Hamdard Islamicus 91 Vol. XXXIX, No. 4

BOOK REVIEW

Orientalism in English Literature: Perception of Islam
and Muslims. By A.R. Kidwai, New Delhi, Viva Books, 2016.
ISBN: 978-81-309-2692-6. Pp. xxi + 282. INR 1395.

In Covering Islam (1981), Edward Said, in his characteristic display
of intellectual courage and honesty, had emphasized the Orientalist conceit
of the dominant, western-based global media and its tendency to reproduce

damaging verbal and visual image of the Muslim world in the following
words:

‘For the general public in America and Europe today, Islam is

“news” of a particularly unpleasant sort. The media, the government,
the geo-political strategists and – although they are marginal to the
culture at large – the academic experts on Islam are all in concert:
Islam is a threat to Western civilization. Now this is by no means

the same as saying that only derogatory or racist caricatures are to
be found in the West. I do not say that, nor would I agree with
anyone who did. What I am saying is that negative images of Islam
continue to be very much more prevalent than others, and that such

images correspond not to what Islam “is” … but to what prominent
sectors of a particular society take it to be. These sectors have the
power and the will to propagate that particular image of Islam, and
this image, therefore, becomes more prevalent, more present than

others’.

More than three decades on, and in the post 9/11 era, and the
ongoing ‘global war on terror’, Said’s words remain prescient as tropes

and narratives of militant Islam are not only being continuously used but
have also intensified in media discourses and literary texts to produce, to
quote Stephen Morton, ‘new regimes of knowledge that survey, regulate



Hamdard Islamicus 92 Vol. XXXIX, No. 4

and criminalize particular Muslim populations and Islam more generally’.
The challenges faced by contemporary Muslim intellectuals under such

circumstances in contesting these neo-orientalist narratives are rather
daunting. They have to chart a distinctive path away from not only the
confrontational radicalism of fundamentalist groups but also the distorted
liberalism of several modernists who, in the name of representing Muslim

beliefs and attitudes from the inside, actually promote a Western secular
agenda. Above all they also have to avoid the nervous rhetoric of
apologetic Muslim and Western leaders who only keep repeating that all
aberrant extremism has nothing to do with Islam but selectively fail, to

quote ShahÉb Ahmed,‘to understand the fullness of the reality of what
has actually been going on in the historical societies of Muslims living as
Muslims’.

Orientalism in English Literature: Perceptions of Islam and

Muslims joins recent scholarly writings that negotiate with such challenges.
The modesty of its intended aim is quite clear, as stated in the ‘Preface’ –
to bridge the regrettable divide between the West and Islam/Muslims by
way of tracking down the misrepresentation of history as well as the

history of misrepresentation. In doing so it avoids any specific form of
defensive or polemical or even neutral grounds but acknowledging the
globalized, multi-faith condition of the world today, seeks to contribute
towards opening up strong, vibrant channels of cross-cultural

communication and understanding.
The book brings together, under the rubric of a common theme –

images of Islam and Muslims in English and European literature – articles,
notes, book reviews and review articles by Abdur Raheem Kidwai, an

eminent professor of English at Aligarh Muslim University, India, written
over the last twenty seven years. Besides being a testimony to the
dedication towards one’s object of study, the book is a valuable addition
to the subfield of literary orientalism. This subfield within English literary

studies, which was relatively unknown in the past, has assumed greater
importance in the post 9/11 scenario of the ‘resurgence of Islam’ and its
repercussions on global politics. Not that literary orientalism is an altogether
new phenomena, for there have been pioneering works like Byron Porter

Smith’s Islam in English Literature (1939), Samuel Chew’s The Crescent
and the Rose (1937), which have defined the parameters of the debates
in the subject. The groundbreaking work, however, after which the subject,



Hamdard Islamicus 93 Vol. XXXIX, No. 4

as it were, took off, was Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978. Ever since
then, and in larger numbers of late, substantial studies have emerged.

The present volume joins scholarship of these works in identifying the
forms as well as the contexts of the negative portrayal of Islam/Muslims
in several canonical and popular cultural texts of the west while also
taking care to appreciate the occasional positive depictions.

