Chapter 1: Critique of Contemporary Debate on Arab Occidentalism

In the years following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, American media, public, and policy makers paid unprecedented attention to the way Arabs view America and the West, Arab Occidentalism. As a result, two main approaches crystallized to explain the nature and root causes of Arabs’ Occidental views and how such perceptions could be improved.

The first theory was that Arabs’ views of America and the West are encrypted in the Arab culture in general and in the Muslim religion in particular. It also posited that Arabs’ negative views of the West reflect the gloomy circumstances of Arab societies and scapegoat the West and its foreign policies for those circumstances. As a result, advocates of this theory argued that America and the West don’t have to change their current foreign policies in order to improve their image in the Arab world. Instead, they urged the West to focus its efforts on pressuring Arab governments to reform the conditions of the Arab societies and on educating Arabs about the West, its values, civilization, and foreign policies.

On the contrary, the second theory saw American and Western foreign policies as the main cause of Arabs’ anti-American and anti-Western perceptions, looked at current and future Western policies with suspicion, and urged America and the West not to intervene in the internal affairs of Arab societies because it regarded such intervention as the fundamental cause of Arabs’ discontent with the West.

In response to this debate, the current study intends to contribute to the general understanding of the nature and root causes of Arabs’ views of America and the West by analyzing the Occidental discourses of three intellectual leaders of late nineteenth century Egypt, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897), Qasim Amin (1863-1908), and Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1854 – 1902). The Occidental views of these writers are important to our subject for at least four main reasons.

First, the three writers together constitute a group of three influential, diverse, and widely respected intellectual fathers of modern Arab thought and Occidentalism. The ideas of each of them helped lay the foundation for one or more of today’s most dominant Arab ideologies, such as liberalism, Arab nationalism, and Islamism and for the way the followers of these ideologies see America and the West today.

Second, the Occidental discourses of the three writers reveal important details about the nature and root causes of Arab Occidentalism. In brief, they reveal that Arab Occidentalism is something more than an automatic reflection of Arabs’ culture and internal circumstances or a mindless reaction to Western foreign policies toward the Arab world. Instead, they reflect Arabs’ search for reform and awakening. Such search, the study argues, dominated the thinking of the three writers and led them to manipulate their knowledge about the West in unique ways revealed by the study.

Third, the Occidental perspectives of the three writers demonstrate that any serious effort to improve the image of the Occident in Arabs’ eyes cannot depend only on fixing Western foreign polices or merely on reforming Arabs’ circumstances and on teaching Arabs about the values of the West. However, such an approach should include all three of those steps in addition to encouraging Arabs to seek reform in gradual, educational, and non-violent ways. This is because the Occidental discourses of the three writers show a clear connection, explained in detail later, between the spread of political, radical, and violent reform and the rise of anti-Western views.

Finally, the Occidental discourses of the three writers are uniform in their pronounced rejection of religion as the main basis of the conflict between the East and the West. In this regard, the study shows that the three writers belonged to a different era of modern Arabic thought, the late nineteenth century, when Arabs and Muslims were more willing to learn from the West and less worried about the threat posed by the West to their cultural and religious identities. This led Arab and Muslim intellectuals, such as the three writers studied here, to encourage their audience to learn from the West and to clearly state their beliefs that the conflict between the East and the West was more based on political and economic reasons than on religious and cultural ones. I believe that such views, if revived and promoted, should help reduce contemporary religious tensions between Easterners and Westerners.

In the rest of this introductory chapter, and before analyzing the Occidental discourses of the three writers in the following chapters, I will focus on highlighting the study’s main argument and methodology.

1) Critique of Contemporary Debate on Arab Occidentalism

The current debate about the nature and root causes of Arabs’ contemporary views of America and the West, Arab Occidentalism, gained rising importance since the terrorist attacks on Washington, D.C., and New York on September 11, 2001, which demonstrated to the American people and government that their country enjoys a generally negative image in the Arab world, from which the 19 hijackers came. In response, the American administration, pressured by the need to win Arabs’ support for the war on terrorism, launched several public diplomacy initiatives aiming to improve Arabs’ perceptions of America in particular and the West in general (U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy 2002; Djerejian 2003; Blinken 2002; Tolson 2003). In addition, countless books, articles, and public opinion surveys were released seeking to explain the nature and root causes of Arabs’ contemporary discontent with America and the West (Friedman 2002; Friedman 2004, Buruma and Margalit 2004; AbuKhalil 2004; Lewis 2003; Hirsh 2004; Huntington 2001, Warren 2004).

Although it may be difficult to draw generalizations about the main theoretical perspectives recently used to explain Arab Occidentalism in the American media and public circles, one can easily notice the influential presence of two contrasting approaches. The first approach is promoted by intellectuals who believe that Arabs’ attitudes toward America and the West mainly reflect the cultures and circumstances of Arab and Muslim societies. Some of these intellectuals see Islam as a religion that holds deep animosity toward non-Muslims and that seeks to obtain the submission of all other religions, by force if necessary (Hollander 2002:15; Fradkin 2001:28; Rollins 2001:27). They perceive Arab and Muslim societies as “sick” ones that failed to modernize themselves, leaving contemporary Muslims with nothing but a feeling of hatred and envy toward the powerful and more advanced West (Fradkin 2001:28; Rosworth 2001). They reject the notion that American foreign policy has contributed to Arabs’ negative perceptions of the United Sates. In contrast, they believe that America has often aligned itself with the interests of the Arab and Muslim worlds, which in response made America the scapegoat for the serious problems facing their societies, such as the lack of democracy, economic reform, and freedoms (Fradkin 2001:28; Rubin 2002:74& 81; Cornell 2002).

