’. Possibly he preferred to use a term with which his audience was familiar. 23 Ibid., p. 219. 24 Ibid., p. 218. 25 Ibid., pp. 238f. 26 Ibid., p. 175. 27 Ibid., p. 362. 28 Usama ibn Munqidh, The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades (tr. Paul Cobb), Penguin Books: London, 2008, p. 148. 29 Ibid., p. 149. 30 Newman, 2004, p. 252. 31 Ibid., pp. 139, 173 and 219. 32 Ibid., p. 180. 33 Ibid., p. 202: ‘bi-khiyânah fî tadbîr bi-al-rashwah aw bi-ikhtilâs al-amwâl’, Rifâ‘ah Râfi‘ al-Tahtâwî, Takhlîs al-ibrîz fî talkhîs Bârîs, Al-Hay‘ah al-Misriyyah al-‘âmmah li al-kitâb: Cairo, 1993, p. 178. 34 Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din ‘al-Afghani’, University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1968, pp. 5–8. 35 Ibid., pp. 84–95. 36 Ibid., p. 43. 37 One could think of Tanzania’s ‘African socialism’, Nasser’s ‘Arab socialism’, Iran’s Islamic revolution or Al-Qadhdhâfî’s ‘Arab democracy’ as later manifestations of the ideal of authentic or alternative modernization. 38 Hourani, 1983, p. 135.



Notes

173

39 Muhammad ‘Abduh, Risâlah al-tawhîd, s.n.: Cairo, 1953, pp. 193f. 40 ‘Abduh does not actually use the term ‘Crusaders’, rather he refers to al-Gharb and al-Gharbiyyûn. This use is clarified by Muhammad Rashîd Ridâ, editor of the 1953 edition, in a note: ‘This refers to the Crusader wars [that aimed] at driving out Islam … It is necessary for every Muslim to know of its details and of how the Europeans profited from [experiencing] the virtues of Islam which led them to reform the affairs of their religion and their state. Most Muslims are ignorant of this.’ (Ibid., p.192, n.2). 41 In translation by Roger Allen, A Period of Time, Ithaca Press: Reading, 1992. Page references are to Allen. 42 Sabry Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse: A Study in the Sociology of Modern Arabic Literature, Saqi Books: London, 1993, p. 132. 43 Allen, 1992, p. 108 emphasis added. 44 Ibid., p. 111. 45 Ibid., pp. 208ff. 46 Ibid., pp. 378ff. 47 Ibid. 48 This interval is derived from Hourani (2004, p. vi), who discerned three generations of Arab intellectuals engaging with modern Europe: 1830–1870, when news of modern Europe was first made widely available; 1870–1900, when ‘Europe had become the adversary as well as the model’; and 1900–1939, when various trends of thought started to crystallize on the Arab intellectual scene. 49 Allen, 1992, p. 367. 50 Quoted in Emad Eldin Shahin, Through Muslim Eyes, International Institute of Islamic Thought: Herndon, 1993, p. 85. 51 Janice Terry, The Wafd 1919–1952: Cornerstone of Egyptian Political Power, Third World Centre: London, 1982, pp. 98ff. 52 Ibid., p. 71. 53 Ibid., p. 72. 54 Mahmûd Abû al-Fath, Ma‘a al-Wafd al-Misrî, s.n.: Cairo, n.d., pp. 152ff. 55 James P. Jankowski, ‘The Egyptian Blue Shirts and the Egyptian Wafd, 1935–1938’, Middle Eastern Studies (Cassirer: London), 6/1 (January 1970): 77–95. 56 Terry, pp. 98ff. 57 Quotation marks are in order because it is questionable whether Amîn’s position qualifies to be seen as one of female emancipation, as argued

174

58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72 73

Occidentalisms in the Arab World most forcefully by Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 1992, ch. 8. Taha Hussein, The Future of Culture in Egypt, Palm Press: Cairo, 1998, pp. xiv, 4. Ibid., pp. xv, 11. Hourani, p. 226. E. D. Shahin, ‘Rashid Rida, Muhammad’, in John L. Esposito (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2001 (1995). Hourani presents Ridâ mainly as the ‘keeper’ of ‘Abduh’s legacy, Shahin (1993) considers Ridâ’s own input to be an elaboration of ‘Abduh’s work, not a departure. See also Emad Eldin Shahin, ‘Muhammad Rashid Rida’s perspectives on the West as reflected in Al-Manar’, The Muslim World, 79/2 (April 1989): 113–32. The most recent extensive research on Ridâ, however, shows that there is a stronger link between Ridâ and Hassan al-Bannâ (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, see further) than previously assumed: Umar Ryad has found documentation showing that Hassan al-Bannâ’s father and Ridâ were close friends, and that al-Bannâ was close to Ridâ as well, see Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashîd Ridâ and his Associates (1898–1935), unpublished PhD thesis, Leiden University, 2008, pp. 5ff. Ryad, 2008, p. 2. Shakîb Arslân, Al-Sayyid Rashîd Ridâ wa ikhâ‘ arba‘în sanah, s.n.: Damascus, 1937. Shahin, 1989,1993. Shahin, 1993, p. 11. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 128f. Eliezer Tauber, ‘Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I’, The Muslim World, 79/2 (April 1989): 102–12, p. 107 Shahin, 1989, pp. 123ff. Following the Japanese victory over the Russians, Japan became an icon of Oriental strength. Already in 1904, Mustafâ Kâmil, the Egyptian nationalist leader, had written al-Shams al-Mushriqah (‘The Radiant Sun’) (Matba‘ah al-Liwâ‘: s.l., 1904), in which Japan is made into an exemplary Oriental success. Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1993, pp. 224ff. Ibid. Qutb, quoted in Mitchell, p. 230.

74 75 76 77

78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87

88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Notes

175

Al-Bannâ, quoted in Mitchell, pp. 226ff. München, 1918. Ryad, pp. 19ff. Suggested in Pieter Smoor, ‘The mental world of Sayyid Qutb: seedbed for the Muslim Brothers’, in Manfred Woidich (ed.), Amsterdam Middle Eastern Studies, Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag: Wiesbaden, 1990, pp. 197–215, 199. John Calvert, ‘The World is an undutiful boy! Sayyid Qutb’s American experience’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 11/ 1 (2000): 87–103; Sayyid Qutb/‘Abd al-Fattâh al-Khâlidî (ed.), Amrîkâ min al-dâkhil bi-mandhâr Sayyid Qutb, Dâr al-Manârah: Djeddah/Dâr alWafâ’: Mansura, 1986. Gamal Abd el-Nasser, The Philosophy of the Revolution, Dar al-Ma‘aref: Cairo, 1954. Page references are to this English edition. Ibid., p. 45. Ibid., p. 22. Italics mine. Ibid., p. 42. Ibid., p. 65. ‘Khitâb al-ra‘îs Gamâl ‘Abd al-Nâsir fî al-ihtifâl al-sha‘bî min maydân al-gumhûriyyah bi al-‘îd al-‘âshirah li al-thawrah’, Cairo, 22 July, 1962. The speech can be played through the website www.nasser.org where many documents, speeches and images from the Nasserist period are available. Mohamed Heikal, Nasser: The Cairo Documents, Doubleday & Co.: New York, 1973, p. 13. This dualism was paralleled in the position taken by American administrations toward Egypt during the Nasser years. See David Lesch, ‘Abd al-Nasser and the United States’, in Elie Podeh and Ann Winckler (eds), Revisiting Nasserism: Revolution and Historical Memory in Modern Egypt, University of Florida: Gainesville, 2004, pp. 205–29. R. Baker, Egypt’s Uncertain Revolution under Nasser and Sadat, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, London, 1978, pp. 34, 61. Sayyid Qutb, Ma‘âlim fî al-tarîq, Dâr al-Shurûq: Beirut, n.d. Qutb, pp. 3f. Ibid., p. 3. We will see later on that it is noteworthy that Qutb argues for the weakness of the West through (supposedly) Western sources. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 7. For this view, see, for instance, Abu-Rabi’, 2004.

176

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

95 One could think of the contemporary New Age fascination with freely adapted Hindu or Buddhist philosophies, or one could go back to the notion of the Noble Savage that was first coined in English in 1672 by John Dryden in his play The Conquest of Granada, where the Moorish (!) hero exclaims: ‘I am as free as Nature first made man / Ere the base laws of Servitude began / When wild in woods the noble Savage ran.’ 96 The earliest elaboration on the theme (of the East as spiritual and the West as an abode of science) in Arabic is, to my knowledge, A.K. Mahmud, Ithâf al-mulûk al-alibbâ‘ bi taqaddum al-gam‘iyyât bi bilâd Urubbâ (Cairo, 1841), who writes ‘God honored Asia with the pride of the message, of prophethood, generosity and chivalry … then he bestowed on Europe the pride of the utilitarian sciences and the arts of brilliant education.’ Cited in Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Arab Rediscovery of Europe: A Study in Cultural Encounters, Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1963, p. 154. 97 See e.g. Lewis, 1990; Thomas Friedman, ‘The core of Muslim rage’, New York Times, 6 March, 2002; Barry Rubin, ‘The real roots of Arab anti-Americanism’, Foreign Affairs, 81/6 (November/December 2002); Margalit and Buruma, 2004. 98 See previous note. 99 Lewis, 2002. 100 Hourani, 1983, p. 171. 101 Authors such as Al-Muwaylihî, Muhammad Husayn Haykal and Tawfîq al-Hakîm let themselves be inspired by European themes and genres such as the novel and the play. Roger Allen, The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction, Syracuse University Press: New York, 1982. 102 Cf. the notion of the ‘idealized West’ in El-Husseini, pp. 65–97. 103 Cf. the notion of the ‘rejected West’ in El-Husseini, pp. 101–33. 104 See previous note. El-Husseini focuses on the writings of Michel Aflaq. 105 Newman, pp. 365–70 106 I have been unable to locate the original source for this remark. Regardless, it is still regularly quoted, e.g. Faysal Al-Sub‘î, ‘Islâm bi-lâ Muslimîn … wa Muslimîn bi-lâ Islâm’, online at http://www.alarabiya. net/Articles/2005/07/26/15275.html (viewed 14 June, 2006). 107 Hourani, 1983, p. 298, emphasis added. 108 Ahmad Shawqî, ‘Al-‘Arab awwal al-mustafîdîn min al-tahawwulât algadîdah’, Al-Masâ‘, 18 November, 1989.



