Through the sizeable amount of history we are looking at for this week, I found myself returning frequently to some of the broad, theoretical concepts Daniel outlined within his introduction to “Islam and the West”. Though the factual aspects of both the documentary and Daniel’s later chapters were very interesting, I found them to be much more enlightening when viewing them through three of Daniel’s initial ideas: the misappropriation of Islamic beliefs into Western myth, the concept of “doctrine about doctrine”, and Islamic history (particularly that of pre-Islamic Arabia) permeating into contemporary Islamic understanding. As Daniel discusses, misrepresentations of alternate faiths and/or cultures often become accepted myths, resulting in a harsh dichotomy that is drastically distorted from fact. An excellent example of this that Daniel uses is that of first generation Christians after the birth of Islam. Within the earliest Western writings on Islam, we see a severe disregard and rejection of Islamic ideals – a rejection so harsh that it often even contradicts foundational Christian thinking (here, Daniel cites the Christian conceptualization of the Muslim relationship to Christ and God). This leads to what Daniel refers to as a “doctrine about doctrine”, where these accepted myths get repeated and broadly accepted among the mass. In the process, the subjected group (in this case, the Muslims) loses any ability to speak to their own faith, as everything they say is held to a “real truth” (the myth) which cannot be refuted. These accepted myths still resonate in Islamic understanding today from non-Muslims. I found the discussion of pre-Islamic Arabia fascinating in this context. As Daniel points out, much of Islamic understanding blends with the pagan beliefs of Arabia before Islam, which may explain the Western preoccupation with the Muslim world as “barbarous”, “savage”, and “underdeveloped”. Within the context of these three theoretical ideas, Islam’s history in relation to the West becomes a fascinating study of perspective and historical storytelling.
I agree with Daniel's statements in the regard of accepted myths towards Islam, however at that time it is hardly surprising that early medieval Europeans would be so quick to scorn a religion that not only threatens the only form of security that these countries can find after the fall or Rome, that being the Catholic Church. On top of that, Islam was becoming part of a scientific golden age, discovering methods of critical and scientific thinking that were so advanced, a primitive European culture would have been only able to understand the practices as magic, further validating their false ideas towards the young religion. Unfortunately, as Christian Europe stabilized and began to actively clash with their Islamic cousins, it was easier to perpetuate the stereotypes in order to create a more powerful loyalty to the church and her teachings. It wouldn't be until the Renaissance that those myths would even begin to be questioned, let alone completely eradicated.
Why does western Christianity believe that the bible is the “word of the Lord” but then have a hard time believing that the Quran is God speaking? It seems to me that it is rather hypocritical for western Christianity to blindly trust in God in the Christian religion but to denote God in the “eastern” Islamic religion. This idea was brought up on page 56 in the text, Islam and the West The Making of an Image. According to the text, “Christians could not distinguish between God speaking (in the Quran) and Muhammad speaking… They always argued ‘Muhammad said …’ when, in conversation with Muslims, it would surely have been more effective to say ‘You believe that God said …’”. This discourse shows how the West positions itself above Eastern religion. The west other’s the east, making their religion seem unreasonable or human-invented. This is seen in how they credit Muhammad as the author, or speaker of the Quran. Yet, the Christian bible was composed by Jesus’ disciples and followers and the west chooses to say it is the word of God. As an education major, I find this bias obtrusive and arrogant. When people travel into an unfamiliar area, they often look for the differences between what they are used to and to what is unique or even peculiar about the new environment around them. Instead of respectful observance of the surroundings people incorrectly represent and report about their cultural experiences. To me, it is interesting to see how the west would goes out of the way to “other” the Islamic religion while it actually contains many similarities to the Christian religion.
Melinda your blog post really got me thinking! What you said above has been on my mind for a few days now. What’s also interesting is how the Quran actually accepts Jesus, and his teachings. While they do not think he’s the Son of God, they do acknowledge that he is some sort of prophet. They believe that Jesus too was a leader in their religion, like Abraham, Noah, and Moses before him. Yet, of course, Christians and the Christian writers do not dare accept what Muhammad says or preaches. The two religions are so, so similar yet while one says, “Yes, I concur with your thoughts,” the other sticks up its nose and declares, “I am better than you! Everything you say are lies!” At another point in “Islam and the West” there is a fascinating line, “the Bible derives its significant from Christ; but Muhammad derives his from the Quran” (Daniel 53). I think here is a key central difference that can help answer what you first asked. As Daniel states, Christ is how Christians got their information, while for Muslims it was the Quran, their book, itself. I feel that it was impossible for Christians to try and grasp the fact that Muhammad wasn’t a divine person to Muslims. They only ever knew Jesus as divine, and could not understand the Muslims’ point of view. They did not try at all to comprehend the difference between the religions before brushing off Islam. Christians basically threw away any possibility of creditability to the Islamic-Christian connection.
I absolutely agree with Melinda in that it is ridiculous how many Christians have criticized the Islamic religion throughout history, and yet there are so many similarities between the two religions, it is almost eerie. In watching the PBS documentary for last class, I never realized just how many similarities the two religions have. The fact that Muhammad claimed to have been visited by the angel Gabriel is shocking to me, since in the Christian religion the angel Gabriel appears many times in the Bible. There are many strong similarities with both religions, but this one was the one that really stuck out for me. Again, it makes me wonder why most Christians try so hard to separate themselves from Muslims. Just as the west separates themselves from the east, many Christians separate themselves from Muslims, even though they have many similarities in many different ways (religion being only one of them).
Towards the beginning of the PBS documentary, the narrator says "for the West, much of the history of Islam has been obscured behind a veil of fear and misunderstanding". Throughout the text "Islam and the West", we are provided with a number of examples of the misrepresentation of Islam which have some resemblance to some of the thoughts held of Islam as a culture today.People fear the unknown, and still to this day a majority of people are blind to the actual ideals and values of the Islam faith and culture. Melinda has an extremely valid point in that Islam shares many similarities with Christianity,but it is important to remember that these issues go beyond just religion.Christians try hard to separate themselves from Muslims because of these false notions, perpetuated through a number of vehicles, especially the media and the information available to them. What we know of the Islamic way of life is controlled by the information provided to us. An example as given in the text for this week is the ideas and beliefs held about polygamy, and the treatment of women in Islamic culture. This idea is still held today, and for the sake of example, we will go turn to a more recent example. Osama Bin Ladin's assassination gained a lot of attention around the world, and a number of news stations reported that as the US troops surrounded the area, he held one of his wives in front of him as a human shield.Clearly a horrifying picture, this idea that men view their wives as belongings and not people has been perpetuated throughout history. Because we are only ever receiving information that sheds a negative light on people from this culture, it is not hard to understand why a majority of the people, especially strict christians whose views on marriage and sexual behavior are so rigid, want to separate themselves from their conception of what Islam is.
I agree that the assumptions that people make about Quran are ridiculous and unfair. Western society has created this view of negativity towards Muslims. We tend to overlook the contributions of the Middle East. In the text, Islam and the West, Daniel shows us how the Quran was written to perfect other religions. For example, Daniel mentions that Muslims do accept the other Prophets mentioned in other religions. He states, “Muslims are commanded to believe in God and the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and not to make any difference between them” (38). Islam does not deny other prophets; they are just looking things differently and adding to what other people believe. If Islam is not that different then why is there so much opposition to it? In our country, we allow people to have religious freedom. The west overlooks several things about the Middle East in addition to religion. One of the ideas discussed in the documentary on Science revealed that the Middle East has contributed to our knowledge in both Math and Science. For example, the video mentions how many Medical practices contributed to today’s advancements. The video also showed how some of the methods and ideas are still being used today.