As a result, they believe that the West does not need to change its policies toward the Arab and Muslims worlds. Instead, they urge American and Western governments to pressure their Arab and Muslim counterparts to open the Arab and Muslim countries for political and economic reform. They also don’t mind increasing America’s efforts to educate Arabs and Muslims about its values, culture, and policies.

On the contrary, the second approach rejects the notion that Arabs and Muslims hate America because of its values or culture (Brumberg 2002:4; Telhami 2003; Andoni 2002). Instead, it focuses on America’s foreign policy, especially toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, as the major source of Arabs’ negative attitudes toward America (The White House Bulletin. 2002; Asali 2002:7; Fuller 2003:152). Followers of this theory criticize America for supporting several authoritarian regimes in the Arab and Muslim worlds, for imposing sanctions on Iraq during the 1990s, and for invading Iraq in 2003 (Robberson 2003; Talbot 2003:30). Some of them consider American foreign policy as a continuation of the policies of European colonialism (MacFarquhar 2003; Al-Barghouti 2003). They distrust America’s current intentions and interventions in the Middle East and believe that America’s policies in the Arab and Muslim worlds are based on America’s selfish political and economic interests rather than on the American values of freedom, human rights, and democracy (MacFarquhar 2003; Lynch 2003; Al-Barghouti 2003, Said Aug 2003, Said Jul 2003).

At the policy level, advocates of this theory believe that America’s image can only improve if America changes its policies toward the Arab and Muslim worlds, especially toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They also mistrust America’s attempts to promote democracy and reform in the Muslim world and pay little interest to the need to educate Arabs about American and Western values and cultures.

The two previous approaches have many limitations. First, they provide two simplistic and dichotomous views of the nature and root causes of Arab Occidentalism. The first theory views contemporary Arab perceptions of America and the West mainly as mindless reflections of Arab history and culture, especially of the teachings of the Islamic religion, which the proponents consider to be inherently hostile to non-Muslim cultures, religions, and peoples. On the other hand, the second theory considers Arabs’ perceptions of America as a mechanical reaction to America’s foreign policies toward the Middle East.

Second, the first theory looks at Arabs’ views of America as if they are homogenous and stagnant, which leaves little room, if any, for explaining why pro-American and pro-Western attitudes may exist in the Arab world. It also fails to explain how Arabs’ perceptions of America change over time and across place. On the other hand, the second approach underestimates the influence of Arabs’ own circumstances and ideas on their perceptions of America and the West because it sees Arab Occidentalism primarily as a mere reaction to Western foreign policies.

At the policy level, the two approaches seem to be fixed to a limited number of inflexible policy options. In this regard, the first theory leaves little room for reviewing and reevaluating current American foreign policies toward the Arab and Muslim worlds although many public opinion surveys show that America’s foreign policies are concerning to large segments of the Arab and Muslim populations. On the other hand, the second theory does not provide many policy options other than the West’s need to change its own policies. It also denies, to some extent, Arabs’ need to be educated about Western values and cultures.

In addition to the previous problems, many of the contemporary writings on Arabs’ views of the West in general and of America in particular lack a deeper understanding of the historical roots of such views. Recent writings often focus on the period after the Second World War, if not on the last few years. Therefore, such writings neglect earlier stages, when America used to enjoy a different image in the Arab and Muslim worlds (Makdisi 2002; Prados 2001:2; Khalidi 2004:30-36). They also fail to offer a deeper understanding of the historical roots and development of Arab Occidentalism (Kinnane 2004:95).

2) Study Objective, Importance, and Main Arguments

In this context, the current study hopes to contribute to the contemporary debate on the nature and root causes of Arab Occidentalism by highlighting the Occidental discourses of three intellectual leaders of late nineteenth century Egypt, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897), Qasim Amin (1863-1908), and Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1854–1902). Analyzing the Occidental views of these three intellectual pioneers should contribute to our understanding of Arab Occidentalism for five main reasons.

First, Egypt at the end of the nineteenth century was the birthplace of major political and intellectual movements that transformed Arabs’ modern views of themselves and the West. This is because the middle of the nineteenth century witnessed the rapid military and economic decline of the Ottoman Empire, the largest Muslim empire since the fifteenth century. This retreat weakened the Ottomans’ ability to defend the Arab and Muslim countries against the incursions of European colonialism, which succeeded in gaining control over the majority of the Arab and Muslim countries by the end of the nineteenth century. In response, Arab governments and intellectuals launched several political and intellectual reform movements, which laid the foundation for some of today’s most dominant Arab ideologies, Islamism, Arab nationalism, and liberalism, and transformed Arab’s perceptions of themselves and others.

