Orientalist Discourse And The ‘Irrational Savage’

There are those of us who choose to believe, and those who would love to have us believe, that it was specifically 9/11 and al-Qaeda that “gave Muslims and Arabs a bad name.” This notion is promoted among Muslims, non-Muslims, Arabs and non-Arabs alike. Obamawama is a keen cheerleader to this concept, as expressed during the infamous Cairo speech:

“The attacks of September 11 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and western countries, but also to human rights. This has bred more fear and mistrust.”

This analysis is flawed at best, wilfully harmful and misleading at worst, and delusional in all cases. It bases itself upon the premise that up until that point, the mainstream Western depiction of Arabs and/or Muslims was that of a dignified and respected people, admired for their chivalry and love for peace. The truth, as anyone refusing to partake in society’s wilful collective amnesia would be able to recount to you, is glaringly different.

Starting from the base, since Hollywood’s inception, its projected image of the ‘Arab’ (of course, we all know that every Arab is a Muslim and vice versa, for as Chomsky once aptly noted of the general Western attitude: “Well, nobody makes that distinction―Arabs, Iranians, Islam, it’s all the same thing.”) was the organic and natural heir to good old fashioned Victorian bigotry: with ‘Arab’ being read as any brownish person from ‘the East’ clad in robes, whether they fit the ‘Bedouin sheikh’, ‘wealthy Maharajah’, ‘fez-donning Pasha’, Tolkien’s ‘Haradrim’  or even the ‘fierce Sikh warrior’ stereotypes.

“His scarlet robes were tattered, his corslet of overlapping brazen plates was rent and hewn, his black plaits of hair braided with gold were drenched with blood. His brown hand still clutched the hilt of a broken sword.”

– Tolkien describing a Haradrim in The Two Towers, the only humanoid race to fight alongside Sauron’s monstrous Orcs against the heroes during the War of the Ring

From silent films, The Sheik (1921) and The Son of the Sheik (1926), to Taken (2008), the ‘Arab’ buys, sells and gambles away women as cheap currency. Via more serious films, such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and less serious ones, such as Tarzan’s Desert Mystery (1943), the one constant is the intrinsically savage nature of the ‘Arab’, so much so that the Arab press found reason to jubilantly celebrate Morgan Freeman’s character, Azeem, in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and even Antonio Banderas’ excruciating performance in The 13th Warrior (1999). As Jackie Salloum mentions in the notes to her excellent short, Planet of the Arabs, out of 1000 films depicting Arabs and Muslims between 1896 and 2000, 12 were positive depictions, 52 were even handed, and the remaining 900+ were negative.

“Me Tarzan.
White man bred by animals in jungle still less savage than desert sheik.
Jane head pop out of box.”

The political and historical basis for such depictions runs deep in Western imperial consciousness. Take old crusader tales of the ‘Infidel Moors’ and ‘Heathen Saracens’, furnish with ornate Ottoman carpets and baths (as were no doubt found within the confines of the Harem with all its sexy fun times), add a dash of balaclava- and keffiyeh-clad Palestinian (and later Iraqi and Somali) resistance fighters from 1948 onwards, stir together with stories of ‘fundamentalist Islamist’ political opposition to the Egyptian government since the 50s; the Iranian government during the 70s; the Algerian government since the 90s, but to name a few, and then finally dress it all up in the robes of the West’s dictatorial allies: the entirely ridiculous and screamingly hypocritical Gulf sheikhs and hereditary ‘presidential’ despots of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

A classic example of such finely weaved Frankensteinesque orientalist imagery coming to life is that of the ‘Arab suicide hijacker’. I believe Condoleezza Rice was only half-lying when she said “(nobody) could have predicted that … they would try to use an airplane as a missile.” Western leaders were fully aware that the imagined mental image of the ‘Arab suicide hijacker’ was one painted by a Western orientalist mind out of no actual historical precedent. It was an image repeatedly drawn from the ether by the media whenever the occasion called: as the 1996 Saudi/Kazakhstan Airlines mid-air collision and the 1999 EgyptAir Flight 990 crash unfolded, to name but two incidents, the first thing we were informed of was the high likelihood of ‘suicide terrorism’, especially considering all that ‘Allah talk’ in the pilots’ final moments. Indeed, it was a stroke of (evil?) genius that, on that fateful day in September, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed simply called their bluff.

