Yasir Qadhi – The End of Orientalism

			Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah who either early he will be here a woman who
Allah Hammerberg. Today inshallah we'll do something different as most of you are aware, I'm
speaking to those that are visiting I know some of you are visiting outside. Generally we talk about
obviously any phoron see or something from our tradition. Once in a while, I think it is useful to
mention a fact that is related to our history as an OMA but not necessarily straight from our texts.
And as you know, in the last two years, I have sometimes given issues of psychology issues of
sociology things of benefit. And by the way, footnote here, this is sunnah our profit system it is
		

			reporting SIBO hottie that many times after Salah, the Sahaba would speak of the days of Dr. Healy,
the words of Jahai Lea, they would even recite the poetry. So to have beneficial knowledge in the
masjid is something that is a part of our tradition. So today, inshallah we'll go to the tangent,
which is going to be especially useful to those who are engaged in dialogue with people of outside
of our community, or in trying to understand the media and current affairs. My talk today is going
to be about one of the most interesting books written in the last 100 years in Western academia. It
is considered to be one of the 10 most important books that revolutionized Western academia written
		

			by a non Muslim, and Arab Christian by the name of Edward Saeed. Edward Saeed. This is a figure that
anybody who's involved in understanding modern politics and modern media should be aware of a little
bit about this person and why we're talking about him, in today's call total because it is a very
interesting topic. Edward Saeed comes from a christian palestinian family. And he was raised in very
elite schools in federal Slean and Cairo back in the 40s. And 50s. His father was wealthy and
managed to send him to America as a teenager. So he was one of the first Arabs to graduate from
Princeton, and then Harvard back in the 50s. And he had a PhD in English literature, like some field
		

			that is not related to us, right. So he became a professor in Columbia. So he's Ivy League entire
way, professor in Columbia, English literature, but he is Palestinian. He's out of, of course, he's
Christian, but he's Arab. And he sees what's happening in this country. And he sees the news media
and the analysis about how they portray Islam, and how they talk about Palestine and how they
portray the Arabs. And so even though his PhD is in linguistics and in literature, he writes a book
that literally shook the world of academia. It is said that hardly any book impacted universities as
much as this book did in the last century, and it's a book called Orientalism, you should all be
		

			aware of this today's hot, there's about this book, Orientalism by Edward Saeed, published in 1978.
The impact of this book is beyond what I can mention in a hot era, it literally destroyed an entire
field called Orientalist studies. And it created multiple different fields, such as a post modernism
post colonialism, post colonialist studies is a new field, you can get a PhD and post colonial
studies. This entire discipline was created as a result of this book, one book, the book deals with
us as an ummah, that's why we're talking about it. It's about us. It's about the Muslim world,
written by a non Muslim, but because he's born and raised amongst Muslims, and because he's out of
		

			because he's Palestinian. The book that he wrote, was an amazing work that still has an impact to
this day. This book itself has been the subject of multiple PhDs. The book itself is the subject of
multiple dissertations. And it is an accessible book. It's not a very difficult, advanced abstract
book. It's one that any educated person can have. You can buy it on Amazon Orientalism, by the way,
before this point in time, Islamic Studies programs were called Orientalist studies. And the person
who studied Islamic Studies was called an Orientalist. Okay, this was the term Orientalism and
Orientalist. This book, demolished the term nobody uses it anymore. This book demolished the
		

			Department of Oriental Studies. Now it's called department of Islamic studies because of this book,
Department of Islamic Studies. Nobody wants to use the term Orientalist anymore because this book,
devastatingly critiqued the concept of Orientalism, in a nutshell and I'm being a little bit
obviously, off the cuff I haven't prepared for this and obviously has to be simplistic for we're not
doing an advanced topic is very simple talk here in a nutshell, Edward Saeed created multiple
disciplines by sifting together topics of psychology of colonialism, of literary theory of power
dynamics, and he demonstrated this is now the key point, that when people from America and Europe,
		

			talk about Islam and the Arab world and the Muslim world, they are not coming from a place of
neutrality.
		

