Orientalism

by Edward W. Said

The reception of Islam in the West is a perfect case in point, and has been admirably studied by Norman Daniel. One constraint acting upon Christian thinkers who tried to understand Islam was an analogical one; since Christ is the basis of Christian faith, it was assumed—quite incorrectly—that Mohammed was to Islam as Christ was to Christianity. Hence the polemic name “Mohammedanism” given to Islam, and the automatic epithet “imposter” applied to Mohammed.37 Out of such and many other misconceptions “there formed a circle which was never broken by imaginative exteriorisation.… The Christian concept of Islam was integral and self-sufficient.”38 Islam became an image—the word is Daniel’s but it seems to me to have remarkable implications for Orientalism in general—whose function was not so much to represent Islam in itself as to represent it for the medieval Christian.