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Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's 'Orientalism' | 
| Author: Ibn Warraq
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Category: Book
List Price: £20.00
Buy New: £15.05
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Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 25436
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 500
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 1591024846
Dewey Decimal Number: 950.072
EAN: 9781591024842
ASIN: 1591024846
Publication Date: January 1, 2007
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| Customer Reviews:
 Much needed reality check! July 25, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Said's 'Orientalism' is a racist, inaccurate tract of suspect scholarship. This book is a splendid riposte. well written and interesting, readers familiar with Said will find this book a splendid revelation. Great read! MUST BUY!
Excellent. Essential. Edward Said's Nightmare April 30, 2008
10 out of 15 found this review helpful
Ibn Warraq's latest book is an eloquent and impassioned defence of the West against the liberal self-loathing and grievance-mongering of liberals and cultural relativists such as Edward Said. With fact after devastating fact, Warraq debunks Said's thesis that every European is by definition a racist, whose sole interest in the Orient is merely to dominate and colonise it.
Part 1 of the book is largely a reprint of an old essay Warraq wrote refuting Said. It serves as a general overview of the whole book.
Part 2 is where it gets really good. Warraq argues that there are "Three Tutelary Guiding Lights" that define humanity, and he demonstrates with countless examples how the West has embodied these principles more than any other civilisation in history. The three guiding lights are rationalism (learning for its own sake), universalism (acceptance, tolerance and admiration of other cultures and willingness to learn from them), and self-criticism, which leads to positive change within cultures (Warraq points out that it was the West which abolished slavery, for example). All the while, however, the author does not denigrate the Orient and Islamic civilisation, and gives them credit where it's due.
I also enjoyed the section later in the book where Warraq outlines the racist attitudes that are prevalent in the Orient, which Edward Said never mentions and the mainstream media never covers, including the surprising revelation that Mahatma Gandhi was a racist and warmonger in his earlier years. And following that, there's an excellent discussion of the pernicious influence liberalism, political correctness and multi-culturalism have had on Western coverage of Islam and the East, leaving many Westerners unwilling to defend themselves against "the greatest threat the West has faced since the Nazis." All of this is done with brilliant erudition, extensive documentation and fairness of mind.
Part 3 of the book is an examination of how Said's smears against Western artists and their portrayals of the Orient has resulted in the "shelving" of some truly great works of art and literature. In this part, the exposing of Said's intellectual bankruptcy is complete.
All in all, this book is a must-read for anyone who is proud of their cultural heritage and wishes to defend it against both armed and ideological attacks. The originality and scope of this work is unsurpassed. Buy it, and Defend the West before it's too late.
 The West deserves better defense April 27, 2008
8 out of 16 found this review helpful
This is a badly written book. The narrative is interrupted by long and at times not appropriate quotations from various sources. The book is also based on the work of others and thus does not follow any specific research method or plan. The topics are discussed superficially. The author did not address the principal issue of Edward Said's discourse which deals with our relationship with the "Other". The book is a naive defence of what he calls the "West". However, the author contradicts its arguments since the Western civilization is a synthesis of a variety of other cultural achievements realized by other civilizations (which he confirms via various quotations in the text). The author is at times racist e.g. he describes the European man as "rational", "self-critical" and "curious" by nature. Such descriptions are exclusive. What is about the Indian man, Chinese man?. This book does not help us in repairing the "artificial" conflict created due to the presumed "clash of civilizations". Unfortunately, the book defines the West as anti-thesis of the backward, ignorant "Other" of the East and South. The author did not learn from Edward Said's writings that both the West and East should exercise self-critique and should accept each other narrative to be able to work for a common successful future for the whole humanity.
Said said it wrongly March 12, 2008
10 out of 17 found this review helpful
The author is an apostate Muslim from Pakistan living in Europe. He writes with scholarship and erudition to demolish the postmodernism of the liberal Palestinian Christian Said. In his Orientalism Said dismissed the scholarship of all Western orientalists as corrupted by imperialist motives. The author shows this is not the case. The scholars were out to discover the truth about the Orient, to understand not to exploit. He accuses Said of encouraging the modern Muslim victim culture. He demolished the myths of a tolerant Islam. In Spain Jews were persecuted, killed and hounded out. Islam does not promote understanding of other cultures nor scholarship on matters not Islamic. He sees Islamic anti-semitism as rooted in Mohammed, not in Zionism. He is appreciative of missionaries like Lull and Carey though strangely silent on the anti-slavery of the Clapham Sect. He tells us that the Triangular Trade enslaved 11 million Africans but Arab traders enslaved 17 million Africans and also Europeans. Highest prices were for eunuchs as only about 10% survived the operation. This book is an indictment of Said and of Islam. He sees the root cause of Islamic fundamentalism is Islam.
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