There was no place in the Arab world at the end of the nineteenth century where these transformations and reform movements were more radical and influential than in Egypt. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Egypt went through a successful modernization process that improved the productivity of Egypt’s agricultural economy, introduced new industries, built a strong Egyptian military, opened Western-style educational institutions, sent Egyptians to learn modern sciences in Europe, and employed many Europeans in the Egyptian administrative system. Yet, Egypt’s progress was interrupted in the 1840s, after several major European countries allied with the Ottoman Empire to put an end to Egypt’s rising economic and military power. After that, Egypt went on a path of continuous economic and political decline that led to its colonization by the British in 1882.

However, despite its decline, Egypt was, during the second half of the nineteenth century, one of the most modernized Arab countries, with a relatively large number of scholars and strong Islamic institutions, such as Al-Azhar. This made Egypt the intellectual center of the Arab world, to which leading non-Egyptian Arab scholars, such as Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, and non-Arab Muslim intellectuals, such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, migrated to live and spread their new ideas. At the same time, Egypt witnessed the birth and growth of one of the early nationalistic movements in the Arab world, as native Egyptian military officers and scholars, some of them educated in Europe, sought since the 1887s to build an Egyptian national front. That movement played an important and pioneering role in reforming Egypt and in resisting the hegemony of European colonialism.

Second, studying the Occidental discourses of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Qasim Amin, and Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, will explain the way some of today’s most influential political and intellectual Arab movements, Islamism, Arab nationalism, and liberalism, see America and the West through the eyes of some of their most influential, diverse, and inspiring founders.

This is because each of the three intellectuals helped lay the foundations for one or more of some of today’s most dominant Arab intellectual and political movements. Afghani is considered to be one of the most powerful and influential Muslim intellectuals who lived in the nineteenth century. He is credited to be the founder of the Islamic reform movement that spread all over the Muslim world in the second half of the nineteenth century, as the chief agitator against the incursion of European colonialism into the Muslim world during his life, and as the founder of the national movements in several Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Persia, and Turkey (Imarah 1981). “Afghani,” Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr., (2002:180) noted, “pops up in almost every political movement that stirred in the Middle East in the late nineteenth century.”

The ideas of Qasim Amin and Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi were less influential during their lives compared with Afghani’s, but they were not less groundbreaking and inspiring for later Arab generations. Qasim Amin, a European-educated Egyptian lawyer, is famous for his Egyptian nationalistic attitudes and for promoting liberal values and ideas, especially regarding the importance of educating and liberating Muslim women. Amin’s liberal views that challenged some of the most dominant social taboos of his time made him a subject of strong critique during and after his life. Yet Amin is celebrated today by many liberal and conservative Arab thinkers alike as a major founder of Arab modern thinking, who devoted most of his writings to defending the rights of Muslim women (Imarrah 1989:13; Esposito 1995:58).

If the conservative social agenda of the Arab masses made Amin’s ideas less popular at his time, it was Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi’s pro-democratic ideas that led many Arab and Muslim governments to fight his ideas during and after his life. Kawakibi left at least two main contributions to modern Arabic political thinking. First, he is seen as one of the early Muslim founders of Arab nationalism, a cause that was initially championed by Arab Christian intellectuals against the Islamic nationalistic views spread by the Ottoman Empire. Second, Kawakibi wrote one of the most inspiring and celebrated books on the anatomy of tyranny and tyrannical rule in the Arab world. Kawakibi’s anti-authoritarian political views led to his persecution during his life and to the persecution of his ideas after his death. Yet Kawakibi’s ideas have continued to inspire the writings of many pro-democracy Arab intellectuals (Al-Hulu 2005; Al-Rabi’i 2004). Kawakibi’s ideas on the nature of authoritarian regimes have been regularly cited since the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein, in 2003, which was seen by many Arab intellectuals as one of the most tyrannical Arab regimes (Dajani 2004; Jelbi 2003).

In addition, the Occidental views of the three leaders are not just influential; they are also diverse. Afghani was a religious leader who sought to motivate the Muslim masses and governments against the incursions of European colonialism in the Muslim world. Qasim Amin was a liberal nationalistic intellectual who focused on social and cultural reform and was willing to challenge the conservative agenda of the Muslim masses in order to promote his liberal views. Kawakibi spoke out strongly against Muslim governments while respecting the conservative nature of the Muslim masses.

There have been few studies that have focused on analyzing the Occidental views of the three thinkers. Those who study Afghani tend to focus on his influence on contemporary Muslim movements, although some highlight his critical views of the West. Those who study Qasim Amin usually highlight his defense of women’s rights. Those who study Kawakibi tend to focus on his arguments for Arab nationalism and against tyrannical rule. By focusing on the Occidental views of the three thinkers, this study hopes to explore new areas in the ideas and legacies of these three pioneers.

Third, by using discourse analysis, as utilized by Edward Said in his study of Orientalism and as later improved by post-colonial theory, to analyze the Occidental views of Afghani, Qasim Amin, and Kawakibi, the study hopes to provide a better understanding of the factors that shaped Arab Occidentalism, as it appears in the writings of the three intellectuals in late nineteenth century Egypt.

