Alex’s Reviews > Orientalism > Status Update

“The European encounter with the Orient, and specifically with Islam, strengthened this system of representing the Orient and turned Islam into the very epitome of an outsider against which the whole of European civilization from the Middle Ages on was founded.”

“For Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, “us”) and the strange (the Orient, the East, “them”). This vision in a sense created and then served the two worlds thus conceived. Orientals lived in their world, “we” lived in ours.”

“European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.”

Even the language of the war is dehumanizing in the extreme: “We’ll go in there take out Saddam, destroy his army with clean surgical strikes, and everyone will think it’s great,” said a congresswoman on national television.