{"id":505,"date":"2020-09-04T10:00:15","date_gmt":"2020-09-04T08:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/?page_id=505"},"modified":"2021-02-03T15:00:16","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T14:00:16","slug":"9-das-andere-europas","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/jewish-perspectives-on-the-crises-of-an-idea\/9-das-andere-europas\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe’s “Other”"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
\"\"

Installation Europe’s “Other”. Photo: Dietmar Walser<\/p><\/div>\r\n

In the European search for the \u201cother,\u201d the attempt to find Europe\u2019s \u201ccounterpart\u201d in the Orient, the academic discipline of Oriental Studies came into being already in the 18th<\/sup> century. Among those driving forward linguistic and historical research of the entire Orient in the 19th<\/sup> century were also many representatives of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism)<\/em> , such as Lion Ullmann, Salomon Munk, Gustav Weil, Moritz Steinschneider, David Samuel Margoliouth, Felix Peiser, Josef Horovitz, and Eugen Mittwoch. Unlike the history- and philology-oriented Oriental Studies, Islamic Studies mainly dealt with Muslim religion and culture.\u00a0 The initial impulse to establish such field of study came from the pioneer of the Jewish reform movement in Germany, Abraham Geiger. However, the father of modern Islamic studies was\u2014together with Theodor N\u00f6ldeke\u2014Ignaz Goldzieher. Lew Nussimbaum (1905-1942) who converted to Islam and Hedwig Klein (1911-1942) also wanted to follow in the footsteps of these scholars. Klein studied Islamic and Semitic studies in Hamburg and completed her doctoral thesis in 1937 on a manuscript about the \u201cHistory of the people of ‘Om\u0101n from their adoption of Islam until their dissensus\u201d. Since she was Jewish, her PhD was not approved. After a failed attempt to escape Germany, she was still able to collaborate until mid-1942 on today\u2019s most widely used Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic<\/em> by Hans Wehr. Eventually she was deported and murdered in Auschwitz. In 1947, she was posthumously awarded her PhD degree. Was Hedwig Klein\u2019s interest in the Orient and in Islam founded, like that of her male predecessors and colleagues, in the affinity between Hebrew and Arabic or else in the fact that both Judaism and Islam are considered to be law based monotheistic religions?<\/p>\r\n

^\u00a0<\/span>Hedwig Klein, ca. 1930, \u00a9 Institut f\u00fcr die Geschichte der deutschen Juden, Hamburg <\/em><\/div>\r\n
\u00a0<\/div>\r\n
< Den Orient im Herzen: Lew Abramowitsch Nussimbaum alias Essad Bey alias Kurban Said, Berlin 1921 <\/em><\/div>\r\n
\u00a0<\/div>\r\n
> Anti-Islamic float at the D\u00fcsseldorf carnival parade, 2007, \u00a9 Federico Gambarini\/dpa\/picturedesk.com <\/em><\/div>\r\n

In any case, research carried out by European Jews on Islam was not motivated by the exoticism widespread in the 19th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> century, by the superficial fascination with the \u201calien.\u201d Nor was it prompted by the goal to use Orientalism as an ideology of difference and\u2014as so often happens these days as well\u2014 to define the Orient as the negation of the Occident. On the contrary: Jews\u2014themselves perceived as Europe\u2019s \u201cother\u201d\u2014were able to approach the Islamic world with much more insight and understanding than many Christians. Although the return to fundamentalism can be observed in all religions, these days, populist agitation expresses itself mainly in the promotion of the enemy stereotype of \u201cIslam\u201d: the image of the Orient as a counterdraft to the Occident, as Europe\u2019s eternal adversary.<\/div>\r\n
\u00a0<\/div>\r\n
\r\n

Brian Klug (London) about the inner and outer “other” \u00a0of Europe and the heritage of Colonialism:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n