Michael Young: Mideast Must Stop Blaming Imperial Past
[Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.]
Although the referendum on the future of south Sudan is attracting more headlines in the Arab world, civil unrest in Tunisia and Algeria, communal recrimination in Egypt following a recent bomb attack against a Coptic church, multiple crises in Yemen, and political confusion in Lebanon, as well as a host of lesser tribulations, tell a larger story. More and more, the Arab state seems incapable of managing effectively even its most basic challenges.
But you already knew that. An interesting question, however, is what does this tell us about the western colonial legacy in the Middle East? More specifically, what does it say about the tendency over the years of many Arab and western publicists to place the ills of the region at the door of European imperialism and American neo-imperialism?
There are academic programmes on the politics and history of the Middle East built around the premise that the region is still suffering substantially from the consequences of imperial abuse and an ongoing American effort to dominate the Arab world, usually in collaboration with Israel, depicted as a colonial project. Edward Said's book Orientalism remains more influential than ever among students and scholars, for having been the first to interpret Western scholarship of the "Orient" as reflecting a hegemonic impulse. There is an institutional interest in keeping the colonial paradigm alive, for without it many university departments would have to re-tool entirely.
And yet isn't it time to pause for a moment and look more carefully at the wreckage all around us?..
Read entire article at The National (UAE)
Although the referendum on the future of south Sudan is attracting more headlines in the Arab world, civil unrest in Tunisia and Algeria, communal recrimination in Egypt following a recent bomb attack against a Coptic church, multiple crises in Yemen, and political confusion in Lebanon, as well as a host of lesser tribulations, tell a larger story. More and more, the Arab state seems incapable of managing effectively even its most basic challenges.
But you already knew that. An interesting question, however, is what does this tell us about the western colonial legacy in the Middle East? More specifically, what does it say about the tendency over the years of many Arab and western publicists to place the ills of the region at the door of European imperialism and American neo-imperialism?
There are academic programmes on the politics and history of the Middle East built around the premise that the region is still suffering substantially from the consequences of imperial abuse and an ongoing American effort to dominate the Arab world, usually in collaboration with Israel, depicted as a colonial project. Edward Said's book Orientalism remains more influential than ever among students and scholars, for having been the first to interpret Western scholarship of the "Orient" as reflecting a hegemonic impulse. There is an institutional interest in keeping the colonial paradigm alive, for without it many university departments would have to re-tool entirely.
And yet isn't it time to pause for a moment and look more carefully at the wreckage all around us?..