I agree with Melinda's point. It is incredibly true that many Christians are clearly in denial of the similarities that their religion shares with Islam, and the significance of those similarities. Many are willfully ignorant, but for what reason? On page 132 of "Islam and the West," Daniel quotes Aquinas as having said, "It is to stop them from putting obstacles in the way of the Christian faith, that the Christian faithful often wage war on infidels." It is interesting that it was the natural inclination of Christians during that time period to immediately understand Islam as anti-Christianity, rather than as an alternative interpretation of God's message to humanity. Why did Christians have to see Islam as an "obstacle" to the Christian faith at all? Interestingly enough, this was sufficient for many Christians to justify their prejudice against Islam and those who believed in it. This brings to mind the Crusades, where Christians slaughtered for their religion. On page 136, Daniel writes that the essence of crusading was to 'slay for God's love.' In this context, however, "crusading" seems like a ridiculous euphemism. It's a pretty word that exists for the purpose of making the idea of war look better, even divinely inspired, against a people who have more in common than not.
As interesting as Melinda's observation about the absurdity of Christianity's xenophobia as a whole in spite of the similarities between Islam and Christianity as were identified in previous replies, I think it's more interesting to look at Christianity's treatment of Muslims as compared to Jews. Despite the Muslim's recognition of Jesus as a prophet and a very significant figure, Christians resent them for denying his divinity and vilify Muslims for it to such an extent that the messenger who delivered their principle text was made out to be an invalid, an animal, and a liar. As much as the rest of their beliefs are the same, Christians refuse to see past those individual differences -- yet Jews deny Jesus even as a prophet. They think he was a false messiah. If Christians can't stand Muslims for suggesting Jesus wasn't the son of God, then why do they embrace Jews when they claim Jesus wasn't even a prophet? This difference in reception says a lot about the motives behind Christianity's xenophobia, I think.
“Time doesn’t pass, it accumulates”—a quotation that resonated with me today in my comparative literature class with Maria Lima. We see this in all histories, but especially with the history of Islam. I was somewhat overwhelmed by the history of the Islam and how little I knew about it. Seeing the base layers of what transpires into the conflicts of today was very fascinating—especially when the PBS narrator in the documentary briefly mentions the formation of factions within Islam after Mohammad’s death that are still active to this day. I was truly humbled by the way Mecca, even when it was first occupied by tribes, was a place where people of various ideologies put aside their differences and peacefully came together for sake of trade and even worship. As the Islamic empire developed it was interesting to see how Baghdad exemplified Mecca on a larger scale in a way that it was a common ground for people of different races and religions to exchange knowledge and goods—I did not know that Baghdad was once rich with so much innovation and peace. Even after I have taken so-called “non-western tradition” classes while at Geneseo, professors did not do justice in explaining the achievements and golden ages of civilizations in the non-western world. They would primarily focus on how the western tradition effected those civilizations or how those traditions have fallen. As an art history minor, it is frustrating that we study works and different histories with such an isolated scope. Rather than indulging in complete discourse that encompasses the origins of such things as flying buttresses on cathedrals being inspired by certain mosques, or that artists painted the Virgin Mary in ornate cloth that so clearly quoted words from the Quran, we remain under the impression that these worlds did not come into contact too often before the 1700s. Although westernized education has come some way, it still fails to give credit where credit is due.
What stuck out for me in particular was the reverence that the Muslim empire of the 9th century had for knowledge. The campaign that was mentioned in the PBS documentary “Islam and Science” in which the caliphate of Baghdad offered the weight in gold of any book brought to him demonstrates that the priorities of the empire were invested more into the accumulation and preservation of human knowledge and less in the militaristic conquests that fueled the hateful rhetoric of the Crusades. The project to compile the wealth of arts and ideas from across the globe shows a commendable foresight on the part of the Muslims, knowing from past experience that total destruction was a looming possibility. At a time when western culture was immersed in the Dark Ages of their civilization, the acquisition of all these texts by the caliphate was critical to not only the progression of the eastern civilization, but to the west as well.
It truly is disappointing that of all the courses offered by our college, this is one of only a handful that deals directly with the enormous contributions of ancient Islamic scholars to modern thought and technology. Ancient revelations in medicine, math and physics that underpin hospitals, architecture and science would have passed away with their respective empires if the academics of Baghdad had not gathered and translated all those texts. It is sad that the history and dignity of that age should be fully recognized only in a course specially designed to explore the marginalization of nonwestern people, and not right alongside the Galileos and DaVincis and Dantes of Humanities and World Lit courses. Those of us who are even casually aware of the rich and important history and culture of this region always notice blatant omissions from world survey courses, and are at least moderately upset to see the stories of more than half the world’s people banished to a few experimental courses as if they were extra, auxiliary, elective. It’s not as if students don’t want to hear about this stuff, clearly this part of human history is captivating and satisfying to explore, as evidenced by our packed classroom and our solid interest in course discussions. Anyone familiar with the accomplishments of this era would be delighted to offer and expand what they have heard, especially if their families have ties to the Islamic world. It is a glaring shortcoming of the university tradition that the resident culture is taught over that of perceived outsiders.
I found the Christian Attitude to Crusade in part IV of Daniel’s work to be worthy of discussion as it became clear that a great amount of discrimination was rooted in the Crusades. The contrast between the PBS documentary about Islam and the Crusades and the ideas of Western Christians presented in Islam and the West is incredible. Of course it can be argued that the PBS documentary failed to present a detailed perspective of the Christian Crusaders, the justification for the Crusades in Islam and the West by way of Western Christian writers is outrageous and allows us to get a glimpse of how extreme and unwarranted the Western Christian hatred of Islam really was. For Western Christians, what was originally deemed a “Holy war” for the purpose of gaining territory for religious purposes suddenly became fear of “threats” to Christendom. Aquinas, according to Daniel, accused Islamists of “blasphemies, wicked propaganda and even persecutions” (132). This suggests that the Crusades were much more than just a seizure of lands in the name of God, as an invasion for blasphemy seems more like an act of discipline. Furthermore, the fact that Aquinas saw Muslims as an obstruction to Christian faith and argued that the Crusades were justified caused me think more about western egocentrism and its influence on “the east.” Even the nature of the word blasphemy, which was used by Aquinas, should be looked at, as it is a word used primarily in the sect of Christianity. That Christians would equate Islam (a religion completely separate from Christianity) to an act of blasphemy is egoistic in every sense. The idea that blasphemy in the Christian sense of the word applied to followers of Islam, a completely different denomination, is absurd and insinuates that Christianity is the only “right” institution. I saw Daniel’s comparison of the Western Christian justification of the Crusades as “defense against obstacles” to the 1989 incident in which Muslim girls in French schools were suspended for not removing their veils as extremely interesting and completely valid. In comparing the two phenomena, it’s not difficult to see the irrationality of the claim that the mere presence of another religion manifests itself as an “obstacle” to Christianity. Moreover, I began to think about how the self-proclaimed superiority of the west and of western religion still persists today even after the 1989 event. It’s a known fact that Muslims in the United States constantly experience injustices and human rights violations because their heritage and/or religion is seen by the ignorant as a deviation of sorts from the western standard instead of a respectable, separate entity.
Abby-- I agree with the great amount of discrimination rooted in the Crusades, however I have to disagree with the statement that Islam is a religion completely separate from Christianity. For one, they both are sects of, and derive their roots from Judaism; therefore making them more closely related as religions rather than "completely separate" from one another as you claimed earlier. I also do not necessarily agree with your description that Christians equating Islam to an act of blasphemy is "egoistic in every sense". It is not necessarily egoistic in every sense, because if you look at it from the perspective of the Christian religion-- a religion, like Islam for example, which states that Jesus was not the son of God, but merely a prophet of God, is in itself by Christian definition, disrespect shown to God or something holy--which they believed Jesus to be-- and as a result, blasphemous. Not to say that it wasn't wrong of Christians to equate the entire religion of Islam to an act of blasphemy, because quite frankly it was entirely insensitive on their part and indeed wrong; but I think it's also interesting to note that by doing so, they violate the very respect Muslims desire to be shown in regards to their religion and God as they themselves desire to be shown respectively, too. As Akman said earlier in class this evening, "Rhetoric of hatred always breeds rhetoric of hatred against you." Rather than dispensing hatred and sowing seeds of discord among one another, I think Christians must stop looking for what is wrong with Islam, and start carefully observing the similarities pertaining to both religion and God that each share.