One of the most potent images of ‘Savagery Incarnate’ painted in recent times is that of the Taliban fighter: long-haired, bearded hippies in ‘dresses’ (but with added ‘fundamentalism’), who fund their ‘terrorism’ habit by dealing hard drugs (despite banning them outright when in power (!)) and handling ‘communist’ weaponry, all mixed in with the prototypical Victorian/Hollywood ‘Arab’ outlined above.  Also, whilst the Taliban (literally: students’) movement is indeed the largest group currently fighting occupation forces and their agents in Afghanistan/Pakistan, just as the Viet Cong were in Vietnam, Imperialist Western governments’ preference of the two terms over the more accurate Afghan resistance and Viet Minh, respectively, boils down in part to a simple case of onomatopoeia: Cong = gong, dong, bong, mong, ping pong and King Kong = retarded, drugged up, sexual, yellow menace monkey men invaders (possibly on horseback). Taliban = they ban stuff, especially Taliphones, Talivisions and Fender Talicasters.

Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, without the sex, drugs, or rock ‘n’ roll. AKA Straight Edge Talibcore.

Of particular interest in the past month, both living off this image and perpetuating it, have been the widely covered bomb blasts targeting Pakistan’s civilian population, in crowded Peshawar marketplaces and at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, naturally attributed in ‘default mode’ to ‘the Talibans’. To anyone who had been closely following events in Pakistan, particularly during the last few months, the initial reaction to this popular narration was obvious: “bullshit!” Here is a movement locked in bitter battle with a government acting as a proxy to U.S. Imperial interests, and which has successfully launched consecutive sophisticated attacks on military and paramilitary government agencies directly involved in the government-sponsored terrorism wrought upon the country’s western population, including: headquarters of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA; equivalent to the U.S. FBI); the Elite Police Academy in Lahore and other regional Police headquarters and training facilities; convoys and headquarters in Peshawar, Lahore and Rawalpindi, among others, belonging to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s largest and most notorious intelligence agency; and, most incredibly, a large scale attack on the Pakistan Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi last October. If one is to believe the default media allegation that Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s goal is merely ‘to wreak havoc and bring as much death and destruction as possible upon their fellow countrymen’, the question that begs itself is, why should they ever bother with such complex, strongly guarded and extremely difficult targets as those outlined above, when the open marketplaces and bazaars beckon so enticingly? And, also, why oh why is it that the number of attacks against military targets far outnumbers those targeting civilians?

Of course the reaction expected of us is clear: “It all makes perfect sense precisely because it doesn’t make any sense at all. For why should it make any sense? The Taliban are sub-human, cave-dwelling crazies, who live in a dimension far removed from our ‘universal’ human values, and who operate free from the confines of basic animal logic.” Considering even animals will not harm those in their own group or pack, ascribing such practices as standard to the Taliban effectively places them well beyond the realm of irrationality, and sits them comfortably in the newly manufactured sphere of anti-rationality. Not in an attempt to reply to such racist orientalist sentiments, which, in all honesty, do the best job of defeating themselves, but simply to spell it out for those still under the spell of the ‘mainstream’ media:

1) Sophisticated campaigns of the magnitude outlined above against legitimate military targets simply do not add up with the image of the bumbling ‘fundamentalist’ fool we are expected to pair them with.

2) Popular uprisings, old and new, are the Pashtun people’s forte on both sides of the British Empire’s Durand Line: they, more than anyone, know that the winning card in insurgencies is to fight for, amongst, and as part of their people.

3) The real parties behind the attack against the Islamic University couldn’t have been more patronising to their intended target audiences: we get it, those whom you point the finger at for the attacks are “enemies of Islam and Muslims.” Next time, try something a little more subtle; the Art Faculty, perhaps, or even better, the Music Department!