In this regard, the study argues that the Occidental discourses of Afghani, Qasim Amin, and Kawakibi, were part of a wider and more dominant Arab discourse on reform and awakening that dominated the thinking and writings of the three intellectuals and many other Arab and Muslim intellectuals at their time. These reformist discourses were shaped by the writers’ understanding of their circumstances and culture and of the process of reform and how it should be achieved, by their ambivalent attitudes toward the West both as an obstacle against reform that should be mocked and as a model for reform that should be mimicked, and by their attitudes toward and willingness to work with their contemporary authoritarian Muslim governments and economically impoverished, politically weak, and socially conservative Muslim masses.

To be more specific, the study argues that the Occidental discourses of Afghani, Qasim Amin, and Kawakibi, were clearly influenced by four main variables:

(1) The political circumstances of their contemporary Muslim societies. In this regard, intellectuals who attempted to work in unity with the tyrannical Muslim regimes were more likely to hold anti-Western views.

(2) The conservative culture of the Muslim masses. In this regard, intellectuals who were less critical of the conservative agenda of the Muslim masses held more anti-Western views. The study also shows that all three intellectuals held negative attitudes toward the nature of the Western individual in particular, who was seen as a selfish, materialistic individual.

(3) Western foreign policies toward the Arab and Muslim worlds. In this regard, all three intellectuals viewed Western foreign policies negatively.

(4) Reform and how it should be achieved. In this respect, intellectuals who saw reform as a gradual and educational process held more pro-Western views than those who saw reform as a political and radical process.

In addition, the thesis argues that the three intellectuals, to serve their reform agendas, mobilized the information they had about the West, used ambivalent discourses that sought to mimic and mock the West at the same time; and two of them used double discourses, one when talking to Muslims and another when talking to Westerners, in order to remain consistent before their Muslim audience.

This led to the crystallization of at least three distinct Occidental discourses. The first discourse, used by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, sought to achieve reform by calling on the Muslim masses and governments to unite together against Western colonialism. This goal led Afghani to emphasize an image of the West as a threat to the unity and progress of the Muslim countries. At the same time, Afghani deemphasized his perception of the West as a model for intellectual and political reform in the Muslim world. Afghani’s Occidental discourse is discussed in detail in the second chapter of this thesis.

Qasim Amin, whose Occidental discourse is analyzed in the third chapter, despised politics, focused instead on social and cultural reform, and was willing to challenge some of the social and cultural taboos, which he perceived to be wrong, at his time. This led Amin to focus on the West as a model for social and cultural reform that should be mimicked. At the same time, Amin deemphasized the information he had about the negative aspects of Western civilization and the negative effects of Western colonialism on the progress of the Arab and Muslim societies.

The third Occidental discourse, used by Kawakibi and examined in the fourth chapter of this study, was very critical of the authoritarianism of the Muslim governments while being careful not to offend the conservative Muslim masses. This led Kawakibi to introduce the West as a model for political reform that should be mimicked. On the other hand, Kawakibi mocked the West at the cultural and religious levels.

The circumstances of Egyptian society in the second half of the nineteenth century, which shaped the former discourses, will be discussed in detail in the second chapter. I will attempt to show how Egyptians in particular and Arabs and Muslims in general came to realize, at the middle of the nineteenth century, the weakness of their civilization and to feel the need to reform their countries by democratizing their political regimes, reforming the thinking of the Muslim masses, and modernizing their economies and militaries. The chapter will also highlight some of the attempts that were taken to modernize Egypt and how these steps failed, because of internal and external obstacles, to change the conditions of the vast majority of the Egyptian masses, who remained economically impoverished, politically weak, and socially conservative.

I will conclude the study with a summary of the main characteristics of the Occidental discourses used by the three writers. I will pay special attention to the way they saw America in comparison with the rest of the West and to the way they saw the role of religion in general, and Islam in particular, in shaping the relationship between the Arab and Muslim world and the West.

Fourth, determining the main factors that shape Arabs’ views of America and the West should help us understand what is needed, at the policy level, to improve such perceptions. In this regard, I have highlighted at the first few pages of this study how the current debate on Arab Occidentalism has reached a stalemate because of its dichotomous nature. Alternatively, I will seek to build a more comprehensive policy approach toward improving Arabs’ views of America and the West. Such approach should be build on an inclusive understanding of the various factors that shape Arab Occidentalism.

Fifth, the study intends to highlight the way Islam appeared in and affected the Occidental views of each of the three intellectuals. This is because the role of religion, particularly Islam, in shaping Arab Occidentalism is widely disputed today. In this regard, it is important to remind the reader of how late nineteenth century Arab and Muslim intellectuals are viewed today. They, even the most religious among them, such as Afghani, are seen as liberal reformers, who sought to reinterpret the Islamic religion and traditions in a way that would encourage Muslim to learn form the West at as many levels as possible.

According to John Esposito (1992:55), late nineteenth century Arab and Muslim reformers, Afghani, Qasim Amin, and Kawakibi included, “did not seek to restore a pristine past but instead wished to reformulate [their] Islamic heritage in response to the political, scientific, and cultural challenge of the West. [They] provided an Islamic rationale for accepting modern ideas and institutions, whether scientific, technological, or political.”

In this regard, late nineteenth century Arab and Muslim reformers were different from their predecessors and their followers in some important ways.

