Western Imaginings. Rohan Davis
WESTERN IMAGININGS
WESTERN IMAGININGS
The Intellectual Contest to Define
Wahhabism
ROHAN DAVIS
The American University in Cairo Press
Cairo New York
Copyright © 2018 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
www.aucpress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 977 416 864 2
eISBN: 978 161 797 876 0
Version 1
For my parents, Janice and Phil
And thank you Rob, I’m eternally grateful
Contents
Wahhabism: A Contested Category
1 Wahhabism as a Contested Category
Intellectuals, Imagined Geographies, and Imagined Communities: Wahhabism as Threat
Understanding Wahhabism through a Feminist Lens
Saudi School Textbooks and the Problem of Translation
Wahhabism Is Not So Bad After All
2 On Intellectuals, Prejudice, and Understanding the Social World
On the Collective Identity and Attachment of Intellectuals
Intellectuals and the Nation-State
3 Dialectics, Ideal Types, Fuzzy Categories, and Analyzing Language
Metaphors, Analogies, Similes, Neologisms, and the Cognitive Structuring of Violent Accounts
Critical Discourse Analysis: Language Is Made in and Makes the World
4 Spreading the Rule of Reason: Liberal Imaginings of Wahhabism
Understanding Liberalism: Many Freedoms?
Understanding Liberalism: Toward an Ideal Type
Wahhabism as Backward and an Obstacle to Progress
Wahhabism Is a Threat to the Ideal Secular Society
Individualism, Progress: The Key Themata and Generative Metaphors Influencing Liberal Thinking
Introducing the Neoconservatives
An Unwavering Support for Israel: Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia as Enemies of the Jewish State
Key Themata: The Holy Land and Welcoming the Savior
Animal Metaphors and the Noble Savage
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets
Like so many other authors, my researching and writing this book was inspired and motivated by an experience that had a profound effect on me. In 2008 I was in Stockholm, Sweden, staying in a small student apartment in the south of the city. It soon became clear to me that if I wanted to have something close to an authentic Swedish experience, then I needed to speak and understand some of the Swedish language. So I enrolled in a beginner-level Swedish language course, two classes a week. The classes had few students, and they were relaxed and enjoyable. The most interesting aspect of this experience was the friendships I made with other students while talking during coffee breaks and after class. It was