The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies: J. Lawrence Scholer Reviews 'Ivory Towers on Sand'

By J. Lawrence Scholer | Monday, February 4, 2002

On September 11, Osama bin Laden committed his worst in a series of acts of terrorism against the United States. Bin Laden has made headlines for a number of years—organizing terrorism across the globe at sundry U.S. targets.

Yet, despite his history and newsworthiness, bin Laden has never made it to the desks of Middle Eastern scholars. In the field, he has been widely ignored—no analyses of him or of his views have been written by academics. Despite bin Laden's now evident weight in the Islamic community, scholars have paid little attention to him, and, more broadly, Islamic terrorism in general.

As a result, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Middle Eastern scholars have little to say. Terrorism and terrorists, it seems, never appeared on their theoretical radar. Terrorism is an unsavory, but very evident, aspect of the Islamic world, and, for that reason, scholars have glossed over it.

In Ivory Towers on Sand, Martin Kramer pins the blame on American academics in Middle Eastern Studies Departments across the nation. These scholars have largely ignored the threat Islamic terrorism, instead making false prophesies on the direction of the Middle East. A prevailing argument has been that Islamic fundamentalism could, in the end, bring democracy to the Middle East.

Kramer is editor of the Middle East Quarterly and past director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. He has taught at Cornell, Georgetown, and the University of Chicago. His study documents the transformation of Middle Eastern Studies from art and literature to politically correct theory. 'Middle Eastern studies used to resemble a quaint guild, emphasizing proficiency,' he writes. 'Now they more closely resemble a popular front, demanding conformity.'

The problem began in America. Early Middle Eastern Studies departments in Europe had focused more on the humanities—what Kramer calls 'the demanding labor of philology and textual analysis.' Islam also is responsible for much of the classical corpus we have today. Many ancient texts were preserved and found in Islamic settlements.

However, American Middle Eastern studies left this focus on humanities and dedicated their study to the social science. Rather than studying the Arabian Nights, American scholars would form cultural theories. '[American scholars] would master the theories of history and paradigms of the new disciplines, supplemented by a working, practical knowledge of history and language,' Kramer writes.

Many of the current problems with Middle Eastern Studies can be traced to Edward Said, an English and comparative literature professor at Columbia, who, in 1978, published Orientalism. The book was Said's attempt to delve into Middle Eastern studies, an interest that was piqued following the 1967 war between Israel and Palestine. Said, born in Palestine, attended preparatory school in the United States and later studied at Harvard and Princeton, and saw the war as a chance to establish a Palestinian identity. 'Beginning in 1968, I started to think, write, and travel as someone who felt himself to be directly involved in the renaissance of Palestinian life and politics,' wrote Said.

The premise of Orientalism was that previous study of the Middle East (that done by Europeans) was racist. This racism and ethnocentrism was what Said termed 'orientalism.' Past studies had only served as credence for the West to assert its dominance over the East, he suggested.

Although Orientalism mainly aimed its polemics at European scholars, the book was widely received in the United States. The book appeared when the radical students of the 1960s became faculty at colleges in universities. Further, Orientalism was identified with postmodernism, marked by Said's bow to Michel Foucault in his introduction.

Orientalism also named Arabs as the only ones capable of studying the East without bias. This privilege was not based on the scholarship of the individual, but solely on race—that as an Arab, one was innocent of 'orientalist' bias.

Said moved the study of the Middle East from the real to the theoretical. It should be remembered that Middle Eastern studies were founded and funded in this country so that they might advise policy-makers. Orientalism would end any notion of that practice—radicalizing the departments and glossing over relevant details in the Arab world, like terrorism. 'I say explicitly in [Orientalism] that I have no interest in, much less capacity for, showing what the true Orient and Islam are,' said Said. What purpose, then, would Middle Eastern studies serve?

