Critical Practice Volume XVIII (Annual), 2011, pp.

11-24

The Muslim East in the imagination of the two sides of the Atlantic Travelers: Europeans and Americans

MUBARAK AL-TWAIJI
When the Orient was first Orientalized at the end of the eighteenth century, a vast and complex discourse on Islam and Muslims developed in the European travel writing. Said believes the eighteenth century travel writing to be the approximate starting point of European travel writing, like Silvestre de Sacy's Chrestomathie Arabe and Edward William Lane's Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, "for dealing with the Orient-dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it settling it, ruling overit" (Orientalism. 3). Further, Said is pessimistic of how writers represent and speak of Arab Muslims for imperial interests and criticizes their misuse of Karl Marx's widely famous statement that "They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented." In Said's point of view, this authority of representing the Orient is motivated by imperialist power and thus lacks truth. Compared to the more enlightened and civilized European World, the Orient has long been perceived by European travelers as a place of romance inhabited by exotic beings: "since antiquity 'a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories

12

MUBARAK AL-TWAIJI

and landscapes, remarkable experiences" (1). Said shows the imbalance of power and the absence of a voice given to "Oriental Muslims" in European travel writing by discussing an influential passage from the great nineteenth century French author and critic Gustave Flaubert in which Flaubert describes his experience with an Egyptian courtesan who cannot represent herself and with whom he claims to have a sexual relationship: Flaubert's encounter with an Egyptian courtesan produced a widely influential model of the Oriental woman; she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or history. He spoke for her and represented her. He was foreign, comparatively wealthy, male, and these were historical facts of domination that allowed him not only to possess [her] physically but to speak for her and tell his readers in what way she was "typically Oriental."...It fairly stands for the pattern of relative strength between East and West, and the discourse about the Orient that it enabled (6). Backward Islamic East versus Enlightened West is the most obvious binary opposition well appreciated in the European travel writing in the Eighteenth Century and continues to emerge till the present time. Flaubert, for instance, comments on Islamic treatment of woman as "the Oriental woman is no more than a machine" (Said, Orientalism. 187) referring to her sexuality. This conception of Arab Muslims including Prophet Muhammad, a man who is responsible for spreading religion that oppresses woman, has long been in the famous work of the Italian poet Dante and remains practically unchanged centuries later. In Italy, Dante's Divine Comedy or Commedia is a major literary work with a considerable focus on Muslims and Islamic scientific figures, Prophet Muhammad, his son-in-law Ali, Avicenna, Averroes, and Saladin. In this work, Dante considers these figures as sinful and thus he places each one of them on a particular level of hell. Dante, for example, places Prophet Muhammad in the ninth bolgia of the eighth circle of Hell where apostates, devils and heretics are found: "How mutilated, see, is Mahomet; In front of me doth Ali weeping go, Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin; And all the others whom thou here beholdest, Disseminators of scandal and of schism. While living were, and therefore are

EUROPEANS AND AMERICANS

13

cleft thus. A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us" (Dante. 118). Avicenna (981-1037) and Averroes (1126 - 1198) are great Arab philosophers whose contribution to humanity, virtuous deeds, and lofty codes of ethics intercede for them because Dante has a profound respect for such figures and therefore he places them in hell among great philosophers and scientists like Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Orpheus, Hippocrates and Plato (19). European travel discourse on the Orient known as" Orientalist scholarship" did not mean to evaluate other's culture; rather it was an imperial tool meant to serve its empire. Rana Kabbani makes it clear that a traveler in the Orient was not free from prejudices since he was "the Empire's scholar, surveying its dominions, portraying its subjects, recounting their culture in the unemotive and urbane manner" (70). Therefore, in those colonial discourses, imperial culture is always introduced as hospitable to the oppressed, especially woman. Lazreg introduces one of the best examples of how the French travelers introduced their Christian Civilized Culture as a solution for the oppressed men and women in the Islamic society of Algeria. She also depicts how the French tried to westernize those women who lived under the oppressive rule of the Islamic and Arab Culture. She describes a skit written by a French lady at awards ceremonies in Muslim Girls' school in Algeria held on October 24,1851 that is attended by French colonial Officials: Oh! Protective France: Oh! Hospitable France!... Noble land, where 1 felt free Under Christian skies to pray to our God:.. We believe that God Loves a prayer said by a good child. Oh! But we will strive to do good So that He will fulfill your wishes... God bless you for the happiness you bring us! And you, adoptive mother, who taught us That we have a share of this world, We will cherish you forever! (qtd. Lazreg. 68-69) Few parts of the world have become as deeply embedded in the popular imagination of America as the Middle East. As a newly independent nation rising to power, the writing of America on the