Arab and Muslim reformers who lived earlier, during the end of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century, did not witness the full retreat of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, they were occupied with how to rebuild the Ottoman Empire and Muslim states to catch up with the West again. However, at the end of the nineteenth century, Arab and Muslim reformers realized that their civilization and societies were far behind the West. Therefore, this second generation of reformers focused their attention on reforming the thinking of their Muslim followers and on convincing them of the necessity to learn from the more advanced Western civilization.

On the other hand, reformers, who lived in the first half of the twentieth century and after were confronted with a different set of challenges. At that time, the West was not only a political and economic challenge; it was also a cultural and ideological one. This is because European colonialism, which led to the occupation of the great majority of the Muslim countries after the end of the nineteenth century, constituted a deep threat to the cultural and religious identities of the Muslim masses that were less connected with the Islamic religious and cultural traditions, compared with the Muslim masses at the end of the nineteenth century. In other words, late nineteenth century Arab and Muslim reformers were addressing Muslim masses that were not suffering cultural and religious identity problems. So, nineteenth century reformers focused all their attention on convincing their religiously rooted Muslim masses of their need to learn from Western political, scientific, and intellectual achievements:

Afghani was addressing people whose primary commitment was to Islamic values, and in saying modern Western virtues were to be found in Islam he was trying to attain Muslim acceptance of those modern ideas. …By the 1930s, Islamic liberals were writing for an audience educated in Western ways, and when they conflated Islam and modern values they were trying to reinstate Islam with that audience, and to build a type of Islam that their hearers would find as acceptable as they did Western values. Or else they were speaking to people torn between Islam and secular Westernized loyalties, and trying to indicate that their newer ideas could be reconciled with Islam. (Keddie 1978: XVII & XVIII)

However, when the Muslim masses started losing their connection with their religious and cultural traditions, after being occupied for decades by European colonizers, Arab and Muslim reformers had to focus on portraying the cultural and religious threat posed by Western colonialism to the Arab and Muslim identities. That threat increased after the decolonization of the Muslim countries in the second half of the nineteenth century, when post-colonial Arab and Muslim governments chose to follow secular Western ideologies, such as socialism, as their primary path to modernization. This choice led to a long wave of clashes, sometimes violent, between the Arab and Muslim governments and the pro-Islamic reformers and movements. This wave is still alive until today, and it is partly caused by the way the Arab and Muslim governments themselves, rather than the West, force Westernization on their masses.

In the aftermath of independence … [when] newly emerging states struggled to establish themselves, the West proved a necessary and often popular source and model. Although the independence struggle left deep resentment and scars, most rulers appropriated their colonial institutional legacy and ties. Modernization was imposed from above by governments and Westernized elites. European languages remained the second (and, among modern elites, often their preferred) language. In some countries European languages were the official language of the government, the courts, and university education. Modern bureaucratic, educational, and legal systems continued intact, as did trade and commerce. Islamic law was generally confined to the area of personal status and family law. …Individuals, countries, cities, and institutions judged themselves, and were judged, to be modern by the degree to which they were Westernized—in language, dress, manners, knowledge, organizational structure and values, architecture, and infrastructure. (Esposito 1995:67-68)


Today’s Islamic reform movements may share some common ground with Afghani, Qasim Amin, and Kawakibi, such as their respect for Islam as a religion and a way of life. However, contemporary movements depart from the three intellectuals in other aspects. In this regard, the current study intends to highlight some important statements that were made by the three intellectuals against using religion to fuel the conflict between the East and the West because such statements are not very common today.

This does not mean that none of the three writers expressed any anti-Western views that were religiously based or colored. Actually, as highlighted by future chapters, both Afghani and Kawakibi expressed some religiously negative views of the West. However, the three writers clearly expressed their beliefs that the conflict between the East and the West is motivated by political and material interests rather than by genuine religious ones. I believe that highlighting those positive statements should improve the Occidental views of those who follow and admire Afghani, Qasim Amin, and Kawakibi today.

3) Study Methodology and Main Concepts

This study will count on discourse analysis, as used by Edward Said in his study of Orientalism and later improved by post-colonial theory, to analyze the Occidental views of the three Muslim thinkers examined in this study. Toward this end, I will introduce, in the following paragraphs, an overview of how Edward Said and post-colonial theory used discourse analysis to study the way human groups see each other. I will conclude with a definition of Occidentalism and with some useful concepts that I will use throughout the rest of the study to analyze the Occidental views of the three Muslim thinkers.

1. Edward Said’s Use of Discourse Analysis

Edward Said’s writings on Orientalism not only gave the theory of Orientalism new and intellectually stimulating meanings; it has also transformed the way Western academia thinks of its approach toward studying the Orient in particular and other groups and cultures in general (Smelser and Baltes 2001: 10976). Said saw Orientalism as a Western “academic field of study and knowledge” that has the East as its subject. He also saw Orientalism as a “style of thought” that is widespread within the West and that adopts a dichotomous view of “the Orient” and “the Occident” and makes essential statements about the Orient. Most importantly, Said thought of Orientalism as a discourse that serves the interests of the European colonial powers by making the Orient more governable (Said 1979: 2-3; Prasad 2003: 10).

Since the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient. (Said 1979:3)

By defining Orientalism this way, Said offered scholars of cultural critiques numerous valuable theoretical tools to analyze the way human groups see each other.

