“Orientalism”

Edward Said . Orientalism

1 . Thesis Edward 's Said thesis in Orientalism ' is that every cross-cultural investigation is necessarily ideological . So in to understand any cross-cultural study it is necessary to place it inside a particular framework . Said uses the of oriental studies to prove his point

2 . Sources used by Author Said used academic studies of Arabic and far-East countries to develop his argument , as well as literary sources and reports on interaction of European countries with oriental ones during the colonial period

3 . Why the arguments are convincing ? The

book is pretty convincing due to it 's outstanding factual background , profound analysis and easy-to-read language , as well as evaluated objective approach

Anwar Abdel Malek "Orientalism in Crisis

1 . Thesis Malek in his article strongly relates orientalists and European colonial authorities . As the colonial empires collapse , under Maleks idea orientalism will have to face a serious crisis

2 . Sources Maleks article is rather a discourse than academic study , so his sources are mostly informative articles , by which he proves some facts in support of his thesis

3 . Why the arguments are not convincing ? To my opinion Malek 's mistake is in confusing colonial authorities with scientists . Study of science does not depend of the existence of empires , and can develop independently . This is proved by the fact , that orientalism still exists in the modern world

Abdul Latif Tibawi . Tibawi . English-Speaking Orientalists

1 . Thesis Tibawi is one of the early critics of western approach to orientalism . In his work he argues , that orientalism is actually a fruit of European colonial policy , and states , that English-speaking authors can never really understand East , for they use orientalism only as tool for domination

2 . Sources Tibawi refers to religious and philosophic writings and quotations from contemporary ideological activists in his work

3 . Why the arguments are convincing ? Tibawi has a pleasant writing style and he is very much convincing . In fact western scholars can really never fully understand east , and this is what Said spoke about in his book

Abdul Latif Tibawi . Tibawi . English-Speaking Orientalists (II

1 . Thesis In his second article in western orientalism Dr . Tibawi proves that western orientalists have made a great mistake when they tried to use their understanding of Islam only to combat Muslims . As a result they received a corrupted picture of Islamic civilization . They taught this picture to their students making mistakes even worser

2 . Sources Tibawi turned to writings of contemporary western orientalists and summarized them to analyze their mistakes using Islam religious and scientific texts

3 . Why the arguments are convincing ? This work of Tibawi seems to be convincing for the same reasons as the previous one , but one reason should be added : his thesis , that investigation can never be objective in case it is made with hate in mind is obvious for a fair scientist

Works cited

1 . Edward W . Said . Orientalism - Vintage 1st Vintage Books Ed edition , 1979

2 . Malek Abdel Anwar . Orientalism in Crisis . Diogenes 1963 : 44 103-140

3 . A...