|
  riting in The Nation (where else?), Edward Said hammers away at Samuel Huntington's
"Clash of Civilizations" thesis, which has been invoked frequently
in recent days to explain the rise of radical, bin Laden-style
Islam. Said, doubtless preferring his own theories of American
imperialism, Zionism-as-racism, and Muslim martyrdom, accuses
Huntington of being "an ideologist, someone who wants to make
'civilizations' and 'identities' into what they are not: shut-down,
sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and
countercurrents that animate human history." Those who accept
Huntington's paradigm of the "West versus the rest" (a rhyme worthy
of Jesse Jackson!) are paying "scant attention to complex histories
that defy such reductiveness and have seeped from one territory into
another, in the process overriding the boundaries that are supposed
to separate us all into divided armed camps."
For Said, of
course, there are no "civilizations" at all, and so any attempt to
see Osama bin Laden and his cohorts as representative of a broader
"Islamic" world is as foolish as taking "cults like the Branch
Davidians or the disciples of the Rev. Jim Jones at Guyana" as
representatives of the West. One might point out, of course, that
David Koresh and Jim Jones were never abetted by Western governments
— nor were they hailed as heroes by mainstream Western clerics — nor
did their crimes prompt cheering New Yorkers or Bostonians to take
to the streets, as many of Said's precious Palestinians did on
September 11. But the Columbia professor is having none of it. To
Huntington's claim that many Muslims are "convinced of the
superiority of their culture, and obsessed with the inferiority of
their power," Said sneers "did he canvas 100 Indonesians, 200
Moroccans, 500 Egyptians and fifty Bosnians? Even if he did, what
sort of sample is that?" Well, a pretty significant one, some might
say. But for Said, it's all or nothing — either every Muslim
backs bin Laden and hates the West, or "Islamic civilization" does
not exist.
In place of the
Huntington thesis, though, Said offers nothing of substance. He
accuses Huntington of peddling "vast abstractions that may give
momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or informed
analysis," but then offers only "vast abstractions" himself. There
is no insight in Said's essay, no argument, only wind and
platitudes. "Primitive passions," he writes, "and sophisticated
know-how converge in ways that give the lie to a fortified boundary
not only between 'West' and 'Islam' but also between past and
present, us and them, to say nothing of the very concepts of
identity and nationality about which there is unending disagreement
and debate." In other words, nobody knows anything about anything.
And once we understand that, we can begin "to reflect, examine, sort
out what it is we are dealing with in reality, the
interconnectedness of innumerable lives, 'ours' as well as 'theirs'
... [and] to think in terms of powerful and powerless communities,
the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal
principles of justice and injustice." But no "vast abstractions,"
please.
There is
something sad, truth be told, and a little desperate about Said's
essay: It reads like the flailings of an intellectual who realizes,
too late, that history is passing him by. He lashes out
indecorously, calling Huntington "a clumsy writer and inelegant
thinker" — an odd accusation from a essayist whose prose often reads
like something badly translated from an obscure Eastern European
tongue (A typically unsuccessful Said sentence: "Uncountable are the
editorials in every American and European newspaper and magazine of
note adding to this vocabulary of gigantism and apocalypse, each use
of which is plainly designed not to edify but to inflame the
reader's indignant passion as a member of the 'West,' and what we
need to do.")
Later, he takes
a swipe at Bernard Lewis, author of the prescient 1991 essay "The
Roots of Muslim Rage," calling him a "veteran Orientalist" whose
"ideological colors" are obvious — "Orientalist" being, of course,
the term that Said himself invented to tar any westerner with the
temerity to study the Near East. Meanwhile, lacking any actual
evidence to prove his points, he fumbles for bizarre anecdotes,
citing Dante's placement of Mohammed in "the very heart of his
Inferno" to prove that Islam is somehow "inside" western
civilization. Someone, apparently, has neglected to explain to Prof.
Said that Dante's Mohammed is damned.
In the end, he
falls back on vapid cliches — "we are all swimming in those waters,"
he writes, "Westerners and Muslims and others alike. And since the
waters are part of the ocean of history, trying to plow or divide
them with barriers is futile." His arguments, boil down to Disney:
It's a small world, after all ...
This,
apparently, is what passes for intellectual rigor and "informed
analysis" on the American Left. |