Following Said's assertion that he is uninterested in the reality of Islam, scholars have avoided important issues. Thus, they strictly avoid terrorism, instead promoting the view that terrorism does not represent Islam, despite so much evidence to the contrary. There is no justification for this omission. Kramer writes, 'Scholars merely repeated stale assurances that kidnappings, hijackings, bombings, and the infamous fatwa did not represent Islam—without any explanation of why those Muslims who committed and applauded these acts thought otherwise.'

The impact of this assertion seems to have been accepted without hesitation. The media and even our President frequently proclaim Islam as a 'religion of peace' when signs often point otherwise.

Orientalism, however, is only one of the fads that pervades Middle Eastern studies in academia today. Thus enters John L. Esposito, a former professor at the College of the Holy Cross and author of The Islamic Threat. Esposito's goal, taken from that of his mentor Ismail R. Faruqi, was to present 'Islam in Western categories to engage his audience as well as to make Islam more comprehensible and respected.'

Like Said, Esposito presented Islam with the understood notion that Americans are inherently ethnocentric, particularly when it comes to American notions of democracy. Esposito proclaims that Islamist movements are nothing other than movements toward Democratic reform. And, in order to see this, Americans 'must transcend the narrow, ethnocentric conceptualization of democracy,' wrote Esposito. Other scholars soon followed suit. John Voll, then of the University of New Hampshire, appeared before a congressional committee in 1992 to support the military regime of Sudan. 'It is not possible, even using exclusively Western political experience as basis for definition, to state that if a system does not have two parties, it is not democratic,' he counseled Congress.

Perhaps Esposito's most glaring error came in regards to Islamic terrorism—he claims that research on terrorism would only enforce ethnocentric stereotypes. Esposito deemed terrorism 'counterproductive,' as '[Islamic movements] speak of the need to prepare people for an Islamic order rather than to impose it.' Thus, the terrorism of the 1980s was supposed to end and democracy would reign.

But when the violence did not end, Middle Eastern scholars 'entered a state of denial.' After the bombing at the World Trade Center, Richard Bulliet of Columbia organized a conference on 'the new anti-Semitism'—discrimination and hostility towards Muslims. Exploring the causes of terrorism, it seems, would only reinforce ethnocentrism. But Bulliet is the same scholar, who, in 1993, wrote in Foreign Affairs, 'Violence. . .will probably be deemed too great a risk by Hamas leaders.'

Nor did this strange theory pay heed to prominent Muslim activists—like Osama bin Laden. The activists studied were those deemed important as leaders of what would be the 'Islamic Reformation.' Journalist Robin Wright first penned the term in 1992, writing that 'Islam is now at pivotal and profound moment of evolution, a juncture increasingly equated with the Protestant Reformation.' Scholars never studied bin Laden, finding him just too radical—bin Laden's rhetoric clashed with the idea that Islam is friendly to America. Kramer explains scholar's reluctance thus: 'Focusing on Osama bin Laden, risk[s] catapulting one of many sources of terrorism to center stage, distorting both the diverse international sources (state and nonstate, non-Muslim and Muslim) of terrorism as well as the significance of a single individual.'

Dale Eickelman '64, Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth, also heralded the arrival of the 'Islamic Reformation.' In his article, 'Inside the Islamic Reformation,' he wrote, 'If my suspicion is correct, we will look back on the latter half of the twentieth century as a time of change as profound for the Muslim world as the Protestant Reformation was Christendom.' Students and scholars alike awaited eagerly for the time Eickelman prophesied—a time yet to come.

Middle Eastern Studies departments across the country have, since their inception, taken money from the government—with hopes that scholars could advise administrations on policies toward the Middle East. Middle Eastern studies, as Kramer points out, has moved far astray from reality, bogged down in various fruitless and incorrect theories. The terrorist attacks, although preceded by numerous attacks at American targets by Islamic militants, were a wake-up call to a Middle East that is not as friendly or democratic as many scholars have led us to believe.

The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies: J. Lawrence Scholer Reviews 'Ivory Towers on Sand'

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