This week we were required to watch two documentaries based around the history of Islam, as well as skim through a dense text expounding upon the way that Christian scholars have portrayed the Islamic world. I found that the text by Norman Daniel, “Islam and the West” provided an interesting context for watching the documentaries. In this post I would like to stray away from our reading materials and delve a bit more into the theory. The idea of Orientalism as defined by Edward Said can be applied to any two groups that are trying to understand each other. I think that the definition works very well in creating parallels between the Arabic world and the European world. But as I have been reading literature from Native American writers in another class, I have started to notice some more depth to the idea of Orientalism. Even in our own nation, between the blonde-haired blue-eyed Christians and the brown-eyed, dark-haired aborigine’s, as they have been referred to; there is a dynamic that is created. Both sides have used literature, as well as orature, to spread myths about the other. Native Americans often prescribe the abundant problem of alcoholism on reservations to the fact that the white man has duped them into reveling in drunkenness. The Christians on the other hand, have always prescribed the notion of barbarism on the Natives; going so far as to ban them from dancing for religious purposes on the premise that they were going to start up some sort of revolution. I think the transitive nature of this idea makes it all the more dangerous. There is so much manipulation of ideas and words in order to achieve the goals that greedy colonialists or profiteering businessman, that we often cannot separate fact from fiction.
This leads me to my final point, which Professor Akman touched upon just for a moment today: all history is subjective. I am taking Islamic history right now, and we are talking about how Islamic civilization can be viewed as a world-system (in economic terms) in the context of a world-history-narrative. (This is all from just the first article that I read for this class.) The article claims that the Islamic civilization was unique for not falling into the systems that most other civilizations fell into. The main fact in the article being that Islamic civilization avoided a centralized government based on capitalism, and favored a stronger connection of smaller states based around faith, or ideological systems. I just wrote a whole bunch of paraphrased ideas from that article, and my point on bringing it up in the context that all history is subjective is this: What good can come from labeling everything into pigeonholes? This author, who is responding to another author, who I am sure was just responding to another author, has provided me with one very specific account of why Islamic civilization differed from European civilization. Again in Norman Daniel’s book, we can see an extreme specificity of one singled out idea within just a span of two centuries. By putting everything into such tiny realms of thought and contemplation, I think we are missing out on the big picture virtues, ideals, systems, and all around lifestyles that literature holds. We can gain a lot by picking out the big ideas and trying to compare them with the big ideas behind all other works. I understand that there is value in understanding the binaries that have been established, but must we beat the dead horse until it’s pulverized? There must be something else there after we have noticed the problem. Maybe I’m just frustrated because I’ve heard these theories for three semesters in a row, and I haven’t found the purpose for myself, but I want you to think about what we do after we break down what’s wrong with Orientalism. How do we stop it from increasing and continuing? Can we view texts through a lens of Orientalism, but while still searching for bigger and deeper meanings besides what a certain text might say about a different culture? I hope this didn’t come across too angry guys, I love the ideas, I just haven’t found solace in the practice. (Sorry for the double post, but it was too long for one)
“The English Christians were on the whole the more prejudiced, and exhibited more clearly the continuing influence of an unmodified mediaeval tradition at its most uncompromising” –Norman Daniel
This quote became apparently true while watching the documentary Islam, Empire of Faith. There are many current day stories and pictures describing the miracle of Muslim tolerance. They show Muslims guarding Christians while they pray in tumultuous regions. The target audience for these pictures is Christians who will of course be shocked by how generous these specific Muslims are being. The point is that not all Muslims are bad. Clearly, this mindset stems from nothing but Christian lies stemming back to the beginnings of Islam. Even after the Crusaders overtook Jerusalem by force, killing even their own people for being foreigners, Muslims allowed all types of people to worship freely. Christians built castles next to glorious mosques. Castles were designed with weapons and stone to keep invaders out. Mosques were built with scientific innovations and luxurious gardens to inspire thinking. When the two religions are forced to stand side by side, at the time period of the crusades at least, the clear champions of open mindedness are the Muslims. Muslim thinkers were able to translate the works of Aristotle because they did not separate their religion from advancement. Christians considered it an act against God to believe in the scientific discoveries, and hence were left in the dust of Muslim thinking. The West, Christianity in specific, created the idea of a menacing East that is intolerant. By creating an intolerant East they can point to them as proof that they themselves are more tolerant. Lies were the only possibility to justify the horrific crusades. Al Hakim did destroy the Holy Sepulcher, and the response by Pope Erwin II shows that they had been waiting for the Muslims to slip up just once, so that they could justify invading. Christians did not want to be repaid, when Al Hakim’s successor rebuilt the church the Christians did not care. The Muslim’s ultimate retaliation for the crusades was to keep trading and improving scientifically, while Crusaders harassed the traders and secretly bought souvenirs of spices and textiles, even painting their saints with Arabic writing on their clothes. And then burning the Crusaders to death.
While obviously what you have said above is accurate and I agree completely with your statement that Christians came up with falsehoods in order to use Muslims as scapegoats, it still leads to the question: why? I am curious to know why you think the Christians were so biased toward the Muslims and used Islamic culture as the "bad guys" whenever there was a need for a scapegoat. What do you think made the Christians decide to use Muslims as opposed to the Jews or any other number of different cultures? Not only that, but why do you think the Christians did not just try to profit from the Muslims, as it is obvious they tried to profit off of their own peoples for centuries.
What struck me as interesting was the dichotomy of the terms we listed the first day of class to describe the East and the West and the actual characteristics of both, the more we learn about the historical aspects of both Orientalism and Islam. We tended to describe the West as being more developed- a place of Christianity, Capitalism and democracy. We labeled the East as being a foreign place of constant tribal warfare and Islam. What we did was generalize ideas of the East based on what we have learned via what our media portrays.
These misrepresentations of Islam have been occurring since the beginning of time, and for a variety of reasons. Daniel touches upon quite a few of these reasons, including: writers set out to annihilate Islam through their writing, therefore often using exaggerated descriptions and made-up differences. These writers were more concerned about writing for amusement than truth, leading to the beginnings of major misconceptions. Additionally, and perhaps most significantly, "Information was extracted from sources to serve higher powers of the Church." (271)
The fact that writers were writing in the name of the Church is not surprising, but what is surprising is the lengths followers went to in the name of their religion. Religions that taught the practices of love and harmony, but required people to kill mercilessly in the name of a shared, singular God. The power of the desire to belong to something greater than oneself, such as a religion, can be seen in the example of the attack of the Mongol Empire in the PBS Documentary. These savage nomads were well-versed in the practice of terror, and yet became a completely different type of people when they succumbed to Islam and began expanding the Muslim Empire. So I guess my question is: can religion and the desire those who are faithful have to serve it be more powerful than the desire citizens have to serve a political leader?
I found it very ironic that many of the text we consider integral to the western canon were completely lost to Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Without the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, the works of Plato and Aristotle would not be a part of international discourse. The irony continues even further in the mere fact that we consider the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans to be exclusively Western texts, when the mere fact that they were translated into Arabic and traveled all the way across North Africa implies that they were widely read and circulated throughout the Arab world. For several centuries, these texts would have been disseminated across what we label as the East, while the Western world had no knowledge of their existence. Furthermore, the Arab culture in the middle of its golden age in the East did more than read and distribute translations of “Western” texts, they also wrote their own analyses and commentary, so that by the time they reached Spain the texts existed not only in their original edition, but also with extensive intellectual annotation. The existence of these texts across the Eastern world goes to show how absurd the artificial distinction between East and West really is, when the Eastern world has been involved in the intellectual discourse of texts we consider fundamental to the very basis of Western society for over a thousand years.
Furthermore, the presence of an Islamic regime in Spain had a tremendous impact on the Spanish language, many words and phrases used in Spanish are taken directly from Arabic, so the idea that the East and the West evolved separately is utter nonsense, the very language that is spoken in what was a major Western power was highly influenced by Eastern language.