14

MUBARAK AL-TWAIJI

Muslim East did not originate at home; rather it was as an extension and imitation of a movement that widely prevailed in the European literary scene. Further, catching up with the fervor of the European writers, American travelers as well became involved in writing and talking about the East. This interest in the East has a unique significance for American literary scholarship because it coincided with the rise of the American nationalist search for both identity and independence. The East became part and parcel of the emerging American Identity. The spirit of this period is embodied in Ralph Waldo Emerson's The American Scholar, alecture he gave in August 31,1837: "If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?" (68). America was a perfect embodiment of such a longing for identity. Frequent emergence of the Islamic Orient on the American diplomatic and cultural horizon was during Washington Irving's travels and begins to loom large with what Mark Twain called "the Gilded Age," not only because U.S. missionaries sought to have more converts but also because U.S. merchants tried to expand its trade in the Orient. Douglas Little, an American historian specializing in American diplomatic history and United States relations with the Middle East, argues that "No one probably did more to shape nineteenth-century U.S. views of the Middle East, however, than Mark Twain" (13). Washington Irving's fascination with the Middle East and its people in his "Mohamet and his Successors" brings us a very strong account of the Arabs and Islam to the United States in the early years of the nineteenth Century when Irving finds Islam to be "one of violence and the sword". Irving's manipulation of Muhammad into "Mahomet" and Islam into "Mahometanism" helps achieving an Orientalist aim of demonizing Islam and defaming the Prophet (Einboden. 44). Similarly, Mark Twain's Travel writings (1835-1910) show a great interest in the description of Arab life style, the houses, the people, the dresses, mosques, coins, rulers, women, landmarks, jails, marriage, slavery, pilgrimage, and foreign relations. In his " The Innocents Abroad", he describes Muslims as brutish savages,

EUROPEANS AND AMERICANS

15

ignorant, unprogressive, and superstitious. Obeidat observes that Mark Twain represents the first generation of American Orientalists whose main focus is foreignness, misery and filthiness of the natives he comes across: A Syrian village is a hive of huts one story high (the height of a man), and as square as a dry-goods box; it is mud plaster all over, flat roof and all, and generally white-washed after a fashion... When you ride through one of these villages at noonday, you first meet a melancholy dog...These are all the people you are likely to see.. .They reminded me much of Indians, did these people. They sat in silence and with tireless patience watched our every motion They were infested with vermin and the dirt had caked on them till it amounted to bark (qtd. Obeidat. 152-153). Therefore tense relationship between the Muslim East and America cannot at all be said to be a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks since we have appreciated howthe American travel writing style emerges as a continuation of what the European travelers had already started in Europe. Like their European counterparts, the American travelers were genuinely interested in identifying with the Orient as a place of romance where exotic people live. This interest in Western identification with the East resonated equally on both sides of the Atlantic: "I had to focus rigorously upon the British-French and later the American material because it seemed inescapably true not only that Britain and France were the pioneer nations in the Orient and in Oriental studies, but that these vanguard positions were held by virtue of the two greatest colonial networks in pre-twentieth-century history" (Orientalism. 17). A major difference between the European travel writing and the American one during this period remains evident that the American discourse aims to shape an identity while the European is an imperial one. Here, Homi Bhabah's explanation of hybridity undoubtedly can lead to a better understanding of the self that the romance revolves around. In describing the significance of this concept to cultural studies, Bhabha says: The move away from the singularities of "class" or "gender" as primary conceptual and organizational categories has resulted in an awareness of the subject positions -of race, gender, generation, institutional location, geopolitical locale,

16

MUBARAK AL-TWAIJI sexual orientation -that inhabit any claim to identity in the modern world. What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to thinkbeyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These "in between" spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood -singular or communal -that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself. (1332)

