Posted by Scientific Insights on Tuesday, July 1, 2014
A. Background Problem
Orientalism discourse today has seized a little more attention to the Muslims. This is evident from his many studies that discuss the ins and outs and the doings of Orientalists and their methods in developing the concept of Orientalism now. Caution is indeed a natural thing, because thanks to the pace of the struggle Orientalism, gave birth to new concepts in Islam that is actually the fruit of the seeds of Orientalist thought. The seeds of that, today even regarded as a contemporary development of Islam; The new face of Islam in following the changing times such as liberalism, pluralism, etc.
In language, Orientalism derives from the orient, the antonym of the word Occident. If the occident means West, then the meaning of Orientalism is all matters relating to the eastern. Mannan Bukhari, after analyzing some sense orentalisme, gives two definitions of the word in terms of Orientalism:
First: If viewed broadly, thus, Orientalism was all matters relating to the Nations of the world east and its environment. So based on this definition, the scope of the orientalists, inter-alia: archeology, history, language, religion, and literature, descent (ethnology), costums, politic, economic, and environment.
Second: narrowly, Orientalism is an investigation into the activities of the eastern by the west in eastern religions, especially about Islam.
The existence of two different definitions for understanding Orientalism shows that, in the development of Orientalism studies the motivation changed. It was of course based on the current state of the evolving study of Orientalism. For that reason in this paper, the author tries to analyze the initial motives of the existence of the study of Orientalism. This is necessary because the concept of orientalism now is certainly not independent from studies conducted by orientalists in the classical period, thus becoming the material to determine the extent to which changes in the study Orientalism is going on now. The analysis in this paper, further more focused more on the characters and works of Orientalism in the classical period.
B. Problem Formulation
Based on the background that has researchers describe the above, the authors draw the outline of the issue, including:
1. What is the motivation of the study of the early period of Orientalism?
2. Who figures in the early period of Orientalism and what works?
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