Imagining the Arab Other: How Arabs and Non-Arabs Represent Each Other

368 Pages·2008·2.62 MB·English

by  Tahar Labib

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Centre for Arab Unity Studies Arab Association of Sociologists
Imagining the Arab Other:
How Arabs and Non-Arabs
View Each Other
Edited by
Tahar Labib
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Contents
Preface v
List of Contributors xi
Part I: On the Otherness Question
1. The Other as an Historical Invention 3
Jean Ferreux
2. Orientalism and Occidentalism: Invention of the Other in 10
Anthropological Discourse
Munzer A. Kilani
3. The Other’s Image: The Sociology of Difference 17
Haidar Ibrahim Ali
4. The Other, the Self and the Idea of Citizenship 35
Pierre Paolo Donatti
Part II: Behind the Borders: (1) The Arab View of the Other
5. The Other in Arab Culture 47
Tahar Labib
6. The African in Arab Culture: Dynamics of Inclusion and 92
Exclusion
Helmi Sharawi
7. The Dialectics of the Ego and the Other: A Study of Tahtawi’s 157
Takhlis Al Ebriz
Hassan Hanafi
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iv CONTENTS
8. The Other’s Image in Maghrebi Travel Writings 183
Abdul Salam Heimer
9. Tunisia and the World: Attitude of the Young Tunisian to 203
Other Countries
Michael Suleiman
Part III: Behind the Borders: (2) The Other’s View of the Arab
10. The Image of Arabs and Islam in French Textbooks 223
Marilyn Nassr
11. The Catholic Church and Islam 251
Anzo Patchi
12. The Others’ Image: Real and False Fears in Arab–European 261
Relations
Sigurd N. Skirpekk
Part IV: Across Borders: The Other of Literature and Arts
13. The Other’s Image in Quinnel’s The Mahdi 269
Abu Bakr Ahmed Bakadir
14. Arab and Turkish Images of Each Other 284
Ibrahim Al Dakuki
15. Arab and Iranian Images of Each Other 316
Talal Atrissi
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Preface
As a construction in the imagination of a given culture, the image of the
other does not identify with reality. It necessarily reflects, however, a real-
ity that is, first and foremost, that of those who build it. It is in this sense
thattheotheristheotherfacet–eventhedamnedotherfacet–ofoneself,
and the search for oneself passes through a search for the other. As such,
it is vital to ‘invent’ the other under one form or another, including under
the form of the enemy.
Despite having many constants and stereotypes, the representation of
the other as a social product is always subject to the rectifications of his-
tory. This is how, for instance, a powerful, open and confident Arab cul-
ture was able, not only to build a pluralistic otherness, but also to
recognizeandadmirethecontributionsandqualitiesof‘bignations’.Read
such great authors as Al Jahiz (died in 869) and Abu Hayyan Al Tawhidi
(died in 1009), and you will be struck today – yes, today – by their open-
mindednessandcouragetorelativizethecontributionsandmeritsoftheir
own culture even when it was at the climax of its world prosperity. This
‘humanism’hadsurprisingexpressionsamongotherArabslikeIkhwanAl
Safaor‘BrothersofPurity’,whobelievedthatthe‘idealhumanbeing’was
of Persian origin, Arabic religion, Hanafi ritual, Iraqi behaviour, Hebraic
mythology, Christian approach, Damascene asceticism, Greek sciences,
and Hindu lucidity ...
As history would have it, the West – i.e. Medieval Europe – which was
not of interest to the Arabs (not because they were not curious enough
aboutit,butratherbecausetheWestdidnothaveanythingtoofferthem),
became, ever since the colonial intervention, the other Enemy by excel-
lence. Therefore, the perspective from which the Arabs viewed others, in
plural, became sharp in the both meanings of the word. Today, in the ‘us
and the other’, this ‘other’ is nothing but the West, and the West alone. It
is as if there was nothing else left in the world but the West. Should we
reiterate that in a society that feels dominated, even humiliated, and that
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vi TAHAR LABIB
inagreatculturethatfindsitselfdestabilized,thisvisionoftheWestisnot
the result of a ‘mental structure’ that belongs to the Arabs, but that of an
inflicted relationship that is deemed unjust?
Inthefieldofresearch,Arabsociologistswerethefirsttotransformthe
otherness, as a social result, into an object of theoretical analysis and
empirical research. This initiative corresponds to a specific moment: the
Gulf War, which added to the gravity of the old misunderstandings and
alsoresultedinsomefactualevidence.Therefore,itisnosurprisetonotice
thattheArabcultureis,atthesametime,verydifferentandclosesttothat
of the West. We become aware that between these cultures, there is not,
and probably has never been, a ‘good neighbourhood’. This is why the
memoryofbothpartiesisalwaysreadytounveilitsstereotypesandrefor-
mulate its revenge.
The Gulf War has persuaded the Arabs that the ‘misrepresentation’ of
their image in the Western rhetoric – a misrepresentation that they have
always grumbled about – was not the complete truth since their own
rhetoric also seemed misrepresentative. The proof was persuading: the
constituents of the ‘coalition’ no longer correspond to the typology of the
Westerners that the rhetoric and the collective imagination had built and
maintained in the Arab world. Hence, from the interrogation about
whattheWestdoes,therewasashifttointerrogationaboutwhattheWest
is.
