The question that refuses to go away and hounds the peripatetic scholar throughout the length of his fieldwork is how to deal with the unfolding and all-too-human drama of the face-to-face encounter. In the cases I have mentioned earlier ( Part I ), the exigencies of the immediate present demand a response that can only be described as human and humane. But on other occasions, the reaction of the scholar no matter how hard he attempts to maintain his sense of objective distance may border on the judgemental.

The scholar who conducts fieldwork is already forced to toil with the burden of culturally-conditioned responsibility at times peppered with guilt weighing heavily upon his shoulders. Even where and when such awkward historical entanglements can be gracefully circumnavigated, there remains the other question of the obvious gulf of knowledge and the corresponding hierarchy of power that accompanies it.

The post-modern scholar a sensitised and sensitive specimen of the homo academicus species is cognisant of the fact that his academic concerns may seem unworldly and irrelevant for the subjects of his research. What, pray tell, is the relevance of 'Translocality' to a foreign madrasah student who does not even know if he will remain free when he returns to his home country at the end of his studies, and who reads in the papers that religious students such as him are damned as potential terrorists?

The theoretical baggage that the scholar carries with him to his fieldwork is therefore a bag of mixed blessings. On the one hand, it provides him with the means to see, engage and understand the subjects of his research, thereby bridging the cognitive gulf between Self and Other. Bridging this gulf is necessary, even more so today, as we witness the deplorable developments all over the world. But on the other hand, the fact that such bridging capital is required (even if the bridge in this case is an epistemic one) underlines the fact that such a gulf between researcher and subject already exists.

Recognition of this cognitive-cultural-political gulf is perhaps the first step in the process of injecting a degree of intellectual honesty and integrity into our labours. Integral to this longing for honesty is also the recognition that the scholar was not the one who created and introduced the gap in the first place, and that he too has to struggle on the same divided terrain bifurcated by differentials of power and wealth.

This may not, however, lighten the moral burden of the scholar who does not wish to occupy the position he does in the blatantly uneven equation; and an honest acceptance of one's place in the overall scheme of power does little to correct that arrangement any more than buying organic coffee from local producers in Brazil solve the problem of Third World debt. Here we have to recognise that the question that stands before the scholar is not merely an academic one having to do with scholarly standards and norms, but rather an existential question that stabs right at the heart of the scholar's own role and identity.

These are the realities that we have to work with and sometime against and to dream of an academic enterprise that is somehow radically outside this economy of concerns would entail the denial of the realities of our times. We are, all of us, scholars living and working in the age of terror and witnesses to the ascendancy of the American empire.

Empire and alterity

Allow me to state again that this was certainly not meant to be a critique of post-structuralism, deconstruction or cultural studies.

If anything, we owe all that we have achieved to these contemporary currents of thinking and academic praxis, and we remain as I have stated earlier products of the times we live in and the ideas that circulate around us. But here lies the crux of the problem: Living as we do in the here-and-now where the norms of political correctness demand that academic research be conducted in an environment almost totally uncontaminated by value judgements, can the researcher permit himself to engage in that most parochial of scholarly sins: Prescriptivism? In short, can the academic judge?

Lest it be forgotten, academics while on fieldwork are not and should not think of themselves as scholarly missionaries sent out on a rescue mission. Here lies my singular contention with much of the work that has been done in the field of cultural studies thus far: In our desire to question the fundamental premises of our respective disciplines and to interrogate the settled hierarchies of power and knowledge we have inherited from the past, there lies the danger that all we manage to achieve is a reversal of that order while leaving the question of power differentials unanswered.

An example of such 'reversed-Orientalism' put to work can be found in the works of Syed Naquib al-Attas, notably his landmark text Islam and Secularism (1978). Al-Attas' project can be summed up as a determined attempt to reverse the traditional Orientalist worldview that presented Islam and the Orient in terms of a negative chain of equivalences juxtaposed to the positive attributes linked to Western civilisation. At its most simplistic, the work merely posits a diametrically opposite view of the world that attributes positive values to Islam/the Orient and relegates the West to a secondary, inferior position within a violent oppositional hierarchy.

In the course of doing so, the image of the West that is drawn by al-Attas is one that is every bit as superficial, static and instrumental as the image of the Orient as envisaged by the Orientalists of the past. The academic worth of such apologia, however, is evident when we unmask its linkages to power and ideological agendas.

Absent in such apologia is the concern to present the subject with all its multi-faceted and multi-dimensional complexities, and by doing so problematise the method of analysis in the process. If the long-held charge against Orientalist scholarship was that it presented a two-dimensional portrait of the Other, then surely contemporary post-Orientalist scholarship has to take on board the concerns and criticisms of the post-modernist, post-structuralist and deconstructionist schools of thought as well.

From such a nuanced approach may emerge a portrait of the Other that is imbued with greater depth, complexity and animation. But such a portrait is also in a sense more intrusive and more revealing, working as it does to reveal more aspects of the subject than ever before including aspects that may jar against the sensibilities of the scholar himself.

