Orientalism

Orientalism is referring to word Orient that has a meaning of East. So more or less it is something
about the way of life in the East. The second things when to discuss orientalism is the word orientalist
refer to the people (specifically to the westerner) that study about East in term of knowledge, cultures
and religion. Said examines the historical, cultural, knowledge and political views of the East that are
study by the West. He then examines how they developed and where they came from. In his book, he
argues that Westerner (America and Europe) presented inaccurate and stereotyped cultural
representation of East. Said believe the West thought its society was superior to the East society.
Orientalism is a study that has a very close relationship ties with the West, especially the Britain and
France. It is started since the late eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War. Then
forwarded by the United States as a symbol (colonial West) until today.

Characteristics of orientalism
There are several characteristics of the orientalism which are a textual construct of the orient,
distinctive occidental and oriental cultures, power relations and criticisms of orientalism.
1. Textual construct of the orient
One of the key attributes of Orientalism is the European literary representations of the frontier
Orient. The writings novels, travel books, letters, original copies, reports, and unlike other
printed remainders of material social. These writings depended on the suppositions that
Europeans had drawn about the Eastern society. Nevertheless the Western presumptions, there
is a particular default of what the genuine tenants needed to say. Along these lines, these
literary talks permitted a review perspective of the political, social and social connections and
circumstances that existed in the post-pilgrim time. Edward Said draws these ideas from the
works of the social scholars, Michel Foucault who examined the arrangement of discursive
writings as a regulated mind-set that is showed by language.
2. Distinguishing Occidental and Oriental Cultures
This is connected to the principal normal for Orientalism wherein the term occident is utilized
to characterize the Western society. Said contends that there existed a negative reversal
between the two ideas where the "Orient" is portrayed as inverse of the "great western
society". Accordingly, there is a development of a myth wherein the prototypical "Situate" is
seen as erratic, in reverse, arousing, and detached. Its encouraging in examination with the
Occidental society was constantly mediocre and conquerable.
3. Power Relations
Said characterized the force relations between the two societies as "the connection of the West
and the Orient was a relationship of force and muddled predominance". As for him this
relationship of force existed as political, scholarly, social and good power. This force
connection is said to be the energizing power behind the myths and suppositions
encompassing the "Oriental" society. Accordingly, the talk was made and utilized by the
Western frontier energy to command, rebuild and control the Orient.

4. Criticisms of Orientalism

Critics of the idea of Orientalism have called people attention to that the majority of Said's
work contains numerous accurate and reasonable mistakes. The most widely recognized
scrutinize against the idea is that the investigation of the Middle Eastern societies by the
English and the French existed much before any frontier administration was set up. His
suppositions with respect to Foucaults work were likewise reprimanded as the thinker had
never included entrepreneur and pre-industrialist creators in the same gathering. In any case,
Said negated this by saying that "he utilized Foucault's strategy to the extent he esteemed
important to safeguard and sort out his social suppositions".

Orientalism and Malaysia

Can one divide human reality, as indeed human reality seems to be genuinely divided, into
clearly different cultures, histories, traditions, societies, even races, and survive the
consequences humanly? (Said,1997). This is one of the quotes from Saids book that capture
my eyes. As we can see and observe, it clearly show that Malaysia consist of various races,
cultures and also religions. If we referring to the histories divide and rule policy that was
introduced by the colonist was one of the factors how Malaysia looks like now. Even thought,
Malaysia already achieved the independent, but we still apply it. As the result, we still can
observe that Malaysian is still divided into races and cultures. Chinese still concurring the
business, Malay still familiar to be called as orang kampong, while Indian popular with
estate. We already divide ourselves into different groups. We also can observe that some place
is monopoly by Malay, and certain places by Chinese or Indian.
Said also argue in his book about the two situations that favour textual attitude. One is when
a human being confronts at close quarters something relatively unknown and threatening and
previously distant while the other one is the appearance of success. In his book, he use
analogy of traveller and travel book. Whenever a traveller travels, they may found something
that does not same as the book said. About the appearance of success, people may have
tendency to continue doing something because of the success made by the previous work. The
simple analogy use by the Said is, a writer writes a book about fierce loin, and people that
read it met fierce loin. So people have tendency to believe the writer and this may lead to new
book about handle with the fierce loin.
Malaysia itself always having situation where crisis happened. For example case of GST
(government service tact). Our neighbours, for example Singapore, apply GST in their
country and they succeed. So, we try to apply it in Malaysia too. But then, we can see that our
government does not consider the entire factor before applying the GST to our country
because basically Malaysian is not ready yet for GST. The appearance of success made by
Singapore made our government believe that we also can do it. Like what Said write human
beings live can be understood on the basis of what bookstextssay; to apply what one
learns out of a book literally to reality is to risk folly or ruin(Said,1997).
Next is about Islam. Westerner claimed that the Muslim backwardness is because they are
influenced by old tradition. So the solution from them is by adopting Western materialism and
civilization. They also cast doubt on Islam and Muslims that are around; that the Qur'an is the
work of the prophet Muhammad himself, the prophet hadith cannot guarantee the truth, Islam
is nothing more than a political movement in the Arab world only, Islamic anti metropolitan
life and so on. They made many assumptions to show that Islam is wrong.
The effect of this claimed toward Malaysia is, nowadays, a young generation is always
following the trends that make them become weaker. Even though they realize it is wrong, but
it is a trend that everyone must follow. For example, in any religions in Malaysia, the illegal
relationship between men and women is prohibited. But because of the trend, people still do
that. They think that Western is the best to follow.
Besides that, they tried to give a new approach to Islam under aspiration progress. For them,
Islam should be following the current demands as what had thought by Prophet Muhammad is
not relevant in this era. Thus, Islamic law that looks bad and does not follow the current

developments need to be abandoned. They want to modernize reform and adjust Islam
according to the demands of the times based on their own understanding and mind.
We also can see the effect of colonization in term of law in Malaysia. All the law and
regulation in Malaysia is basically based on the Western view. We apply democracy since we
got independent. In term of democracy, everyone can voice out their opinion and no one is
wrong. Before the colonization, our regulation and legislation are not based on democracy
because everything was determined by the Sultan. But, in order to get independent from the
colonist, we need to follow their rule. Our first ministry, Tuanku Abdul Rahman was the one
that involves for our country independent. Even though we already achieved 59 years of
independent, we still apply it more or less. All of our action today is still following the view
of Western. The westerner from its point of view is different from us because they have their
own personal values. That why whenever we think we are right but for them it is not.
In a conclusion, everything that happened in Malaysia is related back to our history.
Orientalism is an extension of the Crusades in the other form. Orientalist movement is
growing rapidly and has reached continuing for two centuries, the changes that move as a
form of colonialism. The western colonialism in Malaysia more or less makes us follow their
steps and rules. They started by applying the concept of divide and rule policy. All of us are
separated by cultures, races, social class and so on. But then in order to get independent,
western put a condition for all of us to unite. But then as we can see, Malaysia still consist of
Malay, Chinese, Indian and many more. If we compare to Indonesian, even though they are
Jawa, they still Indonesian. Their nationality and ethnic are the same thing. But, for us in
Malaysia, we are different. We still can observe the gap between all of Malay, Chinese and
others ethnics.