It is only after the fall of European Colonialism, Imperialism continued to operate in the neocolonial form through newer mechanisms of exploitation and control like transnational corporations and global institutional arrangements on trade and economy. Soon after many Arab countries got their independence from the European colonizer, the United States replaced European imperialism in the whole region especially Gulf countries. It was America that ended Europe's obsession with Islam as its ultimate nemesis and alter ego. Therefore, if Europe was in the forefront of Orientalist scholarship, that position was taken over by the United States since World War 11: "American Oriental position since World War II has fitI think, quite self-consciously in the places excavated by the two earlier European powers [Britain and France]" (Orientalism. 17). It is not by accident that Imperialism and scholarship on Orientalism dwell on together and traverse simultaneously. A reader of Orientalist discourse must then be aware of the continuity and the change both in Imperialism and Orientalism. Further, a reader has to keep one thing in mind that if a change takes place in the nature of Imperialism, it is less so in the case of Orientalism because the stream of continuity in representing Arab Muslims remains in European discourses even after European Imperialism faded. Today, especially after establishing the Jewish state of Israel, any study or research in American travel writing should have a reference to American-Israeli relationship. The many wars fought between Arabs and Israel have distorted the image of Arabs in American literature in general. Since establishing the Jewish state of Israel on Arab land of Palestine in 1948, Arab image in American literature suffered more distortion depicting Arabs as savages, backward, anti-Israel and anti-America. For the purpose of

EUROPEANS AND AMERICANS

17

distortion of this image, according to The Independent, Leon Uris was hired by Jewish group in 1957 to write a screenplay that was later named Exodus that aims at demonizing Arab image and praising the Jewish one inside the United States (Par. 10). Larry Portis states "In Exodus the novel, Arabs are constantly, explicitly, and exclusively, described as lazy and shiftless, dirty and deceitful. They have become dependent upon the Jews, and hate them for it" (Par. 20). Critics argue that all Uris' writings aim at propagating the Zionist right over the Palestinian lands:" The Haj aims to justify colonization by depicting the colonial process as a historically inevitable movement of progress toward bringing civilization to the land of the barbarian.. .Uris's attempt to minimize the number of the native population of Palestine aims to justify morally their subsequent domination and displacement" (Gohar. 1-9). This writing technique of the colonizer on the colonized is expressed in The Wretched of the Earth by Fanon as Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content. By akind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it. This work of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a dialectical significance today (Fanon. 210). Similarly in Uris' The Haj, 1984, Arabs are projected as animals, inferior, backward, irrational, untrustworthy and threat to Israel and this kind of projection becomes a reliable source for the American people to understand Palestinian society and issues. In The Haj, Uris' representations of the Arabs come from the Arab voice. He makes Arabs articulate their own point of view about themselves. His Arab narrator Ishmael begins his narration with a reference to these voices: "There are times I will speak to you in my own voice. Others will speak in theirs. Our tale comes from a million suns and moons and comets and all that I cannot possibly know will reach these pages with the help of Allah and our special magic" (Uris. Haj. 5). On the other hand, on every occasion the Jews are presented as civilized, sympathetic, democratic and peace-loving people and are distinguished from Arabs like Ishmael who reveals: "So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the

18

MUBARAK AL-TWAIJI

clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel" (6). According to critics, the two journeys of Uris to the land of Palestine, to produce distorted images of Arabs to the American audience, have been financed by pro-Israeli American agencies. Arthur Stevens writes: "In the early 1950s, he [Uris] was hired by Edward Gottlieb, an American public relations man seeking to improve Israel's image in the United States, to write a novel about Israel's origin that portrayed Israel in a favorable light and distorted the Arabs" (qtd. in Klinger. Par. 74). Edward Said rejects Uris's discriminative approach in treating the Arab-Israeli issue. In it he finds "the moral epistemology of imperialism". In an article, An Ideology of Difference, published few months later, Said gives his point of view on Uris' novel The Hay. I must confess at the outset that I could not finish its six hundred pages, so filled are they with sheer disgusting hatred. This book, which makes the worst Nazi antiSemitism seem restrained, was nonetheless a best-seller. It is intended as a fiction, offering to place before a wide audience the reality of Arab Palestinian life, Islamic religion, contemporary Middle Eastern history and politics. Its premises are simple: the Arab is a lecherous, deceitful, murderous, irrational, larcenous, and utterly reprehensible subhuman, whereas the Jew (to his credit, Uris is totally uncompromising in his portrayals) is noble, intelligent, understanding, courageous, and-above all-deserving of Palestine. Of this diseased work it can be said without any fear of contradiction that in its hatred, fear, and demented inability to deal with reality, it could only be the production of an American supporter of Israel writing about the Muslim Arabs generally, the Pal-estinians in particular, at this moment" [5). This conception of Arab Muslims including Prophet Muhammad in American travel writings remains practically unchanged in the twenty-first Century after 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. Rather, the image of Muslim Arabs and their Prophet worsened. For instance, the then First Lady Laura Bush in a radio address on November 17,2001 states: "The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women" (qtd. Smith. Par. 4). Prophet Muhammad is still perceived as anti-woman, false

