M I N D A N A O S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y

S C H O O L O F G R A D U AT E S T U D I E S

ASIA IMAGINED BY THE ARABS

Asnaira P. Sarip Tracy Ellen V. Dahug

Professor Discussant

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Objectives:

1. Understand how Middle Eastern institutions

study 'Asia' and how it influences regional
perspectives.
2. Explore why Arabs are interested in the Iranian
Revolution and what it means for the Middle East.
3. Understand how Arabs see Japan and what
factors shape their perception of the country.

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Activity:

What do you think are the main factors in which

Middle Eastern perceptions of 'Asia' have influenced
regional policies or cultural exchanges?

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 Institutions And Research On ‘Asia’
• Until recently, research conducted by Middle Eastern
scholars and their interest in studying overseas have
been tainted by their consciousness of the North-South
dimension, be it Europe or the United States.

• The institutionalization of research programs for the

Middle East is very much tied to North-South dynamics,
whereby funding is largely dependent on either American
or European aid or bilateral regional interaction.

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 Institutions And Research On ‘Asia’
• The weak structural institutions and research bodies that are
subject to either authoritarian state control or private funding
seem to be one reason why research in the field of Southeast
Asian area studies is suffering in the Middle East.

• If there has been no institutional backing that has led to the

enhancement of Southeast Asian `area studies` in the Middle
East, this does not mean that there is no indigenous production
of knowledge by Third World intellectuals on other regions, or
more precisely, about the Third World.

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 Institutions And Research On ‘Asia’
• In fact, area studies should draw attention towards
South-South longue durée interactions between
the Middle East and `Asia`.

• Equally, post-colonialism and the national

liberation movements did stimulate a Third World
internationalism that is well portrayed in Middle
Eastern press coverage.
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 Institutions And Research On ‘Asia’
• However, when we speak of Southeast Asian area studies
today in the Middle East, the weakness and discontinuity
of institutional support, the strong legacy of
authoritarianism, the growing interference of
governments in the management of science, and the
crisis in higher educational national systems are
significant problems.
• The Arab Emirates and Jordan are two other centers in
the Middle East that have developed a gaze towards Asia.

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 Institutions And Research On ‘Asia’
• The term `Southeast Asia` is, in fact, hardly ever
used by Middle Eastern scholars.

• Egyptians have most probably inherited and

perpetuated an orientalist legacy about Asia, which
would encompass Iran, central Asia, the whole of
the Indian subcontinent, the Southeast, Japan,
and China.
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 Institutions And Research On ‘Asia’
• In other words, anything eastwards of the Middle
East, non-Arabic speaking, and located in the
Asian landmass is considered to be `Asia`.

• The Arabs perpetuate similar notions about Asia

and the Far East as Europeans did for the `Orient`
as a blurred category.

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 Institutions And Research On ‘Asia’
• If we look at the indigenous production of North
African scholars in their gaze towards the other
regions of the Middle East, very little indeed could
be recorded.
• Certainly, for the majority of Middle Eastern and
Middle Eastern research institutes and
universities, the world of Asia and Southeast Asia
are still terra incognita.
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 Institutions And Research On ‘Asia’
• One wonders if it is even worth talking about
Middle East area studies in Southeast Asia.

• During colonial times, it was possible to trace

specific networks thanks to international
communism, which disseminated information
about liberation movements in different parts of
the world.
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 Institutions And Research On ‘Asia’
• During the post-colonial era, Afro-Asiatism and
the non-alignment movement were prominent
ideologies that triggered an interest in
development models and liberation movements in
Africa and Asia.

• Egypt created in the 1960s the Afro-Asian Peoples

Solidarity Organization.
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Afro Asian People's Solidarity Organization in the late
1970s
 Institutions And Research On ‘Asia’
• The Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo
published an essay by Ahmed Taha Mohammed on Egypt
and South-South cooperation.

• Today, the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization

launched a series of dialogues with Japanese and
Chinese scholars, resulting in exchanges of scholars and
sojourns of Egyptians to China and Japan.

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 Institutions And Research On ‘Asia’
• The Middle East witnessed the creation of various
centers of African studies in Rabat, Cairo, and
Khartoum.
• With the economic take-off in the 1970s and 1980s,
`Asia` for the Arab World, in particular Japan,
China, and Southeast Asia, started to gain
prominence as an example of non-Western models of
development.