Throughout the western world, we have self-declared ourselves as “morally righteous”. Our values of democracy, freedom of thought, educational exploration, and scientific discoveries all serve as the very foundation of our claims to our ethical superiority. Often, in America in particular, you will often hear people cry that we need to spread our developments, civilized nature, and industrialism to the “undeveloped” “violent” Middle East- that it is America’s civic duty. We are the world humanitarians. Yet the truth is we have yet to acknowledge the fact that the very basis of American society can nearly trace every single root back to the Middle East, and in fact, it is the West who played an integral role in the issues that are currently plaguing the middle east.
As we learned in the PBS documentary, the Middle East, in particularly Bagdad, was in the midst of a booming Golden age in the same era that is typically referred to as The Dark Ages. This alone is singularly proof of the notion that it is the West who chooses to write the history of the world. Yet, throughout this period of prosperity in the Middle East developed the Translation Movement. Arab people began to accumulate books of medicine, philosophy, and research from all parts of the world, translating these works from their native language to Arabic. From here these works were eventually translated into Latin where they began to be studied by the western world. Essentially, the western world, which likes to take claim to these developments of Greece, was hundreds of years behind the Islamic world.
Not only have we adapted principles of democracy and philosophy from the Ancient Greeks, but we have adapted most of our medical knowledge as well. The Eastern world had comprised an extensive compilation of medical knowledge from India, and China- that they were miles ahead of the western world in this area as well. Instances like the Islamic treatment of cataracts, occurred centuries prior to the even beginning development of such treatment in the western world. Even the Hippocratic oath that all western doctors must take has roots in the Middle East.
Yet, when it comes to the West’s modern interactions in the Middle East, we are entirely self serving behind our façade of morality. The media alone, over the past decades have portrayed the Middle East as only an area of violent tribal wars, terrorists, and threats to the United States. Yet, nearly every thing that we as Americans pride ourselves on was brought to us through the developments in the Middle East. Instead we focus on the Orientalist views that are so deep rooted in our society. We have painted such a picture of the eastern world, that it is nearly impossible for the majority of Americans to conceive any other possibility. We have wholly dehumanized, Arabic people.
Now, America has an opportunity to step in as the self-appointed world leader in human rights in Syria. Yet, we have yet to do anything. In our society, Arabic people cannot be the victims. We will continue to turn a blind eye to total human genocide, while continuing to support the state of Israel, the glorified version of Middle Eastern people. All I ask is that we begin to show the Middle East half of the support that they have shown us. That is our true civic duty as Americans.
I agree that it is ridiculous that America has built itself up as this moral authority that needs to transform the Middle East into something like ourselves, especially since we clearly owe so much to Middle Eastern societies. There is a definite superiority complex in America particularly in regards to Middle Eastern nations. This is frankly stupid. As you say, there is a huge amount of knowledge that the West would never have had access to if it were not for Middle Eastern countries. I would continue your train of thought regarding America's current view of the Middle East. As you state, the media is painting the Middle East as a constantly war torn and violent area, with essentially no redeeming value. Then we have our own radical groupsthat blatantly disrespect Islam on a regular basis. After watching the video in class today of the Navy Seal's speech, I realized that people like this are literally making propoganda for radical Muslims. As Professor Akman said, that video is exactly what Islamic extremists would show to others as "proof" that Americans hate them. If I recall correctly, Florida Pastor Terry Jones' burning of the Qu'ran sparked protests in Afghanistan that resulted in quite a few deaths. The general ignorance of this portion of the American population is dangerous, and will definitely have future consequences.
The concept of Islamic medicine had been completely foreign to me, not only because of the fact that students in the “West” rarely learn about what was going on outside of Europe during the Middle Ages, but because rarely are Islamic innovations given due credit. This last BBC documentary, Science and Islam, really shed some light on how underrated the Middle Ages were for Islam, and how much those advances were ignored until they were “rediscovered” by “Western” societies such as France and England. Unfortunately this is unsurprising, as France and England are predominantly Christian societies and according to Norman Daniel, the religious rivalry between Islam and Christianity was about more than just religion. The church’s attempts to discredit Islam ranged from the fact that Muhammad was epileptic to the larger issue (read: attack) of misrepresenting the Qur’an as the Islamic equivalent of the Bible; is it so surprising then, that the advancements of Islam during the time after the fall of Rome would be ignored to some extent? I knew, as Professor Akman mentioned in class and as the documentary shows, that English speakers (along with many common western languages) use Arabic numerals, decimals, and Arabic methods of computation (among other innovations), but I hadn’t realized the scope of Islamic advancement during this time period—and the implications of these advances to modern medicine. I studied abroad in Montpellier, France last semester—which just so happens to be the site of the oldest medical university still in use. It was officially founded in the 13th century by decree of the pope—but much of the faculty, I learned on the tour of the university, was not Christian. Christian doctors were not permitted to cut open dead bodies, which was a major issue when it came time to do surgery and the doctor only knew theoretically where everything was and what it looked like. Thanks in part to the proximity of the city of Montpellier to Marseille (a major port that connected France with the entire Mediterranean) as well as Spain and North Africa, the University was able to invite Muslim physicians to teach and perform autopsies. The Christian doctors couldn’t cut into the bodies, but there was no injunction prohibiting them from watching a practitioner of Islam as he examined bodily structures and explained their functions. Another facet of my own ignorance was that I believed, having done some research on the Rosetta stone, that French linguist Jean-Francois Champollion had effectively cracked the code of Hieroglyphics in the 19th century. Islamic scholar’s use of the Coptic language to associate more than half of the hieroglyphic alphabet with Arabic letters or sounds during the great translation movement of the 9th-10th centuries, long before Champollion, was completely left out of this research. Furthermore, that this research was done, according to the BBC documentary, in search of alchemical secrets (and abandoned when it was discovered there were no such secrets in the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs)—and was not simply a work of linguistic code-breaking—speaks to the advancement of Islamic society even beyond that of the 19th century French society which spent so much effort simply to translate an already half-translated dead language. This is a prime example of an Islamic breakthrough that was completely glossed over—which continues to be completely glossed over by Western authorities.
Hey, this is late, but i figured i'd post it anyways:
After watching the two documentaries, one gets the impression that ancient Islam and the eastern world is responsible for Ideas and discoveries that we from the western world long believed to be our own. The documentaries both show how common fields of study like algebra originally came from the east, and how something as fundamental as our letters and numbers have not originated in the west, but the east. What’s interesting (and maybe a little sad) about this revelation is that most, if not all of us sure didn’t learn it that way. Most of us were taught these things and kept blissfully ignorant of their origins, of the influence that permeates our culture and our lives. These days, our country’s funny people like to crack jokes at North Korea. Their self-imposed isolation, idolatry for their ruler, and their professed dislike of our country and the mild, non-threatening reality of their size and actual power makes that nation an easy target. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhohteHuyPM The way in which their government intentionally shelters their people from outside influence is an incredibly foreign concept for most Americans, who might look at cultural blending as commonplace. But I was wondering how different North Korea’s intentional blindness or ignorance of the outside world really is from our government and culture neglecting to give the East its deserved respect and credit. Like, either I paid really horrible attention in high school, or there’s an unfortunate recurring pattern of the people of our country growing up without the full story, particularly in regards to the Islamic empire and their contributions to the world we enjoy today. And the idea I’m presenting isn’t exactly novel. In truth, it’s behind a lot of what Professor Akman tries to get across in his classes – that the East is much more than what we’ve been led to believe it is. The real conclusion I came to wasn’t a conclusion at all, but a question: Does every culture teach and perpetuate its own version of history? Even when the facts are out there, and the trail of influence is clearly visible to anyone who’s looking in an un-biased way (like Norman Daniel). Because if that’s the case, then it’s just further proof that the human condition and patterns of behavior is something widespread. And our poking fun at a country like North Korea fails to recognize the similarities in our behaviors.