EUROPEANS AND AMERICANS

19

Prophet and author of religion based on subjugation of woman. This prejudice recurs over and again. From her visits to Saudi Arabia, Zoe Ferraris writes in her very timely novel, FindingNouf that modern Arab men are like their Prophet who perceived woman as an object exists to satisfy man's desire. She encapsulates Prophet Muhammad's attitude towards woman as: "The best of women, the Prophet said, is the one who is pleasing to look at, who carries out your instructions when you ask her" (20). Therefore, according to Ferraris, suffering of modern Muslim woman is part of tradition that Muhammad started centuries ago. Within this highly controlled patriarchal enclosure, good woman ought to become submissive human and erotic object for their husbands' gratification. In this frame, it comes as no surprise that woman is described in terms of commodities that are at the core of rivalry between Islamic states and contemporary America. What is notable here is that, according to American point of view, this commodification is entirely a function of gender differentiation infused in religious textual material taught at home. This textual practice creates stereotypes of the Arab woman vis-a-vis the American woman. For the sake of monolithic construction of Arab society, Ferraris establishes dichotomous opposition between women's life in Arabia and in America so as to pit the American culture against the Islamic one. In the novel, Nouf plans to run away to America because America offers her what is stolen in Arab society: "The fact that she wanted to run away to America set her in a category beyond what she had previously believed: that she was a nervous bride escaping an arranged marriage...she was ambitious. She was going to appall her family" (105). The increasing American dominant perception of the Islamic society as impotent, unproductive, ineffectual, is reflected in the general feminization of the Islamic Orient in cultural discourse, so that the Muslim woman, the most feminine part of that effeminate world, becomes its exemplary manifestation. According to Ferraris' presentation, the ideal woman is not the one who accepts the oppressive treatment of Islamic culture, but the one who rebels. As is reflected in Ferraris' novel, the imbalance between the Muslim Arab East and the Christian American West remains what

20

MUBARAK AL-TWAIJI

Said calls in Orientalism the difference between the familiar/ strange, superior/inferior. He notes that the presence of this imbalance in the American Orientalist discourse has failed to make accurate predictions. He traces this attitude through a study by the Middle East Studies Association on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1967 conducted by Morris Berger, an American sociologist. The study comes to the conclusion that the modern Arab states are not areas of great cultural achievement and that the area has no potential to become a political power center (Said, Orientalism 288). In Finding Nouf, a r e a d e r can a p p r e c i a t e t h e total a b s e n c e of Arab m a l e participation in uplifting woman's condition while the American boy, Eric, is introduced as a savior of Arab woman from the cruel culture of Islamic society: "I was helping her. She had ho one-1 was her only link to freedom" (158). However, to Arabs, Eric Scarsberry represents an evil intruder: "Eric was in some ways the evil American, the greedy m a n who comes to Saudi and does anything for money, wreaking havoc with society-in this case, with innocent virgins" (160). Here, the superiority of the American values becomes more definite over the Arabic ones at least in women's freedom. This superiority, Ferraris notes, fascinates Nouf to escape her family and live in the American society. Her driver, Muhammad, narrates: She wanted to live in America.. .She saw this program on television one day, about a woman who studied wild dogs in Africa. She wanted to be just like that woman, even though the woman lived with these dogs- dogs! She was dirty. She'd been in Africa for three months, but she loved her life. I think that impressed Nouf more than anything else, that this woman could live like a dog and be so happy. More than Nouf, at least. (102) In America, the Puritans of the 19th century thought the Muslim w o m a n n e e d e d relief from overindulgence in sex (Haddad. 260). Interestingly, today's liberation of Arab women takes another form in American writing. Today, the Americans believe that Arab women need a liberation that will enhance her sexual freedom. Thus, e m p o w e r m e n t of Muslim w o m e n in American literature asserts libration of woman from Islamic heritage as a first and utmost step. This significant contradiction