The disparity between representation and reality is huge and flagrant,
mainlyintheeyesofthosewhohavealwaysbelievedintheWest’svalues.
Yet, it was totally expected that the West would unite as a system.
However,thebiggest‘culturalsurprise’wasundoubtedlytheemergenceof
this Arab-other which defied the established norms of cultural belonging
and forged an alliance with foreign powers in order to confront the
‘brother’. This surprise did not only trigger a political debate, but also
theological controversies regarding the legitimacy of alliances with the
conquerors.
It is in this context that the Arab Association of Sociology organized in
1993 its first international colloquium on the ‘image of the other’. A sig-
nificant ‘cultural fact’mustbe highlightedaboutthiscolloquiumand that
is:whilenon-Arabcolleaguesfromdifferentareasoftheworldresponded
to the organizers’ proposal of indicating how their respective societies
viewed one another, almost all Arab colleagues opted for the inverse; that
is, they chose to explain how other societies viewed Arabs. Undoubtedly,
Arab colleagues perfectly understood what was suggested to them since
they lack neither the knowledge, nor the theoretical and methodological
approachesforthatmatter.However,thehistoricalcontextforcesonthem
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Preface vii
a sort of pursuit of oneself, even within otherness. In this aspect, they
resemble the 19th-century Arab travellers who used to visit European
countriesinorderto‘retrieve’thesignsoftheirowncountries.Therefore,
another colloquium dealing with the same issue was organized in 1996,
yet was exclusively destined for Arabs. Surprisingly, that same proposal
was respected this time! Consequently, the following conclusion is worth
being highlighted: having become fragile, the Arab culture can no longer
bear the intimidation of the look. This brings to mind the image of the
womanwhomMontesquieudescribedashavingaperfectwalk,yetlimped
every time she was looked at! This is neither a quality nor a flaw. This is
a situation.
The aim of these chosen texts is particularly to reflect the crossing look
betweentwoculturesthataregloballycalledArabandWestern.Thisbook
contains only a reduced sample of the Arabic edition. The section dealing
withtheexchangeofimagesbetweenArabsthemselveshasbeenexcluded.
Inarathertheoreticapproachofotherness,thelightisshedonthecon-
texts and mechanisms of ‘invention’. Jean Ferreux attempts to prove that
the ‘self’ that would not exist without the other is a late historical inven-
tion since it is tied to the emergence of self-conscience. Before this emer-
gence, there was the ‘us’, and the ‘tribe’ with its other. The other of ‘us’
has been transposed throughout history in differentrepresentations of the
enemy. Every culture has its own history of animosity. The Finnish
researcher Vilho Harle traces back some of this animosity’s roots to
the European culture. He supports the idea that the establishment of the
European community is not a ‘European identity’ since the latter only
existsinitsChristianform;ratheritistherevivingofsometraditionalani-
mosities, including those against the East.
For some, the invention of the other dates back to the European dis-
coveriesandfindsitsrootsintherhetoricthatthisinventionhasproduced
regarding cultural difference. Just like Todrov in ‘the discovery of
America, the question of the other’ (in fact, he showed that America was
not discovered but invented), Mondher Kilani insists on the prejudices
that orient the anthropological observation and that have the power to
transform the other. Since the discursive reasoning about the other is
essentially a discursive reasoning about difference, it is necessary to have
questions regarding oneself. Yet, according to Kilani, the dominant Arab
discursive thinking only responds to this necessity by substantializing
identity.
Islamists push identity substantialization to the extreme, not only when
itcomestotheWest,butalsoregardingotherMuslims,theIslamofwhich
they find lacking credibility. The Sudanese sociologist Haydar Ibrahim
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viii TAHAR LABIB
showshowtheIslamist‘catharsis’hastransferred,intheheartoftheArab
society, the old antagonism between ‘house of Islam’ and ‘house of war’.
This has divided the Muslim society into two communities: one which
is open and pluralistic, the other which is ‘integrated’ in an absolute
consensus.
How do Arabs view others? Four texts throughout the history of the
Arab-Islamic world indicate a few moments of articulation and, at the
same time, of change in this view. By comparing two moments or two
‘scenes’, I tried to demonstrate that at the moment when the Arab culture
was at its climax, the field of otherness was so large and pluralistic that
the‘exterior’otherwasviewed,byanalogy,asacontinuationofthesocio-
cultural distances witnessed in the Arab society itself. In fact, only the
unknown amounted to something strange, to absolute otherness. With
the internal regression and the external challenges, the angle from which
others were viewed became limited to the moment when the angle only
showed the West. This is why we assume that the current withdrawal
into oneself and the rejection of the other that we see in some backward-
lookingtendencieshasnosolidorigininthehistoryofArabculturebefore
it was marked by regression.
