Islam and Arabs in Early American Thought The Roots of Orientalism in America By Fuad Sha'ban. Durham, N.C.: The Acorn Press, 1991, 244 pp.

Abstract

The introduction to this book credits the author with clarifying the
operative attitudes of Americans towards Islam by looking at the cause
and result of the Muslim image in American literature. However, regret
is expressed that Sha'ban had to be heroically selective about a subject
radiating in many rich directions. Apparently, the book offers fresh insights
and new possibilities for exploration and discovery, thereby
contributing significantly to the enhancement of a literary tradition that
came to the forefront with Said's Orientalism. Sha'ban studies orientalism
in tenns of America's exposure to and understanding of Islam by focusing
on Muslims of nineteenth-century North Africa and the Middle East.
Even though the book's thrust is political, Sha 'ban challenges the reader
to review familiar American writers and trends from an unfamiliar perspective
as he traces the historically biased approach of Americans in
their dealings with the Muslim world.
In chapter one, “A Place for My People,“ the author explains how
America’s Puritan beginnings shaped its self-image and its attitude towads
“the Arab world, its people and land.” The Pilgrims saw themselves
as the chosen people in a promised land. Under the umbrella of a
providential plan and the divine covenant, they were heirs to the kingdom
of God in the new world and therefore shared a common responsibility
to execute the divine mission. Unlike European monamhs who relied on
religion for personal privilege (i.e., the Divine Right theory), Puritans
shifted away from emphasizing the personal and private aspects of Christianity
to its communal or corporate nature. They constantly endorsed
their national responsibility to share the benefits of their chosen status as
citizens of God’s kingdom with the rest of the world ...