Cover of Edward Said’s memoir Out of Place (1999).  Said is also the author of Orientalism (1978), Covering Islam (1981), and The Word, the Text, and the Critic (1983) among other works.

THE INBORN AUTHORITY

by Yahya T. Ali

In a video produced by the University of Southern California, a group of students from different backgrounds were brought together to discuss Arab and American films. The students were truly diverse, Arabs of different nationalities, Asians who were born and raised in Arab countries, an Iranian-American, and Americans from “Middle Eastern” backgrounds. It is important to note that these students were put in a position where they were thought of to be representatives of the everyday Middle Eastern person watching American movies. They spoke with loud-voiced authority on everything related to the greater Middle East (extending from Morocco, adn to India); while white Americans were very careful how to work their opinions of what they watched of, for example, Egyptian movies. While some of the Middle Eastern students were born and raised in Arab countries, many were born and have lived their entire lives in the United States.

When an Iranian-American, a girl named Layla, whose views were generalizing and never specific, was asked about how she obtained such knowledge of the Middle East, she simply replied “my readings; I spend a lot of my time reading about the Middle East”. To break this down, she has lived her entire life in America and has only been to Iran for a few vacations with her family. Aside from limited knowledge of Farsi, if any (sociologically speaking), her knowledge of the Middle East is the same as any American who has read similar books that she had; yet what privileges her over the white girl sitting next to her is that her name is Iranian and her complexion is immigrant-dark. What is alarming is that Layla is acting on a second-hand constructed knowledge of the Middle East that could have been acquired by anyone; however her ethnic/cultural background unfairly privileged her over others. It is fair to mention that an ethnic/cultural background does help, yet it would not justify grotesque generalizations that project the greater Middle East as all culturally homogenous.

Edward Said, in examining the media coverage of the Middle East (and/or Islam) observes many defects that discredit the knowledge and scholarship of the experts usually resorted to by the media. Two of the many shortcomings are:

1. Essentialism (and thus, Racism). Many of the experts opinion on the Middle East as a culture, people and religion often portray an image of unchangeability and the existence of an essence from which negative actions are derived (anti-Semitic/American/West, undemocratic, despotic, misogynist, repressive, extremist, fanatic… etc).
2. The non-existent representation from the Middle East. The absence of self-representation. And/or the lack of first-hand long significant experience in the Middle East.

Much has changed since the publication of Covering Islam, however. The number of immigrants from the Middle East surged in the 80s and 90s; from different countries, for different reasons, but generally from the area recognized by the media as unchanging and “all the same”. These Middle Eastern voices, however, lacked the academic background to support their statements which echoed Western Orientalist views. Rather than narrating personal experiences of despotism (and/or patriarchy, xenophobia, racism…etc), their narration has been used (interpreted as, and lead to become) a sweeping generalization that eliminates the peculiarities and uniqueness of each small community within the Middle East, and renders it and its people unchangeable. These experiences become further proofs for Orientalist views that dehumanize the Middle East to the public.

These personal experiences were used to assert a claim of racial/religious essentialism, whereupon oppression of women is not part of a world phallocentricism, but is instead an integral essential part of being Middle Eastern (Arab, Turkish, Persian, Pakistani…etc) and/or of being a Muslim. This has been established through the misleading channels and their audiences. These experiences by the “natives” of the Middle East would be directed by abrupt TV hosts and Orientalist western experts to draw the static image they desire to crystallize of the Middle East.

This could be either an honest mistake by the Middle Eastern “expert”, or a simple indifference about the way they are perceived. Some believe in Western superiority which makes them willing to be “native informants”; to inform the White Man of the atrocities committed by the Brown Man against the Brown Woman, as well as the brown minorities, (the brown gays, the brown unconventional religious groups…etc). So while Irshad Manji “Thank[s] God for the West”, Nawal El-Sadaawi vehemently and harshly rejects the White Man’s (represented by the Bush administration) calls for the West’s intervention in the Middle East to liberate it’s women; “We do not need you!”.

The native informant is thus created. This is not to speak of all scholars in the west with Middle Eastern ethnic/cultural background, but of those that are often quoted and interviewed by xenophobic, racist media as they serve as proofs of the brown uncivilized world in desperate need of the White Man’s missionary work.

The strength and authority these “experts” gain are direct results of their ethnic/cultural background. It is thought that this background is of significance because, the knowledge of those experts are supported by the advantage of:

1. Having lived in the Middle East or at least have lived in a Middle Eastern immigrant community.
2. Language (Considering the fact that Arabic is seen to be one of the most difficult languages to learn).

However, it is difficult to decide whether these factors could be advantageous or disadvantageous.

The views of these “experts” would be regarded highly as they are given the status of eye witnesses, and their words are not mere theories or second-handedly taken from books, but “testimonies”. (Everybody thought of Layla’s words to be first-hand and testimonial of nature).

