The New Orientalists

1. Islam as a Mirror for Western Self-Critique

As we shall see, the spirit of Byron’s gesture – that of an English/European self-critique which partly results in, partly springs from a concerted, selective, at times not wholly convincing sympathy with the Islamic Other – will be found in practically all of the nine writers presented in this book.

Byron's precedent. Lord Byron, ostracized from English society, found in the "Terrible Turk" a provocative counterpoint to critique his own culture's hypocrisies. His admiration for Turkish dignity and honesty, even his flirtation with converting to Islam, served primarily as a means to gain critical distance from the European values he rejected. This instrumental use of the Islamic Other established a pattern for later Western thinkers.

Instrumental alterity. Many postmodern figures, from Nietzsche to Foucault, similarly invoked Islam not for its intrinsic qualities but as a strategic "Other" to re-evaluate Western modernity. Whether it was Nietzsche praising "Mohammedans" over Christians or Foucault contrasting Tunisian authenticity with French superficiality, Islam functioned as a ready-at-hand store of alternative customs and values. This allowed them to undermine the universalist claims of European Christianity and modernity, sharpening their "trans-European eye."

Self-serving function. This engagement with Islam was often less about understanding Islam itself and more about understanding the West through contrast. Islam became a semantic counter, a symbolic resource to articulate critiques of European thought, culture, and politics. The "Islamic Orient" served as a convenient backdrop against which the perceived decadence, repression, or mendacity of the West could be highlighted, ultimately serving a self-critique that remained fundamentally Eurocentric in its motivation and focus.

2. The Paradox of Postmodern Orientalism

With the critique of Eurocentric modernity, the European game has not ended, it has simply moved into a second phase.

Subtler perpetuation. The book argues that postmodern representations of Islam, despite their critical stance towards European "grand narratives" and the decentering of the subject, often perpetuate Orientalist tropes in subtler ways. While acknowledging the de-universalizing potential of postmodern thought for challenging European hegemony, it highlights how this critique remains largely dictated on European terms, merely shifting the "game" rather than ending it.

Unconscious biases. Even thinkers aware of the Western construction of the Oriental artifice, like Foucault, inadvertently essentialize the West (and implicitly the East) through their repeated emphasis on "Occident." This creates stock associations—tragedy, individuality, inauthenticity for the West, and their inverses for the East—that betray an unconscious indebtedness to familiar Orientalist motifs, despite intentions to delineate cultural specificities.

Instrumentalization persists. The "New Orientalists" often use Islam as a "pool of signs and motifs" for their philosophical aims, adapting and utilizing it as a key argument without necessarily engaging with Islam as an object of interest in itself. This instrumental approach, whether through exaggerated sympathy or critical distance, ultimately serves to reinforce a Western-centric discourse, where the "Other" remains a tool for self-definition rather than an autonomous entity.

3. Nietzsche's Idealized, Anti-Christian Islam

Christianity robbed us of the harvest of the culture of the ancient world, it later went on to rob us of the harvest of the culture of Islam.

Affirmative counterpoint. Nietzsche frequently invoked Islam as an "affirmative Semitic religion," contrasting it sharply with what he saw as the life-denying, "womanish" Christianity. He praised Islam for its perceived "manliness," non-judgmentalism, and its embrace of instincts like lust and the will to power, particularly in medieval contexts like Moorish Spain or the Assassins. This served as a powerful rhetorical tool to critique the "European disease" of Judaeo-Christian modernity.

Selective affirmation. Nietzsche's interest was not in Islam's theological depth but in its utility as a barometer of difference. He affirmed common nineteenth-century prejudices about Islam—its lack of democracy, fanaticism, and social injustice—but ironically praised these traits as signs of a "purer," pre-Enlightenment attitude, untainted by European "civilization." His Islam was largely medieval, frozen in time, and devoid of internal development.

Constructed anti-Christianity. Ultimately, Nietzsche's Islam was a constructed anti-Christianity, a semantic counter built on anecdotes and symbolic figures like Hafiz or the Assassins. It was a vacuous concept, serving his philosophical agenda to provincialise and re-evaluate Europe, rather than an object of genuine, nuanced study. His "peace and friendship with Islam" was driven more by a hatred of German Christianity than a deep understanding or love of Islamic cultures.

4. Foucault's Timeless, Energetic Islamic Other

That sense of looking, even at the price of one’s life, for something whose possibility the rest of us have forgotten since the Renaissance and the great crises of Christianity: a political spirituality.

