Better Left Un-Said

Cinnamon Stillwell writes about a new mural of Edward Said at San Francisco State University. Stillwell discusses past murals at SFSU and the anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic themes. That's the Edward Said about whom Justus Reid Weiner wrote in "My Beautiful Old House" and
Other Fabrications by Edward Said:

Although Said has defined his own intellectual vocation as one of "tell[ing] the truth against extremely difficult odds"--he has sweepingly declared that the duty of the intellectual is "to speak the truth, as plainly, directly, and as honestly as possible"--it turns out that, in retailing the facts of his own personal biography over the years, he has spoken anything but the plain, direct, or honest truth. Instead, he has served up, and consciously encouraged others to serve up, a wildly distorted version of the truth, made up in equal parts of outright deception and of artful obfuscations carefully tailored to strengthen his wider ideological agenda--and in particular to promote the claims of Palestinian refugees against Israel.

According to Stillwell, the pendulum may finally be turning on Said and his Orientalism and a backlash could be underway:

Despite my contention that the Said mural represents an ideological defeat for those interested in preserving Western civilization, an anti-Said backlash appears to be underway. Several books have come out in recent years that seek to overturn Said's false and damaging attacks on Orientalist scholarship and, in a larger sense, the West. Daniel Martin Varisco's Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid and Robert Irwin's Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents are among them.

Then there's ex-Muslim and stalwart guardian of the West Ibn Warraq, whose book, Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, came out just last month. Bruce S. Thornton's review of Warraq's book at City Journal is especially insightful in regards to overturning Said's prejudicial attitude towards the West.

It is about time that Edward Said's distortions be addressed.

Technorati Tag: Edward Said.