Summary
Bernard Lewis, named by Said in Orientalism among the Orientalists from Renan to Goldziher, Macdonald and von Grunebaum who saw Islam as a cultural synthesis studyable apart from the economics, sociology and politics of the Islamic peoples, and cited for the formula by which Arab Palestinian opposition to Israeli settlement and occupation is read as merely “the return of Islam” (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.114, 116 / printed p.105, 107).
Details
- Said lists Lewis with Renan, Goldziher, Macdonald, von Grunebaum and Gibb as Orientalists for whom Islam had a meaning reducible, in Renan’s first treatise, to “tent and tribe”, the impact of colonialism, worldly circumstances and historical development being disregarded (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.114 / printed p.105).
- In Said’s account of the area-studies approach in practice: with Bernard Lewis, if Arab Palestinians oppose Israeli settlement and occupation of their lands, then that is merely “the return of Islam”, Islamic opposition to non-Islamic peoples defined as a principle of Islam enshrined in the seventh century, in which history, politics and economics do not matter (Orientalism (1978), PDF p.116 / printed p.107).
Related pages
Orientalism (1978), Orientalism, H. A. R. Gibb, Ernest Renan