Orientalism refers to study and understanding of the East by scholars belong to the West. In the Age of Enlightenment when Europeans began to colonise various regions of the East, they also sought to understand the religions, languages and cultures of the inhabitants of the East with the intention to find fault lines in them that could be exploited so that the Western dominion could be expanded and sustained.
Historian and former chairperson of the University of Karachi’s Islamic history department Dr Nigar Sajjad Zaheer said this in a podcast on Off The School’s YouTube channel on the subject of Oriental attempts to understand Seerah.
The podcast was hosted by journalists Najam Soharwardi and Rana Muhammad Asif.
Dr Nigar explained various trends about discussing the life of Prophet Muhammad (S) in three periods of the Western history. She said that in the Dark Ages, some Byzantine writers such as John of Damascus wrote about Seerah but their prejudice against Islam did not let them write accurately. She added that such so-called historians tried to defame the religion but their discourse was so shallow that even the Western historians who came after them had to refute them.
In the age of Renaissance and colonisation, Dr Nigar said, the Europeans started taking interest in the religions and traditions of East. The term Orientalism, she said, was first used in the 18th century.
The scholar said that in that period, we find two broad approaches in the West towards Seerah. A group of biased historians attempted to find faults in Seerah as they wanted to defame Islam while the other group appreciated various aspects of the life of Holy Prophet (S).
Dr Nigar explained that even the writers of the second group, who include famous authors like Carlyle and Gibbs, would here and there write something about Seerah that may create doubts in the readers about the authenticity of Islam.
She said that as such historians did not believe in the Prophethood of Muhammad (S), they tried to portray him as a reformer, rather than a prophet sent by God. With this approach, she said, they criticise some aspects of Seerah while overall praising the life of Holy Prophet (S).
In the last two centuries, Dr Nigar said, Europe produced several historians who tried to strike at some of the fundamental foundations of the Islamic thought while writing in a scientific manner. She named Ignac Goldziher and Joseph Schacht who criticised the Hadith books on the ground that they were compiled several years after the death of the Holy Prophet (S).
She said two of the most powerful responses to Schacht’s views came from Sub-continent by Dr Mustafa Azmi from India and Dr Zafar Ishaq Ansari from Pakistan.
In the 20th Century, Dr Nigar said, the prejudice of the Oriental scholars against Islam was explained by Edward Said, a Palestine-born Christian who grew up in the United States.
She said Said’s book on Orientalism was a difficult read and students would normally fail to understand it. Said wrote that Western writers who discussed Islam did so in the light of their negative biases, she explained.
The podcast also discussed the criticism coming against Islam from the atheist circles.