Orientalism and Sufism

Edward Said’s Orientalism caused many debates in the world of Islamic Studies. ¹ Alexander Knysh, however, points out that this has inspired ‘surprisingly little “soul-searching” among the western “Sufiologists” of the last decades of the twentieth century’. ² Said observed that the colonialist background of armchair academics, travellers, artists, colonial officials etc. studying ‘Islam’ and the ‘Orient’ has led to misrepresentations and stereotypes that served to define the Western Self and to legitimise the colonisation of the Eastern Other. ³ These misrepresentations were continuously reproduced in a ‘self-perpetuating body of truth’. ⁴ It has also been said that these misrepresentations have been internalised by the ‘Orientals’ and have influenced their self-definition and understanding of the world as well. ⁵