Notes

177

Chapter 3 1

Ahmad Shawqî, ‘Ba‘d inhiyâr ma‘âqil al-shuyû‘iyyah fî Urubbâ al-Sharqiyyah’, Al-Masâ’ , 18 November 1989. 2 Ahmad Zayn, ‘Bi-lâ mashâkil’, Al-Akhbâr, 27 May 1988. 3 Muhammad al-Hayawân, ‘Kalimah hubb’, Al-Gumhûriyyah, 7 May 1988. 4 Fahd Muhammad al-Sakr, ‘Al-Siyâsah al-‘Arabiyyah fî dhall al-mutaghayyirât al-duwaliyyah’, Kull al-‘Arab, 9 April 1990. 5 Lutfî Nâsif, ‘Al-Wahdah al-Urûbiyyah … wa al-tamazzuq al-‘Arabî … li-mâdhâ?!’, Al-Gumhûriyyah, 29 September 1990. Italics added. 6 See p. 102. 7 Muhammad al-Rumayhî, ‘Hal yukhâf al-Gharb al-Muslimîn?’, Al-‘Arabî, September 1992. 8 The reference is to Brian Beedham, ‘As Leninism fades out, older forms of dictatorship loom clear’, International Herald Tribune, 17 September 1992. While Al-Rumayhî’s quote is far from a literal rendering of the original, it does convey the general idea of the article. 9 Kâdhim Habîb, ‘Al-‘Alâqât al-‘Arabiyyah al-Uwrûbiyyah al-râhinah fî daw’ al-sirâ‘ al-munsaram bayn al-Sharq wa al-Gharb’, Al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabî, March 1993. 10 ‘Abd Allâh, ‘Abd al-Dâ’im, ‘Al-‘Arab wa al-‘âlam bayn saddâm althaqâfât wa hiwâr al-thaqâfât’, Al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabî, January 1996. 11 ‘Kashafa al-kathîr min al-dirâsât … an … al-qawmiyyah hiyya al-îdiyûlûgiyyah al-wahîdah allati istitâ‘at an tasmada ba‘d inhiyâr al-Ittihâd al-Suvyîtî.’ Ibid. 12 From the adjective ‘Islamitic’. More directly translated, mu‘âdâh alIslâm would yield ‘anti-Islam’ but this could be misunderstood to mean ‘the opposite of Islam’, while ‘anti-Islamism’ is confusing because one could easily assume it expresses animosity against political Islam. 13 Ibid. 14 The terms thaqâfah (culture) and hadârah (civilization) are regularly used synonymously. 15 E.g. Ragab al-Bannâ, ‘Sûrah al-Islâm fî al-Gharb bayn sinâ‘ah tazwîr altârîkh … wa al-tadlîl al-i‘lâmî’, Uktûbar, 1 June 1997; Ragab al-Bannâ, ‘Laysa awwilhum Salmân Rushdî walâ âkhirhum “Tâtyânâ”. Sûratâni li al-Islâm fî Brîtanyâ’, Uktûbar, 6 July 1997. 16 Part of this section was published in Robbert Woltering, ‘Arab windows on Europe’, in Michael Wintle, Imagining Europe, Peter Lang: Brussels, 2008, pp. 177–96.

178

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

17 In a way, there was truth in the assessment that the report would be of service to ‘the West’. The American ‘Greater Middle East Initiative’, which proposed a major remapping of the Middle Eastern political landscape, argued that the Arab Human Development Report showed the need for the initiative. This was much against the intentions of the authors of the report, the lead author of which commented that ‘[the Americans] are using the report in the way a drunk leans against a lamppost; not for being enlightened, but in order not to fall down’. See Robbert Woltering, ‘Ik dacht dat de UNDP het nooit zou publiceren’, ZemZem, 1/2, 2005: 9. For an elaborate analysis of the reports including a discussion of the debate that they generated, see Asef Bayat, ‘Transforming the Arab world: the Arab Human Development Report and the politics of change’, Development and Change, 36/6: 1225–37. 18 AUC Press: Cairo, 2000. 19 AUC Press: Cairo, 2004. 20 ‘Asr al-tashhîr bi al-‘Arab wa al-Muslimîn. Nahnu wa al-‘âlam ba‘d 11 Sabtambar 2001, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2004. 21 Ibid., pp. 5f. 22 Ibid., p. 36. 23 Ibid., p. 72. 24 Ibid., pp. 37ff; see also Galâl Amîn, Khurâfah al-taqaddum wa al-takhalluf. Al-‘Arab wa al-hadârah al-Gharbiyyah fî mustahall al-qarn al-wâhid wa al-‘ashrîn, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2005, pp. 152f. 25 See previous note. 26 Galâl Amîn, The Illusion of Progress in the Arab World: A Critique of Western Misconstructions (tr. David Wilmsen), AUC Press: Cairo, 2006, p. 148, italics mine. Asked about the background to these discrepancies, translator David Wilmsen informed me that Amîn ‘exercised a great deal of authority over the target text’ (email correspondence with David Wilmsen, 6 August 2007). 27 Khurâfah, pp. 7–19 The Arabic term used by Amîn is ‘uqdah al-khawâgah. 28 ‘Asr al-tashhîr, p. 42 29 Ibid., p. 10. 30 Ibid., p. 130. 31 Ibid., p. 136. 32 Mâdhâ ‘allamatnî al-hayâh, Dâr al-shurûq: Cairo, 2006. 33 E.g. Khurâfah, pp. 85f. 34 Interview held in Cairo, 17 September 2007.



Notes

179

35 Robbert Woltering, ‘The roots of Islamist popularity’, Third World Quarterly, 23/6, 2002: 1133–43. 36 E.g. Woltering, 2008; Robert D. Lee, Overcoming Tradition and Modernity: The Search for Islamic Authenticity, Westview Press: Boulder, CO, 1997. 37 Fahmî Huwaydî, ‘Ba‘d ikhtirâ‘ al-‘aduww al-Islâmî. Hal hiyyâ harb gadîdah salîbiyyah wa talîfîzyûniyyah?!’, Al-Magallah, 25 March 1995. 38 Mawqif al-Gharb min al-Islâm, Dâr al-kitâb al-‘Arabî: Cairo, Damascus, 2003 (1993). 39 Ibid., jacket. 40 This will be elaborated upon, see p. 139. 41 Mawqif al-Gharb min al-Islâm, p. 230. 42 ‘Nostra aetate: declaratio de ecclesiae habitudine ad religiones nonChristianas’, Verbum Domini, 43 (1965): 273–7. Also available online. 43 More recently Dr ‘Abd al-‘Azîz has gained internet fame after footage spread of an interview she gave to the Saudi satellite television channel Iqra‘, during which she stated that 9/11 was committed by the Americans themselves, as part of their strategic alliance with the Vatican, in an attempt to Christianize the world. Footage of this interview is widely available on the internet. 44 E.g. Fatemah Farag, ‘Together too much’, Al-Ahram Weekly, 731, 24 February–2 March 2005; ‘Zilzâl tsûnâmî … wa i‘sâr al-duktûr Zaghlûl Al-Naggâr’, Al-Qâhirah, 1 March 2005: 21. 45 Zaghlûl al-Naggâr, Al-Islâm wa al-Gharb fî kitâbât al-Gharbiyyîn, Nahdah Misr: Cairo, 2005 (2003). 46 When the Arabic translation of this book was published in 1997 it received praise: see Ahmad Yûsef al-Qur‘î, ‘Al-Islâm wa al-gharb’, Al-Ahrâm, 13 June 1997. Indeed, it is hard to see how one could denounce Graham Fuller as anti-Islamic, given that he has expressed his disappointment with US policy towards the Muslim world, to the extent that he states that this was his reason for immigrating to Canada (Vancouver Sun, 18 January 2008). 47 The collected work of Muhammad al-Ghazzâlî is published by Nahdah Misr in 44 volumes; also CD-Roms are available containing even more material. 48 Despite Al-Ghazzâlî’s stature, he has not been studied extensively. The only thorough biographical study is Haifaa Genedi Khalafallah, Rethinking Islamic Law: Genesis and Evolution in the Islamic Legal Methods and Structures: The Case of a 20th Century ‘Alim’s Journey into his Legal Traditions, Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917–1996), unpublished doctoral thesis, Georgetown University, 2000.

180

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

49 Muhammad al-Ghazzâlî, Dhalâm min al-Gharb, Nahdah Misr: Cairo, 2003. Original date of publication not given, but must have been either in or before 1965. 50 Khalafallah, Rethinking Islamic Law, p. 61. 51 Raymond Baker, Islam Without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 2003, pp. 190f. 52 Khalafallah, Rethinking Islamic Law, pp. 81ff. She argues that Al-Ghazzâlî was ‘a staunch believer in democracy’, p. 61. 53 Dhalâm min al-Gharb, pp. 3f. 54 Târiq al-Bishrî, Al-hiwâr al-Islâmî al-‘ilmânî, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2005 (1996), p. 32. 55 This topos will be discussed further on p. 131. 56 Târiq al-Bishrî, Al-Malâmih al-‘âmmah li al-fikr al-siyâsî al-Islâmî fî al-târîkh al-mu‘âsir, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2005, 1996, p. 44. (The chapter from which this quote is taken, entitled sayabqâ al-ghuluww mâ baqiya al-taghrîb, was originally published in 1982.) 57 Baker, Islam Without Fear, 2003; Shahrough Akhavi, ‘Sunni modernist theories of social contract in contemporary Egypt’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 35/1 (2003): 23–49. 58 Mawsû‘ah al-Yahûd wa al-Yahûdiyyah wa al-Sahyûniyyah (1999): a twovolume edition was published in 2003 by Dâr al-Shurûq, Cairo. 59 Contrary to, for example, Muhammad ‘Imârah (on him, see pp. 111– 19), Al-Masîrî has repeatedly argued that it is a mistake to deride Israel on the basis of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion. According to Al-Masîrî, the Palestinian case is so evidently just that there is no need for the Arabs to have recourse to falsifications. See ‘Abd al-Wahhâb alMasîrî Al-Brûtûkûllat, al-Yahûdiyyah wa al-Sahyûniyyah Dar al-Shuruq: Cairo 2003. 60 ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-Masîrî, ‘Al-Hadâthah al-Dârwîniyyah wa tasâ‘ud mu‘addal al-tasaddâ lahâ’, http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E7C257 EC-2550–470B-B014–186E7F208AD6.htm (viewed 9 June 2008). 61 The only analyses to date of a large part of the issues published are Amr Hamzawy, ‘Exploring theoretical and programmatic changes in contemporary Islamist discourse: the journal Al-Manar al-Jadid’, in Azza Karam (ed.), Transnational Political Islam: Religion, Ideology, Power, Pluto Press: London, 2004, pp. 120–47; and Mona Abaza, ‘A commentary on Tanwir and Al-Manar al-Jadid in Egypt’, Orient, 41/2 (2000): 301–13. 62 ‘Alâ’ al-Nâdî, ‘Ishkâliyyah al-Gharb fî al-khitâb al-harakî al-Islâmî’, Al-Manâr al-gadîd, 22 (Spring 2003): 74–91.



