• Why Jihad Watch?
  • About Robert Spencer and Staff Writers
  • FAQ
  • Books
  • Muhammad
  • Islam 101
  • Privacy

Jihad Watch

Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Fitzgerald: The “prestigious” schools of Middle Eastern studies

Oct 8, 2006 8:02 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald

Some of the worst, most misleading, departments of Middle Eastern studies are at schools deemed — in the U.S. News & World Report pecking order — the most “prestigious.” Columbia, for example. Practically from soup to nuts. Who would wish to hire someone coming out of the Columbia program, someone that is who was taught by, inter alia, Hamid Dabashi, Joseph Massad, Rashid Khalidi, Lisa Abu-Lughod, Zainab Bahrani, George Saliba, not to mention Gary Sick and Lisa Anderson?

As possibly the only person in the world to have read everything written in English by Hamid Dabashi, I can grimly report that his primitive notion of scholarship, the laborious piling on of details, never given shape, never subject to analysis, never endowed with any significance, makes him one of the greatest embarrassments of Columbia today, the school where Jacques Barzun once taught, once administered. Simultaneously cheer yourself up and depress yourself: simply google “Hamid Dabashi” and “Edward Said,” in order to read the former’s treacly tribute to the latter, in the style of assorted Odes to Stalin.

Go ahead. Google. Read. Laugh. Cry.
Then there are the Apologists Lite at Yale, which actually thought seriously about appointing Juan Cole, although, to its credit, decided not to do so. At Harvard, meanwhile, that Palestinian groupie, the egregious Roger Owen, who was once a lowly lecturer at St. Antony’s, has managed somehow to wangle an appointment as that appetizing thing, the “A. J. Meyer Professor of Middle East Economics.” (A. J. Meyer himself was — see J. B. Kelly — hardly a major scholar of the Middle East; the chair is one more reflection of oil money.) Owen has sensed the way things are going and come out with a perfectly standard biography of Lord Cromer, which in the new environment helps him to re-position and re-package himself (just like Richard Bulliet, who is now delivering lectures not on the coming confluence of Islam and Christianity, but rather on cotton growing). These are not Sami al-Arians. Careers and careerism even before the “Palestinians” and Islam.

What value can such a word as “prestigious” conceivably have, when an English department may be “good” and a History department deplorable, or vice-versa, in the same institution? And what does it mean to say that a “department” is good or bad, except as a general statement that the non-spouters of nonsense outnumber the spouters, but not much more than that? In the end, the individual teacher, his elan and knowledge, is what counts the most.

It is not all darkness. Here and there Bat Ye’or’s books are assigned Very much here and there. One assumes that parts of one or another may be assigned. In the war colleges some are using this or that book — and no doubt, it will be harder and harder to ignore her, as her book Eurabia continues to look not like fantasy but every day more like a modest description of an even more horrific reality. Bernard Lewis, as far as I know, has never given her a boost, and there is reason to believe that in the past he has actually belittled her as “polemical,” without feeling the need for more.

Lewis’s anthology (done with Benjamin Braude, who teaches at Boston College, and who according to reports becomes deeply disturbed when others focus on Islam as the explanation for the behavior of Muslims) on Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire does contain Joseph Hacker’s uncompromising discussion of the difficulties faced by Jews. One wonders if Lewis was happy with that contribution, or distinctly uneasy. Those who assign chapters from that book in various courses on “Islam and the West” (Maria Rosa Menocal is often included), seldom assign the article by Hacker. In his attempt in “The Middle East: the Last 2000 Years” at haute vulgarisation, Bernard Lewis offers that intended common reader, out of some 400 pages, three paragraphs, two of them exculpatory, on the treatment of non-Muslims under Islam. In other words, the fate of tens of millions of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, in the Middle East (and North Africa, ordinarily treated now as part of that Middle East) under Islam is mentioned glancingly. Nothing about the many disabilities save for the hastily mentioned Jizyah. Nothing about forced conversions (Shah Abbas with Armenians and Jews, Copts in the 12th century). Nothing about massacres overnight. Just a paragraph or two.

Sometimes just a paragraph or two can speak volumes. As it does here, but not in the way that Lewis would wish. But such is what garners “prestige” in these latter days.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Follow me on Facebook

Filed Under: Uncategorized


Learn more about RevenueStripe...

FacebookYoutubeTwitterLog in

Subscribe to the Jihad Watch Daily Digest

You will receive a daily mailing containing links to the stories posted at Jihad Watch in the last 24 hours.
Enter your email address to subscribe.

Please wait...

Thank you for signing up!
If you are forwarding to a friend, please remove the unsubscribe buttons first, as they my accidentally click it.

Subscribe to all Jihad Watch posts

You will receive immediate notification.
Enter your email address to subscribe.
Note: This may be up to 15 emails a day.

Donate to JihadWatch
FrontPage Mag

Search Site

Translate

The Team

Robert Spencer in FrontPageMag
Robert Spencer in PJ Media

Articles at Jihad Watch by
Robert Spencer
Hugh Fitzgerald
Christine Douglass-Williams
Andrew Harrod
Jamie Glazov
Daniel Greenfield

Contact Us

Terror Attacks Since 9/11

Archives

  • 2020
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2019
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2018
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2017
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2016
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2015
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2014
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2013
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2012
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2011
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2010
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2009
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2008
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2007
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2006
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2005
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2004
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2003
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • March

All Categories

You Might Like

Learn more about RevenueStripe...

Recent Comments

  • OLD GUY on UK: Woman converts to Islam, distributes Islamic State jihad terror videos
  • OLD GUY on Al-Qaeda Calls on Jihadis to Kill Non-Muslims With Poisoned Coronavirus Masks
  • Boycott Turkey on Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, France and UAE conduct joint military exercises amid rising Turkish threat
  • Michael Copeland on New study reveals that Muslim religiosity strongly linked to hatred towards the West
  • Michael Copeland on New study reveals that Muslim religiosity strongly linked to hatred towards the West

Popular Categories

dhimmitude Sharia Jihad in the U.S ISIS / Islamic State / ISIL Iran Free Speech

Robert Spencer FaceBook Page

Robert Spencer Twitter

Robert Spencer twitter

Robert Spencer YouTube Channel

Books by Robert Spencer

Jihad Watch® is a registered trademark of Robert Spencer in the United States and/or other countries - Site Developed and Managed by Free Speech Defense

Content copyright Jihad Watch, Jihad Watch claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to their respective owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and you do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.

Our mailing address is: David Horowitz Freedom Center, P.O. Box 55089, Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.