“The Orient and Islam have a kind of extra-real, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the Orient could not do was to represent itself” (Said 283). For hundreds of years, Caucasian Westerners have not had a chance to see those who live in the Middle East in an unbiased light due to the history that they themselves created for Middle Easterns. Westerners have simplified Eastern culture and the people in it, so now whether someone has learned to see Middle Easterners as mysterious and unworldly, or as gruesome terrorists, they have still been taught not to see them as human. The West has benefited from these misconceptions of Orientalism and continues to today. This essay will look at how Arab Muslims have lost over and over again to Orientalism.

Oriental has been used to describe both Middle Eastern and East Asian countries. This essay will focus on the Orientalism in the Middle East and the surrounding countries. The term Arab Muslim will be used in this essay to describe both those of Arabic decent, and those who are Muslim. Though these are two different groups, they are often confused and used interchangeably, so both groups are affected by the same stigmas (Spears 61).  Said refers to Orients as a European invention (9). This “invention” was meant to undermine the cultural significance of Arab Muslims for self-gain. “I have not been able to discover any period in European or American history since the Middle Ages in which Islam was generally discussed or thought about outside a framework created by passion, prejudice, and political interests” (Al-Da’mi 2). Through simplifying and radicalizing Arab Muslims, Westerners are able to better control the narrative and justify actions such as colonization. “In the West they thought they hard working, in the East they are so lazy. People in East are black, they are white. People in the West understand culture, people in the East do not understand” (Islam 761).

It is important to understand the perception of the East to understand how the West was able to benefit, as well as how Orientalism lives on today. Some negative stereotypes include men who beat their women or sexually abuse them, women who are passive victims in need of saving, or as exotic and sensual belly dancers in harems, and Arab Muslims as terrorists and primitive savages (Demir). This glorification or vilification is harmful and degrading.

Since Arab Muslims have been established in Westerner’s minds as a group of people desperately in need of guidance and direction, the journey of the “White Savior” begins. “The white savior complex is an institutional social relation that entails self-serving, condescending, and often institutionalized actions by ‘privileged’ people that aim to provide help to the underprivileged, including those from less powerful nations and people of color in developing nations” (Yu 1). The Westerners have identified Arab Muslims as a group that needs to be “saved”, but what does this saving actually look like? The first European country to settle in the Middle East was Britain in the late 18th century (Armstrong). The French later came followed Russian and many more European powers, each bringing their own army. “The European powers colonized one Islamic country after another” (Armstrong). Over the years Westerns would continue to maintain control over things such the economy, oil, or the Suez Canal (Armstrong). The Westerners perception of the Middle East continued to justify these actions as they told themselves they were saving savages. However, while “saving” them, they took land and depleted their resources. These patterns can still be seen today.

Orientalism has not gone away and the intolerance towards Arab Muslims has only grown over the last twenty years due to the events of September 11, 2001, and the media’s portrayal of them following the event. “The phenomenon of Islamophobia, includes feelings of fear, disgust and hatred towards Muslims and Islam” (Pavetich 370).  It is even more disappointing to see how this behavior is taught to youth. “Research conducted with Jewish children in Israel has shown that children as young as six believed that Arabs were violent and aggressive” (Spears 63). Not only is there the possibility of children learning this from their parents which creates a generational cycle of xenophobia, but children also learn it from media portrayal. Many children in the West have grown up with depictions of the same negative stereotypes discussed earlier in the paper. Though cartoonish, there are several instances of movies and television shows directed towards children showing the Arabic world as a place of endless sand, as a country with little resources filled with beggars, or showing dramatic caricatures of Arab Muslims and of their lifestyles such as overtop ”gross” foods or being surrounded by dancers and gold. Children absorb these depictions and take it with them as they grow older and will continue to see Arab Muslims as less than human and believe that it to be true.