First, Said separated ideas and images from the entities they claim to represent. He argued that the West constructed an image of the Orient that does not represent the real Orient, but reflects the way the West itself wants to see the Oriental other.

Second, Said exposed the relationship between culture and political interests on one side and scholarship and the movement of ideas on the other side. Said (1979:204) thought that Europe’s bias toward the East was “aided by general cultural pressures that tended to make more rigid the sense of difference between the European and Asiatic parts of the world.” He also believed that Orientalism was spread and promoted by the institutions of European colonialism that sought to develop a “a moral justification for colonialism” by portraying the East as a weaker and disadvantaged other waiting for a more powerful and civilized West to bring the Orient out of its dark ages (Prasad 2003: 12).

Third, Said offered some insights into the intellectual process through which a group of people can distort the image of another group. For instance, Said spoke about how the West reduced the Orient to a disadvantaged “other” that is structurally related to the West through a binary relationship (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 2000:24; Kennedy 2000:17). In the binary system, the West was always linked with the superior poles of the binaries, and the non-West was always linked to the inferior poles.

In addition to these valuable ideas, some analysts believe that Said’s most important contribution to the study of the way human groups see each other was his introduction of the concept of discourse as a main analytical tool that can be used to analyze the way European colonial powers influenced their colonies at the cultural level. According to Robert Young (2001: 384), before Said many theories, such as Marxism, provided strong criticism of European colonialism and its negative influence on the colonized nations at various levels. Yet those theories did not focus enough on colonialism’s cultural influence. Therefore, when Said introduced the notion of colonial discourse he presented “a conceptual general paradigm” that can be used to analyze the cultural side of colonialism and imperialism.

In this regard, Said suggested that colonialism was reflected in the various texts that European colonialism produced. Those texts were created by numerous institutions, within the colonial societies, to reinforce those institutions’ colonial tendencies and interests by creating an intellectual discourse that justifies colonialism. In other words, Said opened the door to studying colonialism through studying its texts, which were regarded by Said as reflections of the power the West has upon the Orient more than expressions of a Western desire to know the real Orient.

2. Critiques of Edward Said’s Orientalism

Said’s writings, especially Orientalism (1979), have generated many critiques (Young 2001:38-40). First, some scholars questioned the ability of the colonial texts to represent the history they claim to represent. This is because texts sometimes don’t tell the truth. In addition, real history sometimes does not get recorded in texts. Second, Said was often accused of looking at colonial discourse as if it were a unified homogenous text that crosses times and geographical locations. In doing so, Said was accused of not permitting the appearance of competing colonial or anti-colonial discourses within the colonial countries. He was also accused of being selective and of focusing on minor writings that prove his theory while neglecting other major writings that may not fit his paradigm. According to Gyan Prakash (1995:202), “the claim that many scholars and several strains within the Orientalist tradition escaped its pernicious prejudices and politics has been a persistent theme in the critique of Said’s work.”

At a more political level, some writers questioned Said’s motives and accused him of tactfully promoting a personal ideological agenda as a Palestinian refugee, who is seeking to over-blame and criticize the West because of its support of the state of Israel. For instance, Bruce Bawer (2002:629) saw Said as a “Palestinian spokesman” who viewed Israel as a “product of colonialism” and who over-criticized the West for being anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, using Western-developed standards of cultural critique while ignoring the “downside of recent Islamic history.” Said’s agenda, according to Bawer, led him to ask the West to “suspend judgment entirely” toward the Orient and to attack “the very notion of terrorism” as an “imprecise, ideologically charged, and—well—downright vulgar” concept. Said’s ideas, Bawer thought (2002:634), weakened the West’s ability to understand the real hatred that some Arab and Muslim groups have against the West. This led some writers, such as Charles Paul Freund (2001:63), to argue that Orientalist critique “does not fit the aftermath of the [9/11] attacks” because it neglects “the other side of the Orientalism coin: Occidentalism.”

3. Post-Colonial Theory Analysis of Occidentalism

It was Edward Said’s critique in Orientalism (1978) of the cultural politics of academic knowledge, from the basis of his own experience of growing up as an “oriental” in two British colonies, that effectively founded postcolonial studies as an academic discipline. (Young 2001:383)

Scholars, such as Robert Young (2001:383-394) and Valerie Kennedy (2000:111-120), believe that Said’s writings were very influential in establishing post-colonial studies because of several reasons. First, Said was very capable of introducing his ideas, on colonialism and on anti-colonial movements, in a theoretical framework that relates them to important Western analytical theories, such as structuralism and post-structuralism. Second, Said’s usage of the notion of discourse as a main analytical paradigm was intriguing and empowering to the field of cultural studies. Third, Said’s Orientalism was always seen as “theoretically and politically problematic” and it survived an unprecedented number of critiques. In this regard, the many critiques and debates that Said’s Orientalism has generated helped shape post-colonial theory. “In fact,” Young argued (2001:384), “postcolonial studies has actually defined itself as an academic discipline through the range of objections, reworkings and counter-arguments that have been marshaled in such great variety against Said’s work.”

