Palestine's call and Edward Said's response

Edward Said's intellectual trajectory is a very striking example of what kind of extensions thinking about Palestine, thinking by way of Palestine, has in today's world.

Social science circles came to know Said, and accepted him, for his approach to the realities created through discourse that make power-exploitation relations possible and justified. His book Orientalism is a very powerful study of the role discourse plays in the construction of a West-centered world. Yet most of those who read the book overlook that the factor that actually motivated this groundbreaking work was the Palestinian question. And yet Said, in the early stages of his quite brilliant career in English Language and Literature in America, arrived at the turning point of his life through the reactions, even of circles he had considered American friends, to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and became, as it were, a Palestinian from that hour on.

This "enlightenment" he experienced actually closely resembles the enlightenment Sayyid Qutb experienced, while in America, when the news of the martyrdom of Hasan al-Banna was received with great excitement and joy. The significant reason why Hasan al-Banna was met with such great hatred in the U.S. was likewise his great support for the Palestinian cause and the volunteer fighters he mobilized against Israel.

Since we are recalling, on this occasion we must not pass over a similar enlightenment our National Poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy experienced while in Vienna. The anecdote in Mithat Cemal Kuntay's work on Mehmet Akif, recounting how the news of the loss of Jerusalem was received in Austria, our ally in the war, is given, as related from Akif, as follows: "I was in Vienna during the General War. One night the bells of the Viennese churches began to ring. I looked from the hotel window; in the street, a candle in every hand, everyone was shouting. I said to myself: 'Our allies the Viennese must have won a victory at the front.' I dashed into the street. To a shopkeeper I said:

- Is there news of a victory! The man said:

- Victory, is that even a question? The English have taken Jerusalem from the Muslims. The English army entered Jerusalem under Allenby's command. The holy city has been delivered from the Crescent and has reached the Cross."

One of the two greatest results of the First World War was that the Ottoman state, and therefore the Islamic political presence, was brought to an end; the second was that a decision was made to found a Jewish state on the lands of Palestine. The event Akif witnessed in Vienna, which was "our ally" in the war, also shows very well what kind of a dividing point Jerusalem and Palestine are for the West between two worlds.

A point we often emphasize here is that the state of Palestine, Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque is always a reflection of the state of the Islamic world, and therefore of the whole world. If Jerusalem has gone, Muslim unity and political presence have also dissolved; indeed, Jerusalem has gone because Muslim political unity dissolved. But in order to re-establish this unity, a call must again come from Jerusalem, from Palestine. This call can sometimes come to some people even from the occupiers of Jerusalem and Palestine. The bells Mehmet Akif heard, the displays of joy Sayyid Qutb witnessed, and the othering language Edward Said received from his academic friends ironically were, each at a different time, calling them all to gather in Palestine.

Orientalism takes as its subject an important discursive process in the establishment of a West-centered world, and Edward Said depicts very well how the East was orientalized through this discourse. What is at issue here is a process in which every kind of ethical violation will be justified and the people living there are reduced to the level of "human-like beings," as is also reflected in the gaze of the Israeli defense minister. They are not even an Oriental other; their pains, sorrows and troubles are not worth much attention, nor need they be taken seriously.

This outlook was reflected even in the view of Marx, from whom we hoped that, by way of socialism, he would have something to say to humanity. That is why Marx, in India, saw England's "modernizing" and "progressive" mission rather than its colonial savagery, and could celebrate it. In the same way F. Engels, in the face of the colonial and occupying practices in Algeria, characterized Emir Abdelkader's resistance as futile struggles against inevitable historical progress.

This language that Edward Said identified toward the Orientals created in orientalism is in fact no different from the attitude of the Zionists toward non-Jews: non-Jews are not even an "other." The other, that is, those toward whom we have an ethical responsibility. They may be lied to, killed, their property stolen, interest taken from them...

Said's depictions of Orientalism are in fact exactly parallel to the Zionists' theo-political discourse about non-Jews, and the great motive that made him write this book in the first place is none other than the Palestinian cause.

Perhaps a difference can be seen here. Orientalism is the literature and discourse of a West-centered world created especially in the modern period. However, the West's interest in Palestine, Zionism's Jerusalem obsession, does not fit at all with a West-centered perception of the world. In a way Israel must constitute a very large and serious parenthesis in this West-centered perception of history and the world. For Palestine lies precisely at the very heart of Orientalism's area of interest. In this case the target of all Crusader-Zionist campaigns of a West-centered world from history to today has been Jerusalem. When we must count the Evangelical prophecies as an important part of this perception of the world, in fact the real center of the Western world is Jerusalem.

This interest and this dimension may perhaps require us to reexamine what Said said. In the subconscious of the Western world there is this Orientalness as an "origin." This psychological complex is the entire motivation of a Zionist and aggressive desire to return, after all is said and done, to what it calls its "motherland." That is why the Orientalist mind concerning Palestine does not identify a human being living on Palestine. Those living here are not "human" but "human-like beings"; not the "other" but "ummi" or "gentile" beings who have no share of the Book. That is why Palestine, before Israel was founded, could be described as a "land without people." The founding of Israel consists of nothing but settling people on this piece of land.

Thus Palestine has historically been of central importance not only for Muslims but also for Crusaders and Zionists. It inspired Said's book Orientalism, which had a truly groundbreaking effect on contemporary social sciences, and all his other works. In fact, Palestine invited and Said answered.

Of course, who is concerned with Palestine and how, and what kind of world anyone wants to build on Palestine with others, with the others, is a separate matter. What kind of world was built here under the administration of Muslims, what is being lived under the rule of the Crusaders and Zionists, we all see together.