Notes

181

63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-Masîrî, ‘Al-Haqîqah wa al-wahm … fî qissah brûtûkûlât hukamâ’ sahyûn’, Al-Manâr al-gadîd, 21 (Winter 2003): 20–38. 66 Bahâ’ al-Amîr, ‘Brûtûkûlât hukamâ’ Sahyûn … al-ra’y al-âkhar’, Al-Manâr al-gadîd, 22 (Spring 2004): 120–36. 67 Two recent publications in which a particularly jubilant tone is employed are Raymond Baker, Islam Without Fear, 2003; Geneive Abdo, No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2000. 68 Magma‘ al-buhûth al-Islâmiyyah. 69 Mona Abaza, ‘Two intellectuals: the Malaysian S.N. Al-Attas and the Egyptian Mohammed ‘Immara, and the Islamization of knowledge debate’, Asian Journal of Social Science, 30/2 (2002): 354–83, 359. 70 Ibid., p. 366. 71 Muhammad ‘Imârah, Al-Gharb wa al-Islâm: Ayn al-khat’ wa ayn alsawwâb?, Maktabah al-shurûq al-duwaliyyah: Cairo, 2004, p. 82. 72 Don McCurry (ed.), The Gospel and Islam: A 1978 Compendium, Missions Advanced Research and Communications Center: Monrovia, CA, 1979. 73 Muhammad ‘Imârah, Al-Islâm wa al-âkhar. Man ya‘tarif bi-man? … wa man yankar man?, Maktabah al-shurûq al-duwaliyyah: Cairo, 2004 (2001), p. 123. See also his book on this topic: Muhammad ‘Imârah, Istrâtîgîyyah al-tansîr fî al-‘âlam al-Islâmî: dirâsah fî a‘mâl mu’tamar kûlûrâdû li-tansîr al-Muslimîn, aw brûtûkûlât qasâwisah al-tansîr, Markaz dirâsât al-‘âlam al-Islâmî: Malta, 1992. 74 As I have been unable to locate ‘Imârah’s source (i.e. the Arabic translation of The Gospel and Islam), I cannot know if he has wilfully misrepresented the documents or whether the responsibility for this deception lies with the author of the Arabic translation. 75 Al-Islâm wa al-âkhar, p. 141. 76 Muhammad ‘Imârah, Al-Islâm fî ‘uyûn Gharbiyyah bayn iftirâ’ al-guhalâ’ … wa insâf al-‘ulamâ’, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2005, pp. 45–62. 77 Al-Gharb wa al-Islâm, pp. 59ff. 78 Muhammad ‘Imârah, Al-usûliyyah bayn al-Gharb wa al-Islâm, Dar alShurûq: Cairo, 2006 (1998). 79 This is a reference to the ashâb al-yamîn or ‘the people who stand on the right side’, as mentioned in the Quran. The argument is however rather far-fetched as this is certainly not the first association Arabs will have when a reference is made to right-wing politics.

182 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Al-Usûliyyah, pp. 5–9. Al-Islâm wa al-âkhar, pp. 65f. Al-Gharb wa al-Islâm, pp. 27–55. Ibid., pp. 72f. Ibid., pp. 115ff. Ibid. Isra’îl Shâhâk, Al-Diyânah al-Yahûdiyyah wa mawqifuhâ min ghayr alYahûd (tr. Hasan Khadir), Tab‘ah sîna li al-nashr: Cairo, 1994. 87 ‘Imârah, Al-Islâm wa al-âkhar, pp. 32–53. 88 Ibid., p. 50. 89 ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-Masîrî, Mawsû‘ah, vol. 2, pp. 343f. 90 Richard M. Nixon, Seize the Moment: America’s Challenge in a OneSuperpower World, Simon & Schuster: New York, 1992. 91 ‘Imârah, Al-Gharb wa al-Islâm, p. 78; note that this is my translation of ‘Imârah’s quote from the Arabic translation of Nixon’s Seize the Moment. Comparison with the English original yields minor differences. 92 Ibid., p. 79. 93 Apart from the previously mentioned citation, see also, for example, ‘Imârah, Al-Usûliyya bayna, pp. 15, 32; Al-Islâm fî ‘uyûn, p. 57; and Al-Islâm wa al-âkhar, p. 138. This last reference is to a particularly misleading quotation, which suggests that Nixon holds the view that Islam has become the new major threat to the West. In fact, Nixon emphatically rejects this view (Seize the Moment, p. 195). 94 Abu-Rabi‘, 2004, p. 8. 95 For example, Khalîl al-‘Inânî, ‘Li-mâdhâ fashalat al-lîberâliyyah ‘andinâ …’, Al-Qâhirah, 25 March 2005; Hânî Nusayrî, ‘Al-lîberâliyyûn al-gudud fî al-mantiqah al-‘Arabiyyah’, in Shâkir al-Nâbulsî (ed.), Al-lîberâliyyûn al-gudud. Gadal fikrî, Manshûrât al-Gamal: Köln, 2005, p. 107. 96 Al-Nâbulsî, Al-lîberâliyyûn al-gudud: Gadal fikrî, Manshûrât al-Gamal: Köln, 2005. 97 Ahmad al-Baghdâdî, ‘Na‘am, al-lîberâliyyûn wahduhum humma aldîmuqrâtiyyûn’, in Al-Nâbulsî, Al-lîberâliyyûn al-gudud, pp. 114f. 98 Al-Nâbulsî, Al-lîberâliyyûn al-gudud, p. 10. 99 Abu-Rabi‘, 2004, p. 76. 100 This is the case with various anti-liberal contributions to Al-Nâbulsî’s volume. 101 Kamâl Ghibryâl, ‘‘Alâ ghayr mâ na‘taqid … al-duwal al-kubrâ lâ tukayyil bi-makiyalayn’, Al-Qâhirah, 10 July 2007. 102 Another example could be Tal‘at Al-Sadat, of the Wafd party, who gave an interview to an Egyptian newspaper in the summer of 2007 in



Notes

183

which he called for military government instead of democracy, claiming that Egypt is not ready for democracy. I have been unable to retrace the newspaper in question. 103 Al-Sayyid Yassin, Al-Dîmuqrâtiyyah wa hiwâr al-thaqâfât: Tahlîl aluzmah wa tafkîk li al-khitâb, Mîrît: Cairo, 2007. 104 Ibid., p. 35. 105 Ibid., p. 105. 106 Ridâ Hilâl, Al-Amrakah wa al-aslamah: Ma’zaq ‘Arab al-yawm, Dâr Misr al-mahrûsah: Cairo, 2004. 107 See p. 58. 108 Hilâl, Al-Amrakah wa al-aslamah, pp. 33f. 109 Ridâ Hilâl, Amrîka al-hulm wa al-siyâsah: Min awrâq ‘al-taghrîbiyyah al-Amrîkiyah’ , Al-Hadârah li al-nashr: Cairo, 1999, pp. 19ff. 110 Ibid., p. 15. 111 Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1983, p. 298. 112 Amrîka al-hulm wa al-siyâsah, 1999. 113 Ibid., p.12. 114 Ibid., p. 25. 115 Al-Amrakah wa al-Aslamah, pp. 25f. Chapter 4 1

Robbert Woltering, ‘Arab windows on Europe’, in Michael Wintle (ed.), Imagining Europe, Peter Lang: Brussels, 2008, pp. 177–96. 2 Bernard Lewis, ‘The roots of Muslim rage’, Atlantic, 266 (1990): 47–54, 56, 59–60; Thomas Friedman, ‘The core of Muslim rage’, The New York Times, 6 March 2002; Barry Rubin, ‘The real roots of Arab anti-Americanism’, Foreign Affairs, 81/6 (Nov/Dec, 2002); Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, Penguin Press: New York, 2004. 3 Suhaylah Hammad, ‘Al-Madhâhib al-adabiyyah al-Gharbiyyah alhadîthah wa athruhâ fî al-fikr al-‘Arabî’, Al-Manâr al-gadîd, 12 (Autumn 2000): 38–54. 4 Willem G. Weststeijn, Russische Literatuur, Meulenhoff: Amsterdam, 2004, pp. 35–40; Donald W. Treadgold, The West in Russia and China: Religious and Secular Thought in Modern Times (2 vols), Cambridge University Press: London, 1973, vol. 1, pp. 166–73. 5 Juan Jose Lopez Ibor, El Español y su complejo de inferioridad, Rialp: Madrid, 1951.

184 6

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Al-Sayyid Yassin, Al-Dîmuqrâtiyyah wa hiwâr al-thaqâfât. Tahlîl aluzmah wa tafkîk li al-khitâb, Mîrît: Cairo, 2007, p. 18. 7 Khalîl al-‘Inânî, ‘Li-mâdhâ fashalat al-lîberâliyyah ‘andinâ …’, Al-Qâhirah, 25 March 2005. 8 Egyptian Gazette, 31 July 2007, p. 1. 9 E.g. John Waterbury, ‘Hate your policies, love your institutions’, Foreign Affairs, 82/1 (2003) 58–69; this concerned a poll of nine Muslim countries, which did not include Egypt. Ruth Gledhill, ‘AntiAmerican feelings soar among Muslims, study finds’, The Times, 21 February 2007. 10 John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, Gallup Press: New York, 2007. 11 J.J. Zogby, What Arabs Think: Values, Beliefs and Concerns, Zogby International/The Arab Thought Foundation, 2002; Zogby International, Impressions of America 2004: How Arabs View America, How Arabs Learn About America, July 2004. 12 The Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed 16,000 people in 20 nations in May 2003, and more than 38,000 people in 44 nations in 2002. The results of both rounds of research were published in Views of a Changing World, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press: Washington, 2003. 13 Ronald F. Inglehart (ed.), Human Values and Social Change: Findings from the Values Surveys, Brill: Leiden, 2003. 14 Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World/ Edward P. Djerejian, Changing Minds, Winning Peace: A New Strategic Direction for US Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World, Washington, DC, 2003, p. 9. 15 Ibid., p. 24. 16 Quoted by Joseph Massad, Desiring Arabs, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2007, p. 4. The quote is taken from Gabartî’s Târîkh muddah al-Faransîs bi-Misr. 17 Usama ibn Munqidh, The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades (tr. Paul Cobb), Penguin Books: London, 2008, p. 149. 18 Xiaomei Chen, Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in PostMao China, Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, MD, 2002, p. 29 19 For similar (though more extreme) examples of this trend, see Yi Chen, ‘Ces intellectuels qui rêvent de Bush’, in Jeune Afrique/L’Intelligent, 2318 (12–18 June), 2005. 20 Ahmad al-Baghdâdî, ‘Lâ naft fî Kûsûvû’, http://www.alarabiya.net/ views/2008/02/26/46132.html (viewed 22 May 2008).



