By Ian Jobling • 8/1/08
Previous articles on the Inverted World have argued that some of the distinctive characteristics of Western culture are openness to new and foreign ideas, the capacity for self-criticism, and the drive to discover the objective truth about the world. In his erudite book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, Ibn Warraq, a Pakistani expatriate now living in Europe, paints in brilliant color the portrait of the West that my articles only tentatively sketched. On top of that, the book delivers a powerful blow to leukophobia, or the fear and loathing of the white race, by demolishing the theory of Orientalism developed by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor, pro-Palestinian activist, and guru of the destructive class.
Throughout the book, Warraq uses Islamic culture, which his previous books attacked, as a foil to set off Western uniqueness. Though he draws a sharp contrast between the two cultures, he is no race realist. He never suggests that the cultures are the products of innate differences between whites and the non-European Caucasians who make up the bulk of the Islamic world. Nevertheless, his work is of great value to those of us who wish to draw biological distinctions among the races and should be required reading for all race realists as well as anyone interested in the nature of Western or Islamic culture.
For Said, Orientalism names the political agenda behind the Western representation of the Middle East from the Greeks to the current day. Said views Orientalism “as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” that is “shot through with doctrines of European superiority, various kinds of racism, imperialism, and the like.”1 Said’s ideas are a routine variant of the leukophobia that sees whites as the only racist race and all other peoples as noble savages cruelly exploited by us.
Warraq castigates Orientalism as a malignant falsehood that fundamentally misunderstands the nature of Western culture and encourages a spirit of self-pitying victimhood among Muslims. Against Said’s portrait of Westerners as chauvinistic bullies, Warraq argues that the West is unique for its open-minded appreciation of non-Western cultures and its capacity for self-criticism.
For Warraq, the distinguishing traits of the West are rationalism, universalism, and self-criticism. Although Warraq gives all these terms a precise definition, the first two labels are arguably poorly chosen because “rationalism” and “universalism” have been used with so many meanings that they may confuse readers. By “rationalism,” Warraq means the drive to discover the objective truth about the world for its own sake, and by “universalism,” the openness to ideas from other cultures and the willingness to recognize the common humanity of all mankind.
The Greeks were the first to value knowledge for its own sake rather than for practical or religious purposes. As Aristotle said:
Learning, then, is the most valuable activity for a human. The fifth century philosopher Democritus claimed he would rather discover one cause than gain the kingdom of Persia.2
This idea persists throughout the Western tradition, as Warraq demonstrates through examinations of classical and modern authors. To its taste for the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, the West owes its overwhelming dominance in science and scholarship of other kinds.
Unlike Christian authorities, the Muslims viewed all knowledge that was not helpful for the practice of religion as blameworthy. Hence Muslim inquiry tends to be concerned with the theological implications of the natural world rather than properly scientific matters. Moreover, the censorship of science by religious authorities was much more heavy-handed and pervasive among Muslims than Christians. The 19th century French philosopher Ernest Renan summed it up:
Science and philosophy flourished on Musulman soil during the first half of the Middle Ages; but it was not by reason of Islam, it was in spite of Islam. Not a Musulman philosopher or scholar escaped persecution. During the period just specified, persecution is less powerful than the instinct of free inquiry, and the rationalist tradition is kept alive, then intolerance and fanaticism win the day.3
Closely related to its drive to understand the objective truth about the world is the West’s openness to novel and foreign ideas. Even in the Middle Ages, Westerners were eager to learn about Islamic language and culture. Latin-Arabic dictionaries began to appear in Europe in the twelfth century, and medieval Europeans partially translated the Koran into Latin. With the coming of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, Europeans composed more scholarly Arabic dictionaries and grammars and produced critical editions of Arabic texts.
By contrast, intellectual, as opposed to strictly practical, interest in Europe was virtually absent in the Islamic world in the same period. Indeed, there is no evidence that any Muslim scholar before the 18th century sought to learn a Western language, let alone to write dictionaries or translations.
Nothing has changed in the modern age. In 2003 a Unite Nations report found that fewer books have been translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years than the Spanish translate in one year.4 There are no universities in the Islamic world where Western culture can be studied in depth and detail. By contrast, many Western universities offer degrees in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. Moreover, the greatest scholars of Islam have been Westerners.
