The Great Game

Frances Wood has dedicated a large part of her book depicting the struggle to conquer Central Asia in the early 20th century. A struggle that turned into a race or as she refers to it the Great Game between archaeologists and historians to conquer the culture, art and history of this region and take it back with them to the West. She depicts tales of explorers that traveled through Central Asia looking for fame, respect and to collect exotic relics of the East.

Their struggle turned into the Great Game. A race between the British and Russian explorers for Central Asia and its wonders, relics and culture. The stage for this race stretched from modern day Tajikistan off to Western regions of modern China. Each explorer brought a new technique to the art of exploration. But, it is sad to know how ugly and devastating this art was! While each traveled the region in the name of history, survey and exploration, the affect of their travels included some troubling decimations of Asian relics, arts and sites. To some cases, it even included a loss of culture for the local inhabitants as they took away bits of their history and culture in the shape of manuscripts, paintings and relics.

It is interesting to note that the explorers themselves were sometimes as characteristic and individual as the cultures they explored. Sven Hedin's friendship with Adolf Hitler is just one example!!! More fascinating is the fact that they each built up on the knowledge and experience of their predecessors. They re-traced each others travels, used each others maps and accounts to navigate through the deadly deserts and find remote sites.

But there was another side to the many explorations of this region. While some cherished the art and culture of the place, others went looking for exotic Asian relics, artifacts and goods praised by Westerners and who were ready to pay a high price to own them. So as long as there was a demand there was a need to raid these ancient sites for the search of exotic and ancients relics and devastating local culture and history.

What is even more troublesome, is that by this reading one understands how little understanding there existed of the the local inhabitants and their cultures. Among the explorers that went into these regions, most of them cared or paid very little attention to the local inhabitants, their concerns and needs. They mostly viewed them as inferior, perceived it their right and duty to not only study their cultures but tho also take parts of it back for studying. Some may argue that they saved these artifacts and in fact their culture by taking their paintings and relics and protecting them from raids and natural decay, due to ill care by the locals. But, this is by far a excuse for the affects these explorations had on the history and culture of the region. They have lost parts of their culture and past to, they have lost ownership of their culture and may have even lost links to their past. A hefty price for being protected.

Ignorance fuels Hatred

I think Said's article could be summarized in a nut shell. He describes the ignorance that was so evident on Huntington's article "The Clash of Civilization". He spoke as if he had complete knowledge of all civilizations. in particularly the West and Islam. And spoke with confidence of the impending struggle between the West and Islam dominating global politics. It is more sad that in the aftermath of 9/11 attacks, many have adhered to his vision and accepted his views. These are the same people that have plagued themselves with the ignorance of Huntington's understanding of Islam and the conflict that is growing each day. They fear as Huntington did, and believe that the West must grow so strong to fend off the threat Islam poses in this global conflict.

The sad part of this is that in the presence of fear from terrorism and the portrayal of the muslim threat to West has fueled this ignorance. People have become oblivious to the growing interdependence of cultures and grow in interest of the so called conflict that has been brewed up between Islam and the West. And soon they will forget what describes each, become confused of what identifies as western and what as Islamic. The worse that comes out of this situation is the generalizations and labels that are attributed to each culture, that will persist overtime to become norms and realities in mind of future generations.

Unfortunately, as Said also mentions in his article, the media plays a very important role in this. Wether by their ignorance or purpose to present material that may not be contrary to realities of the muslim world, but presented in a manner that would fuel the ignorance of people by drawing upon their fear of terrorism. The same has also been used by public figures, politicians and whomever that stands to gain from the prospect of a global conflict between the Islam and the West. The media is constantly engulfed in presenting Islam not its true image, but the image people are interested to see, the image that would justify their fears and give them comfort in hating all muslims rather than realizing the fault of few radicals, that could very well exist with in their own. fanatics exist in all cultures, but if they were to define an entire civilizations, that the threat of terrorism from Islam would be just as real as the threat from the West.

We must put aside the false generalizations and assumptions that easily satisfy our needs and realize the interconnectedness that exist between all people. The sooner people realize that the global conflict exists not between civilizations but in the ignorance that exists between them. The ignorance that fails to recognize the interdependence between cultures and looks to hail one a superior to others.

In the end, theres