Critique and appropriation. Foucault's engagement with Islam, particularly during his time in Tunisia and his observations on the Iranian Revolution, involved a complex interplay of analyzing and appropriating its alterity. He recognized the West's "thousand-year-old reproach of fanaticism" against Islam but simultaneously used Islam's "otherness" to critique Western thought, echoing Nietzsche's desire for a "sharper eye" outside Europe.

Pre-modern vitality. Foucault found in Tunisia and Iran an "energy" and "radical intensity" that he believed had been lost in Christian Europe since the Renaissance. He saw the Iranian Revolution as a "political spirituality," a "revolt against history" that overturned Western conceptions of modernity. This positioned Islam outside European temporality, as a repository of forgotten vitality and wisdom, a "madness" of irrepressible energy resisting Western control.

Uncritical essentialization. Despite his rigorous historicizing, Foucault's portrayal of Islam often fell into essentialist traps. He described Iranian society as having "forms of life which have been immobile for a millennium" and noted the "absolutely collective will" of the revolution, overlooking internal struggles or individual agency. This "immobility" and homogeneity, reminiscent of traditional Orientalist clichés, suggested that Foucault's perception of Islam was shaped more by his pre-existing theoretical framework and Nietzschean influences than by direct observation.

5. Derrida's Shifting, Instrumentalized Islam

Islam, it has to be said, stands on the periphery of Derrida’s thought.

Marginal yet versatile. Despite spending formative years in Algeria, Islam remained largely peripheral in Derrida's extensive work, often appearing in passing mentions or footnotes. When addressed, Islam functioned as a "semantic counter," easily shifting between identities: a "fundamentalism," a victim of Christian globalization, a partner to Judaism and Christianity, or a radically different "Arab Other." This protean nature allowed Islam to serve various deconstructive arguments without deep engagement.

Selective engagement. Derrida's reluctance to discuss Islamic mysticism, citing it as an "immense place" about which he "cannot speak," contrasts with his detailed critiques of Greek and Christian negative theology. This omission, framed as a "consistent possible apophasis," paradoxically reinforces Islam's status as an unspeakable, radically "autre" entity, too foreign for his European philosophical framework, despite his self-description as a "very Arab little Jew."

De-essentialization as instrumentalization. Derrida's multiple Islams, rather than reflecting cultural diversity, often stemmed from semantic needs, allowing him to graft any identity onto it. When critiquing Euro-Christian modernity, Islam became a "non-pagan monotheism" resisting "globalatinization." When discussing sacrifice, it dissolved into a generic "Abrahamic revelation," even overlooking crucial Qur'anic differences. This de-essentialization, while seemingly pluralistic, ultimately instrumentalized Islam, emptying it of stable identity to serve Derrida's broader deconstructive project.

6. Borges' Medieval, Constricting Islamic Fantasies

...Averroes, closed within the orb of Islam...

Exotic backdrop. Borges' fascination with Islam, evident in numerous stories, often drew from a European Orientalist tradition, mixing the exotic and esoteric. His early "Arabian" tales, filled with sultans, deserts, and moralistic plots, presented Islam as a safe, orthodox, and deterministic world where divine justice prevailed. These stories, often narrated by fictitious Muslims, served as a colorful, encyclopedic backdrop for exploring themes of human pride and divine omniscience.

Heresy and limitation. Later, Borges explored Islam through figures on its fringes, like the "atheist" Omar Khayyam or the heretical al-Mokanna. This reflected a fascination with how individuals succumbed to or struggled against Islam's perceived constricting influence. Islam, in these narratives, often appeared as a monologic, monochrome, self-enclosed totality, stifling creativity and free thought, with its medieval setting serving as an archaic backdrop for intellectual thought-experiments on the limits of faith and knowledge.

Orientalist self-reflection. In "Averroes' Search," Borges critically reflected on the Orientalist project itself, realizing his depiction of Averroes' failure to grasp Greek drama was a mirror of his own failure to truly understand Islam through "a few fragments from Renan, Lane and Asin Palacios." This moment of self-doubt, however, also revealed a deeper, almost claustrophobic fear of Islam as an encroaching, malevolent force, capable of consuming reality, as subtly hinted in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius."

7. Rushdie's Contradictory, Politicized Islams

Actually Existing Islam, which has all but deified its Prophet, a man who always fought passionately against such deification; which has supplanted a priest-free religion by a priest-ridden one; which makes literalism a weapon and redescriptions a crime, will never let the likes of me in.

Polyphony of Islams. Salman Rushdie, as a "nominal Muslim" insider-outsider, presents a complex, often contradictory array of Islams in his work. He critiques Islam as an outdated, progress-inhibiting superstition and a "violent metaphysics" akin to nationalism and capitalism. Yet, he also defends it as a faith of oppressed minorities against Hindu nationalism or highlights its moderate, pluralistic Sufi traditions, particularly after the Satanic Verses controversy.