The final distinctive trait of Western civilization is the capacity for self-criticism. Warraq points to the criticism of slavery during the Enlightenment that was discussed in The Inverted World. Westerners also deplored the cruelties involved in the colonization of the non-Western world. The 18th century British writer Samuel Johnson, for example, wrote, “I do not much wish well to discoveries for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.” Indeed, third world critics of Western imperialism like Said build on an internal Western tradition of self-critique, as their bibliographies, replete with references to Marx, Freud, Foucault, Nietzsche, and so forth, attest.5
This tradition of self-criticism has made the West a much more innovative culture than others, as we were always more skeptical of authorities. Warraq quotes a passage from historian Sir Ernst Gombrich to illustrate this point:
In the venerable civilizations of the East, custom was king and tradition the guiding principle. If change came, it was all but imperceptible, for the laws of Heaven existed once and for all and were not to be questioned. That spirit of questioning, the systematic rejection of authority, was the one invention the East may have failed to develop. It originated in ancient Greece. However often authority tried to smother this inconvenient element, its spark was glowing underground. It was that spark, perhaps, that was fanned into flame by the awareness that our ancestors did not have the monopoly of wisdom, and that we may learn to know more if only we do not accept their word unquestioned. As the motto of the Royal Society (dating from 1663) has it, Nullius in verba—By nobody’s word.6
Such a self-critical tradition is markedly absent from the Arab world. People in these cultures are so deeply worried about maintaining their honor in the face of others that it is impossible for an Arab man to admit publicly that he is wrong, as doing so would bring shame not only on himself, but on his family, nation, and religion.7
Warraq points to the prevalence of conspiracy theories in Middle Eastern society as a sign of its inability to admit failure or wrong-doing. Indeed, the newspapers of the governments of the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, as well as many prominent Islamic scholars, have all promoted the theory that 9/11 was an American-Israeli plot designed to discredit Arabs.8 Such beliefs are also dominant among Muslims in Western societies. Forty-five percent of British Muslims believe 9/11 was a conspiracy orchestrated by Israel and the US, and 35 percent have no opinion on the cause of this disaster. That leaves only 20 percent who are willing to stick up for basic sanity. American blacks and Hispanics also use conspiracy theories to blame their own failings on whites. It seems few, if any, races share whites’ capacity for self-criticism.
The bulk of Warraq’s book examines how these distinctive Western values have manifested themselves in the European representation of the non-West, particularly the Middle East, from the Greeks until the 19th century. Warraq makes clear that this body of knowledge was much more strongly marked by the spirit of objectivity, curiosity, and openness than Said’s Orientalist chauvinism.
Warraq describes the unprecedented objectivity of the Greek inventors of the study of history. The account of non-Greeks in the works of Herodotus, the 5th century BC historian, is characterized by lively interest and admiration. Indeed, he is prone make comparisons among peoples to the disadvantage of the Greeks. Despite the fact that the Persians had recently tried to conquer the Greeks, Herodotus shows no sign of bias in his assessment of them, crediting them with bravery, honesty and loyalty. A later classical author even called Herodotus a philobarbaros, or lover of the barbarians.9
The coming centuries would see the development and the enrichment of this Western spirit of objectivity and openness. Warraq cites as an example the life and studies of 19th century archaeologist Henry Rawlinson, who spent five years in Persia diligently studying the history, geography, and culture of the country, as well as the antiquities that were his specialty. What drove him on was, as he said, the “pleasure in discovery for its own sake” and his gratification in the “continual progression in knowledge.” He was full of admiration for the people he met, whose dialects he learned and in whose company he delighted. The Kurds, for example, he found “a remarkably fine, active, and athletic race.” The Persians reciprocated his admiration; indeed, the man became a legend in the country. The natives were amazed by a man who was so deeply versed in the Persian language and culture that he could hold his own in arguments with the mullahs, and besides, was the best shot and the boldest rider that they had ever seen.10
The Western attitude towards the non-West demonstrates not merely the spirit of openness, but also a recognition of the essential similarity of mankind. While whites before the 20th century were aware of racial differences, they were quick to overcome the crude equation of “us” with “good” and “them” with “evil” that characterizes traditional societies. For the cultivated men of the West, the distinctions among races were a matter of degree rather than kind.
In a chapter on contemporary Western liberalism, Warraq traces the transformation of Western values into crude egalitarianism, which obscures crucial differences among cultures, and cosmopolitanism, which causes Westerners to prize the foreign over the familiar and to adore charlatans like Said. Warraq’s book, however, is a powerful antidote to liberalism and reminds Westerners why we should cherish our culture and work to preserve it.