This is not just seen in media targeted towards children. Media depicts to Western adults of how women are forced to cover themselves head to toe with only their eyes and hands being visible. It also depicts that Arab Muslim women are beaten, not allowed to go anywhere alone, have no independence, are not allowed to receive education. Most depictions of Arab Muslim women are used to show them sexually or as eye-candy (Allam). “All Muslim women are not oppressed and uneducated. Most lead happy, fulfilling lives. Any are well educated, productive members of society. There are as many, if not more women than men in most Middle Eastern universities” (Common Misconceptions 2).

Perhaps the most damaging are the action movies that show the heroic white man battling the terrifying Arab Muslim men who are stocked to the brim with powerful guns. Or they are depicted as terrorists who want to destroy the Western world. Regardless they are constantly depicted as an enemy to the West. We also see it in Western politics such as the anti-Muslim ban in the United States under President Trump, or his statement “Islam hates Americans” (Pavetich 370). “The growing tension that exists between Muslims and non-Muslims can also be seen in the rise of reported Islamophobic hate crimes in North America and Europe” (Pavetich 370). With the rise of different terrorist groups over the last few decades such as the Taliban, Al-Qaida, and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), who all claim to justify their violence with Islam, dehumanizing all Arab Muslims seems to be a coping mechanism. “Dehumanization is a mental loophole that lets us harm other people. Thousands of years ago, humans would have felt a pang of anxiety when they saw the silhouette of a foreign tribe marching over a hill. We still have that anxiety inside of us today” (Resnick). Continuing on with looking at the dehumanization of Arab Muslims on a psychological level, researchers asked Americans to rate how evolved Arab Muslims were along with several other nationalities. Out of about a dozen different nationalities, Muslims were the lowest ranked, being seen as quite literally less than human (Resnick).

How does Orientalism and Islamophobia end? There is not a simple answer. A good start would be unbiased media portrayal. If dehumanizing is a natural instinct, then the portrayal the heroic West vs. violent Arab Muslim must end. It is also important to pay attention to those in power and how they view Orientalism because others will follow their lead. Since “the Orient has never been able to represent itself”, perhaps one of the best choices to end Orientalism would be to give them a chance to and to simply listen to the one voice that has not yet been heard.

Works Cited

Al-Da’mi, Muhammed A. “Orientalism and Arab-Islamic History: An Inquiry into the Orientalists’ Motives and Compulsions.” Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 4.

Allam, Rasha. “Countering the Negative Image of Arab Women in the Arab Media: Toward a ‘Pan Arab Eye’ Media Watch Project.” Middle East Institute, 13 Oct. 2021, https://www.mei.edu/publications/countering-negative-image-arab-women-arab-media-toward-pan-arab-eye-media-watch.

Armstrong, Karen. “An Overview of the European Invasion of the Islamic World.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muslims/etc/armstrong.html.

“Common Misconceptions and Stereotypes about the Middle East.” Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, 21 Oct. 2013, https://jsis.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mideast.pdf.

Demir, Dace. “Understanding and Defining Metanarratives: Orientalism.” 2021.

Islam, Tajul. “Edward Said’s Orientalism: Is It Still Alive Today in the Contemporary World?” International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, vol. 11, no. 10, Oct. 2020.

Pavetich, Melissa, and Sofia Stathi. “Investigating Antecedents of Islamophobia: The Role of Perceived Control over Terrorism, Threat, Meta-Dehumanization, and Dehumanization.” Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, vol. 31, no. 4, 26 Mar. 2021, pp. 369–382.

Resnick, Brian. “The Dark Psychology of Dehumanization, Explained.” Vox, Vox, 7 Mar. 2017, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/7/14456154/dehumanization-psychology-explained.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism, Pantheon Books, New York, 1978, pp. 283–283.

Spears Brown, Christia, et al. “U.S. Children’s Stereotypes and Prejudicial Attitudes toward Arab Muslims.” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, vol. 17, no. 1, ser. 60-83, 2017, pp. 60–83. 60-83.

Yu, Chunhua. “An Examination of the Institutionally Oppressive White Savior Complex in Uganda Through Western Documentaries.” International Social Science Review, vol. 97, no. 2, pp. 1–1.