When Palestine called Edward Said, he answered the call.

Edward Said, the Palestinian thinker who declared war on "Orientalism" (Al Jazeera)

Edward Said's intellectual career is a stark example of what thinking about the Palestinian cause, or the ideas generated because of it, can lead to in today's world.

The social scientific community has known Said through his approach to monitoring the role of discourse in shaping our understanding of facts, and the role these "manufactured" facts play in justifying and overcoming power relations and exploitation. His book, Orientalism, is a valuable study of how discourse contributes to the construction of a Western-centered world. However, the main motivation for this groundbreaking work, the question of Palestine, is often overlooked.

In fact, early in his career, which was going well in English and literature in the United States, Said reached a turning point in his life when he saw the reactions given by his American friends to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. At that very moment, Said became a "Palestinian."

Orientalism traces the process of building a Western-centered world through a discursive narrative, and Edward Said brilliantly portrays how the East is "Westernized" through this discourse.

Edward Said's "moment of enlightenment" resembles that of the Islamic thinker Sayyid Qutb when he was in America and saw how the assassination of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, was greeted with great joy there. The main reason for this intense hatred of Hassan al-Banna in the United States was his strong support for the cause of Palestine and his organization of volunteer fighters to fight Israel.

A similar moment of enlightenment was experienced by our Turkish poet, Mehmet Akef Ersoy, when he was in Vienna. The poet Midhat Jamal Kuntay recounted how he saw the news of the fall of Jerusalem in World War I in Vienna, the capital of Austria, Turkey's ally in the war.

"I was in Vienna during World War I, one night, the church bells started ringing," Akef said. I looked out the hotel window at the street, and I saw everyone holding a candle, and everyone was screaming. I thought to myself: "Perhaps our Austrian allies won a victory at the front." I rushed to the street and asked one of the vendors:

• Is there news about a victory?
• He replied, "Victory?" What is this talk? The English took Jerusalem from the Muslims. The British army entered Jerusalem under General Allenby. The city was liberated from the crescent and returned to the cross.

World War I had two main consequences: the end of the Islamic political existence by eliminating the Ottoman Empire, and the decision to establish a Jewish state on the land of Palestine. The event in Vienna, Turkey's ally in Vienna, clearly shows how Jerusalem and Palestine were a turning point between two worlds for the West.

We always affirm that the situation of Palestine, Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque is a reflection of the state of the Islamic world, and therefore the entire world. If Jerusalem is lost, Muslims lose their unity and political existence, and vice versa. Therefore, if we are to regain our unity and our international presence, we must listen to that call coming from the heart of Jerusalem and Palestine and to the voice of those who occupy them.

The Vienna bells, heard by Muhammad Akef, the celebrations witnessed by Sayyid Qutb, and the discriminatory language that Edward Said saw from his academic colleagues, were all painful wake-up calls for them to gather in and around Palestine, at different points in time.

Orientalism examines the process of building a Western-centered world through a discursive narrative. Edward Said brilliantly portrays how the East is "Westernized" through this discourse. It is a "process" in which every moral violation can be justified, and the people living in the East reduced to the level of "human animals," as reflected in the recent expression of the Israeli defense minister. The Eastern man does not represent the "other" who should be accepted. His pains, sorrows and problems are not worthwhile, nor do they need to be taken seriously.

This vision was also reflected in the view of Karl Marx, the "prophet of socialism and the working classes," who celebrated Britain's "modernizing" and "progressive" mission in India, rather than condemning its colonial brutality. Similarly, Friedrich Engels described Emir Abdelkader's resistance in Algeria against the practices of the invading colonizers as "futile uprisings" against inevitable historical progress.

This inferior view of the Easterners, which Edward Said observed in Western discourse and included in his book "Orientalism", is no different from the attitude of the Zionists towards non-Jews; they do not rise to the level of the "other" towards whom we bear moral responsibility, but these people can be lied to, killed, stolen their property, and imposed usurious interests on them.

In fact, Said's description of "Orientalism" is quite similar to Zionism's political-religious discourse on non-Jews, and his main motivation for writing this book was the question of Palestine.

However, there is something striking here: Orientalism is the discourse and literature of modern times about a world that sees the West as the center. Therefore, that West's interest in Palestine and Zionism's obsession with Jerusalem are at all incompatible with this vision that sees the West as the center of the world.

The "State of Israel" constitutes a major and dangerous breach in this perception of history and the Western-centered world. Because Palestine, which is located in the heart of the area of Orientalism's interest, has been – and still is – the target of all the crusades and Zionism, historically, until today. If we consider that evangelical prophecies are part of the literature that governs the West's perception of the world, then "Jerusalem" is in fact the true center of the Western world. Isn't that amazing?!

This interest and even obsession may require us to re-read what Said said, as Western consciousness is in fact looking for "oriental roots", and so we can understand the psychological motives of this Zionist "aggression", as they cling to what they call the "mother land".

Those who live there are not "human beings" but "quasi-human beings", not "other" but "illiterate" or "internationalists", who have no share in the book, and therefore they can safely describe Palestine before the establishment of Israel as "a piece of land devoid of human beings", and the establishment of Israel simply means settling "human beings" in this land.

Thus, historically, Palestine has been of central importance not only to Muslims, but also to the Crusaders and Zionists, and Edward Said inspired his book Orientalism, which made a revolutionary impact in the social sciences. Palestine invited him and he responded.

Of course, the argument of who is entitled to Palestine and how, and who is willing to coexist with the "other" in it, is a separate issue. Together, we have witnessed the kind of world that the Muslims created in this part of the land under their rule, and the other world that the Crusaders and Zionists created.