Once again, thanks to Ben for the Bruce Bawer assessment of Edward Said. After finishing Covering Islam last night I went back to the Bawer piece, which he closes with:
After September 11, Westerners can no longer luxuriate in the illusion that that hatred is not real or that it can somehow be dissolved by means of a sufficient application of “sympathy.” If we are to show sympathy, rather, it should be for the brave souls in that region who are struggling under perilous circumstances, and against formidable odds, to nudge fundamentalist Islam out of the Dark Ages and to turn rogue states into respectable members of the community of nations. This is, to say the least, a tall order; and in such a monumental struggle, the glib deceptions and slippery distortions of an Edward W. Said can play no positive role.
Really? I think it might have paid us well pre-9/11 to have heeded some of Said’s words in the closing paragraph’s of Covering Islam:
It is certainly true that the Islamic world as a whole is neither completely anti-American and anti-West nor unified and predictable in its actions. Without trying to give an exhaustive account of these changes, I have been saying that this has meant the emergence of new and irregular realities in the Islamic world…There is simply no way in which societies thousands of miles away from the Atlantic world in both space and identity can be made to conform to what we want of them. One can consider this a neutral fact without also regarding it (as I happen to) as a good thing. In any event, the danger in talking about the loss and therefore threat of Iran and the decline of the West in the same breath is that we immediately foreclose the possibility of most courses of action – except the ascendancy of the West and the regaining of places like Iran and the Gulf…
…If the history of knowledge about Islam in the West has been too closely tied to conquest and domination, the time has come for these ties to be severed completely. About this one cannot be too emphatic. For otherwise we will not only face protracted tension and perhaps even war, but we will offer the Muslim world, its various societies and states, the prospect of many wars, unimaginable suffering, and disastrous upheavals, not the least of which would be the victory of an “Islam” fully ready to play the role prepared for it by reaction, orthodoxy, and desperation. By even the most sanguine of standards, this is not a pleasant possibility.