Notes

185

21 Hilâl 2003, pp. 25f. 22 Al-Sayyid Yassîn, Al-Dîmuqrâtiyyah wa hiwâr al-thaqâfât: Tahlîl aluzmah wa tafkîk li al-khitâb, Mîrît: Cairo, 2007, p. 144. 23 Ibrahîm Nâfi‘, ‘Urubbâ … wa âfâq al-mustaqbal’, Al-Ahrâm, 10 May 2005. 24 Randah Taqî al-Dîn, ‘Ayna Urubbâ?’, Al-Hayâh, 11 May 2005. 25 Various authors, Shu’ûn ‘Arabiyyah, 121, Fall 2005. 26 Hasan Nâfi‘, Al-Ittihâd al-Urubbî wa al-durûs al-mustafâdah ‘Arabiyyan, Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-‘Arabiyyah: Beirut, 2004. 27 Hasan Nâfi‘, ‘Li-mâdhâ nagahat Urûbbâ wa fashala al-‘âlam al-‘Arabî’, http://www.alarabiya.net/views/2008/03/05/46498.html (viewed 6 March 2008). 28 Ibrâhîm Nâfi‘ (ed.), Mâdhâ yagrî fî Sharq Urubbâ?, Al-Ahram: Cairo, 2001. 29 Ibid., pp. 7f. 30 Ibid., p. 216. 31 Ibid., p. 225. 32 James Carrier (ed.), Occidentalism: Images of the West, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1995, p. 10. 33 Yassîn, Al-Dîmuqrâtiyyah, p. 243. 34 Ibid., p. 242. 35 This of course does not apply to instances where foreign names are transcribed or such loanwords are used that the Arabic script is ill-equipped to convey. Someone who appears similarly motivated is Muhammad ‘Imârah, except that in his case the clarifications consistently fail to clarify: ‘al-zangiyyah/Nigritid’ (for ‘Négritude’); ‘fursân al-ma‘bad/the kinghts Templur’ (for ‘the Knights Templar’); ‘muhattimî al-tamâthîl/ Icemoclasts’ (for ‘iconoclasts’); from Al-Islâm fî ‘uyûn Gharbiyyah: Bayna iftirâ’ al-gahlah … wa insâf al-‘ulamâ’ , Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2005, pp. 115, 124, 126. 36 Rasheed El-Enany, Arab Representations of the Occident: East West Encounters in Arabic Fiction, Routledge: London, 2006, p. 205. 37 ‘Imârah, Al-Islâm fî ‘uyûn Gharbiyyah. 38 Ibid., cover text. 39 ‘Alâ’ al-Nâdî, ‘Ishkâliyyah al-gharb fî al-khitâb al-harakî al-islâmî’, Al-Manâr al-gadîd, 22 (Spring 2003): 74–91, p. 79. 40 Ibid., p. 80. 41 Gallup, ‘Blame for Sept. 11 attacks unclear for many in the Islamic world’, 1 March 2002; http://www.gallup.com/poll/5404/Blame-SeptAttacks-Unclear-Many-Islamic-World.aspx (viewed 5 March 2008).

186

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

42 The Lavon affair involved Israeli secret operatives bombing American and British targets in Egypt in 1954; the practice of ‘rendition’ in the American ‘war on terror’ has involved countries as seemingly unlikely as Syria; in 1994 the American ministry of defence considered a project for a non-lethal weapon aimed at disrupting enemy discipline and morale, involving a chemical that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other; the question as to whether Israeli operatives have bombed synagogues and other Jewish targets in certain Arab countries in order to stimulate Arab Jews into aliyah remains contentious, see Norman Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times, Jewish Publication Society: Philadelphia, 1991, p. 162; the bird flu theory belongs to the category of anti-Islamic car tyres and Zionist underpants causing infertility. 43 See also Asef Bayat, ‘Conspiracies and theories’, ISIM Review, 18 (Autumn 2006): 5. 44 Karam Muhammad Zuhdî et al., Nahr al-dhikrayât: Al-murâga‘ât alfiqhiyyah li al-gamâ‘ât al-Islâmiyyah, Maktabah al-Turâth al-Islâmiyyah: Cairo, 2003. 45 Karam Muhammad Zuhdî et al., Tafgîrât al-Riyâd: Al-ahkâm wa alâthâr, Maktabah al-Turâth al-Islâmiyyah: Cairo, 2003. 46 Zuhdî, Nahr al-dhikrayât, p. 233f. 47 Bayat, ‘Conspiracies and theories’. 48 ‘Abbâs al-Tarâbîlî, ‘Al-khawf … li-radd al-fi‘l’, Al-Wafd, 12 September 2001. Note that this article also mentions the Lavon affair. 49 Hasan Hanafî, Muqaddimah fî ‘ilm al-istighrâb, Al-Dâr al-Faniyyah: Cairo, 1991, pp. 29f. 50 Tarâbîshî 2004, passim. 51 Galâl Amîn, Khurâfah al-taqaddum wa al-takhalluf: Al-‘Arab wa alhadârah al-Gharbiyyah fî mustahall al-qarn al-wâhid wa al-‘ashrîn, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2005, p. 19. Chapter 5 1

2

Noureddine Afaya, L’Occident dans l’imaginaire arabo-musulman, Toubkal: Casablanca,1997; Nassib Samir El-Husseini, L’Occident Imaginaire: la vision de l’Autre dans la conscience politique arabe, Presses de l’Université du Québec: Sainte-Foy, 1998; Rasheed El-Enany, Arab Representations of the Occident: East–West Encounters in Arabic Fiction, Routledge: London, 2006. Xiaomei Chen, Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in PostMao China, Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, MD, 2002.

3

Notes

187

Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, Penguin Press: New York, 2004. 4 Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2002, passim; Daniel Newman, ‘Myths and realities in Muslim Alterist discourse: Arab travellers in Europe in the age of the Nahda (19th c.)’, Chronos, 6 (2002), pp. 7–76. 5 Enany, 2006 p. 9. 6 Abu-Rabi‘, 2004, p. 7.

Bibliography

The following is not an exhaustive listing of relevant literature, but rather a list of publications that have been cited in the thesis, minor references excluded. Abaza, Mona, ‘Two intellectuals: the Malaysian S.N. Al-Attas and the Egyptian Mohammed ‘Immara, and the Islamization of knowledge debate’, Asian Journal of Social Science, 30/2 (2002): 354–83. Abaza, Mona, ‘A commentary on Tanwir and Al-Manar al-Jadid in Egypt’, Orient, 41/2 (2000): 301–13. Abdo, Geneive, No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2000. Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim, Arab Rediscovery of Europe: A Study in Cultural Encounters, Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1963. Abu-Rabi’, Ibrahim M., Contemporary Arab Thought: Studies in Post-1967 Arab Intellectual History, Pluto Press: London, 2004. Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World/ Edward P. Djerejian, Changing Minds, Winning Peace: A New Strategic Direction for US Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World, Washington, DC, 2003. Afaya, Noureddine, L’Occident dans l’imaginaire arabo-musulman, Toubkal: Casablanca, 1997. Ahmed, Leila, Women and Gender in Islam, Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 1992. Ajami, Fouad, ‘The end of pan-Arabism’, Foreign Affairs, 57/2 (Winter 1978): 354–74. Akhavi, Shahrough, ‘Sunni modernist theories of social contract in contemporary Egypt’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 35/1 (2003): 23–49.

190 Occidentalisms in the Arab World Ali, Nadje al-, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The Egyptian Women’s Movement, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000. Allen, Roger, A Period of Time, Ithaca Press: Reading, 1992. Allen, Roger, The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction, Syracuse University Press: New York, 1982. Amîn, Galâl, The Illusion of Progress in the Arab World: A Critique of Western Misconstructions (tr. David Wilmsen), AUC Press: Cairo, 2006. Baker, Raymond, Islam Without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 2003. Baker, R., Egypt’s Uncertain Revolution under Nasser and Sadat, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, London, 1978. Bayat, Asef, ‘Conspiracies and theories’, ISIM Review, 18 (Autumn 2006): 5. Bayat, Asef , ‘Transforming the Arab world: the Arab Human Development Report and the politics of change’, Development and Change, 36/6: 1225–37. Beller, Manfred and Leerssen, Joep (eds), The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters: A Critical Survey, Rodopi: Amsterdam, New York, 2007. Bierman, Irene A. (ed.), Napoleon in Egypt, Ithaca Press: Reading, 2003. Bonnett, Alastair, The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics, and History, Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2004. Buruma, Ian and Margalit, Avishai, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies, Penguin: New York, 2004. See also Margalit Calvert, John, ‘The World is an undutiful boy! Sayyid Qutb’s American experience’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 11/ 1 (2000): 87–103. Carrier, James (ed.), Occidentalism: Images of the West, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1995. Charaffedine, Fahima, Culture et idéologie dans le monde arabe, Harmattan: Paris, 1994. Chen, Xiaomei, Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China, Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, MD, 2002 (1995). Chen, Xiaomei, ‘Occidentalism as counterdiscourse: ‘He Shang’ in postMao China’, Critical Inquiry, 18 (1992): 686–712. Dijk, Teun A. van, Racism and the Press, Routledge: London, 1991. Enany, Rasheed El-, Arab Representations of the Occident: East–West Encounters in Arabic Fiction, Routledge: London, 2006. Esposito, John L. and Mogahed, Dalia, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, Gallup Press: New York, 2007.



Bibliography

191

Findley, Carter Vaughn, ‘An Occidentalist in Europe: Ahmed Midhat meets Madame Gülnar, 1889’, American Historical Review, 103/1 (February 1998): 15–49. Fokkema, Douwe, ‘Orientalism, Occidentalism and the notion of discourse: arguments for a new cosmopolitanism’, Comparative Criticism, 18 (1996): 227–41. Foucault, Michel, L’Archéologie du savoir, Gallimard: Paris 1969. Friedman, Thomas, ‘The core of Muslim rage’, New York Times, 6 March 2002. Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man, Free Press: New York, 1992. Gallup, ‘Blame for Sept. 11 attacks unclear for many in the Islamic world’, 1 March 2002; http://www.gallup.com/poll/5404/Blame-Sept-AttacksUnclear-Many-Islamic-World.aspx (viewed 5 March 2008). Gledhill, Ruth, ‘Anti-American feelings soar among Muslims, study finds’, The Times, 21 February 2007. Gogwilt, Christopher, The Invention of the West: Joseph Conrad and the Double-mapping of Europe and Empire, Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, 1995. Hamzawy, Amr, ‘Exploring theoretical and programmatic changes in contemporary Islamist discourse: the journal Al-Manar al-Jadid’, in Azza Karam (ed.), Transnational Political Islam: Religion, Ideology, Power, Pluto Press: London, 2004. Heikal, Mohamed, Nasser: The Cairo Documents, Doubleday & Co.: New York, 1973. Hildebrandt, Thomas, Emanzipation oder isolation vom westlichen Lehrer? Die debatte um Hasan Hanafîs ‘Einführung in die Wissenschaft der Okzidentalistik’, Klaus Schwarz Verlag: Berlin, 1998. Hourani, Albert, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1983. Huntington, Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster: New York, 1998. Huntington, Samuel, ‘The clash of civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, 72/3 (1993). Hussein, Taha, The Future of Culture in Egypt, Palm Press: Cairo, 1998. Husseini, Nassib Samir El-, L’Occident imaginaire: la vision de l’Autre dans la conscience politique arabe, Presses de l’Université du Québec: Sainte-Foy, 1998. Inglehart, Ronald F. (ed.), Human Values and Social Change: Findings from the Values Surveys, Brill: Leiden, 2003. Jankowski, James, Egypt: A Short History, Oneworld: Oxford, 2000.

