Revisiting Orientalism: Muslims Through the Looking Glass

Dr. Hatem Bazian, UC Berkeley Zaid Shakir, Zaytuna Institute The study of Arabs and Muslims has become, in the backdrop of the War on Terror, a veritable free-for-all. In academia, books are being published at furious rates, university departments concentrating on Islam and the Arab world are being newly endowed, and once obscure scholars are finally enjoying the limelight. In the popular context, this newfound interest in the Muslim East has reached even dizzier heights with opinions-from the knee-jerk to the thoughtful-being welcomed from pundits of all stripes. All this, ostensibly, to achieve understanding, to allow for the Occident to better understand the other, the Orient.

Perhaps, then, the time has come to revisit the lessons of Orientalism. Because, the "other" may well ask: Can the Orient ever be understood through the looking glass of the Occident?   

The Zaytuna Contemporary Lecture Series is a special set of lectures taking place at prestigious Bay Area universities for the dual purposes of providing informed discussion on some of the contemporary world’s most important questions and provoking robust and continued dialog. The lectures are open to the public and are delivered by prominent thinkers and scholars associated with the Zaytuna Institute in Hayward, California.

Admission is free. All are welcome.

For more information:
CALL: (510)582-1979  E-MAIL: info@zaytuna.org
WEB: http://issu.stanford.edu