Jon A. Shields and Yuval Avnur:
Like Ms. Alexander, Said attracted admirers and critics. One of his most influential intellectual competitors was Samuel Huntington (1927-2008), author of a 1993 essay and a 1996 book both titled in part “The Clash of Civilizations.” Huntington didn’t deny the existence of anti-Arab prejudice, but he thought the differences between the West and the Arab and Islamic worlds were deep and profound.
“The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism,” he wrote. “It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.” Said called Huntington’s book “belligerent” in an essay (published shortly after the 9/11 attacks) titled “The Clash of Ignorance.”
Huntington wasn’t Said’s only prominent critic. Historian Bernard Lewis (1916-2018) wrote a sharp critique in his 1993 book, “Islam and the West.” “Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies” (2004), by Ian Buruma and Ivishai Margalit, also challenges Said’s thesis, arguing that Western intellectuals have a long tradition of painting the West in disfigured, grotesque ways.