When Edward Said published his book Orientalism in 1978, it gave a bad name to a once-vibrant field of Western academic art and scholarship. Considered the bible of post-colonial studies, Said’s work accused Western culture of perpetuating harmful stereotypes about the Middle East. Despite its arrogant attack on nearly two centuries of Western painting and […]
Historical Methodology and Dogmatic Islamophilia (Part 6)
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 2. Dogmatic Islamophilia of Western Islamologists Consider the following remarks, and try to guess in what sort of publication they might have first appeared: “Archaeologists increasingly have questioned accepted assumptions about biblical history and the biblical narrative….“ “Archaeological finds, however, at times call into question […]
Muslim writer: “Robert Spencer is an Edward Said turned upside down”
Stephen Suleyman Schwartz is a convert to Islam and author of The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role in Terrorism and The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony. He and I were on a panel together at CPAC in 2003 and have had some contentious exchanges in the past. […]