Edward Said Quotes About Islam

Quotes about: Islam

• The sense of Islam as a threatening Other - with Muslims depicted as fanatical, violent, lustful, irrational - develops during the colonial period in what I called Orientalism. The study of the Other has a lot to do with the control and dominance of Europe and the West generally in the Islamic world. And it has persisted because it's based very, very deeply in religious roots, where Islam is seen as a kind of competitor of Christianity.

  Edward Said

  Religious, Islamic, Europe

  Source: progressive.org

• The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing th orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist’s work.

  Edward Said

  Fire, Islam, Experts

  Edward W. Said (2014). “Orientalism”, p.283, Vintage

• It was thought that to rally Islam against godless communism would be doing the Soviet Union a very bad turn indeed, and that, in fact, transpired.

  Edward Said

  Islam, Would Be, Unions

  Edward W. Said, David Barsamian (2003). “Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said”, p.107, Pluto Press

• In 1985, a group of mujahedeen came to Washington and was greeted by President Reagan, who called them "freedom fighters." These people, by the way, don't represent Islam in any formal sense. They're not imams or sheiks. They are self-appointed warriors for Islam.

  Edward Said

  Warrior, Self, People

  Source: www.progressive.org

• This [terrorists attacks on 9/11] was part of nothing. It was a leap into another realm - the realm of crazy abstractions and mythological generalities, involving people who have hijacked Islam for their own purposes. It's important not to fall into that trap and to try to respond with a metaphysical retaliation of some sort.

  Edward Said

  Crazy, Fall, People

  Source: www.progressive.org

• It was thought that to rally Islam against godless communism would be doing the Soviet Union a very bad turn indeed, and that, in fact, transpired. In 1985, a group of mujahedeen came to Washington and was greeted by President [Ronald] Reagan, who called them "freedom fighters."

  Edward Said

  President, Islam, Facts

  Source: www.progressive.org

• The Arab rulers are basically unpopular. They are supported by the United States against the wishes of their people. In all of this rather heady mixture of violence and policies that are remarkably unpopular right down to the last iota, it's not hard for demagogues, especially people who claim to speak in the name of religion, in this case Islam, to raise a crusade against the United States and say that we must somehow bring America down.

  Edward Said

  Names, America, People

  Source: progressive.org

• [Mujahedeen], by the way, don't represent Islam in any formal sense. They're not imams or sheiks. They are self-appointed warriors for Islam.

  Edward Said

  Warrior, Self, Islam

  Source: www.progressive.org

• If you look at the curricula of most universities and schools in this country [USA], considering our long encounter with the Islamic world, there is very little there that you can get hold of that is really informative about Islam. If you look at the popular media, you'll see that the stereotype that begins with Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik has really remained and developed into the transnational villain of television and film and culture in general.

  Edward Said

  Country, Islamic, School

  Source: progressive.org

• It is very easy to make wild generalizations about Islam. All you have to do is read almost any issue of The New Republic and you'll see there the radical evil that's associated with Islam, the Arabs as having a depraved culture, and so forth. These are impossible generalizations to make in the United States about any other religious or ethnic group.

  Edward Said

  Religious, Issues, Evil

  Source: progressive.org

• It [destroying Twin Towers] was a leap into another realm - the realm of crazy abstractions and mythological generalities, involving people who have hijacked Islam for their own purposes. It's important not to fall into that trap and to try to respond with a metaphysical retaliation of some sort.

  Edward Said

  Crazy, Fall, People

  Source: www.progressive.org

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