| ASMEA is located squarely within the Western intellectual tradition. Bernard Lewis, chairman of the organization's academic council and, with Fouad Ajami, one of its co-founders, emphasized this connection in his keynote address to the inaugural conference in April. Drawing upon the insights of one of eighteenth-century England's finest writers, Samuel Johnson, he said: "I wish to situate our profession, the academic study of the Middle East, in a historical context. And I would like to begin with a quotation from the famous Dr. Johnson, from one of his conversations recorded by Boswell. He says, "A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity. Nor is that curiosity ever more agreeably or usefully employed than in examining the laws and customs of foreign nations." A very interesting statement, I feel, and as I shall try to demonstrate, one uniquely Western, uniquely distinctive of this Western Civilization of which we are the heirs at the present time. And I use the word "we" in the widest sense. The members of ASMEA share Dr. Johnson's "eminent degree of curiosity" and Bernard Lewis's expansive definition of an academic community, especially in relation to the study of the Middle East and Africa. Due to their efforts, these two fields are being reformed and renewed. A new intellectual foundation is being constructed, not on the shifting sands of political correctness, but on the bedrock of free scholarly inquiry. |
"Free scholarly inquiry" is good, in light of the large element of jihád careerism to be detected amongst Big Party birdmen junior to Herr von Lewis and M. d' ‘Ajamí. On the other hand, I daresay they could play ‘their’ Sam again on that point also, "There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money."
Mustering up our own preëminently subeminent stock of curiosity, Mr. Bones, do thee suppose that Neorabbi Bernie and The Self-Hatin’ Arab™ and the rest Álbú Asmea would be interested in explaining ‘our’ uniquely distinctive examination of natives and locals and wops and WOG's and whatnot might have had something to do with a wish to sell trinkets profitably and thereby reward ‘our’ shareholders for their confidence in ‘us’?
For that matter, O Bones, do thee suppose something of that sort might be part of the historical truth of the matter?
Now, now, sir, "Sounds like Marx to me" is no adequate response! Anyway, I am more likely to be swiping if from William
Well, yes, of course thee are quite right and we will talk about it some other time. Whatever ‘their’ Sam may have been commending in curiosity cannot have been its tendency to make one's discourse wander all over the map at random. Where was I?
Oh, yes, OK: "free scholarly inquiry" is an expression not quite suitable to the birdmen of ASMEA even overlooking the fact that most of these neosophists are happy to take money for their wares. I daresay their narcissism and omphaloscopy and Big Party spirit are well up to the challenge of fancyin’ themselves free of 11 September 2001 and all that. As independent of Mars and Bellona as they
There would be a Denkpanzer angle to WC's latest Tank of Thought even if Bernie and Fooey and the gang never discussed any human event more recent than 1 Rajab 505. [1] They propose no such self-limitation, as their draggin’ in Africa makes plain. The Middle East is going to remain lost to Western Sieve for the foreseeable future, no matter how braniac and forceful Dr. Gen. Petrolæus of Princeton and West Point may prove himself. In Africa, however, there would still remain an uncharred portion of the brand, provided it can be snatched from the burnin’ in the next century or so.
Yet one mustn’t be fussy: even venal and tendentious scholarly inquiry can come up with interesting trivia from time to time. Time will tell. God knows best.
Meanwhile, Neorabbi Bernie is to be examined as an object of (faint) curiosity about ‘us’ rather than as a practicin’ Orientaliser or utility-grade neosophist. Thee seeth, O Bones, how Bernie plays a game indistinguishable from that of the guru of Rio Limbaugh except that he selects toney middle-brow evidence like Dr. Johnson rather than rootin’ around lower down in the sewer of Romulus. The chief end of "free scholary inquiry" turns out to be trashy self-flattery: the wunnerfulness of Wunnerful US to consist in possession of "a generous and elevated mind"! Nobody amongst the ragin’ heathen would be interested in an up-market product like that, of course. Quelle idée! Curiosity is strictly a Sinn Féin shebang, like ‘we’ say in Neo-Psemitic, curiosity is a megillah for ourselves alone: "uniquely Western, uniquely distinctive of this Western Civilization of which we are the heirs at the present time."
Well, at least the neorabbi has the residual decency to stick in ‘heirs’ and not pretend that Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh and AEI-GOP-DoD have done Western Sieve all of and by and for themselves.
Back before communication with the Old Europe of Century XII/XVIII was broken off and ‘their’ Sam became radically unintelligible to them, it was understood that generosity and elevation of the sort commended consisted above all in the uselessness of curiosities:
| Someone who had begin to read geometry with Euclid, when he had learned the first proposition, asked him "What shall I get by learning these things?" Euclid called his slave and said "Give this person a penny, since he must make a profit out of what he learns." |
Bernie and Fooey and the junior birdmen of ASMEA do not receive on that wavelength any longer, and perhaps as empirical individuals they never did. Perhaps it was a pretty silly wavelength all along, perhaps the real point of it was snobbery or worse, to establish the upperness of Establishment Uppers: "We are so rich and powerful and secure that we do not need to care whether things are useful to us or not." Bernie and Fooey and the birdmen are chip-on-the-shoulder insecure, of course. they cannot walk three blocks in an inhabited district nowadays and not run into an "existential threat" of some sort.
This is not their fault, naturally: Society has made them -- Society has made ‘us’ -- what they are. Oh, well, de nobis narrátur fabula!, the Original Sin rate remains steady at 100.0% and is not likely to come down much any time soon. Still, self-careerists who choose the tertiary education racket really ought to know better than to set up as outstandin’ly distinguished by Liberality and Curiosity. If Bernie and Fooey and their junior birdmen do not actually grasp what such substantives used to mean when it made good Sense to capitalise them, they ought at least to be aware that there was such a time. And that that time has now expired, entailing the minor consequence for themselves personally that they may easily get out of Boswell's Johnson what was never put into it.
Purveyors of Western Sieve would, in general, do better to declare themselves lovers of Tradition without claimin’ to be accurate annalists or wie-es-eigentlich-geschehen historians. It is not really a serious objection to Tradition that it was manufactured from whole cloth a week ago last Wednesday, whereas the same cheerful nonchalance counts as a technical foul when committed by dry-as-dust factmongers.
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[1] The former 3 January 1112 ABCE. Al Ghastly died at Tús the month before,
an occasion revered by a certain class of Orientaliser as the end of all -- well, of all "free scholarly inquiry," more or less, is what it comes to -- in Saracen Sieve. (Except that even the wingnuttiest of ’em always admit Ibn Khaldún to their covens and conventicles and seminar rooms, despite arriving WAY too late. No good rule without a probative exception.)
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