Shifting perspectives. Rushdie's portrayal of Islam shifts dramatically based on context. Muhammad, initially depicted as a defender of the poor against market ethics in an essay, becomes "Mahound the Prophet Messenger Businessman" in The Satanic Verses, exploiting the gullible. This fluidity reflects a "kaleidoscopic sequence" of "Islams of the mind," where no single, identifiable "Islam" exists, but rather diverse and conflicting phenomena.

Postmodern critique of Islam. Unlike Western writers who use Islam to critique the West, Rushdie often uses postmodern strategies—skepticism, irreverence, deconstruction of grand narratives—to critique Islam itself. He dreams of a "progressive, irreverent, skeptical, argumentative, playful and unafraid culture" within Islam, believing that "Actually Existing Islam" has betrayed the Prophet's original principles. This foregrounds Islam at the center of his discourse, with postmodernity serving as a tool to recover its "true, recoverable meaning."

8. Pamuk's Melancholy Quest for Islamic Meaning

Instead of being amazed that library shelves in Islamic countries are crammed full of handwritten interpretations and commentaries, all one has to do is take a look at the multitudes of broken men in the street to know why.

Islam and sadness. Orhan Pamuk's novels imbue Islam with a profound sense of melancholy and resignation, linking it to themes of loss, loneliness, and the absence of transcendental meaning. References to "sad, concrete minarets" and "forlorn mosques" underscore this pervasive tristesse. Islam, along with its mystical traditions like Sufism, forms an intricate cultural background that shapes the characters' quests for identity and meaning in a secularized world.

Deconstruction of mystery. Pamuk, a self-confessed secularist, uses Islam as a "local" manifestation of a universal metaphysical delusion. His narratives, particularly The Black Book, ruthlessly dismantle the notion of a hidden "secret" or "inner meaning" (batin) to signs, revealing that the only secret is that there is no secret. This hermeneutic sadness stems from the realization that our interpretations ultimately point back to ourselves, with Islam merely providing the semantic framework for our human need for meaning.

Ambivalent instrumentalization. While Pamuk's appreciation for Sufism is "purely literary," he uses figures like Rumi to illustrate secular beliefs about the illusion of selfhood, reappropriating mystical concepts like fana' (self-annihilation) into a postmodern context of identity dissolution. This creates a paradox: Islam is celebrated for its tradition and semantic wealth, yet simultaneously attacked for its dogmatic content. Ultimately, Islam serves as a "world-colouring" mechanism, and its "death" in a secularized world signifies the death of mystery and passion for his protagonists.

9. Baudrillard's Hyperreal Islam of Pure Resistance

The crucial stake, the decisive stake in this whole affair is the consensual reduction of Islam to the global order. Not to destroy but to domesticate it, by whatever means: modernisation, even military, politicisation, nationalism, democracy, the Rights of Man, anything at all to electrocute the resistances and the symbolic challenge that Islam represents for the entire West...

Self-conscious Orientalism. Baudrillard, unburdened by deep knowledge of Islam, delights in controversial, provocative statements, often replicating Orientalist stereotypes. His analysis of the Gulf War as a "hyperreal" media event, rather than a physical conflict, positions the "unreal Orient" as a "mirage" or "phantasmagoria," reinforcing the age-old trope of the East as illusion. This instrumentalization of Islam serves to illustrate his theories of simulacra and the depthless.

"Arab masses" and cynical intelligence. Baudrillard's use of "Arab masses" carries colonial implications, depicting them as docile victims of Saddam's "aura," lacking the sophisticated, subversive apathy he attributes to Western masses. Yet, he also grants Arab leaders a "cannier grasp of the flexibility of truth," seeing them as more adept at manipulating images due to an "iconoclastic" understanding of their inherent falsity. This paradoxical view reinforces stereotypes while simultaneously critiquing Western naiveté.

Islam as irreducible alterity. Baudrillard ultimately positions Islam as the "last hope" against the New World Order, an "irreducible and dangerous alterity" that resists global integration. He sees "Enlightenment Fundamentalism" as equally fierce and more destructive than its Islamic counterpart, which can only defy symbolically. Islam's "virulent and ungraspable instability" and "unconvertible" nature become a symptom of Western decay, a "suicide" of the West, ultimately reducing Islam to a semantically empty, disruptive force serving as a signpost for the end of Western hegemony.

10. Žižek's Hegelian Islam as a Socialist Catalyst

Perhaps there is no more sublime passage in the Jewish Law than the commandment: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven or on earth. This commandment can alone explain the enthusiasm which the Jewish people, in their moral period, felt for their religion when comparing themselves with others, or can explain the pride that Islam inspires.