Undoubtedly,likeanyotherculture,theArabculturehasitsownscape-
goat. Historically, it is the Black. By reconstituting the image of the other,
both close and far, Helmi Charaoui shows to what extent the characteris-
tics of the black man are marked, stigmatized and reproduced. Charaoui
notes that Arab sociology as a whole did not contribute to rectifying this
image because it could not break free from the colonial anthropology of
the Nile basin.
Travel stories are of paramount importance, not only in terms of the
information they provide, but also because they are the remaining evi-
dence of the first Arab initiatives to explore the West. Reiterating inces-
santly that it was thanks to Napoleon that the Arab world had its first
contact with modernity is forgetting that the ‘clash’ had happened long
beforeNapoleon’sexpeditiontoEgypt.MoroccansociologistAbdessalam
Himar underlines the change in the image of the West – i.e. Europe – in
the eyes of Moroccan travellers between the 16th and the 19th centuries:
in general, until the 19th century, they noticed the progress yet without
developing any feeling of inferiority whatsoever. The difference was only
seen at that time from a religious perspective. The admiration or fascina-
tion for the West is neither felt nor expressed until the mid-19th century.
Rather than this fascination, Hassan Hanafi prefers to highlight in
Tahtaoui’s stories of his travelling to Paris in 1826 the concern of looking
intheother’smirror.Accordingtohim,thedestinationofthetripwasnot
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Preface ix
Paris but Cairo. He believes that the ‘self’ eventually remains the geo-
graphical, historical and ethnic reference of otherness.
Inversely, how is the Arab perceived in the West’s rhetoric? Each in its
own way, the three chosen texts converge on the difference which is
viewed as a source of threat. First, what is threatening about this differ-
ence is its constants. Marlene Nasr, author of a well-known book about
the image of Arabs and Muslims in French school textbooks, here
describes the permanent tendency to view the Arab as having a rigid pro-
file and hardly marked by evolution. This profile traces back its traits in
periods as old as the Arab conquest, the Crusades or colonization, and
aimsatexacerbatingtheantagonismbetweenthetwocultures.TheItalian
sociologist Enzo Pace adopts the same line of thought but adds a similar-
ity between the Muslim and the Jewish in the vision of Europe’s Catholic
Church. The violence of controversies with Islam is reminiscent of those
with the Jewish and reiterates the same invective. Using this image, with-
outwantingorwillingtonuanceit,theWestbuildsitscollectiveimagina-
tion. And this same image is the West’s biggest fear. For Sigurd Skirbekk,
there is rather an exchange of two types of fear: with its modernity, the
West creates fear in a traditional culture that is still anchored in the Arab
society, while the Arabs threaten the West with destabilizing the relations
that it seeks to establish between man and the environment by creating
immigration waves. Naturally, greater and more global threats have
emergedonbothsideseversinceSkirbekkformulatedhishypotheses.Itis
truethatimmigrationremainsacomplexproblemforEuropetosolve,yet,
behind the economic, political and legal aspects of this problem, there are
concealed cultural and ethical aspects that still need to be comprehended.
RobertCalvinshowshowandwhyFrenchsociety–likeanyothersociety
– is in need of an enemy, and specifies that France’s ‘suitable’ enemy had
tobethe‘Arab’.Infact,theArab’spresenceasanimmigrantmakesiteas-
ier to transform him into a scapegoat.
The universe of literary and artistic creation allows us to convey the
‘real world’ with special twists that are typical of that universe. It allows
itself a freedom with no boundaries to build the space, time, characters
andrelationshipsthatestablishaconceivedotherness.Ahypothesisseems
verifiable to me: if, in the Arab world, the literary and artistic production
seemstobemoreopenthananalysisworksonthedidacticismofthe‘self’
and the other, the total opposite marks the intellectual production in
Europe and America where literary and artistic productions seem to be
more attached to reproducing prejudices and stereotypes. Just like ‘orien-
talist’painters,yetoftenlackingtheirartisticqualities,somenovelistsand
film-makers seek to persuade the public that their fiction refers, without
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x TAHAR LABIB
mediation, to an immediate Arab reality that should be condemned.
Decoding this trick of literature, as used in Quinnell’s novel, The Mahdi,
the Saudi anthropologist Abu Baker Ahmed Aba-Qadir finds the vulgar
and vulgarized archetypal of a Muslim who is fanatic, backward and
stupid: an American agent succeeds in persuading Muslims of Mecca that
he is their Mahdi, their awaited Messiah. Astonished by his ‘miracles’
whichhecarriesoutthankstosophisticatedtechnology,theyendupbow-
ing to him!
The stubbornness of the prejudices and misunderstandings from which
the inter-cultural dialogue still suffers today is not typical of the tradi-
tional opposition between the East and the West. The images that Arabs
exchange with Turks or Iranians are much more nuanced, but still carry
the heavy aftermath of history; they even aggravate them with reference
to the current geopolitical conflicts. This is the general conclusion which
leads us to the analysis of the Turkish press and the interviews with Arab
immigrants in Istanbul in the article of Ibrahim Al-Daququi, and the
analysis of the content of Arabic and Iranian school textbooks in Talal
Itrissi’s article. Here too, the ‘crossing’ look only happens through
broken mirrors.
Tahar Labib
Honorary President of the Arab Association of Sociology