Occidentalism, as defined by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, is a form of anti-Western thought with its origins in the European movements of counter-Enlightenment. It is borrowed and adopted by a section of non-Western intelligentsia when their societies are undergoing painful processes of modernization. In its political manifestations, Occidentalism displays traits of anticolonial nationalism, populism, and even socialism. However, it is best described as a cultural movement, neither of the “left” nor of the “right,” with romantic, mystical, or religious overtones, that strives to preserve the spiritual, organic, and communal cultural values in the face of modern technological advancements, soulless urbanism, individualism, and commercialism. When it reaches the point of dehumanizing its “enemy” (the West) and practices acts of violence, Occidentalism proper is born.

Depending on particular historical contexts, either Far East Asia, Russia, or the Middle East, the authors' broad comparative study shows how local intellectuals found affinities between the literature and philosophy of German Romanticism (e.g., Herder, Fichte, Pan-Germanism, Nietzsche, the Nazi political theology of Heidegger and Schmitt) and their own Shinto, Slavic, or Islamic worldviews. What these intellectuals call authentic self, a return to roots or “tradition,” are but so many forced efforts at reinterpreting, even reinventing traditions and “origins.”

Of all varieties of Occidentalism, the religious type is the most pernicious. Aspiring to universalism, it casts its claims in theological terms, depicting the West as the enemy of God and Westernization as the supreme form of idolatry. This is where Occidentalism increasingly overlaps with Islamism. The Islamist “original contribution to the rich history of Occidentalism,” is precisely this “depiction of the West as a form of idolatrous barbarism.” Buruma and Margalit point out that, unlike similar ideas in Judaism, this is not a metaphorical or rhetorical condemnation. The false god of the West and his agents in the eyes of the Islamists are very much real, representing the political realities of our time. Translated into politics, Islamist Occidentalism is guided by the idea of a holy war or jihad against the alien gods. Westerners are said to be jāhils, which in one strong sense of the term, Buruma and Margalit contend, means not only ignorant people but also savages, those who are not quite human.

In the historical studies of the Orient, one can broadly identify two approaches. One, in the wake of the late Edward Said, maintains that the concepts of Orient and Occident are “supreme fictions” devoid of anthological validity. “Each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other … lending themselves easily to manipulations and organization of collective passion,” writes Said. The other method is what he and his followers set out to debunk, that is, the historical tradition of Orientalist studies, which tends to explain cultural differences in terms of their fundamental civilizational values, with tacit affirmation of the Western as the superior type. Aside from its valuable historical insights, it is possible for Orientalism to be used to justify Western imperialism.

Buruma and Margalit do not intend to propagate views based on the “clash of civilizations” model of inquiry. They assure the reader that Occidentalism is not an “Islamic problem” and hold the view that Islam as an organized religion is not responsible for the Occidentalism of Islamist militants. The clash of values is mainly a struggle within Islam, between Muslim liberals and Muslim traditionalists and not between Islamic societies and the West (hence their five-page tribute to the Pakistani Muslim thinker Muhammd Iqbal).

Nonetheless, their study could lend itself to ideological readings of an Orientalist kind. Occidentalists perceive Westernization or “Westoxication” as a disease, a cancer to be forcefully removed. Buruma and Margalit pay back the tribute. They call Occidentalism a “full blown disease.” Mere symptoms like cultural resentments at Hollywood, pop music, or Western sexual mores could be cured but the full-blown disease is “lethal.” They warn against the “death cult” of jihadists and conclude their study with the alarmist advice that Occidentalism, in its deadly theological form (Islamism) or as a state ideology, is bent at destroying liberal democracies.

A descriptive genealogy of Occidentalism as “thought” is not enough to shed light on the material conditions of its emergence. Two kinds of amends are helpful in preventing studies such as Occidentalism from adding to the post-9/11 literature of fear. One is explanation of the particular social and economic conditions giving rise to Occidentalism among Third World intellectuals; the other is an understanding of how Occidentalism of the elite (as is portrayed in this book) transforms itself into historical Gestalt, or a mass movement.

As explained by the authors, Occidentalism is born out of a traumatic confrontation with modernity, for there is no Occidentalism in premodern or traditional societies. In his other book, God's Dust: A Modern Asian Journey (1990), Ian Buruma, who has spent a considerable part of his life in the East, admirably describes the squalid conditions in large cities of Thailand, Burma, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan, where a painful crisis of identity gradually spreads among the economically and politically disenfranchised. It is through his empathic journalism, through literary or biographical accounts and through various sociological or social-psychological studies, that we learn how not only jealousy and shame, but also extreme forms of humiliation and material deprivation eventually become violent, nihilistic rage. If Islamist Occidentalists tend to dehumanize us, we need not do the same to them. In fact, “humanizing” jihadists and suicide bombers might help us gain the kind of knowledge necessary to fight Occidentalism while keeping at bay our own occasional irrational rage against those “dark aliens.”