Through the sizeable amount of history we are looking at for this week, I found myself returning frequently to some of the broad, theoretical concepts Daniel outlined within his introduction to “Islam and the West”. Though the factual aspects of both the documentary and Daniel’s later chapters were very interesting, I found them to be much more enlightening when viewing them through three of Daniel’s initial ideas: the misappropriation of Islamic beliefs into Western myth, the concept of “doctrine about doctrine”, and Islamic history (particularly that of pre-Islamic Arabia) permeating into contemporary Islamic understanding.
ReplyDeleteAs Daniel discusses, misrepresentations of alternate faiths and/or cultures often become accepted myths, resulting in a harsh dichotomy that is drastically distorted from fact. An excellent example of this that Daniel uses is that of first generation Christians after the birth of Islam. Within the earliest Western writings on Islam, we see a severe disregard and rejection of Islamic ideals – a rejection so harsh that it often even contradicts foundational Christian thinking (here, Daniel cites the Christian conceptualization of the Muslim relationship to Christ and God).
This leads to what Daniel refers to as a “doctrine about doctrine”, where these accepted myths get repeated and broadly accepted among the mass. In the process, the subjected group (in this case, the Muslims) loses any ability to speak to their own faith, as everything they say is held to a “real truth” (the myth) which cannot be refuted.
These accepted myths still resonate in Islamic understanding today from non-Muslims. I found the discussion of pre-Islamic Arabia fascinating in this context. As Daniel points out, much of Islamic understanding blends with the pagan beliefs of Arabia before Islam, which may explain the Western preoccupation with the Muslim world as “barbarous”, “savage”, and “underdeveloped”. Within the context of these three theoretical ideas, Islam’s history in relation to the West becomes a fascinating study of perspective and historical storytelling.
I agree with Daniel's statements in the regard of accepted myths towards Islam, however at that time it is hardly surprising that early medieval Europeans would be so quick to scorn a religion that not only threatens the only form of security that these countries can find after the fall or Rome, that being the Catholic Church. On top of that, Islam was becoming part of a scientific golden age, discovering methods of critical and scientific thinking that were so advanced, a primitive European culture would have been only able to understand the practices as magic, further validating their false ideas towards the young religion. Unfortunately, as Christian Europe stabilized and began to actively clash with their Islamic cousins, it was easier to perpetuate the stereotypes in order to create a more powerful loyalty to the church and her teachings. It wouldn't be until the Renaissance that those myths would even begin to be questioned, let alone completely eradicated.
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ReplyDeleteWhy does western Christianity believe that the bible is the “word of the Lord” but then have a hard time believing that the Quran is God speaking?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that it is rather hypocritical for western Christianity to blindly trust in God in the Christian religion but to denote God in the “eastern” Islamic religion. This idea was brought up on page 56 in the text, Islam and the West The Making of an Image. According to the text, “Christians could not distinguish between God speaking (in the Quran) and Muhammad speaking… They always argued ‘Muhammad said …’ when, in conversation with Muslims, it would surely have been more effective to say ‘You believe that God said …’”. This discourse shows how the West positions itself above Eastern religion. The west other’s the east, making their religion seem unreasonable or human-invented. This is seen in how they credit Muhammad as the author, or speaker of the Quran. Yet, the Christian bible was composed by Jesus’ disciples and followers and the west chooses to say it is the word of God. As an education major, I find this bias obtrusive and arrogant. When people travel into an unfamiliar area, they often look for the differences between what they are used to and to what is unique or even peculiar about the new environment around them. Instead of respectful observance of the surroundings people incorrectly represent and report about their cultural experiences. To me, it is interesting to see how the west would goes out of the way to “other” the Islamic religion while it actually contains many similarities to the Christian religion.
Melinda your blog post really got me thinking! What you said above has been on my mind for a few days now. What’s also interesting is how the Quran actually accepts Jesus, and his teachings. While they do not think he’s the Son of God, they do acknowledge that he is some sort of prophet. They believe that Jesus too was a leader in their religion, like Abraham, Noah, and Moses before him. Yet, of course, Christians and the Christian writers do not dare accept what Muhammad says or preaches. The two religions are so, so similar yet while one says, “Yes, I concur with your thoughts,” the other sticks up its nose and declares, “I am better than you! Everything you say are lies!”
DeleteAt another point in “Islam and the West” there is a fascinating line, “the Bible derives its significant from Christ; but Muhammad derives his from the Quran” (Daniel 53). I think here is a key central difference that can help answer what you first asked. As Daniel states, Christ is how Christians got their information, while for Muslims it was the Quran, their book, itself. I feel that it was impossible for Christians to try and grasp the fact that Muhammad wasn’t a divine person to Muslims. They only ever knew Jesus as divine, and could not understand the Muslims’ point of view. They did not try at all to comprehend the difference between the religions before brushing off Islam. Christians basically threw away any possibility of creditability to the Islamic-Christian connection.
I absolutely agree with Melinda in that it is ridiculous how many Christians have criticized the Islamic religion throughout history, and yet there are so many similarities between the two religions, it is almost eerie. In watching the PBS documentary for last class, I never realized just how many similarities the two religions have. The fact that Muhammad claimed to have been visited by the angel Gabriel is shocking to me, since in the Christian religion the angel Gabriel appears many times in the Bible. There are many strong similarities with both religions, but this one was the one that really stuck out for me. Again, it makes me wonder why most Christians try so hard to separate themselves from Muslims. Just as the west separates themselves from the east, many Christians separate themselves from Muslims, even though they have many similarities in many different ways (religion being only one of them).
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DeleteTowards the beginning of the PBS documentary, the narrator says "for the West, much of the history of Islam has been obscured behind a veil of fear and misunderstanding". Throughout the text "Islam and the West", we are provided with a number of examples of the misrepresentation of Islam which have some resemblance to some of the thoughts held of Islam as a culture today.People fear the unknown, and still to this day a majority of people are blind to the actual ideals and values of the Islam faith and culture. Melinda has an extremely valid point in that Islam shares many similarities with Christianity,but it is important to remember that these issues go beyond just religion.Christians try hard to separate themselves from Muslims because of these false notions, perpetuated through a number of vehicles, especially the media and the information available to them. What we know of the Islamic way of life is controlled by the information provided to us. An example as given in the text for this week is the ideas and beliefs held about polygamy, and the treatment of women in Islamic culture. This idea is still held today, and for the sake of example, we will go turn to a more recent example. Osama Bin Ladin's assassination gained a lot of attention around the world, and a number of news stations reported that as the US troops surrounded the area, he held one of his wives in front of him as a human shield.Clearly a horrifying picture, this idea that men view their wives as belongings and not people has been perpetuated throughout history. Because we are only ever receiving information that sheds a negative light on people from this culture, it is not hard to understand why a majority of the people, especially strict christians whose views on marriage and sexual behavior are so rigid, want to separate themselves from their conception of what Islam is.
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DeleteI agree that the assumptions that people make about Quran are ridiculous and unfair. Western society has created this view of negativity towards Muslims. We tend to overlook the contributions of the Middle East. In the text, Islam and the West, Daniel shows us how the Quran was written to perfect other religions. For example, Daniel mentions that Muslims do accept the other Prophets mentioned in other religions. He states, “Muslims are commanded to believe in God and the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and not to make any difference between them” (38). Islam does not deny other prophets; they are just looking things differently and adding to what other people believe. If Islam is not that different then why is there so much opposition to it? In our country, we allow people to have religious freedom.
DeleteThe west overlooks several things about the Middle East in addition to religion. One of the ideas discussed in the documentary on Science revealed that the Middle East has contributed to our knowledge in both Math and Science. For example, the video mentions how many Medical practices contributed to today’s advancements. The video also showed how some of the methods and ideas are still being used today.
I agree with Melinda's point. It is incredibly true that many Christians are clearly in denial of the similarities that their religion shares with Islam, and the significance of those similarities. Many are willfully ignorant, but for what reason? On page 132 of "Islam and the West," Daniel quotes Aquinas as having said, "It is to stop them from putting obstacles in the way of the Christian faith, that the Christian faithful often wage war on infidels." It is interesting that it was the natural inclination of Christians during that time period to immediately understand Islam as anti-Christianity, rather than as an alternative interpretation of God's message to humanity. Why did Christians have to see Islam as an "obstacle" to the Christian faith at all? Interestingly enough, this was sufficient for many Christians to justify their prejudice against Islam and those who believed in it. This brings to mind the Crusades, where Christians slaughtered for their religion. On page 136, Daniel writes that the essence of crusading was to 'slay for God's love.' In this context, however, "crusading" seems like a ridiculous euphemism. It's a pretty word that exists for the purpose of making the idea of war look better, even divinely inspired, against a people who have more in common than not.