Norman Daniels’s pioneering and definitive work on the construction
of anti-Islamic polemics in Western literature and culture, Islam and the
West: The Making of an Image (1962) had confirmed the role of
‘misapprehension’ and ‘misrepresentation’ of ideas and beliefs of one

society in becoming, in a distorted way, the accepted myths of another
society, so much so, that its relation to the original facts were barely
discernible. Kidwai’s work reiterates this view emphasizing on the role
of literary writings as a ‘rich source material’ and ‘mirror to popular

perceptions and misrepresentations ‘ which ‘reflect’, ‘reinforce’ as well
as ‘rectify’ the image of the ‘Islamic other’.

The first essay titled ‘Perceptions of Islam and Muslims in English
Literature: A Historical Survey’ sets the style and structure of the entire

volume. In our own times, the notion of a ‘medieval’ regressive and
backward looking Islam in perpetual conflict with a ‘developed and
civilized’ West has its roots in Christendom’s historic confrontation with
the Arabs and Ottomans, as a result of which the ‘Muslim world’ has

become synonymous with that monolithic entity. It is an association that
has been invested with a strong discourse of European cultural superiority
over other cultures. Kidwai appropriately begins with the West’s encounter
with Islam in the medieval period, dominated by the Crusades, but balances

it well with the spirit of convivencia or co-existence, particularly in
Andalusian Spain, that prevailed over hostilities fuelled by negative and
polemical depictions. The essay is a comprehensive survey of both positive
and polemical portrayals in canonical and popular texts spanning through

the early modern period of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment
upto the Romantic period. The sheer range and number of texts in their
varying degrees of hostility to Islam and their tolerant treatment by the
author is not specific to this work alone and Kidwai’s writings have been

praised for this attitude by many established scholars in the West.
The next chapter on William Wordsworth carries forward this binary

pattern, of depicting polemics and balancing it with positive portrayals,



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with an analysis of a lesser known poem titled ‘Armenian Lady’s Love’
(1830) which conspicuously retains the conventions of medieval orientalism

characterized by the oppressed princess waiting for the virtuous Christian
knight to liberate her from a tyrannical father. However, the tolerance of
the author again gets foregrounded in the discussion of the famous ‘Arab’s
Dream’ in The Prelude where Wordsworth acknowledges the role of

Muslims in preserving the cultures of Greek Antiquity which would later
be passed on to the European civilization.

Having been a past contributor to the esteemed The Byron Journal
and a specialist in literature of the Romantic period it is expected that

many of the subsequent articles which comprise this book will deal with
English and European Romanticism dominated by the towering figure of
Lord Byron. Here one cannot resist quoting at length the famous letter
written by Byron to Thomas Moore in May 1813:

‘Stick to the East; – the oracle Stael told me, it was the only poetic
policy. The North, South, and West have all been exhausted; but
from the East, we have nothing but Southey’s unsaleables – and

these he has contrived to spoil, by adopting only their outrageous
fictions’.

Byron, who was Europe’s ‘leading consultant in cultural capital’

had a flair for predicting the literary market and was responsible for not
only encouraging the younger poet’s phenomenally successful Lalla Rookh
but also the elder Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’. The role of oriental poetry
in regenerating European aesthetics in the first few decades of the

nineteenth century has even been described as ‘Oriental Renaissance’.
However, Romanticism’s participation in the dark legacies of Western
imperialism heavily overshadows this cross-cultural aspect of European
literature and any discussion of the Romantic poets’ engagement with the

East has to struggle with these problems. Byron’s complicity in the
imperialist project of the ‘civilizing mission’ too has been debated at
length. But Kidwai, along with Mohammad Sharafuddin and Naji B.
Oueijan, has been cited by scholars like Peter J. Kitson as absolving

Byron and stressing on his sympathetic treatment of the Muslim
world.

The unsaleabilty of the poet laureate Robert Southey, as described



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by Byron in the letter above, has been confirmed by scholars like Nigel
Leask and Javed Majeed. In Kidwai it gets a fresh lease of life through

the contrasting approaches of Byron and Southey towards Islam and
Muslims. The presentation of Muslim characters in Southey is a
continuation of the crusading mentality where, in the battle between good
and evil, Christians always prevail. The Muslim solidarity is held together

only by their motive of plunder which their faith permits. In fact Shelley’s
orientalism too has been described as being akin to Southey in his
endorsement of colonial and evangelical incursions in the Islamic lands.
Even though he used the Islamic orient as a means of airing his radical

views on the issues of political tyranny and religious obscurantism, his
cultural narcissism prevailed over sympathetic and positive views.

