ABSTRACT
The British historian Robert Irwin is the sort of scholar who, in times past, would have been proud to call himself an Orientalist. The traditional Orientalist was someone who mastered difficult languages like Arabic and Persian and then spent years bent over manuscripts in heroic efforts of decipherment and interpretation. In Dangerous Knowledge, Irwin relates that the nineteenth-century English Arabist Edward William Lane, compiler of great Arabic-English Lexicon, "used to complain that he had become so used to the cursive calligraphy of his Arabic manuscripts that he found Western print a great strain on his eyes". Some of the Orientalist pioneers were quintessential insiders. By exposing and exaggerating a few of field's insignificant lapses, Orientalism stunned Middle East academics into a paroxysm of shame. Exploiting those pangs of guilt, Edward Said's radical followers demanded concession upon concession from Orientalist establishment: academic appointments and promotions, directorships of Middle East centers and departments, and control of publishing decisions, grants, and honors.