DeleteAs interesting as Melinda's observation about the absurdity of Christianity's xenophobia as a whole in spite of the similarities between Islam and Christianity as were identified in previous replies, I think it's more interesting to look at Christianity's treatment of Muslims as compared to Jews. Despite the Muslim's recognition of Jesus as a prophet and a very significant figure, Christians resent them for denying his divinity and vilify Muslims for it to such an extent that the messenger who delivered their principle text was made out to be an invalid, an animal, and a liar. As much as the rest of their beliefs are the same, Christians refuse to see past those individual differences -- yet Jews deny Jesus even as a prophet. They think he was a false messiah. If Christians can't stand Muslims for suggesting Jesus wasn't the son of God, then why do they embrace Jews when they claim Jesus wasn't even a prophet? This difference in reception says a lot about the motives behind Christianity's xenophobia, I think.
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ReplyDelete“Time doesn’t pass, it accumulates”—a quotation that resonated with me today in my comparative literature class with Maria Lima. We see this in all histories, but especially with the history of Islam. I was somewhat overwhelmed by the history of the Islam and how little I knew about it. Seeing the base layers of what transpires into the conflicts of today was very fascinating—especially when the PBS narrator in the documentary briefly mentions the formation of factions within Islam after Mohammad’s death that are still active to this day.
ReplyDeleteI was truly humbled by the way Mecca, even when it was first occupied by tribes, was a place where people of various ideologies put aside their differences and peacefully came together for sake of trade and even worship. As the Islamic empire developed it was interesting to see how Baghdad exemplified Mecca on a larger scale in a way that it was a common ground for people of different races and religions to exchange knowledge and goods—I did not know that Baghdad was once rich with so much innovation and peace. Even after I have taken so-called “non-western tradition” classes while at Geneseo, professors did not do justice in explaining the achievements and golden ages of civilizations in the non-western world. They would primarily focus on how the western tradition effected those civilizations or how those traditions have fallen.
As an art history minor, it is frustrating that we study works and different histories with such an isolated scope. Rather than indulging in complete discourse that encompasses the origins of such things as flying buttresses on cathedrals being inspired by certain mosques, or that artists painted the Virgin Mary in ornate cloth that so clearly quoted words from the Quran, we remain under the impression that these worlds did not come into contact too often before the 1700s. Although westernized education has come some way, it still fails to give credit where credit is due.
What stuck out for me in particular was the reverence that the Muslim empire of the 9th century had for knowledge. The campaign that was mentioned in the PBS documentary “Islam and Science” in which the caliphate of Baghdad offered the weight in gold of any book brought to him demonstrates that the priorities of the empire were invested more into the accumulation and preservation of human knowledge and less in the militaristic conquests that fueled the hateful rhetoric of the Crusades. The project to compile the wealth of arts and ideas from across the globe shows a commendable foresight on the part of the Muslims, knowing from past experience that total destruction was a looming possibility. At a time when western culture was immersed in the Dark Ages of their civilization, the acquisition of all these texts by the caliphate was critical to not only the progression of the eastern civilization, but to the west as well.
DeleteIt truly is disappointing that of all the courses offered by our college, this is one of only a handful that deals directly with the enormous contributions of ancient Islamic scholars to modern thought and technology. Ancient revelations in medicine, math and physics that underpin hospitals, architecture and science would have passed away with their respective empires if the academics of Baghdad had not gathered and translated all those texts. It is sad that the history and dignity of that age should be fully recognized only in a course specially designed to explore the marginalization of nonwestern people, and not right alongside the Galileos and DaVincis and Dantes of Humanities and World Lit courses. Those of us who are even casually aware of the rich and important history and culture of this region always notice blatant omissions from world survey courses, and are at least moderately upset to see the stories of more than half the world’s people banished to a few experimental courses as if they were extra, auxiliary, elective. It’s not as if students don’t want to hear about this stuff, clearly this part of human history is captivating and satisfying to explore, as evidenced by our packed classroom and our solid interest in course discussions. Anyone familiar with the accomplishments of this era would be delighted to offer and expand what they have heard, especially if their families have ties to the Islamic world. It is a glaring shortcoming of the university tradition that the resident culture is taught over that of perceived outsiders.
DeleteI found the Christian Attitude to Crusade in part IV of Daniel’s work to be worthy of discussion as it became clear that a great amount of discrimination was rooted in the Crusades. The contrast between the PBS documentary about Islam and the Crusades and the ideas of Western Christians presented in Islam and the West is incredible. Of course it can be argued that the PBS documentary failed to present a detailed perspective of the Christian Crusaders, the justification for the Crusades in Islam and the West by way of Western Christian writers is outrageous and allows us to get a glimpse of how extreme and unwarranted the Western Christian hatred of Islam really was. For Western Christians, what was originally deemed a “Holy war” for the purpose of gaining territory for religious purposes suddenly became fear of “threats” to Christendom. Aquinas, according to Daniel, accused Islamists of “blasphemies, wicked propaganda and even persecutions” (132). This suggests that the Crusades were much more than just a seizure of lands in the name of God, as an invasion for blasphemy seems more like an act of discipline. Furthermore, the fact that Aquinas saw Muslims as an obstruction to Christian faith and argued that the Crusades were justified caused me think more about western egocentrism and its influence on “the east.” Even the nature of the word blasphemy, which was used by Aquinas, should be looked at, as it is a word used primarily in the sect of Christianity. That Christians would equate Islam (a religion completely separate from Christianity) to an act of blasphemy is egoistic in every sense. The idea that blasphemy in the Christian sense of the word applied to followers of Islam, a completely different denomination, is absurd and insinuates that Christianity is the only “right” institution. I saw Daniel’s comparison of the Western Christian justification of the Crusades as “defense against obstacles” to the 1989 incident in which Muslim girls in French schools were suspended for not removing their veils as extremely interesting and completely valid. In comparing the two phenomena, it’s not difficult to see the irrationality of the claim that the mere presence of another religion manifests itself as an “obstacle” to Christianity. Moreover, I began to think about how the self-proclaimed superiority of the west and of western religion still persists today even after the 1989 event. It’s a known fact that Muslims in the United States constantly experience injustices and human rights violations because their heritage and/or religion is seen by the ignorant as a deviation of sorts from the western standard instead of a respectable, separate entity.
ReplyDeleteAbby-- I agree with the great amount of discrimination rooted in the Crusades, however I have to disagree with the statement that Islam is a religion completely separate from Christianity. For one, they both are sects of, and derive their roots from Judaism; therefore making them more closely related as religions rather than "completely separate" from one another as you claimed earlier. I also do not necessarily agree with your description that Christians equating Islam to an act of blasphemy is "egoistic in every sense". It is not necessarily egoistic in every sense, because if you look at it from the perspective of the Christian religion-- a religion, like Islam for example, which states that Jesus was not the son of God, but merely a prophet of God, is in itself by Christian definition, disrespect shown to God or something holy--which they believed Jesus to be-- and as a result, blasphemous. Not to say that it wasn't wrong of Christians to equate the entire religion of Islam to an act of blasphemy, because quite frankly it was entirely insensitive on their part and indeed wrong; but I think it's also interesting to note that by doing so, they violate the very respect Muslims desire to be shown in regards to their religion and God as they themselves desire to be shown respectively, too. As Akman said earlier in class this evening, "Rhetoric of hatred always breeds rhetoric of hatred against you." Rather than dispensing hatred and sowing seeds of discord among one another, I think Christians must stop looking for what is wrong with Islam, and start carefully observing the similarities pertaining to both religion and God that each share.
