Al-Ghazālī

In the late modern period, western powers began to study eastern cultures, religions, languages, and territories other than their own under the label of orientalism. In his groundbreaking book, Edward Said (1978) came to eventually redefine what orientalism really was. In his understanding it was the rationalization of a Eurocentric worldview within which the ‘others’ (eastern civilizations) were depicted as inferior, intellectually inadequate, and regressive as a means of justifying the political, cultural, and intellectual superiority of the west. While much can be critiqued of Said’s project, it is nonetheless not absolutely untrue.