From the article: " With Orientalism, Said wanted to open a discussion about the way the Arab-Islamic world had been imagined by the West—not to prevent a clear

From the article: " With Orientalism, Said wanted to open a discussion about the way the Arab-Islamic world had been imagined by the West—not to prevent a clear-eyed reckoning with the region’s problems, of which he was all too painfully aware." Well that's the basic problem right there. Did Said assume there was no need to do a serious study of the Middle East's problems and what causes them, because he assumed that if the West would just leave the Middle East alone, it would all on its own solve its problems? Certainly that is what a lot of his followers seem to think, that the world was an egalitarian paradise until evil White people can along and started oppressing everybody.