Occidentalisms In The Arab World

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, his foreign policy was at first seen to be the antithesis of that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Eid Mohamed highlights how in the wake of this change of US administration, Arab media, literature and cinema began to assert the value of America as a potential source of 'change' while attempting to renegotiate the Arab world's position in the international system. Arab cultural representation of the United States has variously changed and developed since 9/11, and again in the wake of the protests in 2011 and the ensuing political turmoil in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and of course, Syria. Taking this into account, Mohamed offers an examination of the ways in which stereotypes of America are both presented and challenged through cinema, fiction and the wider media and intellectual production. Rather than seeing this process as one where the Middle East reacts to and attempts to negotiate with western modernity, Mohamed instead highlights the significant interplay of religion, pop culture and politics and the role they play in shaping the complex relation between America and the nations of the Middle East.

In the decades since Edward Said first christened the term 'Orientalism', the discourse on the West's historical representation of the East has been inundated with new literature. While the Western perception of the 'the Orient' has become a well-worn topic in the field of Asian and Middle Eastern studies, the way in which the Arab world has come to perceive the West has been largely neglected. Occidentalisms in the Arab World not only presents a comprehensive overview and pointed commentary on recent works in the emerging field of Occidentalist studies, but also provides new insight on the interplay between ideology and image in the formulation of 'the West'. Robbert Woltering offers an in-depth look at the ways in which multiple representations - occidentalisms - of the West have developed in Egypt since the end of the Cold War. From the pivotal classics of Sayyid Qutb and Gamal Abdel Nasser to the contemporary works of Muhammad Imara and Galal Amin, 'Occidentalisms in the Arab World' explores the political undertones in the 'imagined West' in Egyptian media. Through the rigorous analysis of newspaper editorials, scholarly literature, widely-circulated books, and visual media, Woltering examines the competing influences of leftist-nationalist, liberal, and Islamist ideologies within the context of the broader struggle for political supremacy in the region. Drawing from the work of intellectuals at the respective forefronts of these movements, Woltering explores the nuanced relationship between image and ideology, which has shaped the how the West is perceived within the Arab world today. 'Occidentalisms in the Arab World' provides an unparalleled and original commentary in an emerging field at the intersection of Middle East Studies, Political Science, and Media Studies.

When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, his foreign policy was at first seen to be the antithesis of that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Eid Mohamed highlights how in the wake of this change of US administration, Arab media, literature and cinema began to assert the value of America as a potential source of 'change' while attempting to renegotiate the Arab world's position in the international system. Arab cultural representation of the United States has variously changed and developed since 9/11, and again in the wake of the protests in 2011 and the ensuing political turmoil in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and of course, Syria. Taking this into account, Mohamed offers an examination of the ways in which stereotypes of America are both presented and challenged through cinema, fiction and the wider media and intellectual production. Rather than seeing this process as one where the Middle East reacts to and attempts to negotiate with western modernity, Mohamed instead highlights the significant interplay of religion, pop culture and politics and the role they play in shaping the complex relation between America and the nations of the Middle East.

Twenty-five years ago, Edward Said's Orientalism spawned a generation of scholarship on the denigrating and dangerous mirage of "the East" in the Western colonial mind. But "the West" is the more dangerous mirage of our own time, Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit argue, and the idea of "the West" in the minds of its self-proclaimed enemies remains largely unexamined and woefully misunderstood. Occidentalism is their groundbreaking investigation of the demonizing fantasies and stereotypes about the Western world that fuel such hatred in the hearts of others. We generally understand "radical Islam" as a purely Islamic phenomenon, but Buruma and Margalit show that while the Islamic part of radical Islam certainly is, the radical part owes a primary debt of inheritance to the West. Whatever else they are, al Qaeda and its ilk are revolutionary anti-Western political movements, and Buruma and Margalit show us that the bogeyman of the West who stalks their thinking is the same one who has haunted the thoughts of many other revolutionary groups, going back to the early nineteenth century. In this genealogy of the components of the anti-Western worldview, the same oppositions appear again and again: the heroic revolutionary versus the timid, soft bourgeois; the rootless, deracinated cosmopolitan living in the Western city, cut off from the roots of a spiritually healthy society; the sterile Western mind, all reason and no soul; the machine society, controlled from the center by a cabal of insiders—often Jews—pulling the hidden levers of power versus an organically knit-together one, a society of "blood and soil." The anti-Western virus has found a ready host in the Islamic world for a number of legitimate reasons, they argue, but in no way does that make it an exclusively Islamic matter. A work of extraordinary range and erudition, Occidentalism will permanently enlarge our collective frame of vision

Sadik Al-Azm (1934-2016) was one of the foremost Arab public intellectuals, who offered innovative, often controversial challenges to conventional narratives on Islam and the West, Secularism, Orientalism, and the Israel-Palestine issue. This fourth and final volume of his works in English includes his essays on: Faith and Reason in Islam: Strategies in the Education of Muslim Communities Sharia from a Secular Perspective Crossing Borders: Orientalism, lslamism and Postmodernism The Concept of Civil Society in Relation to the 'Arab Spring' Statement by 99 Syrian Intellectuals ("Charta 99") Goethe Medal 2015 Acceptance Speech

Sadik J. Al-Azm was one of the foremost Arab public intellectuals, who offered innovative, often controversial challenges to conventional narratives on Islam and the West, Secularism, Orientalism, and the Israel-Palestine issue. This fourth collection of his essays includes:- Syria in Revolt (2014)- Experience or ""Regime of Truth""? About Translation, Arabic and the Postmodern (2014) - Orientalism of the Worst Kind (2015)- The Shari'a from a Secular Perspective (2015)- Crossing Borders: Orientalism, lslamism and Postmodernism (2016)- What's in a Name: Middle East or West Asia? (2016).

Evaluates the East-West encounter portrayed in Maghrebi literature from colonial times to the post-9/11 period.

Douglas Little explores the stormy American relationship with the Middle East from World War II through the war in Iraq, focusing particularly on the complex and often inconsistent attitudes and interests that helped put the United States on a collision course with radical Islam early in the new millennium. After documenting the persistence of "orientalist" stereotypes in American popular culture, Little examines oil, Israel, and other aspects of U.S. policy. He concludes that a peculiar blend of arrogance and ignorance has led American officials to overestimate their ability to shape events in the Middle East from 1945 through the present day, and that it has been a driving force behind the Iraq war. For this updated third edition, Little covers events through 2007, including a new chapter on the Bush Doctrine, demonstrating that in many important ways, George W. Bush's Middle Eastern policies mark a sharp break with the past.