DeleteThis week we were required to watch two documentaries based around the history of Islam, as well as skim through a dense text expounding upon the way that Christian scholars have portrayed the Islamic world. I found that the text by Norman Daniel, “Islam and the West” provided an interesting context for watching the documentaries. In this post I would like to stray away from our reading materials and delve a bit more into the theory. The idea of Orientalism as defined by Edward Said can be applied to any two groups that are trying to understand each other. I think that the definition works very well in creating parallels between the Arabic world and the European world. But as I have been reading literature from Native American writers in another class, I have started to notice some more depth to the idea of Orientalism. Even in our own nation, between the blonde-haired blue-eyed Christians and the brown-eyed, dark-haired aborigine’s, as they have been referred to; there is a dynamic that is created. Both sides have used literature, as well as orature, to spread myths about the other. Native Americans often prescribe the abundant problem of alcoholism on reservations to the fact that the white man has duped them into reveling in drunkenness. The Christians on the other hand, have always prescribed the notion of barbarism on the Natives; going so far as to ban them from dancing for religious purposes on the premise that they were going to start up some sort of revolution. I think the transitive nature of this idea makes it all the more dangerous. There is so much manipulation of ideas and words in order to achieve the goals that greedy colonialists or profiteering businessman, that we often cannot separate fact from fiction.
ReplyDeleteThis leads me to my final point, which Professor Akman touched upon just for a moment today: all history is subjective. I am taking Islamic history right now, and we are talking about how Islamic civilization can be viewed as a world-system (in economic terms) in the context of a world-history-narrative. (This is all from just the first article that I read for this class.) The article claims that the Islamic civilization was unique for not falling into the systems that most other civilizations fell into. The main fact in the article being that Islamic civilization avoided a centralized government based on capitalism, and favored a stronger connection of smaller states based around faith, or ideological systems. I just wrote a whole bunch of paraphrased ideas from that article, and my point on bringing it up in the context that all history is subjective is this: What good can come from labeling everything into pigeonholes? This author, who is responding to another author, who I am sure was just responding to another author, has provided me with one very specific account of why Islamic civilization differed from European civilization. Again in Norman Daniel’s book, we can see an extreme specificity of one singled out idea within just a span of two centuries. By putting everything into such tiny realms of thought and contemplation, I think we are missing out on the big picture virtues, ideals, systems, and all around lifestyles that literature holds. We can gain a lot by picking out the big ideas and trying to compare them with the big ideas behind all other works. I understand that there is value in understanding the binaries that have been established, but must we beat the dead horse until it’s pulverized? There must be something else there after we have noticed the problem. Maybe I’m just frustrated because I’ve heard these theories for three semesters in a row, and I haven’t found the purpose for myself, but I want you to think about what we do after we break down what’s wrong with Orientalism. How do we stop it from increasing and continuing? Can we view texts through a lens of Orientalism, but while still searching for bigger and deeper meanings besides what a certain text might say about a different culture? I hope this didn’t come across too angry guys, I love the ideas, I just haven’t found solace in the practice.
ReplyDelete(Sorry for the double post, but it was too long for one)
“The English Christians were on the whole the more prejudiced, and exhibited more clearly the continuing influence of an unmodified mediaeval tradition at its most uncompromising” –Norman Daniel
ReplyDeleteThis quote became apparently true while watching the documentary Islam, Empire of Faith. There are many current day stories and pictures describing the miracle of Muslim tolerance. They show Muslims guarding Christians while they pray in tumultuous regions. The target audience for these pictures is Christians who will of course be shocked by how generous these specific Muslims are being. The point is that not all Muslims are bad. Clearly, this mindset stems from nothing but Christian lies stemming back to the beginnings of Islam. Even after the Crusaders overtook Jerusalem by force, killing even their own people for being foreigners, Muslims allowed all types of people to worship freely. Christians built castles next to glorious mosques. Castles were designed with weapons and stone to keep invaders out. Mosques were built with scientific innovations and luxurious gardens to inspire thinking. When the two religions are forced to stand side by side, at the time period of the crusades at least, the clear champions of open mindedness are the Muslims.
Muslim thinkers were able to translate the works of Aristotle because they did not separate their religion from advancement. Christians considered it an act against God to believe in the scientific discoveries, and hence were left in the dust of Muslim thinking. The West, Christianity in specific, created the idea of a menacing East that is intolerant. By creating an intolerant East they can point to them as proof that they themselves are more tolerant. Lies were the only possibility to justify the horrific crusades. Al Hakim did destroy the Holy Sepulcher, and the response by Pope Erwin II shows that they had been waiting for the Muslims to slip up just once, so that they could justify invading. Christians did not want to be repaid, when Al Hakim’s successor rebuilt the church the Christians did not care. The Muslim’s ultimate retaliation for the crusades was to keep trading and improving scientifically, while Crusaders harassed the traders and secretly bought souvenirs of spices and textiles, even painting their saints with Arabic writing on their clothes. And then burning the Crusaders to death.
While obviously what you have said above is accurate and I agree completely with your statement that Christians came up with falsehoods in order to use Muslims as scapegoats, it still leads to the question: why? I am curious to know why you think the Christians were so biased toward the Muslims and used Islamic culture as the "bad guys" whenever there was a need for a scapegoat. What do you think made the Christians decide to use Muslims as opposed to the Jews or any other number of different cultures? Not only that, but why do you think the Christians did not just try to profit from the Muslims, as it is obvious they tried to profit off of their own peoples for centuries.
DeleteWhat struck me as interesting was the dichotomy of the terms we listed the first day of class to describe the East and the West and the actual characteristics of both, the more we learn about the historical aspects of both Orientalism and Islam. We tended to describe the West as being more developed- a place of Christianity, Capitalism and democracy. We labeled the East as being a foreign place of constant tribal warfare and Islam. What we did was generalize ideas of the East based on what we have learned via what our media portrays.
ReplyDeleteThese misrepresentations of Islam have been occurring since the beginning of time, and for a variety of reasons. Daniel touches upon quite a few of these reasons, including: writers set out to annihilate Islam through their writing, therefore often using exaggerated descriptions and made-up differences. These writers were more concerned about writing for amusement than truth, leading to the beginnings of major misconceptions. Additionally, and perhaps most significantly, "Information was extracted from sources to serve higher powers of the Church." (271)
The fact that writers were writing in the name of the Church is not surprising, but what is surprising is the lengths followers went to in the name of their religion. Religions that taught the practices of love and harmony, but required people to kill mercilessly in the name of a shared, singular God. The power of the desire to belong to something greater than oneself, such as a religion, can be seen in the example of the attack of the Mongol Empire in the PBS Documentary. These savage nomads were well-versed in the practice of terror, and yet became a completely different type of people when they succumbed to Islam and began expanding the Muslim Empire. So I guess my question is: can religion and the desire those who are faithful have to serve it be more powerful than the desire citizens have to serve a political leader?
I found it very ironic that many of the text we consider integral to the western canon were completely lost to Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Without the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, the works of Plato and Aristotle would not be a part of international discourse. The irony continues even further in the mere fact that we consider the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans to be exclusively Western texts, when the mere fact that they were translated into Arabic and traveled all the way across North Africa implies that they were widely read and circulated throughout the Arab world. For several centuries, these texts would have been disseminated across what we label as the East, while the Western world had no knowledge of their existence. Furthermore, the Arab culture in the middle of its golden age in the East did more than read and distribute translations of “Western” texts, they also wrote their own analyses and commentary, so that by the time they reached Spain the texts existed not only in their original edition, but also with extensive intellectual annotation.
ReplyDeleteThe existence of these texts across the Eastern world goes to show how absurd the artificial distinction between East and West really is, when the Eastern world has been involved in the intellectual discourse of texts we consider fundamental to the very basis of Western society for over a thousand years.
Furthermore, the presence of an Islamic regime in Spain had a tremendous impact on the Spanish language, many words and phrases used in Spanish are taken directly from Arabic, so the idea that the East and the West evolved separately is utter nonsense, the very language that is spoken in what was a major Western power was highly influenced by Eastern language.
