"Royall Tyler’s Thee Algerine Captive and the Barbary Orient”

The first problem is constant quotations of distorted Islamic image portrayals,and a one and a half page dialogue without evaluation. If the dialoguedoes anything, it increases hostility between Muslim and non-Muslim withoutproviding a critical Islamic evaluation. Options are: examination of sources,Orientalist roots, Tyler’s erroneous characterization, all with enhancementof Islamic values, correcting the thought process. One option the paper missesis captivity due to piracy- a Western coinage invented to cover up the West’sillegitimate attack of Muslim shores. Historically, the Muslims were on thedefensive from the previous century, when Spain and Portugal raided theirshores and persecuted Moriscos, Moroccans, and Islamic North Africa.America joined later, assuming the Muslims’ guilt. That captivity brings outan awareness of the despotic American slavery system is not the sole valueof Underhill’s experience. That he continues forming erroneous judgementsbased on racial biases is more important. The entire experience provides astroke of Islamic irony. While a Christian fails to judge Islam, Islam’s systemof equality in the eyes of God renders Underhill’s awareness stale, captivitya legend, and blindness of war purpose ignorance. Of course the issue couldbe discussed in more profundity and length. If the Islamic perspective is notbrought out, then, the casual non-Muslim reader may read the paper as anadventure of a romantic nationalist when war was a romantic enterprise. Inthis way, the Islamic thesis is lost. There has to be a definite awareness ofthe historical context of such Orientalist writings. This issue is extremely crucialfor Muslim scholars and sheds light on the purpose of Orientalist works witha political goal. We will not go so far as researching who has created racism,or who has created slavery in the American system, which are equally validpoints for this paper, but we should see the historical milieu of this work.Placement in context helps Muslims understand academic endeavors atmisrepresenting Islam at this point in history.The author’s paper entitled “In Search of the Orient: The Muslim Easton the Contemporary American Literary Scene,’’ published by the InternationalInstitute of Islamic and Arabic Studies is of much hgher quality becauseof covering new ground, although it does not mention an important work bya Muslim scholar, Dr. Layla al-Farsy; “Washington Irving’s Mahomet: A Studyof the Sources.” ...