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 riting
in The Nation (where else?), Edward
Said hammers away at Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations"
thesis, which has been invoked frequently in recent days to explain
the rise of radical, bin Laden-style Islam. Said, doubtless preferring
his own theories of American imperialism, Zionism-as-racism, and
Muslim martyrdom, accuses Huntington of being "an ideologist,
someone who wants to make 'civilizations' and 'identities' into
what they are not: shut-down, sealed-off entities that have been
purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents that animate human
history." Those who accept Huntington's paradigm of the "West
versus the rest" (a rhyme worthy of Jesse Jackson!) are paying
"scant attention to complex histories that defy such reductiveness
and have seeped from one territory into another, in the process
overriding the boundaries that are supposed to separate us all into
divided armed camps."
For Said, of course, there are no "civilizations" at all,
and so any attempt to see Osama bin Laden and his cohorts as representative
of a broader "Islamic" world is as foolish as taking "cults
like the Branch Davidians or the disciples of the Rev. Jim Jones
at Guyana" as representatives of the West. One might point
out, of course, that David Koresh and Jim Jones were never abetted
by Western governments — nor were they hailed as heroes by
mainstream Western clerics — nor did their crimes prompt cheering
New Yorkers or Bostonians to take to the streets, as many of Said's
precious Palestinians did on September 11. But the Columbia professor
is having none of it. To Huntington's claim that many Muslims are
"convinced of the superiority of their culture, and obsessed
with the inferiority of their power," Said sneers "did
he canvas 100 Indonesians, 200 Moroccans, 500 Egyptians and fifty
Bosnians? Even if he did, what sort of sample is that?" Well,
a pretty significant one, some might say. But for Said, it's all
or nothing — either every Muslim backs bin Laden and
hates the West, or "Islamic civilization" does not exist.
In place of
the Huntington thesis, though, Said offers nothing of substance.
He accuses Huntington of peddling "vast abstractions that may
give momentary satisfaction but little self-knowledge or informed
analysis," but then offers only "vast abstractions"
himself. There is no insight in Said's essay, no argument, only
wind and platitudes. "Primitive passions," he writes,
"and sophisticated know-how converge in ways that give the
lie to a fortified boundary not only between 'West' and 'Islam'
but also between past and present, us and them, to say nothing of
the very concepts of identity and nationality about which there
is unending disagreement and debate." In other words, nobody
knows anything about anything. And once we understand that, we can
begin "to reflect, examine, sort out what it is we are dealing
with in reality, the interconnectedness of innumerable lives, 'ours'
as well as 'theirs' ... [and] to think in terms of powerful and
powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance,
and universal principles of justice and injustice." But no
"vast abstractions," please.
There is something
sad, truth be told, and a little desperate about Said's essay: It
reads like the flailings of an intellectual who realizes, too late,
that history is passing him by. He lashes out indecorously, calling
Huntington "a clumsy writer and inelegant thinker" —
an odd accusation from a essayist whose prose often reads like something
badly translated from an obscure Eastern European tongue (A typically
unsuccessful Said sentence: "Uncountable are the editorials
in every American and European newspaper and magazine of note adding
to this vocabulary of gigantism and apocalypse, each use of which
is plainly designed not to edify but to inflame the reader's indignant
passion as a member of the 'West,' and what we need to do.")
Later, he takes
a swipe at Bernard Lewis, author of the prescient 1991 essay "The
Roots of Muslim Rage," calling him a "veteran Orientalist"
whose "ideological colors" are obvious — "Orientalist"
being, of course, the term that Said himself invented to tar any
westerner with the temerity to study the Near East. Meanwhile, lacking
any actual evidence to prove his points, he fumbles for bizarre
anecdotes, citing Dante's placement of Mohammed in "the very
heart of his Inferno" to prove that Islam is somehow
"inside" western civilization. Someone, apparently, has
neglected to explain to Prof. Said that Dante's Mohammed is damned.
In the end,
he falls back on vapid cliches — "we are all swimming
in those waters," he writes, "Westerners and Muslims and
others alike. And since the waters are part of the ocean of history,
trying to plow or divide them with barriers is futile." His
arguments, boil down to Disney: It's a small world, after all
...
This, apparently,
is what passes for intellectual rigor and "informed analysis"
on the American Left.
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