I Emphasize In It [my Orientalism] Accortdingly

If You Look At The Curricula Of Most Universities And Schools In This Country [usa], Considering Our Long Encounter With The Islamic World, There Is Very Little There That You Can Get Hold Of That Is Really Informative About Islam. If You Look At The Popular Media, You'll See That The Stereotype That Begins With Rudolph Valentino In The Sheik Has Really Remained And Developed Into The Transnational Villain Of Television And Film And Culture In General.

Refuse To Allow Yourself To Become A Vegetable That Simply Absorbs Information, Pre-packaged, Pre-ideologized , Because No Message.. Is Anything But An Ideological Package That Has Gone Through A Kind Of Processing.

The Other View Is Of The Official United States, The United States Of Armies And Interventions. The United States That In 1953 Overthrew The Nationalist Government Of Mossadegh In Iran And Brought Back The Shah.

The Definition Of Terrorism Has To Be More Precise, So That We Are Able To Discriminate Between, For Example, What It Is That The Palestinians Are Doing To Fight The Israeli Military Occupation And Terrorism Of The Sort That Resulted In The World Trade Center Bombing.

It [destroying Twin Towers] Was A Leap Into Another Realm - The Realm Of Crazy Abstractions And Mythological Generalities, Involving People Who Have Hijacked Islam For Their Own Purposes. It's Important Not To Fall Into That Trap And To Try To Respond With A Metaphysical Retaliation Of Some Sort.