192 Occidentalisms in the Arab World Jankowski, James P, ‘The Egyptian Blue Shirts and the Egyptian Wafd, 1935–1938’, Middle Eastern Studies (Cassirer: London), 6/1 (January 1970): 77–95. Keddie, Nikki R., An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din ‘al-Afghani’, University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1968. Kenny, L.M., ‘East versus West in al-Muqtataf, 1875–1900’, in D.P. Little (ed.), Essays on Islamic Civilization, E.J. Brill: Leiden, 1976. Khalafallah, Haifaa Genedi, Rethinking Islamic Law: Genesis and Evolution in the Islamic Legal Methods and Structures: The Case of a 20th Century ‘Alim’s Journey into his Legal Traditions, Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917– 1996), unpublished doctoral thesis, Georgetown University, 2000. Lee, Robert D., Overcoming Tradition and Modernity: The Search for Islamic Authenticity, Westview Press: Boulder, CO, 1997. Leezenberg, Michiel, ‘Edward Said, Michel Foucault en de Islam’, Eutopia, 6 (December 2003): 73–7. Lesch, David, ‘Abd al-Nasser and the United States’, in Elie Podeh and Ann Winckler (eds), Revisiting Nasserism: Revolution and Historical Memory in Modern Egypt, University of Florida: Gainesville, 2004. Lewis, Bernard, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2002. Lewis, Bernard, ‘The roots of Muslim rage’, Atlantic, 266 (1990): 47–54, 56, 59–60. Lewis, Martin W. and Wigen, Kären E., The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, University of California Press: Berkeley, 1997. Lopez Ibor, Juan Jose, El Español y su complejo de inferioridad, Rialp: Madrid, 1951. MacLean, Gerald (ed.), Re-Orienting the Renaissance: Cultural Exchanges with the East, Palgrave MacMillan: Houndmills, 2005. Margalit, A. and Buruma, I. , ‘Occidentalism’, New York Review of Books, 49/1 (2002). See also Buruma. Matar, Nabil (ed. and tr.), In the Land of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century, Routledge: New York, London, 2003. Mitchell, Richard P., The Society of the Muslim Brothers, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1993 (1969). Moreh, Shmuel, Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle of the First Seven Months of the French Occupation of Egypt, E.J. Brill: Leiden, 1975. Moreh, Shmuel, ‘Napoleon and the French impact on Egyptian society in the eyes of al-Jabarti’, in Irene A. Bierman (ed.), Napoleon in Egypt, Ithaca Press: Reading, 2003, pp. 77–98.



Bibliography

193

Nasser, Gamal Abd el-, The Philosophy of the Revolution, Dar al-Ma‘aref: Cairo, 1954. Nemo, Philippe, Qu’est-ce que l’Occident, PUF: Paris, 2004. Newman, Daniel L., An Imam in Paris: Al-Tahtawi’s Visit to France (1826– 31), Saqi Books: London, 2004. Newman, Daniel, ‘Myths and realities in Muslim Alterist discourse: Arab travellers in Europe in the age of the Nahda (19th c.)’, Chronos, 6 (2002): 7–76. Nixon, Richard M., Seize the Moment: America’s Challenge in a OneSuperpower World, Simon & Schuster: New York, 1992. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Views of a Changing World, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press: Washington, 2003. Quataert, Donald, The Ottoman Empire 1700–1922, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000. Rubin, Barry, ‘The real roots of Arab anti-Americanism’, Foreign Affairs, 81/6 (November/December 2002). Ryad, Umar, Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashîd Ridâ and his Associates (1898–1935), unpublished PhD thesis, Leiden University, 2008. Sabry, Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse: A Study in the Sociology of Modern Arabic Literature, Saqi Books: London, 1993. Edward Said, Orientalism, Vintage Books: New York, 1994 (1978). Shahin, E. D., ‘Rashid Rida, Muhammad’, in John L. Esposito (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2001 (1995). Shahin, Emad Eldin, Through Muslim Eyes, International Institute of Islamic Thought: Herndon, 1993. Shahin, Emad Eldin, ‘Muhammad Rashid Rida’s perspectives on the West as reflected in Al-Manar’, The Muslim World, 79/2 (April 1989): 113–32. Smoor, Pieter, ‘The mental world of Sayyid Qutb: seedbed for the Muslim Brothers’, in Manfred Woidich (ed.), Amsterdam Middle Eastern Studies, Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag: Wiesbaden, 1990, pp. 197–215. Snodgrass, Judith, Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism and the Columbian Exposition, University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2003. Tauber, Eliezer, ‘Rashid Rida as pan-Arabist before World War I’, The Muslim World, 79/2 (April 1989): 102–12. Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamed, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography, Palgrave MacMillan: Hampshire, and New York, 2001.

194 Occidentalisms in the Arab World Terry, Janice, The Wafd 1919–1952: Cornerstone of Egyptian Political Power, Third World Centre: London, 1982. Treadgold, Donald W., The West in Russia and China: Religious and Secular Thought in Modern Times (2 vols), Cambridge University Press: London, 1973. Varisco, Daniel Martin, ‘Review of Mohamed Tavakoli-Targhi Refashioning Iran 2001’, H-Net Reviews, September 2002, http://www.h-net.msu.edu/ reviews/showrev.cgi?path=221631031770217 (viewed 18 August 2008). Vatican, ‘Nostra aetate. declaratio de ecclesiae habitudine ad religiones nonChristianas’, Verbum Domini, 43 (1965): 273–7. Wagner, Tamara S.,‘Occidentalism: Edward Said’s legacy for the Occidentalist imaginary and its critique’, in Silvia Nagy-Zekmi (ed.), Paradoxical Citizenship: Edward Said, Lexington Books: Lanham, MD, 2006. Wagner, Tamara S., Occidentalism in Novels of Malaysia and Singapore, 1819–2004 , Edwin Mellen Press: Lewiston, NY, 2005. Wagner, Tamara S., ‘Emulative versus revisionist Occidentalism: monetary and other values in recent Singaporean fiction’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 39/2 (2004): 73–94. Waterbury, John, ‘Hate your policies, love your institutions’, Foreign Affairs, 82/1 (2003): 58–69. Woltering, Robbert, ‘Arab windows on Europe’, in Michael Wintle, Imagining Europe, Peter Lang: Brussels, 2008. Woltering, Robbert, ‘Egyptian public intellectuals and their “Wests”’, ISIM Review, 19 (Spring 2007): 42–3. Woltering, Robbert, ‘Ik dacht dat de UNDP het nooit zou publiceren’, ZemZem, 1/2, 2005. Woltering, Robbert, ‘They hate us because we’re free’ (review, in Dutch), Eutopia, 7 (May 2004): 91–4. (Available in English online: www.risq. org/article356.html; viewed 4 June, 2008.) Woltering, Robbert, ‘The roots of Islamist popularity’, Third World Quarterly, 23/6, 2002: 1133–43. Zogby, J.J., What Arabs Think: Values, Beliefs and Concerns, Zogby International/The Arab Thought Foundation, 2002. Zogby International, Impressions of America 2004: How Arabs View America, How Arabs Learn About America, July 2004. Zürcher, Erik-Jan, Turkey: A Modern History, I.B.Tauris: London, 1993.



Bibliography

195

Arabic sources ‘Abd al-‘Azîz, Zaynab, Mawqif al-Gharb min al-Islâm, Dâr al-kitâb al-‘Arabî: Cairo, Damascus, 2003 (1993). ‘Abd al-Dâ’im, ‘Abd Allâh, ‘Al-‘Arab wa al-‘âlam bayn saddâm al-thaqâfât wa hiwâr al-thaqâfât’, Al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabî, January 1996. ‘Abduh, Muhammad, Risâlah al-tawhîd, s.n.: Cairo, 1953. ‘Âlim, Mahmûd Amîn al-, Al-fikr al-‘Arabî bayna al-khusûsiyyah wa alkawniyyah, Cairo: Dâr al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabî, 1996. ‘Imârah, Muhammad, Al-Gharb wa al-Islâm: Ayn al-khat’ wa ayn al-sawwâb?, Maktabah al-shurûq al-duwaliyyah: Cairo, 2004. ‘Imârah, Muhammad, Al-Islâm fî ‘uyûn Gharbiyyah bayn iftirâ’ al-guhalâ’ … wa insâf al-‘ulamâ’, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2005. ‘Imârah, Muhammad, Al-Islâm wa al-âkhar. Man ya‘tarif bi-man? … wa man yankar man?, Maktabah al-shurûq al-duwaliyyah: Cairo, 2004 (2001). ‘Imârah, Muhammad, Al-usûliyyah bayn al-Gharb wa al-Islâm, Dar alShurûq: Cairo, 2006 (1998). ‘Imârah, Muhammad, Istrâtîgîyyah al-tansîr fî al-‘âlam al-Islâmî: dirâsah fî a‘mâl mu’tamar kûlûrâdû li-tansîr al-Muslimîn, aw brûtûkûlât qasâwisah al-tansîr, Markaz dirâsât al-‘âlam al-Islâmî: Malta, 1992. ‘Inânî, Khalîl al-, ‘Li-mâdhâ fashalat al-lîberâliyyah ‘andinâ …’, Al-Qâhirah, 25 March 2005. Abû al-Fath, Mahmûd, Ma‘a al-Wafd al-Misrî, s.n.: Cairo, s.d. Abû Zayd, Nasr, ‘Al-Turâth bayn al-ta’wîl wa al-talwîn. Qirâ’ah fî mashrû‘ al-yusâr al-Islâmî’, Alif , 10 (1990). Amîn, Galâl, ‘Asr al-tashhîr bi al-‘Arab wa al-Muslimîn. Nahnu wa al-‘âlam ba‘d 11 Sabtambar 2001, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2004. Amîn, Galâl, Khurâfah al-taqaddum wa al-takhalluf. Al-‘Arab wa al-hadârah al-Gharbiyyah fî mustahall al-qarn al-wâhid wa al-‘ashrîn, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2005. Amîn, Galâl, Mâdhâ ‘allamatnî al-hayâh, Dâr al-shurûq: Cairo, 2006. Amîr, Bahâ’ al-, ‘Brûtûkûlât hukamâ’ Sahyûn … al-ra’y al-âkhar’, Al-Manâr al-gadîd, 22 (Spring 2004): 120–36. Arslân, Shakîb, Al-Sayyid Rashîd Ridâ wa ikhâ’ arba‘în sanah, s.n.: Damascus, 1937. Baghdâdî, Ahmad al-, ‘Lâ naft fî Kûsûvû’, http://www.alarabiya.net/ views/2008/02/26/46132.html (viewed 22 May 2008). Baghdâdî, Ahmad al-, ‘Na‘am, al-lîberâliyyûn wahduhum humma aldîmuqrâtiyyûn’, in Shâkir al-Nâbulsî (ed.), Al-lîberâliyyûn al-gudud. Gadal fikrî, Manshûrât al-Gamal: Köln, 2005.

