Beyond Orientalism; Texting the Victorian East

Orientalism Beyond Belief: Critiquing the Problematics of V. S. Naipaul’s Islamic Excursion

This study aims to offer a critical analysis of V. S. Naipaul’s second Islamic travelogue Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (1998), which chronicles the author’s excursions to the 4 non-Arab Muslim countries of Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia. This critique is presented, firstly, through problematizing the author’s theorization on the theme of Muslim conversi...

Television and Orientalism

Orientalism, proposed by Edward Said (1995), refers to the network of interlocking discourses about the “orient” constructed in western civilization. The orients, in western conceptions, are stereotypically inflated others drastically different from the collective imagination of the civilized West. Said’s argument was initially focused more on Europe and Islamic Culture, but has been applied to...

Crisis in the Middle East: Beyond Terrorism

For years, Russia’s role in the Middle East was viewed primarily through its relations with Iran, Iraq, and, more recently, Syria. In 2006, however, a nearly forgotten dimension of Russia’s Middle East policy came to the fore with a new escalation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, this time in Lebanon. Russia has long played an extraneous role in the Quartet on the Middle East, the grouping compose...

Book Review: China and Orientalism

Orientalism and the Modern Myth of "Hinduism"

a meaningful nitary notion of Hinduism from the Indian phenomena, unless it is done by exclusion..." (Frits Staal [1989], Ritual Without Meaning, p. 397). Orientalism and the Modem Myth of "Hinduism" 165 The work of integrating a vast collection of myths, beliefs, rituals, and laws into a coherent religion, and of shaping an amorphous heritage into a rational faith known now as "Hinduism" were ...