Angry Edward Said

The AP obituary on Edward Said starts: “Edward W. Said, a Columbia University professor and leading spokesman in the United States for the Palestinian cause, has died, his editor at Knopf publishers said Thursday. He was 67.”

I’ve seen assorted essays by Said where he passionately and eloquently defended the cause of the Palestinians and the image of Islam. But the last essay I read by Said was in the July 2002 Harper’s magazine and it was clear that the backlash of 9/11 had muddled his thinking. He wrote two book reviews – really anti-book reviews – on Bernard Lewis’ “What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response” as well as Karen Armstrong’s “Islam: A Short History.” The majority of Said’s essay is dedicated to the Lewis book which, for obvious reasons, gained great popularity immediately after the terrorist attacks (although it was written months before). It would seem that the demand for the book as well as Lewis’ rise in stature after 9/11 drove Said into a bitter frenzy.

The “book review” is remarkable in that it spends precious little time on “What Went Wrong?” in exchange for an ad hominem attack on Lewis which reaches its nadir with this caustic characterization: “One can almost hear him saying, over a gin and tonic, “You know, old chap, those wogs never really got it right, did they?” As for the book itself, Said attacks Lewis’ ability as an Occidental to declaim on the issue of Islam. He attacks the lack or substance of footnotes. He assails spelling and grammar mistakes. It’s an icy tirade of shadow substance that utterly dismisses the notion (absurd!) that Islam could be out of step with the modern world. Here’s the opener for the abridged essay of “What Went Wrong?” published in the Atlantic:

By all standards of the modern world—economic development, literacy, scientific achievement—Muslim civilization, once a mighty enterprise, has fallen low. Many in the Middle East blame a variety of outside forces. But underlying much of the Muslim world's travail may be a simple lack of freedom.

Where is the untruth in that statement? Where is the hatred? I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but Said’s rhetoric was warmed-over intifada from a Columbia professor’s office.