British and American Representations of 9-11

by Oana-Celia Gheorghiu

  Attempting to challenge the centrality of the West , which originates in Eurocentric discourses , but also in such postcolonial writings as Orientalism, Alistair Bonnett discusses the Occident from the perspective of its image as represented by non-Western modernity: ‘the West that I will be portraying is a project fashioned outside the West’ (2005, 505). To this effect, he draws on the works of two influential interpreters of the West, Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) and Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), to show how contrasting stereotypes of the West (and Asia) articulate novel narratives of modernity. Bonnett seems to challenge subaltern studies in its entirety by asserting that it is more illuminating to read such accounts than to focus on how the marginalised and the silenced interrupt the hegemonic discourse of the West. Once again, Said’s influence on the latter approach is emphasised: ‘the modern reader, whose thinking has been influenced by Said’s concept of Orientalism , tends to seize upon proof of Western hegemony wherever she or he looks’ (2005, 506).

  Without making any claims to be an exhaustive study of Occidentalism , a few examples have been selected so as to underline the idea that, while the West might have had a political agenda in constructing the East , Orientals have also constantly objectified and represented the West . To this end, a few Eastern representations of the West are further presented, in an attempt to demonstrate that xenophobia targeted at the Western Other is rooted in the writings of some of the greatest figures of Eastern civilisation.

  Before emphasising Arabic views of the West and on their ‘isms’, synonymous with ‘-phobia’, it may be worthwhile noting that stereotyping the West as materialistic, decadent, secular and rational (as opposed to spiritual, ethical and natural) is present in a startlingly violent manner in the works of the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1913). Interestingly enough, Tagore faced criticism at home for accepting this Western prize and for having westernised/modernised his national literature , although he was well known for his clearly formulated nationalist and anti-imperialist opinions. But his political writings suggest that literature is literature and politics is a completely different matter. Thus, according to Bonnett, Tagore considers that the West represented ‘the despoliation of personality and individuality by an increasingly standardised and industrialised social system’ (2005, 515). The West , in his view, is just ‘a mechanical, officious civilisation, the antithesis of the organic culture found within Asia’ (516), and it is more than necessary to keep it at distance by embracing a modernity exclusively based on the united Asian traditions and by rejecting Western urban culture. Tagore is particularly scornful of Japan for its westernisation: ‘the western nations felt no respect for [Japan] till she proved that the bloodhounds of Satan are not only bred in the kennels of Europe but can also be domesticated in Japan and fed with man’s miseries’ (Tagore 1917 qtd. in Bonnett 2005, 516). Tagore speaks of the poisoning and emasculation of the nations which became, wilfully or not, Western subalterns.

  Moving on to the Arab world, reference should be made to the famous Iranian thinker Jalal Al-i-Ahmad, who popularised the term ‘Gharb zadegi’, translated as ‘Westoxification’, ‘Occid entosis’ or the ‘Western plague’, a notion that would later be embraced by the Islamic Revolution and by Ayatollah Khomeini (with emphasis on morality, and not on the economy, as is the case in Al-i-Ahmad’s book). In Gharbzadegi,6 the writer summarises the tradition of the Islamic interest in the West as Other, concluding that ‘[they] have always looked westward. [They] even coined the term “Western” before the Europeans called [them] “Eastern”’ (1984, 36). Understanding what he implies here requires minimum linguistic knowledge of the etymology of the word the Arabs use for ‘westerner’, so let us quote the explanation provided by Shirin Deylami in her doctoral thesis, Strangers Among Us: A Critique of Westoxification in Perso-Iranian Political Thought:The term gharb shares its etymological origins with the word gharib which in Farsi means stranger or person who is unknown. In turn, the Arabic usage, which is al-gharb, translates into ‘western land’ or ‘of the west’ […]. Thus from its early linguistic origins, gharbzadegi associates the West with both strangeness and the unknown signalling simultaneously a discomfort with and awe of the West . In turn, the suffix zadegi means to be struck with illness, pathogen, or toxin. (2012, 15)

  Gharbzadegi essentially bemoans the loss of the Islamic identity of Iran (and, by extension, of the entire Middle East region) to the cultural and economic influence of the Western world. Al-i-Ahmad makes extensive use of medical metaphors—‘I speak of Occidentosis as of tuberculosis’ (1984, 27)—which is common in the rhetoric of political discourse , as Michael Hanne et al. (2015, 1–50) notices in an insightful study on narrative and metaphor in politics . Although medical metaphors are by no means the exclusive perquisite of Islamic leaders or thinkers (as a matter of fact, after 9/11 , the association of terrorism with cancer has become almost formulaic in the speeches of Western leaders, coming to complete the mythical association with evil), it is obvious that the metaphor forwarded by Al-i-Ahmad entails that he and his followers regard the West as an infection which should be excised from their body [politic]. The book is ragingly anti-Occidental, being also targeted at locals who submit to Western ways: it is crowded with virulent remarks against the young Arabs who study abroad, and especially against those who marry Western women. It overtly accuses the West of drinking ‘the blood of the East (ivory, oil, silk, spices, and other material goods)’ and of embracing the spiritual goods of the East—‘their anthropology, mythology, dialectology and a thousand other “ologies” were founded on material gathered from this side of the world’ (1984, 127).