196 Occidentalisms in the Arab World Bannâ, Ragab al-, ‘Laysa awwilhum Salmân Rushdî walâ âkhirhum “Tâtyânâ”. Sûratâni li al-Islâm fî Brîtanyâ’, Uktûbar, 6 July 1997. Bannâ, Ragab al-, ‘Sûrah al-Islâm fî al-Gharb bayn sinâ‘ah tazwîr al-târîkh … wa al-tadlîl al-i‘lâmî’, Uktûbar, 1 June 1997. Bishrî, Târiq al-, Al-hiwâr al-Islâmî al-‘ilmânî, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2005 (1996). Bishrî, Târiq al-, Al-Malâmih al-‘âmmah li al-fikr al-siyâsî al-Islâmî fî altârîkh al-mu‘âsir, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2005, 1996. Dâhir, Mas‘ûd, ‘Al-Yabân bi-‘uyûn ‘Arabiyya’ (‘Japan in Arab eyes’), in Various, Al-Gharb bi-‘uyûn ‘Arabiyya (‘The West in Arab eyes’): 62–89, Kitâb al-‘Arabî, 60: Al-Qahira, 2005. Ghazzâlî, Muhammad al-, Dhalâm min al-Gharb, Nahdah Misr: Cairo, 2003. Ghibryâl, Kamâl, ‘‘Alâ ghayr mâ na‘taqid … al-duwal al-kubrâ lâ tukayyil bi-makiyalayn’, Al-Qâhirah, 10 July 2007. Habîb, Kâdhim, ‘Al-‘Alâqât al-‘Arabiyyah al-Uwrûbiyyah al-râhinah fî daw’ al-sirâ‘ al-munsaram bayn al-Sharq wa al-Gharb’, Al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabî, March 1993. Hammad, Suhaylah, ‘Al-Madhâhib al-adabiyyah al-Gharbiyyah al-hadîthah wa athruhâ fî al-fikr al-‘Arabî’, Al-Manâr al-gadîd, 12 (Autumn 2000): 38–54. Hanafî, Hasan, ‘Hârî Pûtar Gharbî … wa Hânî Gawhar ‘Arabî’, Al-‘Arabî, 18 August 2007. Hanafî, Hasan, Al-turâth wa al-tagdîd: Mawqifunâ min al-turâth al-qadîm, Manshûrât Magd: Cairo, 2002 (1980). Hanafî, Hasan, Muqaddimah fî ‘ilm al-istighrâb, Al-Dâr al-Faniyyah: Cairo, 1991. Hayawân, Muhammad al-, ‘Kalimah hubb’, Al-Gumhûriyyah, 7 May 1988. Hilâl, Ridâ, Al-Amrakah wa al-aslamah: Ma’zaq ‘Arab al-yawm, Dâr Misr al-mahrûsah: Cairo, 2004. Hilâl, Ridâ, Amrîka al-hulm wa al-siyâsah: Min awrâq ‘al-taghrîbiyyah alAmrîkiyah’ , Al-Hadârah li al-nashr: Cairo, 1999. Huwaydî, Fahmî, ‘Ba‘d ikhtirâ‘ al-‘aduww al-Islâmî. Hal hiyyâ harb gadîdah salîbiyyah wa talîfîzyûniyyah?!’, Al-Magallah, 25 March 1995. Kâmil, Mustafâ, al-Shams al-mushriqah (Matba‘ah al-Liwâ’: s.l. 1904). Mansûr, Ibrâhîm, Al-Izdiwâg al-thaqâfî wa uzmah al-mu‘âradah al-Misriyyah, Mîrît: Cairo, 2006. Masîrî, ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-, ‘Al-Haqîqah wa al-wahm … fî qissah brûtûkûlât hukamâ‘ sahyûn’, Al-Manâr al-gadîd, 21 (Winter 2003): 20–38. Masîrî, ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-, ‘Al-Hadâthah al-Dârwîniyyah wa tasâ‘ud mu‘addal al-tasaddâ lahâ’, http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/



Bibliography

197

E7C257EC-2550–470B-B014–186E7F208AD6.htm (viewed 9 June 2008). Masîrî, ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-, Al-Brûtûkûllat, al-Yahûdiyyah wa al-Sahyûniyyah Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2003. Masîrî, ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-, Mawsû‘ah al-Yahûd wa al-Yahûdiyyah wa alSahyûniyyah, Dâr al-Shurûq: Cairo, 2003 (1999). Nâbulsî, Shâkir al- (ed.), Al-lîberâliyyûn al-gudud: Gadal fikrî, Manshûrât al-Gamal: Köln, 2005. Nâdî, ‘Alâ’ al-, ‘Ishkâliyyah al-gharb fî al-khitâb al-harakî al-islâmî’, AlManâr al-gadîd, 22 (Spring 2003): 74–91. Nâfi‘, Hasan, ‘Li-mâdhâ nagahat Urûbbâ wa fashala al-‘âlam al-‘Arabî’, http://www.alarabiya.net/views/2008/03/05/46498.html (viewed 6 March 2008). Nâfi‘, Hasan, Al-Ittihâd al-Urubbî wa al-durûs al-mustafâdah ‘Arabiyyan, Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-‘Arabiyyah: Beirut, 2004. Nâfi‘, Ibrâhîm (ed.), Mâdhâ yagrî fî Sharq Urubbâ?, Al-Ahram: Cairo, 2001. Nâfi‘, Ibrahîm, ‘Urubbâ … wa âfâq al-mustaqbal’, Al-Ahrâm, 10 May 2005. Naggâr, Zaghlûl al-, Al-Islâm wa al-Gharb fî kitâbât al-Gharbiyyîn, Nahdah Misr: Cairo, 2005 (2003). Nâsif, Lutfî, ‘Al-Wahdah al-Urûbiyyah … wa al-tamazzuq al-‘Arabî … limâdhâ?!’, Al-Gumhûriyyah, 29 September 1990. Nusayrî, Hânî, ‘Al-lîberâliyyûn al-gudud fî al-mantiqah al-‘Arabiyyah’, in Shâkir al-Nâbulsî (ed.), Al-lîberâliyyûn al-gudud: Gadal fikrî, Manshûrât al-Gamal: Köln, 2005, p.107. Qutb, Sayyid/‘Abd al-Fattâh al-Khâlidî (ed.), Amrîkâ min al-dâkhil bimandhâr Sayyid Qutb, Dâr al-Manârah: Djeddah/Dâr al-Wafâ’: Mansura, 1986. Qutb, Sayyid, Ma‘âlim fî al-tarîq, Dâr al-Shurûq: Beirut, n.d. Rumayhî, Muhammad al-, ‘Hal yukhâf al-Gharb al-Muslimîn?’, Al-‘Arabî, September 1992. Sakr, Fahd Muhammad al-, ‘Al-Siyâsah al-‘Arabiyyah fî dhall al-mutaghayyirât al-duwaliyyah’, Kull al-‘Arab, 9 April 1990. Shâhâk, Isra’îl, Al-Diyânah al-Yahûdiyyah wa mawqifuhâ min ghayr al-Yahûd (tr. Hasan Khadir), Tab‘ah sîna li al-nashr: Cairo, 1994. Shawqî, Ahmad, ‘Al-‘Arab awwal al-mustafîdîn min al-tahawwulât al-gadîdah’, Al-Masâ’, 18 November 1989. Shawqî, Ahmad, ‘Ba‘d inhiyâr ma‘âqil al-shuyû‘iyyah fî Urubbâ al-Sharqiyyah’, Al-Masâ’ , 18 November 1989. Shelby, Al-Sayyid Amin, Al-gharb fî kitâbât al-mufakkirîn al-Misriyyîn, Maktabah al-Usrah: Cairo, 2003.

198 Occidentalisms in the Arab World Sub‘î, Faysal Al-, ‘Islâm bi-lâ Muslimîn … wa Muslimîn bi-lâ Islâm’, http:// www.alarabiya.net/Articles/2005/07/26/15275.htm (viewed 14 June 2006). Tahtâwî, Rifâ‘ah Râfi‘ al-, Takhlîs al-ibrîz fî talkhîs Bârîs, Al-Hay’ah al-Misriyyah al-‘âmmah li al-kitâb: Cairo, 1993. Taqî al-Dîn, Randah, ‘Ayna Urubbâ?’, Al-Hayâh, 11 May 2005. Tarâbîlî, ‘Abbâs al-, ‘Al-khawf … li-radd al-fi‘l’, Al-Wafd, 12 September 2001. Tarâbîshî, George, Al-Marad bi-al-Gharb, Dâr Petrâ: Damascus, 2005. Yassîn, Al-Sayyid, Al-Dîmuqrâtiyyah wa hiwâr al-thaqâfât: Tahlîl al-uzmah wa tafkîk li al-khitâb, Mîrît: Cairo, 2007. Zayn, Ahmad, ‘Bi-lâ mashâkil’, Al-Akhbâr, 27 May 1988. Zuhdî, Karam Muhammad et al., Nahr al-dhikrayât: Al-murâga‘ât alfiqhiyyah li al-gamâ‘ât al-Islâmiyyah, Maktabah al-Turâth al-Islâmiyyah: Cairo, 2003. Zuhdî, Karam Muhammad et al., Tafgîrât al-Riyâd: Al-ahkâm wa al-âthâr, Maktabah al-Turâth al-Islâmiyyah: Cairo, 2003. Websites Al-‘Arabî www.al-araby.com Al-‘Arabiyyah www.alarabiya.net Al-Ahram www.ahram.org.eg Al-Gazîrah www.aljazeera.net Al-Masrî al-yawm www.almasry-alyoum.com Al-Sha‘b www.alshaab.com Al-Usbû‘ www.elaosboa.com

Index

Abaza, Mona  181n69 ‘Abbâs Helmî II  61 ‘Abd al-‘Azîz, Zaynab  102, 103, 112 ‘Abd al-Dâ’im, ‘Abd Allah  93 ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Sa‘îd  146 Abdo, Geneive  181n67 ‘Abduh, Muhammad  52–4 and Afaya  12 and Al-Muwaylihî  55 and ‘Appropriated West’  54, 64, 85 exile  52 ideological differences with Ridâ  67, 68, 69 mentor to Ridâ  65, 174n62 mentor to Zaghlûl  61 mufti of Egypt  53 nationalist leader  52 separate philosophy  61 student of al-Afghânî  52 and ulema  66 and Wafd  63 Abû al-Fath, Mahmûd  173n54 Abu Ghraib prison  139 Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim  176n96 Abu-Rabi’, Ibrahim M.  29, 161, 169n62