DeleteThroughout the western world, we have self-declared ourselves as “morally righteous”. Our values of democracy, freedom of thought, educational exploration, and scientific discoveries all serve as the very foundation of our claims to our ethical superiority. Often, in America in particular, you will often hear people cry that we need to spread our developments, civilized nature, and industrialism to the “undeveloped” “violent” Middle East- that it is America’s civic duty. We are the world humanitarians. Yet the truth is we have yet to acknowledge the fact that the very basis of American society can nearly trace every single root back to the Middle East, and in fact, it is the West who played an integral role in the issues that are currently plaguing the middle east.
ReplyDeleteAs we learned in the PBS documentary, the Middle East, in particularly Bagdad, was in the midst of a booming Golden age in the same era that is typically referred to as The Dark Ages. This alone is singularly proof of the notion that it is the West who chooses to write the history of the world. Yet, throughout this period of prosperity in the Middle East developed the Translation Movement. Arab people began to accumulate books of medicine, philosophy, and research from all parts of the world, translating these works from their native language to Arabic. From here these works were eventually translated into Latin where they began to be studied by the western world. Essentially, the western world, which likes to take claim to these developments of Greece, was hundreds of years behind the Islamic world.
Not only have we adapted principles of democracy and philosophy from the Ancient Greeks, but we have adapted most of our medical knowledge as well. The Eastern world had comprised an extensive compilation of medical knowledge from India, and China- that they were miles ahead of the western world in this area as well. Instances like the Islamic treatment of cataracts, occurred centuries prior to the even beginning development of such treatment in the western world. Even the Hippocratic oath that all western doctors must take has roots in the Middle East.
Yet, when it comes to the West’s modern interactions in the Middle East, we are entirely self serving behind our façade of morality. The media alone, over the past decades have portrayed the Middle East as only an area of violent tribal wars, terrorists, and threats to the United States. Yet, nearly every thing that we as Americans pride ourselves on was brought to us through the developments in the Middle East. Instead we focus on the Orientalist views that are so deep rooted in our society. We have painted such a picture of the eastern world, that it is nearly impossible for the majority of Americans to conceive any other possibility. We have wholly dehumanized, Arabic people.
Now, America has an opportunity to step in as the self-appointed world leader in human rights in Syria. Yet, we have yet to do anything. In our society, Arabic people cannot be the victims. We will continue to turn a blind eye to total human genocide, while continuing to support the state of Israel, the glorified version of Middle Eastern people. All I ask is that we begin to show the Middle East half of the support that they have shown us. That is our true civic duty as Americans.
I agree that it is ridiculous that America has built itself up as this moral authority that needs to transform the Middle East into something like ourselves, especially since we clearly owe so much to Middle Eastern societies. There is a definite superiority complex in America particularly in regards to Middle Eastern nations. This is frankly stupid. As you say, there is a huge amount of knowledge that the West would never have had access to if it were not for Middle Eastern countries.
DeleteI would continue your train of thought regarding America's current view of the Middle East. As you state, the media is painting the Middle East as a constantly war torn and violent area, with essentially no redeeming value. Then we have our own radical groupsthat blatantly disrespect Islam on a regular basis. After watching the video in class today of the Navy Seal's speech, I realized that people like this are literally making propoganda for radical Muslims. As Professor Akman said, that video is exactly what Islamic extremists would show to others as "proof" that Americans hate them. If I recall correctly, Florida Pastor Terry Jones' burning of the Qu'ran sparked protests in Afghanistan that resulted in quite a few deaths. The general ignorance of this portion of the American population is dangerous, and will definitely have future consequences.
The concept of Islamic medicine had been completely foreign to me, not only because of the fact that students in the “West” rarely learn about what was going on outside of Europe during the Middle Ages, but because rarely are Islamic innovations given due credit. This last BBC documentary, Science and Islam, really shed some light on how underrated the Middle Ages were for Islam, and how much those advances were ignored until they were “rediscovered” by “Western” societies such as France and England. Unfortunately this is unsurprising, as France and England are predominantly Christian societies and according to Norman Daniel, the religious rivalry between Islam and Christianity was about more than just religion. The church’s attempts to discredit Islam ranged from the fact that Muhammad was epileptic to the larger issue (read: attack) of misrepresenting the Qur’an as the Islamic equivalent of the Bible; is it so surprising then, that the advancements of Islam during the time after the fall of Rome would be ignored to some extent?
ReplyDeleteI knew, as Professor Akman mentioned in class and as the documentary shows, that English speakers (along with many common western languages) use Arabic numerals, decimals, and Arabic methods of computation (among other innovations), but I hadn’t realized the scope of Islamic advancement during this time period—and the implications of these advances to modern medicine. I studied abroad in Montpellier, France last semester—which just so happens to be the site of the oldest medical university still in use. It was officially founded in the 13th century by decree of the pope—but much of the faculty, I learned on the tour of the university, was not Christian. Christian doctors were not permitted to cut open dead bodies, which was a major issue when it came time to do surgery and the doctor only knew theoretically where everything was and what it looked like. Thanks in part to the proximity of the city of Montpellier to Marseille (a major port that connected France with the entire Mediterranean) as well as Spain and North Africa, the University was able to invite Muslim physicians to teach and perform autopsies. The Christian doctors couldn’t cut into the bodies, but there was no injunction prohibiting them from watching a practitioner of Islam as he examined bodily structures and explained their functions.
Another facet of my own ignorance was that I believed, having done some research on the Rosetta stone, that French linguist Jean-Francois Champollion had effectively cracked the code of Hieroglyphics in the 19th century. Islamic scholar’s use of the Coptic language to associate more than half of the hieroglyphic alphabet with Arabic letters or sounds during the great translation movement of the 9th-10th centuries, long before Champollion, was completely left out of this research. Furthermore, that this research was done, according to the BBC documentary, in search of alchemical secrets (and abandoned when it was discovered there were no such secrets in the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs)—and was not simply a work of linguistic code-breaking—speaks to the advancement of Islamic society even beyond that of the 19th century French society which spent so much effort simply to translate an already half-translated dead language. This is a prime example of an Islamic breakthrough that was completely glossed over—which continues to be completely glossed over by Western authorities.
Hey, this is late, but i figured i'd post it anyways:
ReplyDeleteAfter watching the two documentaries, one gets the impression that ancient Islam and the eastern world is responsible for Ideas and discoveries that we from the western world long believed to be our own. The documentaries both show how common fields of study like algebra originally came from the east, and how something as fundamental as our letters and numbers have not originated in the west, but the east.
What’s interesting (and maybe a little sad) about this revelation is that most, if not all of us sure didn’t learn it that way. Most of us were taught these things and kept blissfully ignorant of their origins, of the influence that permeates our culture and our lives.
These days, our country’s funny people like to crack jokes at North Korea. Their self-imposed isolation, idolatry for their ruler, and their professed dislike of our country and the mild, non-threatening reality of their size and actual power makes that nation an easy target. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhohteHuyPM The way in which their government intentionally shelters their people from outside influence is an incredibly foreign concept for most Americans, who might look at cultural blending as commonplace.
But I was wondering how different North Korea’s intentional blindness or ignorance of the outside world really is from our government and culture neglecting to give the East its deserved respect and credit.
Like, either I paid really horrible attention in high school, or there’s an unfortunate recurring pattern of the people of our country growing up without the full story, particularly in regards to the Islamic empire and their contributions to the world we enjoy today.
And the idea I’m presenting isn’t exactly novel. In truth, it’s behind a lot of what Professor Akman tries to get across in his classes – that the East is much more than what we’ve been led to believe it is. The real conclusion I came to wasn’t a conclusion at all, but a question: Does every culture teach and perpetuate its own version of history? Even when the facts are out there, and the trail of influence is clearly visible to anyone who’s looking in an un-biased way (like Norman Daniel). Because if that’s the case, then it’s just further proof that the human condition and patterns of behavior is something widespread. And our poking fun at a country like North Korea fails to recognize the similarities in our behaviors.