  It should not come as a surprise that Al-i-Ahm ad’s ideas have influenced a line of revisionist political thought (and action) which holds that ‘the national salvation so eagerly sought by the Arabs since the Napoleonic occupation of Egypt is to be found neither in secular nationalism (be it radical, conservative or liberal), nor in revolutionary communism, socialism and what have you, but in a return to what they call “popular political Islam”’ (Al-Azm 1981/2001, 234)—widely known today as Islamism. In a keynote address at a conference held in his honour, Al-Azm enlarged upon the notion, describing it as a militant ideology which resurrects the early Islamic concept of jihad ‘against an environing world of paganism, polytheism, idolatry, godlessness, infidelity, atheism, apostasy, and unbelief, known to that ideology as the “jahiliyyah of the twentieth century”.7 The ultimate goal of Islamism is to save the contemporary world from this jahili condition—imposed on it by the modern West’ (2010, 13). However, according to one of the greatest Western authorities in Islam Studies, John Esposito, jihad may acquire more meanings, being one of the most complex concepts in Islam. Thus, for one Muslim, it may signify leading a good Muslim life, for another, spreading the word of the Prophet, for a third, supporting the struggle of oppressed Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir or Kosovo, while for the fourth, whom Esposito identifies with Osama bin Laden and his followers, jihad may represent overthrowing opposing regimes in the Muslim world and attacking the West . All these categories develop, in one way or another, relations to the Western world, which they perceive as utterly corrupt and to which they ascribe the already mentioned stereotypes of ungrateful thieves of the Eastern civilisations:Many Muslims today believe that the conditions of their world require a jihad . They look around them and see a world dominated by corrupt authoritarian governments and a wealthy elite, a minority concerned solely with its own economic prosperity, rather than national development, a world awash in Western culture and values in dress, music, television, and movies. Western governments are perceived as propping up oppressive regimes and exploiting the region’s human and natural resources, robbing Muslims of their culture and their options to be governed according to their own choice and to live in a more just society. (Esposito 2002, 27)

  It would be scientifically inaccurate to look for the roots o
f jihad, which go back to Mohammed himself, according to Esposito, who carefully documents its historical sources (2002, 29–69), in the writings of the self-proclaimed Occidentalist scholars of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, one cannot deny that the last century was one of the most dynamic in Islamic history:Muslim societies have passed from subjugation to European imperialism to national independence, from remnants of medieval empires to modern nation-states, from a transnational but somewhat regionally fixed community to a global community not only of Muslim-majority communities in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia but also of significant Muslim-minority communities in Europe and the United States. (Esposito 1999, 643)

  Alongside these (geo)political transformations of the Muslim civilisation, it is undeniable that the twentieth century saw the publication of many works that contributed significant critiques of the societal order(s), both in the Islamic world and outside it. A specific trait of the intellectuals who wrote these books is that they are, in many cases, not secular but Muslim activists influenced by either leftist or rightist dogmas. Esposito gathers these voices of intellectual Islam(ism?) in a book entitled Makers of Contemporary Islam (2001), co-authored by John Voll. As a parenthesis, in a column written soon after the 9/11 events (‘Yes, it is about Islam’, The New York Times , 2 November 2001, reprinted in a 2002 volume of essays and articles), referring to the radical political movements of the Muslim men, Salman Rushdie exclaims: ‘oh, for the voices of Muslim women to be heard!’ (2002, 339). Esposito and Voll actually identify such a voice, that of Maryam Jameelah, born in a Jewish family and converted to Islam , whose take on modernism and westernisation is extremely theological and conservative. ‘Jameelah believes that westernisation is the most pernicious and destructive force in the Muslim world, a legacy of European colonialism and a universal process repeated throughout the non-Western world’ (2001, 61), an idea which brings the discussion back to Said’s account of the voiceless Oriental, rendered inept by the hegemonic Western discourse , and to the discourses of these silenced subalterns. One of the most frequently cited works in this respect is Hasan Hanafi’s Introduction to the Science of Occidentalism (Cairo 1991, in Arabic), which states that ‘Occidentalism is the discipline constituted in the Third World countries in order to complete the process of decolonisation […] Decolonisation will not be completed except after the […] transformation of the observed in an observer’ (qtd . in Esposito and Voll 2001, 88). Attempting to counter-balance the Western discourses about the Eastern world, Hanafi’s discussion of the West emulates Western Orientalism , which turns his account into what Al-Azm termed, as early as 1981, in his review of Said’s book, ‘Orientalism in reverse’ (1981/2001, 217–38).