Byron, however, is always described by Kidwai as ‘true to life,
reflective of his cross-cultural sympathies’. In Byron’s works Islam is

not responsible for creating tyrants and oriental despots. Rather, he avoids
anti-Islamic polemics by making his heroes anti-authoritarian and not
simply anti-orientals. In the clash between Muslims and Christians, both
groups are indistinguishable in their bigotry and pursuit of violence and

unlike the poetry of the medievalist Southey, Byron portrayed both as
flawed and liable to perish. Byron never invents Muslim characters to
discredit Islam and this according to Kidwai is a significant departure
from a centuries old tradition of demonizing Islam in Western literature.

Kidwai covers the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to include
women poets as well in a separate chapter. After lauding the
unconventional and flamboyant Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who also
broke many of the stereotypes about the ‘harem’ of Muslim rulers,

Kidwai discusses at length the works of Emma Roberts, Maria Jones,
Anne Candler, Felicia Hemans and Mary Robinson. What is noteworthy
about the orientalism of these women writers is the way they strive to
convey an authenticity when writing about India and the orient and how

this effort comes under strain when having to negotiate the conventions
of literary orientalism. Beneath the ‘gorgeous fabric’ of authentic reflection
lies the yearning for home back in England. This ambivalent attitude of
authentic representation and yet the inability to integrate is quite remarkable

in these writers.
The only time when the author’s tolerance is tested and set aside

is while dealing with the neo-orientalism and wilful misperception of



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Muslims, in certain contemporary fiction. One chapter on Balwant Gargi’s
Purple Moonlight (1993) and another on Jean P. Sasson’s Princess

(1993) and Princess Sultana’s Daughters (1994) convincingly bring out
the regrettable retention of the crusading mentality of these contemporary
hate literatures. More subtle, however, is the poise with which Kidwai
commends the ‘ingenuous’ anthology titled Image and Representation:

Stories of Muslim Lives (2000) which bring into sharp relief the ‘religio-
historical and socio-cultural milieu, misery and plight of Indian Muslims’.

A note of hope, however, emerges again in the two chapters which
discuss the novels of Qaisra Shahraz. Her debut novel The Holy Woman

(2001) has been described as elucidating the ‘Islamic faith and practices
as the natural way, perfectly consonant with an essential human nature
and with late modernity’. Shahraz also has the daunting task of distinguishing
the core Islamic teachings on various issues and their corrupted practices

prevalent in many Muslim societies which she carries out in her later
novels – Typhoon (2003) and Revolt (2013) – as well in a sensitive and
sensible way. Her enigmatic protagonists stand out as typical Muslim
characters whose reverence for Islam is undoubtable but who manage

to cope with the challenges of both tradition and modernity.
Besides these searching articles on various aspects of literary

orientalism, the volume also contains notes and book reviews which have
been published in highly reputed journals known for promoting high quality

and committed research. The notes which comprise bibliographies of
oriental reading of canonical Romantic poets like Southey, Byron,
Wordsworth, Moore as well as verification of sources used by recent
editors (including Leslie March and, Andrew Nicholson and Jerome

McGann) of these poets’ complete works are indispensable for future
researchers on the subject. The assurance and confidence with which
the author treats these materials is remarkable. The twenty six book
reviews which comprise the rest of the volume are also a rich source of

information on the subject. Most of the titles covered in that section are
cutting edge research works by leading scholars which have defined as
well as intervened significantly in the existing forms of knowledge in this
field.

To what extent it would be correct to see a seeping of medieval
ideas into the modern consciousness involves debates on Western
historiographical methods but the general agreement remains that if the



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medieval attitudes of anti–Islamic hostilities were rooted in a sense of
Western inferiority, the modern attitudes were constructed through a

gradual rise of the European sense of cultural and political superiority. In
this context, the concluding words of the first essay by the author sounds
a note of immense hope at a time when the past keeps returning to feed
on the fears and anxieties of the present – ‘In a multi-faith, pluralist

world of ours, we stand in need of better understanding, fostered by
knowledge and nurtured by the spirit of tolerance, which can put an end
to misperceptions about one another.’

Dr. Rafat Ali
Assistant Professor, Dept. of English

Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700032 India
e-mail: rafat ali <asdak.yunzi@gmail.com>