Hegelian marginalization. Žižek, despite his later engagement with Islam, initially excised it from Kant's quote on iconoclasm, mirroring Hegel's marginalization of Islam as a peripheral, non-original force in world history. His book Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, despite its title, largely sidelines Iraq, transforming the conflict into a discussion of US-European relations or Lacanian theory. This "ontological fading out" of the Muslim world reflects a "verdrängt Eurocentrism," where the Middle East serves as a backdrop for Western self-analysis.

Radical energy and negativity. Žižek, like Hegel, attributes a "radical energy" and "absolute negativity" to Islam, particularly in his analysis of 9/11. He sees the attacks as an "explosion of lethal jouissance," an irruption of the Lacanian Real that shatters Western complacency. This positions the Muslim world as a source of "traumatic kernel" and iconoclastic resistance to the Symbolic, capable of "genuine political Acts" due to its "unreflective orthodoxy" and "madness of a decision," echoing Hegel's "Mahometan fanaticism."

Incomplete socialist transition. Žižek views Islam's resistance to capitalist global order as an "open chance" for a future "socialist project." He sees Islam as an "incomplete project," a transitional stage that, like Protestantism for capitalism, could facilitate a new social order before potentially "vanishing" within it. This instrumentalization reduces Islam to a "dehumanized functionality," a "freedom fighter with an inhuman face," whose value lies in its potential to serve a larger, pre-determined Western-derived political scheme, rather than its intrinsic worth.

11. The Unspoken Eurocentrism in Critiques of Modernity

The philosophical world, it would seem, is destined to revolve round Europe; Derrida’s generous qualification that such philosophers of the future may even be non-European, providing they continue to think in a ‘European’ way (‘European non-citizens’ he calls them) does not provide much comfort.

Implicit Western framework. The book consistently reveals how postmodern critiques of modernity, even when seemingly universal, remain deeply embedded in a Eurocentric framework. Thinkers like Derrida, while deconstructing Western logocentrism, still privilege Europe as the "ineluctable birthplace" of future philosophy, defining "European" thought as the necessary starting point for any global philosophical vocabulary, even for "non-European" thinkers.

Selective memory and exclusion. Kristeva's "cultural memory" of Europe, for instance, explicitly omits Islam from the "intersection of Greek, Jewish and Christian experience" that defines European freedom. This selective remembering, coupled with her dismissal of the "repressive space" of the Islamic world, reinforces a "Graeco-Judaeo-Christian topos" for Europe, effectively "exteriorizing" Islam to preserve a purified European subjectivity.

Instrumentalizing the "Other." This unspoken Eurocentrism manifests in the instrumentalization of Islam, where its symbols, motifs, and beliefs are appropriated for Western self-critique. Whether it's Nietzsche's "Moroccan eye" or Žižek's "Iraq war about us," the "Other" serves primarily as a mirror for Western introspection, reflecting its own drives, fears, and fantasies. This semantic denial of ontological depth to the marginalized subject is a recurring symptom of this "other" Eurocentrism.

12. The Ethical Burden of Cultural Representation

The Islam of the writers and thinkers covered in this book, to use Sartre’s terms, remains invariably an Islam-for-others, an Islam-pour-l’Occident, an Islam-pour-l’Europe, and never an Islam-en-soi, an Islam for itself.

Islam as a means, not an end. A central ethical concern raised by the book is the pervasive instrumentalization of Islam by postmodern thinkers. Despite their sophisticated critiques of power and representation, these "New Orientalists" often treat Islam as a tool—a palette of exotic colors, a moral stage-set, a source of resistance, or a philosophical catalyst—rather than engaging with it as an autonomous, complex cultural and religious entity. This reduces Islam to a function within a Western-centric discourse.

The "Empire of the Same." The constant re-Westernization of Islamic contexts, turning stories about Eastern thinkers into reflections on Hume or Aristotle, exemplifies Levinas's concept of "extending the Empire of the Same." Even well-intentioned efforts to understand the "Other" often result in projecting Western experiences, anxieties, and intellectual frameworks onto non-European cultures, thereby failing to genuinely encounter their distinctiveness.

Reproachable appropriation. The book questions when the semantic use of another culture becomes morally reproachable. Like Chinua Achebe's critique of Conrad using an entire continent as a metaphor for one European's crisis, the "Islam-for-others" paradigm in these texts highlights a disturbing pattern. It reveals how Western intellectuals, often unconsciously, appropriate and manipulate the imagery and semantic residue of other cultures for their own purposes, with insufficient consideration for the ethical implications of such gestures.

Last updated: April 4, 2026