Back down to reality, to support the initial reactions of those who ascribe the human traits of logical, in opposition to the charge of anti-logical, reasoning to the Pashtun fighters, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan spokesman, Azam Tariq, speaking in a video released on the Internet two weeks ago categorically denied the pre-prepped allegations of the movement’s involvement in the attacks, and indeed condemned the criminal acts and the true culprits behind them, promising to avenge the helpless victims of the deadly attacks.

“Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s targets are evident: those government organisations, which work under American dictation and fight against Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and their hands are coloured with the blood of our martyrs. We consider targeting a single, innocent Muslim to be divinely forbidden, and we reassure the nation that we are their well wishers, their protectors, and their Muslim brothers.

Insha’Allah very soon, we will avenge these attacks against the Islamic University in Islamabad, and in Khyber and the Qisa Khwani bazaar in Peshawar, in which these transgressing American agents and Pakistani secret agencies have killed hundreds of Muslims.

We cannot leave the innocent people at the ‘mercy’ of Blackwater and its allies.

Those who sacrifice our dignity for America’s sake will soon meet their fate – Allah Willing.”

– Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan spokesman, Azam Tariq, seated centre

That the infamous Blackwater’s name was flagged up in this incident should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with America’s fighting style (Crouching Cannon Fodder, Hidden Mercenary AKA The Corporate ‘Contractor’ and His Trailer Trash Shield). In an extended article on Blackwater and its CEO, Erik Prince, published recently in Vanity Fair, a picture emerges of a shadowy, militant, right wing company, intimately linked with the CIA and some of its most high ranking operations. The account includes details of wide-ranging joint CIA/Blackwater assassination and abduction programmes across the globe, including the Afghanistan/Pakistan region; a plan to ‘take out’ the father of Pakistan’s (read: Islam’s) nuclear bomb, A. Q. Khan, described in the piece as ‘rogue Pakistani scientist’; the procedure by which the CIA contracts operations to Blackwater, which in turn sub-contracts to third-country nationals unaware of the CIA connection; CIA/Blackwater covert operations in Iran, euphemistically referred to in the piece as ‘one of the so-called Axis of Evil countries’; Prince’s fantasy to station a fully equipped warship off the coast of Africa to provide “relief with teeth”, as he calls it, to the continent’s trouble spots and curb ‘piracy’; the names of some high ranking CIA employees on Blackwater’s payroll; and, most significantly, the indistinguishability of Blackwater’s mercenaries in Afghanistan/Pakistan from the local population, blending in with beards, beat up pickups and traditional attire; in addition to Prince’s narrow escape from a bomb blast targeting his hotel in – surprise, surprise – Islamabad, Pakistan.

Despite the article’s scathing indictment, its author (by his own admission a ‘former’ attorney for the CIA – go figure!) finds it appropriate to mention in nothing more than a passing sentence (and in parenthesis, mind you) the accusation levelled against Blackwater of its involvement in the Pakistan bombings, a charge that remains entirely credible in light of the rest of the article. Yet he also manages to shrug it off in the very same breath as ‘far-fetched conspiracy theories’, that were, he tells us, ‘floated around by the Taliban’, without attempting to provide the slightest shred of evidence to back up his casual discreditation. Of course, the moral of the story is clear: the very fact that the ‘Taliban Savages’ are saying something, regardless of what it is they are saying or how consistent it is with the defendant’s own admissions, is the very reason for it to be disregarded out of hand and condemned as pure poppycock; perish the thought that any of it should warrant any sort of reply!

Crazies don’t ever make any sense, and these crazies in particular are destined to only make anti-sense.

Notes/Sources:

[1] Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, Noam Chomsky and Gilbert Achcar, Penguin Books, 2007.
[2] Tolkien Gateway
[3] Encyclopaedia Britannica
[4] Citizens for Legitimate Government, reports on Blackwater involvement in Pakistan blasts
[5] Wikipedia entry on chronology of Pakistan ‘terrorist’ incidents
[6] Vanity Fair article on Blackwater and Erik Prince