Paradise Lost
Authors: Sabet Amr G. E. 
Published: December 2020

In Paradise Lost, a collection of rewritten and updated articles spanning aperiod of twenty-five years, C.A.O. van Nieuwenhuijze attempts to tackleissues of identity and interaction in the Arab-Islamic world. Together they constitutephenomena of virtual reality, reifying concepts as instruments of intelligibility,being at once the product and frame of human intellect and action (p. 3). Both components, as the common thread which ties and pervades his work,comprise the conceptual himework within which the “forever problematic”relationship between the Middle East and a revitalizing Islam on the one hand,and a Western Europe undergoing a post-Christian, postmodem phase, on theother, is probed.This nexus of collective identity and interaction manifests a “logical complementarity”inasfar as both presuppose and negate each other (p. 1). Identityevokes an all encompassing eclectic representation of an individual‘s or collectivity’scosmos, be it in the form of someps pro toto (nation, polity, economy,or culture; u r n or din) or an intentional comprehensive indication(lifestyle; patrimoine; htruth). In recognizing no other beyond its cosmicdomain, identity connotes a seemingly timeless and placeless unicity whichfrequently bestows upon it an impressive though mistaken aura of static permanenceand absoluteness @. 2). Interaction conversely represents the “practiceof identity as a plural phenomenon” (p. 405) and thus incorporates all thecomplexities which emanate from the dynamics of a highly variable reality.The formulae it gives rise to purs pro toto are correspondingly much more fluid(communication, harmony, strife, domination) or reflective of inherent, largely imbalanced ambiguities (mission civilisatrice; development aid or,euphemistically, cooperation; ddwuh). In contradistinction to identity significationsasserting the positive aspects of constituency (i.e., what one is), theseinteractional code words are summary evocations arrived at by the interveningperception of a counteridentity of the “other” (i.e., what one is not). Hence, itgives rise to polar images of binary opposites of such orders as Greek vs. barbarian;Islam vs. jahiliyuh; or &zr ul-Islam vs. dar al-harb. In and of themselves,interactional identifications bear limited significations to those concernedexcept in tacit conjunction with each term’s opposition (p. 2). In otherwords, self-identification is arrived at by detour. Consequently, interaction isrelegated to an instrumental role on behalf of a pre-established and, in mostcases as AmbDslamic-European historical experience has shown, dominatingself-centered structure. As a result, “the fundamental complementarity bemeenidentity and interaction is neglected, and with it the contingency inherent inidentity” (pp. 2-3). Entrenchment in the face of an aggressive ethnocentrism,henceforth, becomes the order of the day.Intellectual exploits of Western Enlightenment elevated objectification to thehighly esteemed means toward ethnocentrically motivated mastery over “reality.”Its basic mode of analysis combined empirical observation with criticalrigor and methodological empathy and an overwhelming penchant to universalizeconclusions--method being confused for truth. In the process, social sciencesand Oriental studies came to reflect national categories contrived by an ...