Here I am questioning the significance of these “testimonies” when they are obviously personal, yet serve as the basis for a generalization that encompasses the whole of the Middle East geographically and historically. This only means that the generalization of the testimony is a result of institutionalized methods through which such “testimonies” go through and are processed to become further proofs of the unchanging essence of the Middle East. The way the Middle East is negatively projected in the media has been thoroughly discussed in many works, most notably in Edward Said’s Covering Islam.

As mentioned above, the ethnic/cultural background could and could not be advantageous. Here, I see there are two types of “experts” on the Middle East:

1. One whose ethnic/cultural background has been involved significantly in their life and was a vital integral part of their academic scholarship.
2. One who’s ethnic/cultural background served as an excuse for lacking any significant genuine academic scholarship.

Scholars of the first category may or may not assert reductionist views of the Middle East. However, those who do, are not doing it out of an uneducated ignorant generalization or reduction, but out of an approach to polarize and consequently reduce the Middle East’s cultural, religious, national, political and historical diversity to one. In this one, there aren’t Islams, but one Islam practiced since the 7^th century in ancient Arabia and continues to exist statically in the 21^st century; “Arabs” is not a loose term applied to loosely connected ethnic groups with different histories, dialect-languages, backgrounds, nationalisms and sub-nationalisms, but they are one single “race” of turbaned people. This is done through a belief in a universality that prefers and places the West as the example of the best of what humanity could achieve. Thus, it is the West’s role to alter different world systems of belief to comply with the Western notions of democracy, liberty and freedom. In this case, their knowledge of the diversity of the Middle East’s culture and its complexity is intentionally disregarded as unimportant, due to their belief in a Eurocentric (Americocentric) universality. It is simply willed ignorance/unawareness.

This universality is not always western-oriented. It could be an Islamic universality. Al-Qaeda’s plan for world domination is based on Islamic universality. In the work of many Wahabi/Salafi groups, the different sects of Islam are either dismissed as non-Muslim (and automatically anti-Islamic), or merely as simple-minded Muslims albeit diverted from the true path of true Islam, and are in need of missionary work to guide them from the darkness of their ways, to the brilliant light of Islam.

Both are engaged in a process of reduction for the sake of a single universality. Both willingly and intentionally disregard the diversity of the Middle East in order to polarize and hierarchize. They practice willed intentional ignorance/unawareness. Both are truly aware of the complexity of the greater Middle East.

The second category experts would reduce the Middle East ignorantly as they generalize their experiences and support their generalizations with readings of simplistic reductionist views by Orientalists, simply because they do not negate their generalized personal views, but attest them. They are angry and frustrated with the problems that infest the Middle East, to which they have fallen victims; the calm and critical analysis that treats these problems as produced by a set of complex historical socio-politico-economic reasons, simply does not cut it for them. Good-Guys-Bad-Guys polarized analysis (reduction) appeals to them as it compliments their experiences, and gives them the flattering sympathetic, damsel-in-distress treatment, or as put by Spivak, the White Man saving the Brown Woman from the Brown Man. In addition, their “testimonies” are processed by the fear-inducing and xenophobic media. An appearance by Irshad Manji on The O’Reilly Factor established that the Middle East is all the same and that the Salman Rushdie affair is simply a product of the feeble-minded violent Muslims. Her concluding sentence, which probably could not have been any more pleasing to O’Reilly, the cherry on the top of her feeble analysis is: “It is we, Muslims, who are the problem”. (Other Irshad Manji writings and videos on youtube.com are as pleasantly reductionist as the previous statement).

“Experts” of this sort are genuinely ignorant of the diversity of the Middle East. Many do not have a significant strong academic background in Islam, Islamic history, Middle Eastern political history, Arabic language and literature, yet they speak with authority given to them by the media and whoever assumes that a knowledge of the Middle East and whatever is related to it, is essentially inborn in anyone of a Middle Eastern ethnic/cultural background.

I am not entirely dismissing the significance of an ethnic/cultural background. I am rather calling on a close examination of how it becomes significant or not to who is given the authority to speak on the Middle East. To assume that someone of a certain ethnic/cultural background has an authoritative knowledge of that culture, a knowledge that doesn’t need to be supported by an academic background, would be as preposterous as taking any John/Jane Doe off the streets of Anytown, USA to speak as an authority on, for example, the history of the Supreme Court. One should keep in mind that Mr/Ms Doe could even have some education on American history (e.g., a BA in history) that could be rephrased in his/her CV as “expert on American history”. In this case, we need to assess the level of education to determine whether it qualifies as an authoritative voice.

Usually, the person in the above example would never be considered qualified to speak on American History, but as Edward Said points out, a comparable example of Middle Eastern descent would be qualified if it’s the Middle East we’re talking about. While many Middle Eastern voices are now speaking up in the West, the media is still resorting to the ones that affirm the reductionist polarized image of the Middle East. The ethnic/cultural background could be completely irrelevant, yet it is established to be a (better) substitute for substantial significant academic scholarship.  What we need is a reassessment of authority on every level of this process.

–Yahya T. Ali was born in Kuwait. He is a short-story writer, has a BA in English Literature, and is currently working on a MA thesis in Comparative Literature at the University of Kuwait.