Abû Zayd, Nasr  170n73 Afaya, Noureddine  12, 166n28 Afghânî, Gamâl al-Dîn al-  50–2, 54, 55, 61, 63, 65, 70 Afghanistan  88, 139 aggression, Western  139 Ahmed, Leila  173n57 Akhavi, Shahrough  180n57 Amîr, Bahâ‘ al-  181n66 alarmism, in media  105 Alexandria  44, 48, 49, 52 Algeria, French occupation  60 ‘Alî, Muhammad  43, 44, 54, 55, 73 Allen, Roger  173n41, 176n101 America see United States of America American dream  96, 126 Americanization  124, 126 Amîn, Galâl  94–101 American democracy  96 and Arab Human Development Report  95 and Arab ‘inferiority complex’  154 and construction of West  142 dualism  97 immorality of the West  95–6

200

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

as leftist-nationalist  30 Marxism  101 September 11 2001 attack  95–8 use of Western sources  100 ‘Weak West’  129 West defined in economic terms  98 Western cultural context  100, 148 Amin, Qasim  63, 64, 67, 173n57 anti-islamitism, Western  92, 93 ‘Appropriated West’  40, 54, 84–5, 86, 130 Arab Human Development Report (2002) (UNDP)  94, 178n17 Arab–Israeli War (1967)  28, 78, 154, 169n62 Arab Republic of Egypt  75 Arab ‘West’  21–2 Al-‘Arabî  90 Arabic fiction, West as theme  11 Arslân, Shakîb  67 Asia  132 see also Japan Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal  92 atheism, European  47 ‘Attâr, Hasan al-  43 ‘authenticity’  52, 101, 107, 131, 132, 157, 159 auto-Occidentalism  26 Al-Azhar (university)  52, 55, 64, 111 Baghdad Pact (1955)  80 Baghdâdî, Ahmad al-  121, 130 Baker, Raymond  106 Bannâ, Hasan al-  71, 77, 83, 110, 151, 159, 174n62 Bayat, Asef  186n43 Beedham, Brian  177n8 Beller, Manfred  167n31

‘Benign West’  40, 82, 83, 86, 130 Bierman, Irene A.  171n16 Bin Laden, Osama  97, 121 binary oppositions 6, 37, 113, 114 Bishrî, Târiq al-  107 ‘Blue Shirts’ (paramilitary youth wing, Wafd)  63 Bonaparte, Napoleon  41 Bonnett, Alistair  20–1, 22, 168n52 Bosnia  102, 126, 139, 143 Buruma, I.  7–10, 141, 157, 166n17, 166n19 Bush, George W.  170n3 Cairo, modernization of  48, 49 caliphate, abolition of  68, 92 caliphs, four rightly guided  66, 77 Calvert, John  175n78 capitalism, Western  27, 69, 70, 99 ‘capitulations’  62 Carrier, James  3, 4, 146 Chen, Xiaomei  3, 17, 18, 137, 138, 157 Chen, Yi  184n19 China  17 Christianity  64, 112–13, 116–17 civil rights  23, 64, 113 civilization, concept of  44–5, 72, 90, 100, 122, 123 Claes, Willy (Secretary-General, NATO)  102, 113 Clinton, William J. (Bill)  126 Code Romain  50 Cold War and aftermath capitalism  98 demise of communism  77, 78, 87–8, 108, 123 images of West  27–8, 35, 131, 159

‘need’ for new enemy of West  101 and ‘True West’  85, 86 and West as political unit  2, 37, 72, 83, 89 colonialism  11, 67 communism  27, 75, 86, 91 conspiracy theories  104, 152–3 constitution, Egyptian  62, 81 Copts  47, 56, 60, 125 Crusades  41, 48, 53, 70, 83, 172n40 culturalism, view of West  90, 93 Dâhir, Mas‘ûd  169n58 democracy American  125 and Egypt  122, 146 European  145 and Islam  38, 124 as Western  138 Dijk, Teun A. van  15 discourse analysis  14, 15–18, 28 discursive determinism  17, 135, 141–2 Djerejian, Edward P.  184n14 Dostojevski, Fjodor  8 Dryden, John  176n95 East, spirituality of  83, 96 economic liberalization  75, 146 Egypt and Arabic/ European identity  24, 25, 64 as British protectorate  61, 83 financial crisis (1876)  49 ideological context  25–9 importance of heritage  59, 60 lack of political freedom  28 Egyptomania  60, 63

Index

201

‘ethno-Orientalism’  4 Eliot, T.S.  8 Enany, Rasheed El-  11, 12, 149, 160 Enlightment, European  8, 9, 38 equality  23, 40, 56, 57, 69, 85, 121 Esposito, John L.  134 essentialism  38, 123, 129 ‘ethno-Occidentalism’  3 Eurocentricity  3, 19, 27 Europe arts  81 attitude to Egypt  59 imperialism  65 as political and cultural threat  50, 60 as progressive  45, 124 scientific advances  43, 44, 45 European Union, expansion of  89, 130, 143–6 Fawdâ, Farag  105 feminism see women’s rights fiction, Arabic  11, 160 Findley, Carter Vaughn  4 ‘First World’  23 Fokkema, Douwe  18 Ford, Peter  171n3 foreign policy, Western  125, 134, 138 Foucault, Michel  15, 18 Fourteen Point Plan (1918)  62, 143 France Constitutional Charter (1814)  47, 48 control after Egyptian bankruptcy  49 loss of power to US  71

202

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

as major power in Europe  21, 23, 74, 75 as progressive  44, 45, 46, 85 Friedman, Thomas  183n2 Fu’âd, Sultan  61 Fukuyama, Francis  91 Fuller, Graham  104, 179n46 fundamentalism  61, 66, 111, 124 Gabartî, ‘Abd al-Rahmân al-  40–3 on French occupation  171n12 French scientific superiority  79 and gender issues  136, 137 Western legal system  80, 81, 82 gâhiliyya (‘age of ignorance’)  77 gender  134, 135–7 geographical concept of West  22–5 Germany, unification  of  89–90 al- gharb (‘the West’)  21, 23, 130 Ghazzâlî, Muhammad al-  66, 105–6, 116, 179n47, 179n48 Ghibryâl, Kamâl  122 Gibbon, Edward  167n42 globalization  29, 122, 131, 157, 159, 161, 162 GoGwilt, Christopher  20, 22 Gökalp, Ziya  24, 25, 169n59 Gorbachev, Mikhail  87 Great Britain colonialism  67  and idealized West  85 imperialism  82, 124 loss of power to US  71 occupation of Egypt  49, 52, 60, 80, 159 and Wafd  62–3 ‘Greater Middle East Initiative’ (US)  177n17 Greece  64 Guantanamo Bay (detention

camp)  139 Gulf War  89, 102 Al-Gumhûriyyah  87, 89 Habîb, Kâdhim  177n9 Hafez, Sabry  173n42 halakhah (Jewish law)  117 Hammad, Suhaylah  183n3 Hamzawy, Amr  180n61 Hanafî , Hasan  3, 31–2 Harper, Douglas  168n43 Al-Hayâh  142ill Hayawân, Muhammad al-  177n3 Hegel, Georg W. F.  20 Heikal, Mohamed  175n86 Hilâl, Ridâ  123–7 and Bosnian war  140 democracy  124, 141 disappearance  31, 124 dualistic attitude to west  130 liberalism  30, 36, 123 Hildebrandt, Thomas  170n73 Hourani, Albert  43, 85, 125, 173n48, 174n62 human rights  38, 96, 120, 121, 122, 134, 138 Huntington, Samuel  23 Husayn, Taha  12, 25, 64, 82, 125 Hussein, Saddam  89 Husseini, Nassib Samir El-  12, 83 Huwaydî, Fahmî  102 Ibn Munqidh, Usamah  46 Ibn Taymiyyah  66 ‘Ideal West’  139 igtihâd  66 Al-Ikhwân al-Muslimûn  71 Ikhwâniyyîn  104 imagology  13–14, 26, 130, 135, 137–41, 158



Index

‘Imârah, Muhammad  111–19 and Al-Manâr al-gadîd  110 and discrimination against Muslims in US  140 former Marxist  111 and fundamentalism, Western and Islamic  114 Islam as ‘revolutionary’  115 Islamist discourse  30, 36 ‘Malign West’  129, 143 as moderate Islamist  111 and use of foreign words  185n35 and ‘Western witness’  119, 149 imperialism, European British  124 ‘Malign West’  82 and Nasser  74 and negative images of the West  79 and Orientalism  16, 18 ‘Inânî, Khalîl al-  132 independence (1923)  81 industrialization  23 ‘inferiority complex’, Arab  98, 154 ‘Infidel West’  8, 38, 44, 83 Inglehart, Robert F.  184n13 Institute for Arab Unity Studies, The  93 intelligentsia  43, 61–5, 81, 120, 148, 158 International Herald Tribune  91, 149 invasion, French (1798)  40–2, 70 Iraq war  95, 98, 139, 140 ‘Iron Curtain’  27 Islam attempt to improve image  99 as freeing Orient from Western oppression  51, 115 and historic hostility to West  38

203

moderate (al-wasatiyya)  106, 107 as political and civilizational force  51 reformism  66, 69 as ‘revolutionary’  115 and science  50 and secularism  78 as superior  42 and world hierarchy  45 Islamic Research Academy  111 Islamic revival  76–9, 107 Islamism  101–10, 131 Islamist discourse  29, 30 Islâmiyyah , Al-Gamâ‘ah al-  105, 153 Islamophobia, European  123 Isma‘îl, Khedive  48, 54 Israel imperialism  74 Palestinian conflict  141, 144, 159 peace agreement (1979)  75 US support  88 istighrâb (Occidentalism)  31 Jankowski, James P.  173n55 Japan  dilemma of placing within East/ West  23, 24, 25 and ideas of the West  5 as model to Egypt re modernization  68, 132, 133 victory over Russians (1905)  69, 169n57, 174n70 Judaism  103, 116–18 judicial system, European influence  43, 47, 58, 60, 81 Kâmil, Husayn  61 Kâmil, Mustafâ  174n70

