Early Orientalism : imagined Islam and the notion of sublime power

193 Pages·2012·8.69 MB·English

by  Ivan Davidson Kalmar

ROUTLEDGE ISLAMIC STUDIES SERIES
Early Orientalism
Imagined Islam and the notion of sublime
power
Ivan Kalmar
Early Orientalism
Ivan Kalmar investigates Christian images of the Muslim Middle East, focusing
on the period from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, when the nature of
divine as well as human power was under particularly intense debate in the West.
All Abrahamic faiths – Christianity and Judaism as much as Islam – demand
devotion to a sublime power ruling the universe. They couple obedience to that
power with faith in its benevolence: we would like to believe that it loves and
cares for us. During the period discussed by Kalmar, submission in the expecta-
tion of kindness was ideally extended not only to the divine Ruler of the Universe,
but also to the absolute monarch as the ruler of the state, and to every ordinary
father as the ruler of the family. But what if the ruler –God, king or father –
is, in fact, unloving and uncaring? What if his goal is not our welfare but his
own pleasure? Such a power corresponds to what Slavoj Zizek, following Freud,
terms the “Obscene Father.” Kalmar suggests that the trope of the Obscene Father
describes exactly the western image of the Oriental despot: Allah in heaven, or
the various sultans, emirs, and ayatollahs on earth. These despotic personalities of
imagined Muslim society function in all orientalism as a projection, from the West
onto the Muslim Orient, of an existential anxiety about the nature of the powers
we are subject to.
Early Orientalism is a study of how this projection was formed during a period
when a crisis of authority caused theologians, political philosophers, and artists to
obsess about the value and limitations of submissions to sublime power. Making
accessible academic debates on the history of Christian perceptions of Islam and
on Islam and the West, this book is an important addition to the existing literature
in the areas of Islamic studies, religious history, and philosophy.
Ivan Kalmar is a professor at the University of Toronto. His main work has
addressed parallels in the image of Muslims and Jews in western Christian history.
Routledge Islamic Studies Series
This broad ranging series includes books on Islamic issues from all parts of the
globe and is not simply confined to the Middle East.
1 Historians, State and Politics in 6 The Regency of Tunis and the
Twentieth Century Egypt Ottoman Porte, 1777–1814
Contesting the nation Army and government of a North-
Anthony Gorman African Eyâlet at the end of the
eighteenth century
2 The New Politics of Islam Asma Moalla
Pan-Islamic foreign policy in a
world of states 7 Islamic Insurance
Naveed Shahzad Sheikh A modern approach to Islamic
banking
3 The Alevis in Turkey Aly Khorshid
The emergence of a secular
Islamic tradition 8 The Small Players of the Great
David Shankland Game
The settlement of Iran’s eastern
4 Medieval Islamic Economic borderlands and the creation of
Thought Afghanistan
Filling the great gap in European Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh
economics
S.M. Ghazanfar 9 Interest in Islamic Economics
Understanding riba
5 The West and Islam Abdulkader Thomas
Western liberal democracy versus
the system of Shura 10 Muslim Diaspora
Mishal Fahm al-Sulami Gender, culture and identity
Edited by Haideh Moghissi
11 Human Conscience and 15 Political Liberalism in Muslim
Muslim–Christian Relations Societies
Modern Egyptian thinkers on Fevzi Bilgin
al-ḍamīr
Oddbjørn Leirvik 16 Shari’a Compliant
Microfinance
12 Islam in Nordic and Baltic S. Nazim Ali
Countries
Göran Larsson 17 Muslim Women Online
Faith and identity in virtual space
13 Islam and Disability Anna Piela
Perspectives in theology and
jurisprudence 18 Early Orientalism
Mohammed Ghaly Imagined Islam and the notion of
sublime power
14 Producing Islamic Knowledge Ivan Kalmar
Transmission and dissemination
in Western Europe
Edited by Martin van Bruinessen
and Stefano Allievi

Early Orientalism
Imagined Islam and the notion
of sublime power
Ivan Kalmar
First published 2012
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2012 Ivan Kalmar
The right of Ivan Kalmar to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kalmar, Ivan Davidson.
Early Orientalism : imagined Islam and the notion of sublime power / Ivan Kalmar.
p. cm. – (Routledge Islamic studies series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-415-78276-0 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-203-15480-9
(ebook) 1. Orientalism. 2. Islam–Study and teaching–Europe. 3. East
and West. I. Title.
DS61.85.K35 2011 306.6’97091821–dc23
2011023186
ISBN 978-0-415-78276-0 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0-203-15480-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman by
Bookcraft Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire
To Diane:
I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
Anne Bradstreet, 1612–1672
Gottes ist der Orient!
Gottes ist der Occident!
Nord- und südliches Gelände
Ruht im Frieden seiner Hände.
God’s is the East!
God’s is the West!
Northerly and southerly lands
Rest peacefully in His hands.
Goethe, West-Eastern Divan
The Other holds a secret – the secret of what I am.
Jean-Paul Sartre*
* Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and nothingness: a phenomenological essay on ontology.
Edited by Hazel Estella Barnes. ( New York: Pocket Books, 1992), p. 475.

Contents
Illustrations xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: the Lord: God, King, Father 1
1 The Obscene Father: Allah, Jehovah, and the oriental despot 9
2 Orientalism: what has and what has not been said 18
3 Proto-orientalism: ancient and medieval views of the East 30
4 The abduction from Asia: the fall of Constantinople and
the beginning of modern orientalism 40
5 The Turks of Prague: the mundane and the sublime 44
6 Rembrandt’s Orient: where Earth met Heaven 56
7 The sublime East: the soft orientalism of Bishop Lowth 67
8 The sublime is not enough: the hard orientalism of G. F. W. Hegel 76
9 Letter and Spirit 88
10 The Lord’s command is greater than the Lord 94
11 The All-Seeing Eye 106
12 The bad shepherd: pastoral government and its oriental
discontents 111
13 Sex in Paradise: what suicide fighters die for 120