			On the contrary, there is a deep psychological reality of bias that they're not even willing to
acknowledge. And as they write about us as the Muslim community, they stereotype and caricatured us
in the most basis of fashions, they generalize he goes, firstly, there is no such thing as oriental,
Chinese and Malay are totally different. Pakistani, and you know, somebody from the Middle East are
not the same. But this construction of everybody have brown skin is Oriental. It is done in order to
stereotype. And in order to another point, he says, to actually accused the enemy of what you
yourself are guilty of. This was one of the key points of Orientalism, he demonstrated that, in
		

			fact, America, Europe and the academics of this country and this nation, usually, they themselves
are guilty of certain onze ideas, and they blame the Muslim world for those ideas as a psychological
tactic to get the blame off of them. And he mentioned two things in the book that I can mention
here. They're more than mentioned. Number one, he goes sensuality. Now, if you look at any movie
50s 60s 70s 80s About Arabs and the Middle East, right? There's always some herring, you know,
there's always some, you know, lady, when you get my point, you're very far harsh and whatnot. And
he goes, which society has more fascia? Which society has, you're accusing the Muslim world of these
		

			things, which of the two is the producer of evil and fascia and filth? And then when you said this
before, 911, violence, the stereotype of the Arab terrorist throughout the 70s, and 80s, the
stereotype even in the cartoons, of our Arabs, being Muslims be associated with terrorism and
violence, right. And in reality in human history, which civilization has been the most invading the
most colonizing the most bombing of other nations, which societies have killed more people, West or
East? So he says, by accusing them of what we are guilty of, he's calling himself a Western here by
accusing the Orientals of what we are guilty of, it's actually making us feel we're not guilty of
		

			anything. Those are the real evil people, right? So there's this notion, therefore, of taking your
own faults, and accusing your enemies of having those false so that your false appear without any
fault, you understand this point, right? Another point that he writes here, which is a very profound
point, he says, when these academic thinkers write their dissertations, their papers, even the
movies and literature, they're not writing it from a vacuum, they are benefiting from a system of
oppression, colonialism, and their stereotypes play in to validating colonization, when you claim
that the Orient is backward, and we are civilized when you claim that Muslims are, you know, not
		

			able to be democratic. So we must be the Democratic invaders. You perpetuate stereotypes that are
able to be used by politicians by culture, to then commit crimes against humanity invade bomb, you,
oh, academics are not neutral, you are tools of imperialism, even if you don't recognize it. And
this is a very serious charge, if you understand, right, because academics, they love to say we are
neutral, we are not involved with the government. And he says no, by default, you are not writing
from a vacuum, you're writing from a power differential. You are a superior in terms of GDP and
bombs and whatnot. When you caricatured that level of people and societies, you are perpetuating the
		

			crimes of your own people, you are sugarcoating your white washing and you become a part of the
apparatus that you so willingly claim you're not a part of. Okay, those of you understand what's
going on with the CRT issue as a black and white. These are all predating Edward sides mind is
thinking along those lines 30 years before what we are seeing right now of the woke culture, right?
So Edward Saeed comes with this devastating book. And as I said, the book literally caused like an
academic, you know, avalanche within the communities because he did a very thorough study of some of
the biggest names. His main Nemesis was one of the worst Neo cons who eventually joined George
		

			Bush's war on Iraq, the worst academic of the other side, Bernard Lewis, if you know his name, so
after 911 he wrote an article that went viral. Okay, why do the Muslims hate us so much? And in the
article I kid you not literally I'll summarize it in one sentence. They hate us because we're so
good. Literally. That's why 911 happened. Forget and obviously we don't justify it, but no politics
nothing. They are evil because we are so good that we're we're angels they become devils. This is
Bernard Lewis, Bernard Lewis and
		

