Why do we judge Muslims and the East? (Video)

Today's academy, Edward Said, developed the concept of Orientalism to describe how Europeans portray orientation as inferior, uncivilized, and generally strange.

But most importantly, Said argued, this at the same time defined Europe as the opposite of superior, civilized and generally wonderful orientation, translated by the BBC, Periscope.

The current concept '%orientʹ refers to the rising of the sun at birth and comes from the Latin word '%oriens. So we can think of Orientalism as birth-ism or Eastern prejudice.

Orientalism, then, is a form of “ditria” [vethics], authorising and justifying the establishment of Western power over the East.

But what does that mean?

Orientalism acts as a pair of glasses that distort your vision and exaggerate religious and cultural differences. With these glasses, just everything and everyone seems too exotic and weird or worse, like fanatic and dangerous.

Women in the Middle East, for example, look only as exotic spasms with spa [blbelly dancer] or even printed a covered wife.

And at the beginning of the 20th century, you may have seen men portrayed as exoticly romantically or recently, as terrorists, fanatics and crazy, not considering all ordinary people.

Many Arabs, Muslims, and Asians embrace this term of controvers to describe this unique kind of racism they experience. Orientalism sums up, for most, how their culture, religion and ethnicity are reduced to a prejudice, causing their humanity to be monitored and culture to be misunderstood.

Is that just another form of prejudice?

Yes and no.

Orientalism has to do with a wide range of power relations. When the U.S. government looks at the Middle East through Orientalistic eyes, it creates policies with enormous consequences. The war that falls on other countries in imposing travel stops for whole groups of people.

Perhaps the most devious thing about Orientalism is that it is not fed by ignorance or ignorance but simply by the contrary. This has been historically produced as recognition by those in power positions, whether by officials in power, religious figures or media.

For example, when American President Donald Trump declared, “I think Islam hates us, we cannot allow people to come to this country. [ Footnote] The U.S.A. that have all that hatred for us.”

It effectively characterised 1.6 billion people worldwide as anti-Americans. Even today, Orientalism continues because it is so rooted in the way we see people and other cultures.

Even the term “Middle Order” is considered to be Oriental because it standardizes the Western outlook by referring to East Asia and North Africa as the middle part of the East. Many of the knowledge associated with the Middle East and parts of Asia is still produced through these reflective, distorted glasses.

As in the 18th and 19th centuries, Orientalism remains very powerful because it shapes, not only the way Western people see the East, but also the way they see themselves. /Periscope