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 Interest In The Iranian Revolution
• The works of Ayatollah Khomeini and Ali Shariati
were first disseminated in Egypt by the Sorbonne-
trained philosopher, Hasan Hanafi.
• Inspired by the Iranian revolution, Hanafi
attempted to promote the idea of an Islamic left (al-
yassar al-islami) in which Islam would play a
progressive role similar to the theology of the
liberation movement in Latin America.
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 Interest In The Iranian Revolution
• Hanafi published the first issue of Left Islam, al-
yassar al-islami, in 1981, in which he introduced
the ideas of the Iranian ideologue, Ali Shari`ati.

• In the same issue, he wrote an article on Muslims

in Asia, which is interesting in terms of how the
regions are perceived.

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 Interest In The Iranian Revolution
• For Hanafi, the term `Asian Muslims` encompasses an
area starting from Iran, central Asia, Afghanistan, the
former Soviet Union, India, Pakistan, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, and of course Turkey.

• In 1979, Ibrahim al-Dessouqi Shetta, a professor of

Oriental languages at Cairo University, published one of
the first works on the Iranian revolution in Arabic, which
traced the roots of the revolution.

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Interest In The Iranian Revolution

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 Interest In The Iranian Revolution
• Al-Dessouqui Shetta`s innovative perspective lies in
the fact that he relied extensively on Persian sources
and was among the first scholars to translate the
Shari`ati text, “The Construction of the
Revolutionary Self," into the Arabic language.
• Equally, the Egyptian reporter Fahmy Huwaydi
published a book on the Iranian revolution, which he
named “The Iranian Revolution from the Inside”
(1987, 1991, Cairo al-Ahram).
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 Interest In The Iranian Revolution
• In the 1970s, Huwaydi, who was a reporter for al-
`Arabi magazine in Kuwait, was given a chance
through pro-Khomeini Iranians in exile to travel to
Iran six times between 1979 and 1986.

• Huwaydi has earned the reputation of having

established extended networks with several Islamic
movements ranging from Iran to Malaysia, Indonesia,
and central Asia.
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 Interest In The Iranian Revolution
• The well-travelled journalist Hasanayn Haykal, who is
considered one of the major ideologues of the Nasser
regime, published in 1982 a book titled The Canons of
the Ayatollah, a work that appeared first in the UK in
the English language and was later translated into
Arabic.
• He has also published in Arabic a collection of articles
that he wrote for Japanese newspapers, which
appeared simultaneously in the Los Angeles Times.
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 Interest In The Iranian Revolution

• The Centre for Strategic Studies has issued a new

publication titled `Persian Selections`.

• The selections consist of interesting political and

strategic analysis of Iranian and regional politics.

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 Japan Imagined
• With the advent of colonialism and the foundation
of modern nation-states in the Middle East, Japan
attracted special attention among late nineteenth-
century Arab reformists.

• Why was Japan successful but not the Muslim

nations?

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 Japan Imagined
• Japan is thus used as a mirror for Arab
intellectuals to critically review various aspects of
Arab culture and Muslim nations.

• It is no coincidence that the Egyptian intellectual

Rifa`a al-Tahtawi (1801–1873) is repeatedly
compared to Japanese reformists.

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 Japan Imagined
• Nitobe Inazo, the writer of the Bushido, while the
Egyptian historian Ra´uf Abbas compared him to
Fukuzawa Yukishi (1835–1901).

• Third, it is important to highlight the significance

of Egyptian travel accounts to Japan.

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Bushido: The Soul of Japan
 Japan Imagined
• Alain Roussillon has looked into two of the first
Egyptian travel accounts.

• The first is by Prince Mohammed Ali Pasha, the

son of Khedive Abbas Helmi II, who travelled as a
tourist to Japan in 1910, starting from Moscow.

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 Japan Imagined
• Roussillon reads these accounts as raising issues
of identity, reformism, strangeness, and
fascination for Japanese culture, nature, and
landscapes.
• Prince Mohammed Ali Pasha lamented the fact
that despite the high level of civilization that
Japan had reached, the Japanese remained
unrefined when they dealt with foreigners.
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 Japan Imagined
• The Egyptian prince still displays his preference
for Europe, its commodities, and its distractions
compared to the `far away` Japanese exoticism.
• Finally, it is important to highlight the historical
comparative studies of Egypt and Japan, in which
the values of enlightenment, progress, and
education were introduced by pioneer
intellectuals.
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 Thank you!

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