Are We Not All Human Underneath?

The events of the past week have reignited the debates on immigration and racism whose embers have been glowing for some time.  The brutal murder of a British soldier in Woolwich was purportedly revenge for the deaths of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In response to the attack, the English Defence League sent out a rallying cry to its members, galvanising them into organising anti-Islamic demonstrations across the country.  Viewed from some angles, the Woolwich murder and the subsequent EDL protests might suggest that white westerners and Muslims are further than ever from understanding one another, masking the more hopeful reality that extremists on all sides represent only a minority opinion.  Today’s Britain is a truly multicultural society, yet tensions between the myriad cultures are omnipresent.  Thirty-five years after Edward Said’s seminal work was first published, is it pertinent to ask whether Orientalism is alive and well in 21^st century Britain?

The central tenet of Said’s Orientalism was that Western discourse about the East (the Orient) was, and always had been, inherently prejudiced and based on a false assumptions.  Said defined ‘Orientalism’ as a “Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”, describing the Orient as an almost “European invention…a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences” (Said, Orientalism, (Penguin, 1978), p.1-3).  Said argued that a European or American studying the Orient could not escape the fact that “he comes up against the Orient as a European or American first, as an individual second” (p.11).  In the third and final chapter of Orientalism, “Orientalism Now”, Said asserts that “human societies, at least the more advanced cultures, have rarely offered the individual anything but imperialism, racism, and ethnocentrism for dealing with ‘other’ cultures” (p.204).

Discussion of Orientalism resurfaced in 2011, with the arrival of the Arab Spring.  It appeared that, contrary to the expectations of the western experts, the people of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya were taking their future into their own hands. The results have been uncertain, chaotic and far from perfect – everything that is to be expected of emerging democracies.  The recent high turnout for the elections in Pakistan, including large numbers of women, despite threats and violence by the Taliban, should be a lesson for us in the West not to impose our own values on other countries, nor to assume them incapable of shaping their own civil society.  Pakistan’s fledgling democracy is being built by Pakistani people.

Said touches on the dangers of “self-congratulation” when representing your own and “hostility and aggression” when representing another (p.325).  Immanuel Kant believed that “partiality, the tendency to make exceptions on one’s own behalf or one’s own case” was “the central human weakness” from which all others flowed, and that this could be applied to nations too (quoted in Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p.2).  Human beings also appear to have a predilection for defining themselves as different to the ‘other’.  Indeed, it has been argued that a sense of British identity was forged following the Act of Union, joining Scotland with England and Wales, in 1707 on the basis of being 'Not French' (Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (London: Pimlico, 1992).  These concepts – warped love of one’s own nation and seeing oneself in contrast to the other – sit at the heart of the EDL’s twisted ideology.  The same can be said of Islamic extremists.  And our response, in no uncertain terms, should be to reject Said’s assumption that we will never truly understand one another.

Despite being an atheist, I can appreciate the values enshrined in Martin Luther King’s interpretation of Jesus’ command to love your enemy.  “It is love that will save our world and our civilization," King said; "love even for enemies” (Montgomery, Alabama, 17 Nov 1957).  King went on to add in a speech on Christmas Day, 1957: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

The thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights unequivocally define a common humanity, recognising that “the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”  There are many different ways to see the world, but none of them excuse the mistreatment of others; subjugating women, persecuting minorities, or resorting to violence and murder.  Education has a role to play in teaching us about other cultures, in bringing the people of the world together, and in combatting Orientalism in all its guises.  Western capitalist democracy, with all its overindulgences, is certainly not the only way, nor indeed is it the best way.  There are many things we can learn from the other – from all others – which will enrich our world views, but there are other lessons, of cruelty and oppression, that we should abandon by the wayside on humanity’s journey toward enlightenment.  The values we share are far greater than those on which we disagree.  Universal tolerance will be humankind’s greatest triumph over extremists of all shapes and sizes.  In 2013, this goal is a distant dream, but the more people believe it to be achievable, and refuse to fall prey to the call to arms, the sooner we will accomplish it.