Customer Reviews
Much needed reality check! - By: Mr. P. Briody, 25 Jul 2008 
Said's 'Orientalism' is a racist, inaccurate tract of suspect scholarship. This book is a splendid riposte. well written & interesting, readers familiar with Said will find this book a splendid revelation. Great read! MUST BUY!
Excellent. Essential. Edward Said's Nightmare - By: B. D. Wilson, 30 Apr 2008 Ibn Warraq's latest book is an eloquent & impassioned defence of the West against the liberal self-loathing & grievance-mongering of liberals & cultural relativists such as Edward Said. With fact after devastating fact, Warraq debunks Said's thesis that every European is by definition a racist, whose sole interest in the Orient is merely to dominate & colonise it.
Part 1 of the book is largely a reprint of an old essay Warraq wrote refuting Said. It serves as a general overview of the whole book.
Part 2 is where it gets reallly good. Warraq argues that there are "Three Tutelary Guiding Lights" that define humanity, & he demonstrates with countless examples how the West has embodied these principles more than any other civilisation in history. The three guiding lights are rationalism (learning for its own sake), universalism (acceptance, tolerance & admiration of other cultures & willingness to learn from them), & self-criticism, which leads to positive change within cultures (Warraq points out that it was the West which abolished slavery, for example). All the while, however, the author does not denigrate the Orient & Islamic civilisation, & gives them credit where it's due.
I also enjoyed the section later in the book where Warraq outlines the racist attitudes that are prevalent in the Orient, which Edward Said never mentions & the mainstream media never covers, including the surprising revelation that Mahatma Gandhi was a racist & warmonger in his earlier years. And following that, there's an excellent discussion of the pernicious influence liberalism, political correctness & multi-culturalism have had on Western coverage of Islam & the East, leaving many Westerners unwilling to defend themselves against "the greatest threat the West has faced since the Nazis." All of this is done with brilliant erudition, extensive documentation & fairness of mind.
Part 3 of the book is an examination of how Said's smears against Western artists & their portrayals of the Orient has resulted in the "shelving" of some truly great works of art & literature. In this part, the exposing of Said's intellectual bankruptcy is complete.
All in alll, this book is a must-read for anyone who is proud of their cultural heritage & wishes to defend it against both armed & ideological attacks. The originality & scope of this work is unsurpassed. Buy it, & Defend the West before it's too late.
The West deserves better defense - By: M. Kassem, 27 Apr 2008 
This is a badly written book. The narrative is interrupted by long & at times not appropriate quotations from various sources. The book is also based on the work of others & thus does not follow any specific research method or plan. The topics are discussed superficiallly. The author did not address the principal issue of Edward Said's discourse which deals with our relationship with the "Other". The book is a naive defence of what he callls the "West". However, the author contradicts its arguments since the Western civilization is a synthesis of a variety of other cultural achievements realized by other civilizations (which he confirms via various quotations in the text). The author is at times racist e.g. he describes the European man as "rational", "self-critical" & "curious" by nature. Such descriptions are exclusive. What is about the Indian man, Chinese man?. This book does not help us in repairing the "artificial" conflict created due to the presumed "clash of civilizations". Unfortunately, the book defines the West as anti-thesis of the backward, ignorant "Other" of the East & South. The author did not learn from Edward Said's writings that both the West & East should exercise self-critique & should accept each other narrative to be able to work for a common successful future for the whole humanity.
Said said it wrongly - By: G. J. Weeks, 12 Mar 2008 The author is an apostate Muslim from Pakistan living in Europe. He writes with scholarship & erudition to demolish the postmodernism of the liberal Palestinian Christian Said. In his Orientalism Said dismissed the scholarship of alll Western orientalists as corrupted by imperialist motives. The author shows this is not the case. The scholars were out to discover the truth about the Orient, to understand not to exploit. He accuses Said of encouraging the modern Muslim victim culture. He demolished the myths of a tolerant Islam. In Spain Jews were persecuted, killed & hounded out. Islam does not promote understanding of other cultures nor scholarship on matters not Islamic. He sees Islamic anti-semitism as rooted in Mohammed, not in Zionism. He is appreciative of missionaries like Lull & Carey though strangely silent on the anti-slavery of the Clapham Sect. He tells us that the Triangular Trade enslaved 11 million Africans but Arab traders enslaved 17 million Africans & also Europeans. Highest prices were for eunuchs as only about 10% survived the operation. This book is an indictment of Said & of Islam. He sees the root cause of Islamic fundamentalism is Islam.
