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Studying My Movement: Social Science Without Cynicism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Abdelwahab El-Affendi
Abdelwahab El-Affendi
Affiliation:
Department of PhilosophyUniversity of Khartum
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Abstract

While I was working on my Ph.D. thesis on Ikhwan in the Sudan,1 a Sudanese colleague of mine working in a related area used to joke that we have all become “Orientalists.” There was a certain sense of irony—and truth—in this “accusation.” Our endeavor was either the negation and supersession of Orientalism, or its final triumph. For here we are, fiery Islamic militants, squatting meekly and dutifully at the feet of our Orientalist sheikhs, hoping to drink at their hands the cup of knowledge on which we had simultaneously turned our backs. Is this conceding defeat or starting an invasion?

Type
Commentary
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 1991 , pp. 83 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

NOTES

1 A book based on this thesis and entitled Turabi's Revolution, Islam and Power in the Sudan, is being published by Grey Seal Books, London, in Autumn 1990. The study was conducted at Reading University, England, under the supervision of Dr. Peter Woodward.

2 I use this term to refer to modern Muslim activists in general. This is a deliberate attempt to avoid such loaded terms as “fundamentalists,” etc.

3 See Nekki, Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism (Berkeley, 1968), pp. 84–95.Google Scholar

4 Abdalla, Laroui, The Crisis of the Arab Intellectual (Berkeley, 1974), p. 73.Google Scholar

5 Edward, Said, Orientalism (London, 1978), pp. 323 ff.Google Scholar

6 Edward, Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” Race and Class 27, 2 (Autumn, 1985): 12.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 6.

8 Edward, Said, “Rushdie and the Whale,” The Observer, 02 26, 1989.Google Scholar

9 Ali Mazrui, “Moral Dilemmas of Salman Rushdie's ‘Satanic Verses,’” a lecture delivered at Cornell University on March 1, 1989.

10 Edward, Said, Covering Islam (London, 1981), pp. 149 ff.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., pp. 149–51.

12 Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” p. 14.

13 Said, “Rushdie and the Whale.”

14 Renan claimed that “Oriental youth,” by ingesting the “rational method” in Western universities, would find it impossible to continue to believe in their traditional religion, which was “evidently conceived uncritically.” Renan's remarks quoted in Albert, Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (London, 1983), p. 121.Google Scholar

15 Max, Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, From Max Weber (London, 1982), pp. 147 ff.Google Scholar

16 See Karl, Popper, Unended Quest (Glasgow, 1982), pp. 44 ff.Google Scholar

17 I was kindly alerted by an anonymous benefactor to the fact that this passage was reminiscent of Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. Having now remedied my ignorance on the issue by reading Kierkegaard, I disagree with the assessment. I believe the position I am taking here is diametrically opposed to Kierkegaard's. While he was in essence attempting to justify Abraham for the philistines and shield him from their criticisms by positing such categories as ldquo;unintelligibility,” I am holding Abraham as an indictment of philistinism. Far from asserting that Abraham “speaks no human language,” I am here claiming to speak Abraham's language, to say what he would say if he were with us today.