Afterward, post-colonial theory had a life of its own and started to develop a number of key concepts that can be used to analyze the Occident’s views toward the Orient and vice versa. According to Robert Young (2001:57-61), post-colonial theory inherited several social and political movements that have been shaping European and world politics since the beginning of the 20th century. Although distinct, these movements share together a critical view of colonialism and imperialism and a general support for the liberation of the colonized nations and their cultures. One of these movements is Marxism, which, although being itself a Western product, included strong criticism of colonialism and imperialism, especially for their economic manipulation of the colonized.

After the Second World War, post-colonial theory sought to provide at least three main types of cultural critiques. First, post-colonial theory continued to analyze the imperial and colonial aspects of the Western and European cultures. Second, post-colonial theory supported the cultural decolonization of the Third World and stood by the newly independent nations in their attempts to empower their native peoples and cultures. Third, as many of the independence movements failed to substantially change the power structures in their societies or to achieve their full cultural and political independence, post-colonial theory continued to analyze the new forms of Western influence on the Orient.

In this context, post colonial theory developed several useful ideas and concepts for the study of the way Easterners see the West. These ideas and concepts were succinctly summarized by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin in their book, Post-Colonial Studies: the Key Concepts (2000). This book provides many useful insights on how colonized people responded to colonialism. The authors speak about the resistance of the colonized people to their colonizers as a complex movement that included not just the rejection and mockery of the colonizer but also the appropriation of the colonizer’s language, ideas, and institutions in order to be able to fight its hegemony (p.14). They believe that the hegemony of the colonizer over the colonized people was not always achieved by military or other materialistic means. It was also achieved through ideological means, by persuading the colonized people to believe that the interests of the colonizers are the interests of all (p.116). In response, the colonized people sought to appropriate some aspects of the colonizer’s language, discourse, and institutions in order to empower themselves with the required means to resist the materialistically and culturally powerful colonizers (pp.19-20). As a result, the discourse of the colonized people toward the colonizers was in many cases an ambivalent discourse that included a “simultaneous attraction toward and repulsion from” the colonizers (p.13). This made the desire of the colonized people to mimic their colonizers not far from and sometimes mixed with their desire to mock and criticize it (pp.139-142).

These ideas, I believe, are very helpful for my analysis of the Occidental views of Afghani, Qasim Amin, and Kawakibi because the three of them, as the study argues, simultaneously saw the West both as a model for progress that should be imitated and a threat that should be mocked and rejected.

In addition to the previous important arguments, I would like to refer to the writings of Xuaomei Chen and Junhua Dia (2002) on Chinese Occidentalism. Junhua Dia believed that Orientalism and post-colonial theory unintentionally reaffirm some of the Eurocentric views that they claim to challenge because they were founded in Western and cultural critical theory. Therefore, Dia thought that any serious study of Occidentalism should be founded and rooted in the Orient itself and should focus on trying to understand the Orient’s own reasons to look at the Occident from certain perspectives. In this regard, Dia thought that Occidentalism was adopted by Eastern developing nations to achieve various reasons, such as affirming their legitimacy, constructing new ideologies and regimes, or even to oppress their own peoples. Dia and Chen define Occidentalism (2002:2) as a “discursive practice,” in which Oriental entities contrast themselves with the Western other to achieve their own goals.

Occidentalism is a discourse that has been evolved by various and competing groups within Chinese society for a variety of different ends, largely though not exclusively, within domestic Chinese politics. As such, it has been both a discourse of oppression and a discourse of liberation. (Chen 2002:3)

In this regard, Xiaomei Chen believed that at least two distinct versions of Occidentalism existed in post-Mao China. The first version, which Chen calls “official Occidentalism,” was used by the Chinese government to contrast itself with the West in order to support its nationalistic ideology and sometimes to oppress its own people. The other version of Occidentalism, which Chen calls “anti-official Occidentalism,” was used by anti-government Chinese groups “as a metaphor for a political liberation against ideological oppression within a totalitarian society.”

Following the same logic, this study argues that the Occidental views of Afghani, Qasim Amin, and Kawakibi were motivated by a larger discourse on reform that was deeply rooted in the circumstances of their society. In addition, the study argues that the three writers manipulated the information they had about the West in order to fit their reform agenda. This led to the rise of several distinct Occidental discourses, each of which was manipulated by its source’s view of reform, view of the West, and view of the role of the Muslim masses and governments in achieving reform.

4. Defining Occidentalism and Occidental Discourse

Based on the theoretical framework outlined in the previous sections, I will attempt to highlight some useful analytical concepts that I will depend on throughout the rest of the study.

Discourse. According to Robert Young (2001: 398 -402), every discourse is made up of statements. Every statement is something more than just a text or a piece of language. Statements are constituted of specific events, subjects, and relations between events and subjects, in addition to language. Statements attempt to affect their surrounding circumstances and they are also shaped by those circumstances. Statements seek to reflect neutrally the realities they describe, but they are never a mere reflection of those realities. In any society, every discourse is influenced by its source and the status that source occupies in society. Because the components of discourse, such as concepts, events, and subjects, are in constant mobility and change, discourses may include “diverse and heterogeneous statements.”