204

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

Karam, Azza  180n61 Keddie, Nikki  50, 55 Kenny, L.M.  168n50 Khalafallah, Haifaa Genedi  105, 106 al-Khâlidî, ‘Abd al-Fattâh 175n78 ‘Khawâgah complex’  98, 154 Koran (Quran)  64, 66, 84, 104, 181n79 Kosovo  140 Kuwait  89, 90, 140 Leerssen, Joep  13, 167n31 Leezenberg, Michiel  167n37 leftist-nationalism  16, 91–4 leftist-nationalist discourse  29, 30 Lesch, David  175n87 Lessing, Ian  104 Lewis, Bernard  10, 38, 166n22 Lewis, Martin W.  20 liberal discourse  29, 30 liberal trend  119–23 liberalism  16, 76, 120–2 liberalization, political  75 Lopez, Ibor  132 Macmillan, Harold  168n52 Mahmud, A.K.  176n96 Maimonides, Moses  117, 118 ‘Malign West’  40, 82, 83, 86, 129 Al-Manâr  65, 67, 174n62 Al-Manâr al-gadîd  109, 110, 129, 131, 151 Maoism  8, 17, 138 maqâmah  55 Margalit, A.  7–10, 141, 157, 166n17, 166n19 Marx, Karl  20 Marxism  7, 71, 77 Al-Masâ’  87, 89

Masîrî , ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-  107–10, 118 maslahah  67 Massad, Joseph  184n16 materialism, Western  108, 124 McCurry, Don  181n72 media, Arab  140 media, western  45, 149 methodology  25–7 dangers  33–6 sources  29–32 Middle East  4, 6 ‘middle way’  111 Midhat, Ahmed  4 Misbâh al-sharq  55 Mitchell, Richard P.  69, 70 modernization and Abduh  53 as danger to Muslim societies  52 and Europe  48–50, 53, 59 opposition of Egyptian people  63 Mogahed, Dalia  134 monetary control, foreign  49 Moreh, Shmuel  171n12 Al-Muqtataf  21, 24 Muslim Brotherhood  69–72 capitalist West as enemy  70 Europe as cultural danger  65 strengthened under Sadat  76 Al-Mustaqbal al-‘Arabî  93 Muwaylihî, Muhammad Al-  54–61 earliest concept of ‘West’  22 exile  54 nationalism  54, 56 need to adapt European ideas  56, 57, 59, 124 new genre of literature  55 travels in Europe  54 ‘myth of the West’  20



Index

Nâbulsî, Shâkir al-  30, 120, 121, 122 Nâdî, ‘Alâ’ al-  151 Nâfi‘, Hasan  145 Nâfi‘, Ibrâhîm  144, 146 Naggâr, Zaghlûl al-  104, 119 Nagy-Zekmi, Silvia  166n15 NAM (Non-Aligned Movement)  27 Nâsif, Lutfî  177n5 Nasser, Gamal Abdel  72–5, 175n85 Arab-Israeli War (1967)  78 dictatorship  72, 120 pan-Arabism  72, 125 repression of dissent  75 socialism  79 Nasserist discourse  72, 74, 75, 83 nationalism  animosity towards  93 anticolonialist  4 Arab  80 early  49 Egyptian  56, 60, 61, 63 religious  60 nationalization  76 NATO  19 ‘new liberals’  120 ‘new racism’, European  123, 141 Newman, Daniel L.  172n19 Nixon, Richard  104, 119, 182n93 ‘Noble Savage’  136, 176n95 Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)  27 Nostra Aetate (Vatican, 1965)  103 Occidentalism  3–13 ambiguity of term  5 auto-Occidentalism  4 first use of term  3

205

Occidentalism in Egypt, history of  37–86 ‘Abduh  52–4 al-Afghânî  50–2 dangers of Europeanization  48–50 al-Gabartî  40–3 Islamic revival  76–9 Muslim Brotherhood  69–72 al-Muwaylihî  54–61 Nasser  72–5 Ridâ  65–9 Sadat  75–6 al-Tahtâwî  43–8 al-Wafd  61–5 Occidentalism in Egypt, post Cold War  87–127 Amîn  94–101 Hilâl  123–7 ‘Imârah  111–19 Islamism  101–10 leftist-nationalism  91–4 liberal trend  119–23 Occidentalisms  40, 79–86, 129–55 differentiating the West  142–6 discursive determinism  141–2 gender  135–7 historical parallels  129–33 ideological purposes  137–41 and Orientalism  146–55 public opinion  133–5 occupation, British (1882)  49, 52, 60, 80 oil boom, Arab  101 opinion polls  133–5 Orientalism  146–55 auto-Orientalism  4 and discourse  16 generalization of images  161 and imperialism  6

206

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

‘Other’ authenticity  131, 132 as Communism  88 confusion between Self and Other  148, 149 denial of  54 distortion  26, 27 idealization of  11 Islamic discourse  51 and identity  157, 160 and power relations  154, 155 West as binary opposition  113, 114 Ottoman Empire  39, 42, 61 Palestine and ‘Ideal West’  138 Islamist view of Western policy  79, 102, 141, 159 and ‘True West’  86 and unification of Europe  89, 144 pan-Arabism  72, 78, 101, 125 Pew Global Attitudes Project  184n12 Pfeifer, Wolfgang  168n45 pharaonic heritage  50, 60, 63, 125 pluralism  120, 146 Podeh, Elie  175n87 popular opinion  133–5 post-colonial period  11 poverty, as new enemy of West  123 power, distribution of  4, 6, 146–55, 161 Protestantism  54 Al-Qaeda  97 Quataert, Donald  171n7 Quran (Koran)  64, 66, 84, 104, 181n79

Qur‘î , Ahmad Yûsef al-  179n46 Qutb, Sayyid  71–2, 76–8, 83, 118 racism, European  140, 141 reformism, Islamic  61 ‘rejected West’  83 Renaissance, Egyptian  59, 60, 124, 125 Renaissance, European  38, 39 Renan, Ernest  50 revolution, Egyptian (1919)  61 revolution , Egyptian (1952)  72, 73, 74 Revolutionary Guard  72 Ridâ, Muhammad Rashîd  65–9 admiration for Japan  68 disenchantment with Europe  61 influence of Abduh  67, 174n62 lack of contact with Europeans  71 reformism  66 Rubin, Barry  183n2 Rumayhî, Muhammad al-  91, 92 Russia  20, 69, 132, 159 Sadat, Anwar el-  75–6 economic liberalization  146 and Islamism  78, 101 peace with Israel  79 Said, Edward and colonialism  11 criticism of term ‘inferiority complex’  154 and European ‘Others’  5, 6 exclusion of German texts  33, 34 Foucaultian concept of discourse  15, 16, 17–18 Orientalism  2, 33 Sakr, Fahd Muhammad al-  177n4 salaf (religious predecessors)  66



Index

Salafi Islamism  88, 124 Sanûsî, Muhammad ibn ‘Uthmân al-  24 scientific progress, European  42 scientific rationalism  8 ‘Self ’ ‘Appropriated West’  64 authenticity  101, 131, 132 confusion between Self and Other  148, 149 distortion  27 and identity  88, 157 Islamic discourse  51 and geographical location  24 as opposite of ‘Other’  31, 32 and power relations  154, 155 and spiritual superiority  160 September 11 2001 attack conspiracy theories  152, 153 denial of Islamic involvement  96, 97, 103 destabilizing effect on Egypt  28 and moderate Islamists  109 and Western attitude towards Islam  103, 115, 142 and Western search for Islamic motive  37 sexual mores  134 Al-Sha‘b  90 Shâhâk, Isra’îl  117, 118 Shahin, Emad Eldin  67, 68 sharia  58, 119 al-sharq (‘the East’)  21, 169n55 Shawqî, Ahmad  176n1, 176n108 Skeat, Walter W.  168n43 Smoor, Pieter  175n77 Snodgrass, Judith  5 Soviet Union  75, 87–8 Spain  132, 159 spirituality, Western lack of  78,

207

131, 159 stagnation, Islamic  66 Stillman, Norman  186n42 Suez Canal  49 Suez War (1956)  74, 80, 88 Sunna  64 Sykes-Picot Agreement  61, 80 Syria  78 Tahtâwî, Rifâ’ah Râfi’ al-  43–8 ‘Appropriated West’  84 ‘Benign West’  82 Europe as example for Egypt  44, 48, 79, 80, 81 lack of hatred for West  70 religious teacher  172n20 Taliban  138 tanzimat  50 Taqî al- Dîn, Randah 144 Tarâbîlî, ‘Abbâs al-  186n48 Tarâbîshî, George  30, 32 Tauber, Eliezer  174n69 Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamed  4, 5 Tawfîq, King  60 ‘technological West’  24 Terry, Janice  173n51 ‘Third World’  31 Toynbee, Arthur  23 ‘True West’  40, 85, 130 Turkey  49, 92 Uktûbar  94 ulema  49, 58, 66 United States  as ally to Egypt  76 distinctness from Europe  143, 144 financial assistance  75 and Iraq War  95, 98, 139, 140 and Islamic division of world  45

208

Occidentalisms in the Arab World

as representing ‘the West’  9, 10, 74, 140 support for Israeli occupation of Palestine  159 as supreme Western Power  71 ‘Urâbî rebellion  49, 54 Al-‘Urwah al-Wuthqâ  54, 55, 65, 67 Al-Usbû‘  94 ‘value-free’ concept  108 Varisco, Daniel Martin  5 Vatican, The  103 Venn, Couze  167n30 Al-Wafd  61–5 Wagner, Tamara S.  5, 6 Al-Waqâ’i‘ al-Misriyyah  52 al-wasatiyya (moderate Islamism)  106, 107 ‘Weak West’  40, 70, 83, 84, 86, 100, 129 Weekley, Ernest  168n43 West ambiguity towards  59 capitalism  75 as civilization  22–5, 90 decline of  151 differentiation of  130, 142–6 effect of political policies on image  38, 159 geopolitical concept  19 imperialism  114, 115, 138 materialism  107, 131 moral bankruptcy  77 origins of concept  19–22 as threat in cultural terms  57–8, 130

and Zionism  75 ‘Western witness’  119, 148, 149, 152 Weststeijn, Willem G.  183n4 ‘white civilization’  20 Wigen, Kären  20 Wilmsen, David  178n26 Wilson, Woodrow  62, 143 Winckler, Ann  175n87 Wintle, Michael  177n16 Woidich, Manfred  175n77 Woltering, Robbert  177n16, 178n17, 178n35 women’s rights liberalist attitude to  121 opposition to  7, 173n57 Qâsim Amîn  63, 64, 67, 173n57  as theme in non-fiction  135–7 World Values Survey  134 WWI, effect on image of the West  61, 68 Al-Yasâr al-Islâmî  31 Yassîn, Al-Sayyid  122, 132 Yugoslavia  103, 139 Zaghlûl, Sa‘d  61, 62 Zakaria, Fareed  171n3 Zayn, Ahmad  177n2 Zionism  75, 95, 106, 107, 110, 122, 152 Zogby, J.J.  184n11 Zuhdî, Karam Muhammad  186n44 Zürcher, Erik-Jan  171n8