February 2, 2007
“Weep I not but my heart bleeds at your concern for the American budget deficit, a dysfunctional and inadequate health care system, a differential economy, energy crisis, environmental degradation, whereas you seem to impress that you do not have any or all of the above problems in the Muslim world. If you live in Pakistan, I’m sure you get clean water, perfect health care system, 24 hour electricity supply, with perfect law and order situation. I'm sure you must be living in paradise; or fool's paradise.” wrote Lawrence Benjamin in an email response to the “State of the Union 2007” (The News, Jan26, 2006).
There is nothing unusual in this response to the last “Quantum Note”; it has become commonplace for me to open my mailbox following the publication of the column and find extreme reactions from both sides of the divide. Setting aside the disguised racial slurs and obvious Islamphobia, what is unusual about Lawrence Benjamin, however, are certain assumptions which reflect a much broader category of people with a certain mindset which defines the limits of rational discourse.
“You can fool quite a few people nicely,” he wrote, “who believe in your message of anti-west and anti-American propaganda. You seem to be well influenced by Wahabi Islam, which is the source of all present day troubles in the world; especially terrorism. Like any good Muslim, you would like to see the fall of the USA. In fact, it's the Muslim world which should worry about its survival. After 9/11, the world is getting to know the true face of Islam and its teaching. Let me warn the Muslim world; with these words from the Gospel of Truth: ‘Those who live by the sword, die by the sword’. Have a look at the flag of Saudi Arabia and find out for yourself what principle it represents. Yours, Lawrence”
Lawrence Benjamin’s outburst may be an irrational response of one mind, but he represents a wide spectrum of the Western world where uncritical assimilation of certain prejudices against Islam have now existed for over a millennium. Crusaders were fired by the same irrationality. What they had against Islam and Muslims was not a territorial dispute, but a dispute of faith; Islam was not recognized by them as a true religion; rather, they saw the Prophet of Islam—may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him—as an imposter and a false Prophet. Often charged by a Pope’s edict, thousands of ordinary human beings left their homes and families to fight against the “infidels” between 1095 and 1291. Of course only the most extreme fanatics would now consider these Crusades to be anything but misguided religious zeal, but this initial response of the Western Christianity to Islam has set the mould which still exists and defines the relationship.
This mould was first cast by the religious leadership, but it has not remained the monopoly of the Church; a very wide range of Western thinkers have contributed to the making of the image of Islam and Muslims in the West. These include scholars and poets, politicians and generals, thinkers and philosophers. These perceptions, rather realities, are the foundations of Lawrence Benjamin’s understanding of Islam and Muslims. Those who have institutionalized these perceptions about Islam and Muslims in the West are, however, not the Benjamins and Lawrences who react to a newspaper column, but the grand old men of Orientalism: Gibbons and Pocockes, Goldzihers and Hydes.
“Mohomet and his Saracens soon fixed my attention,” wrote the influential English historian and member of Parliament Edward Gibbon (1737-94), “and some instinct of criticism directed me to the genuine sources.” Gibbon’s “genuine sources” were, however, the works of other Orientalists: Simon Ockley, De Herbelot and Pocoke; for Gibbon never did learn Arabic and had no desire to understand Islam from its primary sources. What Gibbon and generations of Western “authorities” on Islam have done since the eighteenth century is to build a citadel of negative perceptions which continue to influence the reading of past and current events in the West. The influence of Oriental scholarship on Western perceptions of Islam and Muslims is unmistakable, yet there is seldom any acknowledgment of this fundamental component of Western thought in the popular media.
Orientalism is not based on heresy; medieval Christendom did study Islam seriously for the double purpose of protecting Christians from Muslim influence and converting Muslims to Christianity. Priests and monks created a body of literature concerning the Prophet, the Qur’an, and basic teachings of Islam. Though this body of literature was polemic in purpose and often scurrilous in tone, it defined the limits of rational discourse on Islam for centuries to come. Even when a more detached scholarship emerged in later centuries, the prejudices and purposes of polemical writings did not disappear; they merely changed form.
No one would give much credit to Edward Gibbon today, but his intellectual heirs are touted as detached scholars of Islam who can speak with authority and inform politicians and general public what Islam is all about. Thus Bernard Lewis and his kind can churn out book after book of this supposed detached scholarship on Islam and be recognized as the magisterial voice of our times without anyone questioning his authority. And Benjamins can react to “Quantum Notes” without ever realizing their prejudices.
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