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Edward Said's Orientalism

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In his book Orientalism (1978), Edward Said (1935-2003) critiques modern Orientalist prejudices against the Orient(and Islam as a study case). To him, "No matter how deep the specific exception, no matter how much a single Oriental can escape the fences placed around him, he is first an Oriental, second a human being, and last again an Oriental."(102) Not only did nineteenth century Orientalists make generalizations about the Orient, but also they tried to domesticate it, represent it, and speak on its behalf using their own vocabulary. Said asserts that:
In this study, I will discuss the works of Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881), Sir Walter Scott(1771-1832), and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe(1749-1832): “The Hero as Prophet: Mahomet: Islam,”(1840) The Talisman(1825) and (1832), and West-Ostlicher Diwan (1814-1819), respectively. To begin with, Edward Said considers Thomas Carlyle 's “The Hero as Prophet: Mahomet: Islam” as neither a genuine nor a scientific Orientalist philologist study. It deals with the Islamic matter as an over-generalized manner. Said also accuses Carlyle of ignorance of the reality of the revelation and the holy Quran. He argues that Carlyle had been influenced by the nineteenth century Orientalist discourse and contributed to it. He describes the essay as "a nonprofessional analogue to Caussin 's Mohammed, a Mohammed forced to serve a thesis totally overlooking the historical and cultural circumstances of the Prophet 's own time and place."(14) Besides, Said

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