EUROPEANS AND AMERICANS

21

is seen in the Ferraris Finding Nouf. Ferraris draws conclusions about the Arabic world and the world of the Arab woman in particular, from the study and representation of merely one woman, Noul. In Finding Nouf, Katya is advised: "You'd better start having children before you get too old. You maybe too old already! What is a job compared to the value of children?" (177). In such society women do not even argue to get their rights: "When she [Katya] told her father about the job, he jerked upright and narrowed his eyes. "Come on, we're not that poor," he said. It had stung her so deeply that she'd wanted to cry. Letting a woman work was a desperate thing to do. They had sunk in the world. Her face must have showed her disappointment, because Abu backpedaled" (119). Ferraris does not make any effort to distinguish between women who work and others who do not or does not consider for her study, women from various walks of life such as, the educated, uneducated, employed, unemployed, rich, the poor, the courageous, the submissive, the stay-at-home mom and so on. It is not relevant in Ferraris' tradition of approaching Muslim woman. Her representation does not include Muslim women who wear Islamic dress codes by choice and those who are forced to wear it. Rather, readers are introduced to fully controlled women. Judging Arab woman in the light of her beliefs to find out how civilized she is, is a common trend in modern American travel writing: "If a Muslim woman holds certain beliefs that are uncommon in Western culture, she is described as backward, no matter how highly assertive, educated or independent she is; in other words, women are not judged on how they fit within their culture as much as they would fit in a Western culture" (Eltantawy. 144). In Orientalism, Said draws a distinction between "unconscious positivity" which he calls "latent Orientalism," and "the various stated views about Oriental society, languages, literatures, history, sociology," which he calls "manifest Orientalism." He explains that: "Whatever change occurs in knowledge of the Orient is found almost exclusively in manifest Orientalism; the unanimity, stability, and durability of latent Orientalism are more or less constant" (206). Said's notion helps explain Ferraris' claims for ani-humanist nature of Islam where "Muslim women were not allowed to marry infidels" (Ferraris.

22

MUBARAK AL-TWAIJI

101). Ferraris introduces this attitude without providing the Islamic point of view in this kind of marriage which is summarized by Ghafour as "Persons involved in such marriages often leave their wives and children abroad without taking care of them. They lose their children and the trust of their wives" (Par. 4). Negative stereotyping of Muslim Arab society in American travel writing does not stop there. The evil of Islamic law serves as the climax in Finding Nouf"when it allows men to kill women in the name of ho nor. This motif activates a whole new scene which includes, for the first time, the aggressive nature of Islamic law, Sharia, an issue related to women and thus becomes the most powerful evil force in the novel, more powerful even than the conservative tribal tradition of the Arabs. In Finding Nouf, Nouf has been "a victim of her upbringing" (123). Though Nouf knows that committing suicide is a sin in Islam, she does it in order to escape honor killing that may result from her refusal of arranged marriage. In her Journal, she writes: "In the name of Allah, allmerciful, all-knowing, I almost killed myself today, but I was too frightened to do it. I didn't have the courage to see my own blood.. .1 just wanted to get away. I was so happy to realize it, and so, so scared to realize that I MIGHT die because of stupidity (240). Honor killing is a universal phenomenon that is reported in countries such as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bangladesh, Algeria, Brazil, Ecuador, Morocco, India, Israel, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, the Balkans, Sweden, Holland, Germany, Italy, Yemen and many more countries and as such it is not typical of the Arab world. The belief that a male has the prerogative to murder his female relative can be traced back to certain codes of cultures rather than religions. As far as Islam is concerned here, the Quran states: "O you believe! You are forbidden to inherit women against their will. Nor should you treat them with harshness.. .live with them on a footing of kindness and equity" (4:19). Thus, the practice of honor killings has a more cultural root than a religious one. It is undeniable that the root of honor killings in Arabia is centuries old and dates back to the Pre-Islamic era in Arabia. Before Islam, men were encouraged to bury their infant daughters alive to avoid the possibility of dishonoring their families in future. The Quran reveals the brutality of this cultural action and links it with horrible signs of the Day of Judgment:

