Imagining The Arab Other

"In this innovative study, Professor Tahar Labib seeks to understand how the 'Other' is viewed in Arab culture, and vice versa. Imagining the Arab Other examines how Turks, Europeans, Christians and Iranians have been represented in the arts, opinions and cultures of the Arab world. Conversely, it also explores the intellectual representation of 'The Arab' in other cultures. It demonstrates the central role of the Catholic Church in ascribing to the Arab peoples a set of characteristics associated with the 'Other'. Labib places this survey in the context of theoretical debates, started by Edward Said's 'Orientalism', on the construction of 'Other'. With its diversity of perspectives, Imagining the Arab Other offers a new way of understanding identity and cultural difference in the Middle East, one which goes beyond the Orientalist/Occidentalist paradigm."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

In this innovative study, Professor Tahar Labibseeks to understand how the 'Other' is viewed in Arab culture, and vice versa. Imagining the Arab Other examines how Turks, Europeans, Christians and Iranians have been represented in the arts, opinions and cultures of the Arab world. Conversely, it also explores the intellectual representation of 'The Arab' in other cultures. It demonstrates the central role of the Catholic Church in ascribing to the Arab peoples a set of characteristics associated with the 'Other'. Labib places this survey in the context of theoretical debates, started by Edward Said's 'Orientalism', on the construction of 'Other'. With its diversity of perspectives, Imagining the Arab Other offers a new way of understanding identity and cultural difference in the Middle East, one which goes beyond the Orientalist/Occidentalist paradigm.

Who are the Arabs? When did people begin calling themselves Arabs? And what was the Arabs' role in the rise of Islam? Investigating these core questions about Arab identity and history by marshalling the widest array of Arabic sources employed hitherto, and by closely interpreting the evidence with theories of identity and ethnicity, Imagining the Arabs proposes new answers to the riddle of Arab origins and fundamental reinterpretations of early Islamic history. This book reveals that the time-honoured stereotypes which depict Arabs as ancient Arabian Bedouin are entirely misleading because the essence of Arab identity was in fact devised by Muslims during the first centuries of Islam. Arab identity emerged and evolved as groups imagined new notions of community to suit the radically changing circumstances of life in the early Caliphate. The idea of 'the Arab' was a device which Muslims utilised to articulate their communal identity, to negotiate post-Conquest power relations, and to explain the rise of Islam. Over Islam's first four centuries, political elites, genealogists, poetry collectors, historians and grammarians all participated in a vibrant process of imagining and re-imagining Arab identity and history, and the sum of their works established a powerful tradition that influences Middle Eastern communities to the present day.

Resource added for the Global Business program 101381.

The twenty-first century exploded into the global imagination with unforgettable scenes of death and destruction. An apocalyptic 'clash of civilizations' seemed to be waged between two old foes - 'the West' and 'Islam.' However, the decade-long and ruinous 'war on terror' has prompted re-assessments of the militaristic approach to Western-Muslim relations. A growing number of academics, policymakers, religious leaders, journalists, and activists view the struggles as resulting from a 'clash of ignorance.' Re-imagining the Other examines the ways in which knowledge is manipulated by dominant Western and Muslim discourses. Authors from several disciplines study how the two societies have constructed images of each other in historical and contemporary times. The complexities and subtleties of their mutually productive relationship are overshadowed by portrayals of unremitting clash, thus serving as encouragement for the promotion of war and terrorism. The book proposes specific approaches to re-imagine the Other in order to mitigate Western-Muslim conflict.

Recipient of the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation, Imagining the Middle East examines how Western perceptions of the Middle East were formed and how they have been used as a rationalization for setting policies and determining actions.

A fascinating demonstration of how U.S. representations of veils, harems, and belly dancers have operated as nostalgic and exotic symbols to help rationalize dominant U.S. narratives about power and progress.

How religion and race—not nationalism—shaped early encounters between Zionists and Arabs in Palestine As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict persists, aspiring peacemakers continue to search for the precise territorial dividing line that will satisfy both Israeli and Palestinian nationalist demands. The prevailing view assumes that this struggle is nothing more than a dispute over real estate. Defining Neighbors boldly challenges this view, shedding new light on how Zionists and Arabs understood each other in the earliest years of Zionist settlement in Palestine and suggesting that the current singular focus on boundaries misses key elements of the conflict. Drawing on archival documents as well as newspapers and other print media from the final decades of Ottoman rule, Jonathan Gribetz argues that Zionists and Arabs in pre–World War I Palestine and the broader Middle East did not think of one another or interpret each other's actions primarily in terms of territory or nationalism. Rather, they tended to view their neighbors in religious terms—as Jews, Christians, or Muslims—or as members of "scientifically" defined races—Jewish, Arab, Semitic, or otherwise. Gribetz shows how these communities perceived one another, not as strangers vying for possession of a land that each regarded as exclusively their own, but rather as deeply familiar, if at times mythologized or distorted, others. Overturning conventional wisdom about the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Gribetz demonstrates how the seemingly intractable nationalist contest in Israel and Palestine was, at its start, conceived of in very different terms. Courageous and deeply compelling, Defining Neighbors is a landmark book that fundamentally recasts our understanding of the modern Jewish-Arab encounter and of the Middle East conflict today.