Abstract
The resurgence of a deterministic mode of representation mythologizing Arabs as figuring (threatening) Saracen by judging their epistemological commitments as hostile to Enlightened reason-based ideals is demonstratively identifiable after 9/11, and more so following the Arab uprisings in 2011, when we notice that the Arab in general, and Muslim in particular, was historicized as the “new barbarian” from which (liberal-secular) Westphalian society must be defended. Such neo-Orientalist representations disseminate powerful discursive (symbolic) articulations (i.e., culture talk) —in tandem with the (re)formulation of legal concepts and doctrines situated in jus gentium (i.e., sovereignty, immanence, and pre-emptive defense strategy)—legally adjudicating a redemptive war ostensibly to “moralize” a profane Arabia. Proponents of neo-Orientalism define their philosophical theology as not simply incompatible with Arab epistemology (Ar. العربية المعرفة نظرية), but that Arab-Muslims are an irreconcilable threat to Latin-European philosophical theology, thus, accentuating that neo-Orientalism is constituted by an ontological insecurity constituting Arab-Islamic philosophical theology as placing secular modern logic under “siege” and threatening “civil society”. This legal-historical research, therefore, argues that neo-Orientalism not only necessitates figuring the Arab as Islamist for the ontological security of a “modern” liberal-secular mode of Being, but that such essentialist imaginary is a culturalist myth that is transformed into a legal difference which proceeds to argue the necessity of sanctioning a violent episode transforming a supposed lawless “Middle East” receptive to terror, into a lawful “New Middle East” receptive to reason. This sacrilegos process reveals the “inclusive exclusion” temporal ethos of (a positivist) jus gentium which entails maintaining a supposed unbridgeable cultural gap between a (universalized) sovereign Latin-European subject, and a (particularized) Arab object denied sovereignty for the coherence of Latin-European epistemology.
Highlights
As we enter the second decade since the terror attack in Manhattan took place on11 September 2001, and a decade since the Arab uprisings of 2011, it is becoming increasingly clear that the terror of that day has been hijacked into a casus belli for endless privatized pre-emptive/preventative wars using sovereign sponsored agents of terrorism (Al-Kassimi 2019, 2020)
9/11 are more accurately described as redemptive measures since the violence and domination legally sanctioned effectively replaced “other historical precedents of the 20th century, including the Second World War and the Cold War” with the green scare replacing the red scare (Mamdani 2004; Al-Azmeh 2009; Samiei 2010; Altwaiji 2014; Kerboua 2016). It is culture talk or race war discourses, or more precisely, neo-Orientalism colluding with racism, Islamophobia, and selective prejudice that has been at the crux of the legal developments affecting Arabs and Muslims (Al-Azmeh 2009; Kumar 2012; Al-Kassimi 2020)
This idea of terrorism being identified with Arabs in general and Muslims in particular2 —as highlighted in the introductory quote by legal scholar Richard Falk—is not new, but is rather familiar ratiocinated language inherent to a positivist international law animated by a cultural dynamic of difference (Al-Kassimi 2020)3
Summary
As we enter the second decade since the terror attack in Manhattan took place on. 11 September 2001, and a decade since the Arab uprisings of 2011, it is becoming increasingly clear that the terror of that day has been hijacked into a casus belli for endless privatized pre-emptive/preventative wars using sovereign sponsored agents of terrorism (Al-Kassimi 2019, 2020). To respond to this civilizational threat and by making the distinction between modern (civilized) and pre-modern (uncivilized) societies, Cooper argues that if a rogue “premodern state” became “too dangerous for established states to tolerate”, it will become necessary to inaugurate a “defensive imperialism” that is a “new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values” (Diamond 2002, 2009; Cooper 2002, 2003) This idea of terrorism being identified with Arabs in general and Muslims in particular2 —as highlighted in the introductory quote by legal scholar Richard Falk—is not new, but is rather familiar ratiocinated language inherent to a positivist international law animated by a cultural dynamic of difference (Al-Kassimi 2020).
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