EUROPEANS AND AMERICANS

23

When the sun is wound round and its light is lost and is overthrown, when the stars fall, when the mountains are made to pass away, when the pregnant she-camels shall be neglected, when the wild beasts are be gathered together, when the seas become as blazing Fire or overflow, when the souls are joined with their bodies, when the female (infant) buried alive (as the Arabs used to do) is questioned: For what sin, was she killed? (81:1-9) To conclude, While Orientalism has traditionally meant the entire Orient, post 9/11, it began to be focused agreessively on the Arab world and comes to be known as Neo-Orientalism. Stereotyping of the Arab world began in the Orientalist discourse but continues more forcefully in the Neo-Orientalist discouse best studied in Travel Writing. A well-noted tendency, which has a good presence in the Western travel writing, is the overgeneralization of certain cultural practices and mixing t h e m with religious ones; in some cases this leads to distortion and in others leaves one confused about cultural and religious practices that seem inferior, peculiar and alien. These travelers take a single practice; sometimes this practice is very extreme such as honor killing or other kinds of abuse, and introduce it to the audience as an Islamic norm regardless of the different cultural and traditional groupings of the Islamic world. Another feature identified in the modern American-travel writing of Muslim w o m a n is the American standard against which Muslim Arab woman is judged as civilized or traditional. This standard is based on parameters such as how western a muslim woman looks, what clothes she wears and how western her ideas are. However, these standards are not realistic. Many liberal Muslim still hold conservative religious opinions that fit their culture and lifestyle. Thus, this American discourse about the world of Islam, strictly speaking, is an imperialist project. If not imperialist energies, what, then, are the energies that go into the production of discourse about Islam and specifically the Muslim woman beginning with the wives of Prophet Muhammad?

WORKS CITED
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Tranld. HenryWadsworth Longfellow. Feedbooks.com. 1306.

24

MUBARAK AL-TWAIJI

Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. 1994. Einboden, Jeffrey. Washington Irving in Muslim Translation: Revising the American Mahomet. Translation and Literature issue 18.2009. Eltantawy, Nahed M. U.S. Newspaper Representation of Muslim and Arab Women Post 9/11. Diss. Georgia State University. UMI Number: 3293825.2007. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "The American Scholar." The Portable Emerson. NY: Penguin Books Ltd, 1981. Fanon, Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. Transld. Constance Farrington. NewYork: GroveWeidenfeld. 1963. Ferraris, Zoe. Finding Nouf. NewYork: Mariner Books. 2008. Gohar, Saddik M. Narratives of Colonialism, Race and Ideology in Leo Uris's the Haj. Journal of Studies in Islam and the Middle East vol. 3, no. 1.2006. Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck. The Post-9/11 Hijab as Icon. Georgetown University. Sociology of Religion, 68:3 253-267.2007. Independent. Uris, Leon: Novelist w i t h ' a sense of duty towards history. 25 June 2003. independent.co.uk. Web. 13 June 2011. Irving, Washington. Mohamet and his Successors. NewYork: George P. Putnam. 1850. Kabbani, Rana. Imperial Fictions: Europe's Myths of Orient. London: Pandora. 1994. Klinger, Jerry. In Search of the Exodus . The Jewish Magazine. January 2010.Web. 11 Jan, 2011. Lazreg, Marnia. The eloquence of silence: Algerian w o m e n in question. NewYork: Routledge 1994. Little, Douglas. American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945. University of North Carolina Press. 2008. Obeidat, Marwan Mohammad. The Muslim East in American Literature: The Formation of an Image. Thesis: Indiana University, UMI: 8607431. 1985. Portis, Larry. Zionism in the Cinema - Part One: Return to Exodus. January 18, 2007. Counterpunch. Web. 15 Jan, 2011. Said, Edward . An Ideology of Difference. The University of Chicago Press. Vol. 12, No. 1. pp. 38-58 .1985. . Orientalism. London: Penguin. 1977. Smith, Sharon. Using women's rights to sellWashington's war. International Socialist Review Issue 21, January-February 2002. The Nobel Qur'an: English translation of the meanings and commentary. Tran. Muhammad Al-Hilali and Muhammad Khan. Medina: King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran. 1984. Uris, Leon. The Haj. NewYork: Bantam Books. 198.