Occidentalism. Occidentalism is the way the Orient sees the Occident, the people of the Occident, and the relationship between the Occident and the Orient. According to Hassan Hanafi (1991:44), Occidentalism is as old as the relationship between the Orient and the Occident. However, modern Occidentalism has been shaped by the influence European colonialism has on the Orient. Therefore, contemporary colonialism is partly a reaction to European colonialism and partly an attempt to complete the decolonization of the Orient, especially at the ideological level. However, Occidentalism is not always a pro-decolonization and an anti-Western movement. Occidental discourse can be pro-Western, as in the case of many pro-Western Arab intellectuals, including Qasim Amin, whose writings will be analyzed by the current research. Moreover, Occidental discourse can even be used to oppress Eastern pro-liberation groups (Chen 2003:3).

Occidental Discourse. Occidental discourse is a system of statements that can be made about the West and Westerners and their relationships with each other and with the Orient (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin 2000:42). The goal of Occidental discourse is to affect its surrounding circumstances, which simultaneously affect the discourse and shape it. Occidental discourse is heterogeneous and in a contentious state of change. It can include contradictory notions and ideas at the same time, such as imitating Western technology while rejecting Western social and cultural norms.

Occidental discourse attempts to reflect the realities of the Occident. However, it can never represent the Occident as it is, because Occidental discourse is always subjectively affected by its source and by its surrounding circumstances. The place and dominance of any Occidental discourse, in a specific Oriental society, depends on many variables, one of which is the place and power that the supporters of a particular discourse occupy in society.

According to Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin (2000:12-14) Occidental discourse can be an ambivalent one that includes a desire to mock the Occident and to mimic it at the same time. This is because the colonized people may seek to appropriate their colonizers’ culture and institutions in order to empower themselves to be able to resist their colonizers’ cultural and material hegemony.

Colonialism. According to Anshuman Prasad (2003:4), colonialism is an old phenomenon that started with colonial powers like the Roman and Ottoman Empires long before modern European colonialism started in the 15th century. However, what distinguishes modern European colonialism is its focus on exploiting “the wealth of the colonized that contributed to the industrialization of Europe in a systematic way.” In addition, European colonialism, according to Prasad (2003:5), was “new in that it attempted to subjugate its colonies in the realm of culture and ideology as well.” Prasad (2003:5) defines colonialism as “the actual physical conquest, occupation, and administration of the territory of one country by another,” which makes it different form imperialism which is “is an exercise of economic and political power by one country over another that may or may not involve direct occupation.”

Binarism. According to Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin (2000:23-24), binarism initially means “a combination of two things, a pair, two, or duality.” It also means that the opposition between two entities is “the most extreme form of difference possible,” such as in the difference between sun/moon, black/white, and birth/death. When binary opposition is used to define the relationship between groups, such as colonizers and colonies, it creates a division that is difficult to overcome.

Other / Othering. According to Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin (2000:169-173), the other is “anyone who is separate from one’s self.” The relationship between the self and the other does not have to be a negative or a conflicting one. However, when the relationship between the self and the other is about power and when one entity is more powerful than the other, the powerful party may try to create an “other” that is completely opposite or weaker than its own self. The process of creating an opposite, or controlled other, is called “othering.”

4) Research Plan and Limitations

In the second chapter of this study, I will explain the general ideological, political, and economic circumstances in which Egyptians lived at the end of the nineteenth century. I believe that understanding those conditions is an essential requirement for our understanding of the Occidental views that were prominent in Egypt at that time.

In each chapter, from three to five, I will analyze the Occidental discourse used by one of the writers examined by this study. In chapter three I will analyze the Occidental views of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897). In chapter four I will study the ideas of Qasim Amin (1863-1908). The Occidental discourse of Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1854–1902) will be examined in the fifth chapter.

I will conclude the study with a summary of the main characteristics of the Occidental discourses used by the three writers. I will also pay special attention to the way they saw America in comparison with the rest of the West and to the way they saw the role of religion in general, and Islam in particular, in shaping the relationship between the Arab and Muslim world and the West. Finally, I will examine the implications of the current study at the policy level.

Limitations of the Study. I would like to remind the reader of the limitations of this study. Using discourse analysis to analyze the way Egyptians saw America and the West at the end of the nineteenth century is a very useful method that is capable of performing many analytical tasks. Yet because of the limited resources of this research, in terms of time and scope, I will not be able to utilize discourse analysis to its full analytical capabilities. To be more specific I don’t expect the current research to achieve the following possible goals:

1) To introduce a full account of how Egyptians viewed America and the West at the end of the nineteenth century or before or after that time.

2) To compare in depth the Occidental discourses used by Afghani, Amin, and Kawakbi with other Occidental discourses that were prominent in Egypt or in the Arab world during their lives.

3) To give a full account of the institutions or conditions of Egyptian society at the end of the 19th century and how those institutions or conditions shaped the various Occidental discourses that were present at that time.

Rather, the main objective of the next chapters is to introduce an accurate and lively picture of some of the main Occidental discourses that were prominent in late nineteenth century Egypt. In this regard, I will attempt to introduce a picture that is capable of recognizing the full Occidental debate presented in the writings of the three studied thinkers. My goal is to expose this debate and to show its different and sometimes contradictory dimensions. In addition, I will highlight how each of the selected thinkers viewed the United States in particular and viewed the role of Islam in shaping the relationship between the Arab and Muslim worlds and the West. I will also conclude the study with some policy recommendation on how to improve Arabs’ perceptions of the West.