  Therefore, it seems that this ‘science of Occidentalism’ does nothing more than reverse the categories of Self and Other , and subsequently project stereotypes onto the latter, producing effects at least as disastrous as those emerging from the Westerner’s gaze of superiority on its Others. A political agenda is, naturally, present, with an added key component: religion. What results is a ‘dehumanising picture of the West painted by its enemies’ (Buruma and Margalit 2005, 5). Aiming to ‘understand what drives Occidentalism and to show that today’s suicide bombers and holy warriors don’t suffer from some unique pathology but are fired by ideas that have a history’ (9), the two authors produce a short but thorough investigation into the hostile stereotypes of the West , Occidentalism—The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (2004). The writers resist the temptation of the diachronic approach, focusing instead on a list of reasons that have triggered hatred against the West at any given time or place. Mention should be made that the East presented in this book is by no means limited to the territories dominated by Islam and Islamism , but expands so as to incorporate Japan, China, India and even Russia. Nevertheless, the focus of the book is definitely the Islamist, the present-day enemy of the West , although the authors claim that ‘Occidentalism cannot be reduced to a Middle East sickness any more than it could to a specifically Japanese disease more than fifty years ago’ (6). As they put it, ‘symptoms become interesting only when they develop into a full-blown disease. Not liking Western pop culture , global capitalism, US foreign policy, big cities, or sexual license is not of great moment; the desire to declare war on the West for such reasons is’ (5). The book brings together convincing examples of Occidentalism from all parts of what it considers ‘Easts’, as well as from various historical periods, but Islam (ism) occupies a central position with each and every reason identified for the Easterners’ hatred against their Others: urbanism, rationalism, capitalism and materialism.

  According to Buruma and Margalit, the city is figured in the Eastern mindset as a wicked symbol of greed, godlessness, prostitution and rootless cosmopolitanism (205, 21), its image going back as far as the idea of the biblical City of Man (Babylon). Within this frame, and in direct relation to anti-Americanism , New York would be the contemporary Babylon, and the attacks would represent ‘a deliberate act of mass-murder played into an ancient myth—the myth about the destruction of the sinful city’ (14). Although nostalgia for the delights of the simpler, pastoral life, in contrast with the soullessness and coldness of the city is a Western idea as much as it is an Eastern one, in the eyes of the latter, the city is ‘evil, inauthentic, capitalist, ethnically mixed, degenerate and compromised’ (44). Another stereotype deeply ingrained in the Oriental mindset is that of the West as soft, sickly, decadent and addicted to pleasure. An interview with a Taliban fighter at the beginning of the military operations in Afghanistan (2001) is cited in this respect: ‘The Americans would never win for they love Pepsi Cola, but we love death’ (49). This love for death, constantly forwarded by the luminaries and leaders of the Islamist movements, which makes young men ready to sacrifice their lives, is opposed by the alternative system of values of the Occident , which ‘is a threat because its promises of material comfort, individual freedom, and the dignity of unexceptional lives deflate all utopian pretensions’ (72).

  Of course, the greatest ‘guilt’ of the West in the eyes of its enemies—to preserve this formula—is neither its urbanism, nor its rationalism, but its disregard for the Muslim religious values, jahiliyyah. The Muslim Brotherhood, for example, advocates the exclusive rule of God (Allah), which is the only possibility for salvation from the material greed, immoral behaviour, inequality and political oppression of a West compared to a ‘gigantic brothel, steeped in animal lust, greed, and selfishness’ (117). Many examples of similar statements could be further provided so as to cast the blame on Islam for the fierce Occidentalism which now stems from the Middle East. But this is not the aim of this section, which is only intended to account for the stereotypical image of the Other, while also counteracting the standpoint which holds that only the powerful West has prejudices and political agendas in relation to its alterity. After all, irrespective of geography, the Other may appear as secondary and evil. Moreover, the display of these many stereotypes the East and the West assign to each other should prove helpful in deciphering the literary texts in which the Oriental is presented as Other (therefore, from an Orientalist perspective), but which make extensive use of many anti-Western stereotypes , by giving their characters a reasoning clearly inspired by ‘the makers of contemporary Islam’.

  Societal Control Mechanisms

  This section starts from the assumption that society has its ways of controlling the individual: directly, by laws and regulations, and indirectly, by multiple ingrained customs and traditions, here including the mirrors in which the selves are reflected and the windows through which to view the Other—generating auto-images and hetero-images respectively. All these means of controlling the individual are taught and acquired since early childhood and preserved throughout one’s whole life, with the support of all the institutions which make up the societal apparatus and which hold identities and individualities together. A second assumption which governs this section is that, despite their common core of econo
mic, social and cultural structures based on various social relations between their individuals, societies are grounded in different cultural patterns that influence their members in different ways. When such differences are small and when societies interact through their representatives, processes of intercultural communication and even acculturation occur, and societies converge towards multiculturalism and common traits. Ultimately, the already overused concept of globalisation implies an interchange of various social and cultural practices with the aim of unifying cultures and civilisations under the larger umbrella of a ‘single world society’ (Albrow and King 1990, 9). However, not all the societies and cultures of the world are ready to join the global village, and that is a consequence of their too consciously embracing their differences (which, of course, are seen this way from the outside, not from the inside), and of their unwillingness to allow alterity to permeate their culture. A good case in point is represented by some of the Islamic states (and/or organisations) in the Middle East, which not only refuse to embrace Western culture, but actually fight it.