Good Example Of Orientalism Essay

Orientalism as defined by Edward Said (1978) is a way of seeing that conceives, highlights, overstates, and alters differences of the Arab people and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It is the acceptance in the West of “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for novels, social descriptions, epics, theories, and political accounts which concern the Orient including its citizens, ‘mind’, customs, destiny and other ideas.” It revolutionized the study of the Middle East.
Napoleon’s army on his conquest of Egypt were consisted not only of soldiers but also a large volume of scholars. These scholars were Napoleon’s tools to ‘Orientalize’ the Egyptian culture. He studied Egypt to learn its culture and use it for colonizing it. The more he knew about Egypt, the more power he had over it.

Before proceeding, it is of my interest to state that this paper is written as unbiased as I possibly could.

Orientalism, from what I understand, is the studying of a certain culture and using this knowledge to colonize the culture. Said’s orientalism is focused on the Middle East culture. The Middle Eastern community has been stereotyped largely as having a relatively negative culture. It was emphasized that all Arabs, all Muslims, are people that are largely different with the American and European people. They were treated as lower class citizens. Orientalism has heavily misled the notions of common people about the Middle East.
Today, a simple definition or description for orientalism would be that it is racism. Muslims were viewed as extreme kind of people that literally sacrifices themselves brutally for their own belief. They would literally blow themselves up in the name of their belief. Because of these beliefs and notions of the Muslim community, all of ‘terrorist’ activities were automatically credited to them. All ‘terrorist’ acts were automatically attributed to them. The Muslim community had a negative reputation. A man that seems to be a Muslim were automatically judge as a threat.
In the Oklahoma City bombing, as discussed by Edward Said, it was immediately concluded that Muslim terrorists were responsible. A commentator stated that the bombing was designed to inflict the largest damage possible and that it was definitely a Middle Eastern trait. This is extremely racist and damaging to the people of the East. This commentator seemed to be totally sure about his statement. Viewers of his report mechanically shared his ideas thus making more people believed the bad reputation of Muslims.
However it was later found out that it was definitely an American who did it. This immediate assumption that terrorist are Muslims and Muslims are terrorists largely damaged the culture and pride of the Islamic people. They were generally viewed as bad people. Even after the true criminal was caught, the damage to the reputation of the Middle Eastern community were already done and it seemed that there weren’t much effort to emphasize the truth.
The media contributes a big problem with regards to this. Most media’s goals is not to spread the whole truth but rather to produce a story based on a truth that has been distorted “minimally” to make it more interesting. This “small” distortion of the truth is critically damaging to the people’s beliefs. A small ‘infection’ when spread produces a destructive result. Multiple ‘small’ mistakes when strung together creates a very big problem for the world. The belief system of the people is largely affected by the media especially nowadays wherein the people can easily spread information through the power of the internet. Fast information transmission is supposed to be a good invention for the world but now it used to spread a lot of false stories. There is little assurance about what is true. The internet has become a big tool, even for the bad elements, to spread information as fast as the blink of an eye.
Edward Said stated that for Europe, the orient has been amongst the deepest and most recurring images of ‘the Other.’ For me, he meant that the East has been viewed as people that are significantly different from the West. They were thought of as people that are different from the norm that western cultures know. Thus calling the Middle East as just ‘the other’ types of people. They were viewed as ‘infectious.’ Not literally but metaphorically. They were seen as people who bring negativity to the world.
The Middle East were definitely not ‘infectious.’ It was the West themselves who might have infected themselves with bad ideas about the East by simply misunderstanding and misinterpreting their truths. Similar to most media reports today, as I have stated earlier, most stories are misinterpreted and misunderstood at a very early stage. Thus when the stories are passed on, it experiences more and more distortion thus the ‘truth’ of the story slowly changes.
Generalizing a community based on the actions of few extremists is one of the largest problems that the world has today. Especially for the younger generations who now has very little interest for the history of the world, the present notions they know stick to their beliefs thus adding themselves up to the community who ignorantly criticize the people of Arabic culture.
It is very significant that people today be educated with the true and unbiased history of the world. The problem is that the cultures, be it the East or the West, teach their children a history that benefits themselves. A biased history that might have been redesigned or reorganized to subliminally teach the next generations the hidden plans of the present generations making the young generations unknowingly become tools for the present generations. Ignorance is not an excuse to hurt other culture.
People of today needs to open their minds and review their views of other culture. It is important that we as educated people spread an unbiased kind of education. The young generations must be allowed to learn openly. Their views must be impartial. History has left us an infinity of traces, Antonio Gramsci said. This history must not be colored black, brown, or white. This history must be true. This history must not be used for colonialism. This history must be used for the Good and only for the Good only.
Mister Edward Said’s work is a fundamentally significant contribution to todays’ education. It must be taught more to spread an equal and unbiased view not only towards the Middle East but to the world. Everybody must be seen as an equal. This might seem quite impossible today but if we teach our children an unbiased moral and ethical education, equality might become a reality sooner than we imagined.