Spring 2010 - Interpretation

Book Review: Orientalism and Islam
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self-sustaining community that endlessly repeats itself. There is no private
property and, therefore, no class conflict; land is owned by the community
because only it can organize large-scale irrigation in an arid climate. However,
without private property and class conflict, there is no history proper
and society is stagnant. In response to contemporary critics of Orientalism,
Curtis remarks that despite Marx’s distinction between the despotic and
stagnant East and the progressive West, he can hardly be accused of being
engaged in “the imposition of power relationships” (229).
In Curtis’s words, Max Weber is another social theorist who
had “no postmodernist angst about attempting to understand other cultures
in terms of the categories of his own culture” (259). One of the questions Weber
asked was why rationality and capitalism developed in the West but not in
the Orient? Although Oriental religions including Islam were responsible for
political, economic, and legal irrationality, according to Weber the root cause
of the difference between the Orient and the Occident was political. Weber
attempted to explain Oriental despotism with reference to patrimonialism.
In patrimonialism, the entire realm is “the private domain of the ruler” (270);
administration is arbitrary; land is not inherited but allotted conditionally
(the prebend system); the foundation of wealth is not rational profit-making
but an interest in precious stones; the economy is geared to satisfy the ruler’s
needs; there are monopolies; regime stability depends on the military; the
ruler, or the sultan, is considered to be “the father of his people” (281) or the
guardian of their welfare; the social framework is rigid; and the political and
religious leadership is merged. The “warrior ethic” (292) of Islam is another
obstacle to the development of rationalization and capitalism in the Orient
because it is antithetical to the emergence of an independent burgher class, the
growth of autonomous cities, and the creation of a reliable legal framework.
Curtis offers a rich treatment of Western perspectives on the
Orient in history. Of the six philosophers he treats in detail, Montesquieu and
Burke were of two minds on associating the Orient with despotism, a political
condition which they both deplored; Tocqueville and Mill supported civilizing
missions to the Orient, but they disagreed on the particular strategy and
objectives; and Marx related Asiatic stagnancy to economic infrastructure,
whereas for Weber despotism was primarily a political phenomenon. Curtis’s
critique of the postmodernist critics of Orientalism is a balanced contribution
to the debate. However, his claim about the relevance of historic Western
perceptions to contemporary Eastern societies is potentially misleading.
According to Curtis, except for two brief trips by Tocqueville to Algeria,