African and Black Orientalism - Africa And European Colonial Scholarship, Orientalism, African Literature, And Criticism, Black America And Black Orientalism
muslim study people policy
Edward Said's 1978 book, Orientalism, is the harshest critique to date of Western scholarship on the Muslim orient. However, its focus is almost exclusively on the Near and Middle East. The policy statements of William Ponty, the French governor-general in Senegal (1907–1915), quoted below suggest a link between Orientalism, as understood by Edward Said, and colonial scholarship on Muslim societies in sub-Saharan Africa.
It is our duty to study the Muslim society of our colonies in the minutest details.… It presupposes special studies of Islam which the great Orientalists of France and of Europe have now virtually succeeded in establishing.… [The study] will seem very attractive to many because of the scientific interest attached to it. But above all it is interesting for political and administrative reasons. It is almost impossible to administer an Islamic people wisely, if one does not understand its religious faith, its judicial system and its social organization, which are all intimately connected and are strongly influenced by the Coran [ sic ] and the prophetic tradition. It is this understanding of native society which, alone, will enable a peaceful and profound action on the minds of the people. It is, therefore, in this study … that we will find the surest bases and the most suitable directions for our Muslim policy. (Harrison, p. 107)
Writings such as these have prompted scholars to explore the links between Orientalism and European-language scholarship on Africa, produced notably during the colonial period.
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European governments commissioned much of Western scholarship on African Muslim societies produced in the colonial period. The most influential writers on African Islam were scholar-administrators, or at least closely linked with colonial administrations. Britain, Germany, Holland, and France commissioned the most respected specialists on Islam to study the Muslim societies that were coming under …
George Lang is likely one of the first scholars to draw attention to Orientalist features in European-language African writing. Lang explores the effects of the reductions of Islam's complexity upon Africanist writing. The denial of the complexity of Islam impedes the understanding not just of Islam but of Africa. In the area of literary criticism, very frequently one or other dimension of …
Ali Mazrui was probably the first person to use the term Black Orientalism in his critique of the PBS documentary Wonders of the African World, produced by Henry Gates, an African-American professor. According to Mazrui, Gates is a Black Orientalist because he made condescending, paternalistic, ideologically selective, superficial, and uninformed depictions of Africa. He also suggests that Gate&#x…
Sherman Jackson's article on "Black Orientalism" helps one to see Orientalism in the context of the African-American experience. Jackson detected a major shift in black American responses to Islam and the immigrant Muslim community in America. Prior to the wave of Muslim immigration to America in the 1970s, Islam was by and large perceived in the black community as an authenti…
Based on the foregoing analysis, one can see that Orientalism, as it applies to Blacks and Africa, describes realities that are
not necessarily in consonance with Edward Said's original use of the term. In Said's usage, Orientalism is place-bound. It refers to scholarship on the Muslim orient. George Lang, Sherman Jackson, and other scholars have focused on the central targets of Or…
Bangura, Ahmed. Islam and the West African Novel: The Politics of Representation. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000. Harrison, Christopher. France and Islam in West Africa, 1860–1960. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Jackson, Sherman. "Black Orientalism: Its Genesis, Aims and Significance for American Islam." In Muslims in the United States, edited by Phili…
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