Edward Said and Islam

Abstract

Edward Said was thoroughly secular; his secularism was not anti-religious as much as a-religious. His interest in Vico is indicative of his own position. Giambattista Vico, in his New Science (1725), separated the domain of the divine from the domain of the human, concentrating on the latter in his analysis and using the terminology and concepts of his time. He was interested in the history of the gentiles, a history made by people and not the history ordained by God. Likewise Said was interested in human endeavor and history, in all that was made by human beings, not by supernatural forces, and thus in what can be changed by human beings. For Said, it is futile to discuss God's ways partly because he had no taste for it, and partly because what can anyone say to someone who tells you God is on his side? How can one have dialogue and exchange with such 'holiness' and 'fundamentalism'? Once you are one of the elect, or once you are convinced that your people are the 'chosen people' -and chosen by no less than God Himself- then there is no room for human intervention, no place for human agency or endeavor.