The War on the West

by Douglas Murray

Said’s central critique is an attempt to prove that when Westerners encountered other societies, they did so through the lens of the societies they came from. Despite the intelligence and style that Said could bring to his writing and his public debates, this central point is wholly unremarkable. After all, through what other lens might Western travelers and scholars have been expected to look at the Orient? Could they have been expected to look at the Middle East through Chinese eyes? Or Middle Eastern eyes? And why should Western explorers, linguists, and others be held to such a strange standard? It would be curious indeed to expect Arabs to have looked at Europe through European eyes. Or for the Chinese to look at the Middle East through Aboriginal eyes. Everybody approaches a different culture through references they have picked up in the culture they are from. There is nothing sinister about this. It is inevitable.