			St. Edward side will complete at odds with one another, and in lifetime and even up until that's
like their obituary, so very harsh enemies because he quoted Bernard Lewis multiple times as the
quintessential example of this type of person. And by the way, the irony of ironies. Bernard Lewis
actually joined the neocon cabal after 911. Literally, the book came out in 1978. And Bernard Lewis
said, I'm not a politician, I don't have any through politics. And after 911, he actually visited
George Bush and the White House, he instructed George Bush about words to use, he wrote articles
that justified Iraq's invasion, literally with Edward side had predicted back in 1978, that person
		

			became because of this book, as I said, Orientalism became a terrible word. Nobody calls himself
Orientals anymore, because he mentioned and he proved that the notion of studying the east as you're
a Westerner is not neutral, you are a part of the apparatus that kills and rapes and ponders and
lutes. And when you perpetuate these crude stereotypes, when you portray the Muslim world as
backward, and us as civilized, then when your countries bomb, your peoples understand, okay, we're
the better people, your people overlook what your governments are doing. So you are an accessory to
mass murder. Obviously, nobody likes that accusation, the entire name was eliminated, departments
		

			changed. So he also pointed out by the fact and I will testify to this fact myself, in my own
studies and whatnot, up until the 70s and 80s. The only people who would study in these departments
were Caucasian people, if you are out of or Middle Eastern, or Muslim or brown skin, you would not
get admitted to the program, you would. The assumption would be you're not qualified to study
yourself on the weekend study you he pointed out this hypocrisy, because of this book, active
recruitment began that we should bring in some Middle Easterners and some whatnot. So when I applied
to my PhD program, I was one of the very, very few people in that timeframe. That was an openly
		

			practicing Muslim doing a PhD in Islamic Studies. The default was that people doing patient Islamic
studies are not Muslim, much less practicing. It was very rare. It still is very rare to find
somebody like this because Edward site pointed it out, they opened door a little bit, but still the
door remains just a small amount of opening. Also, as I said, he began an entire discipline of
literary studies and of history. This discipline is called post colonialist studies. This
discipline, you can now have an undergraduate degree in it or a PhD in it. What is this discipline?
This discipline seeks to examine the relationship between the colonized and the colonizer. Because
		

			this is a very deep topic, those countries that have broken away from colonization, that's all of
our countries by the way, right? Our identities, whether we like it or not, are shaped by by whom,
the colonizer, okay, our identities, even as we broke away, we cannot help but be shaped by the very
countries that we broke away from the classic example our own home countries of India, Pakistan,
what is the national language of India that the parliament itself speaks in? English? English is a
national language, right? And almost every educated Pakistani speaks English and Bengali speaks
English. How why Where did that happen? Our own construct of what it means Buxton, India itself
		

			comes from colonization, as we were right not to get too, too controversial, but it's a reality. So
he brings up this topic, can you even have an identity without the other? So he goes down this very
philosophical notion of looking at literature and, you know, movies and of the rhetoric between
nations, in any case, summary of it all these types of books and these types of disciplines. Even
though he was not a Muslim, it really benefited the Ummah very much and our prophets are seldom said
sometimes Allah helps this OMA with Rajul Kaffir so Hadith, in Allahu Allah, the UAE, Doha, the
deen, berjudul, kaffir. And these types of people had they been Muslim, their books would not have
		

			been given much credit. It was Allah's hikma, actually, the fact that he's a Christian and his
writing in a discipline. That's not really, you know, he became famous because of this book. By the
way, this book literally made him a world household name and academia. And he died right after 911
He died 20 something years right after a year or two after 911 He passed away. And he wrote things
about 911 as well by the way that you should read. So this book is actually a very useful
introduction to the mentality of those people who study Islam and wish to call themselves
Orientalist. I wanted to introduce this book, the author and the topic to you insha Allah Allah, if
		

			you're interested, you can read summaries online, or buy the book, believe it or not, it's a very
easy read. It was meant for anybody who's interested in this notion you will find in shallow views
and interests. Next time is shallow, we'll do a more standard mainstream lecture. Don't worry, Zack
Kamala Harris, and I'm gonna have to lie about a cartoon. Oh,
		

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