The academic on fieldwork has to brave the risky moment of the face-to-face encounter and has to be prepared to analyse and report what he sees as he sees them. How do I again as a Malaysian academic aware of his own subject position record encounters and statements such as these:

"What the Muslim world needs today is unity. They (the West) call us terrorists and fanatics, but we know this is because the media is controlled by the Jews and the Jews are the real cause of all our problems today?"

Or:

"For there to be dialogue with the West we must begin on equal terms. This will not happen unless and until they respect and fear us (sic), and it is for this reason that we need to arm ourselves with nuclear weapons, like Pakistan has done."

Tricky situations

The politically-correct scholar, finding himself in such tricky situations, is often caught in a double-bind. His post-structuralist and deconstructionist leanings may incline him towards analysing such encounters with an open mind, trying to seek out instances of rational agency, empowerment and positivism at work. But at the back of his mind resides the abiding (political) concern that those very same findings may serve other interests, and be put to use by the omnipresent CIA agent, neo-conservative American think-tank, or a media already hostile towards Islam and Muslims.

What is the scholar to do? Does he pursue his line of enquiry to its ultimate conclusion, unpalatable though that may be to his politically-correct sensitivities? Or should he endeavour, nevertheless, to 'rescue' the subject of his research moved as he is by the moment of the face-to-face encounter and the realisation of the moral responsibility he now bears for the Other who has crossed his path? Balancing the competing demands of objectivity, ethics and the particularities of the here-and-now - this is the real moral dilemma of the contemporary scholar living in the age of the 'War against Terror'.

Can we, living and working as we do in the age of the new Empire, revert to the use of an epistemology and vocabulary that is both descriptive and prescriptive? We may balk at the thought of using the word 'savage' today, but how then does one describe the slaughter of thousands of Shia Muslims at the hands of the Taliban during the closing stages of their campaign to conquer Afghanistan? What are the proper (politically-correct) terms to be used when describing the deliberate, calculated and wanton slaughter, rape and torture of innocent civilians at the hands of their Taliban victors?

And if we hold back in our judgement of the Taliban, would we exercise the same restraint when confronted by the brutal realities of Washington's 'War on Terror' that has blighted the lives of millions, distorted the face of American politics and the West's relation with the Muslim world, and to bring the concern closer to home rendered our own academic efforts infinitely more difficult and dangerous? And can we describe the existing differentials of power and wealth between the North and the South in terms that are neutral, purely descriptive and non-judgemental?

I do not hope to give satisfactory answers to these questions, though my reluctance to do so is not on account of any pretensions to modesty on my part: The reality is that these are perhaps the most difficult, pressing and painful questions that stare all of us in the face today.

My own attitude and approach has been to follow in the footsteps of the scholars of the past, whose scrupulous attention to detail and whose thoroughness in the pursuit of information inspires me still. These men may have worked hand-in-glove with the mechanisms of Empire, but a closer reading of their works (informed by the benefit of hindsight and guided by the theoretical concerns of today) would reveal a greater degree of critical agency at work: Snouck Hurgronje's study of Muslims in Indonesia was undoubtedly conducted with the interests of Dutch colonialism in mind, but his detailed portrait of the Indonesian Muslims he lived with also reveals a greater degree of independent rational agency and local genius than his colonial supervisors would have liked to admit.

Likewise Marshall Broomhall's study of Muslims in China was conducted with missionary intentions close at heart, but he was also the first to compile a comprehensive history of Muslims in the country which remains unparalleled till today. Richard Burton's portrait of the Africans he lived with also uncovered an entire life-world that was autonomous, self-governing, guided by its own historical evolution and teleology that had hitherto remained unknown to the rest of the world. The unstated conclusion that emerges from all of their writings is worth repeating: The native is not for turning.

Looking back at the legacy of the Orientalists of the past serves as a humbling lesson for us in the present in many ways. For a start, it reminds us of the simple fact that all shall pass and that in the panoptic view of history all has passed. We, who live and work at a time where conscience and academic ethics rule over us and guide our pursuits, should also be aware of the particularities of the present and our own embeddedness in that present. In the same way that the Orientalists were men of their time whose time has gone, so are we today embedded in a present that shall one day be history.

Ahistorical viewpoint

The yearning for an ahistorical point radically outside the economy of temporality is perhaps the biggest conceit that we can help ourselves to. Like all counterfeit cures, it offers no release and no panacea to the dilemma we face. Honesty entails the recognition that our work even before it has begun is already dated and pass in a sense. Generations to come will undoubtedly question our methods and motives and in time yet another wave of radical criticism shall descend upon our collective endeavours in the here-and-now and render them to shreds.

Regardless of the fact that none of us shall ever emerge victorious in this contest against time and history, in the course of our toil and daily grind we need to remind ourselves of who and what we are: Academics whose primary task is to seek out information, analyse it, assess it and understand it.

Our respect for the Other does not and should not lead to the obfuscation or distortion of the Other for the sake of political correctness, or the fear of falling prey to the vicissitudes of realpolitik and geopolitical interests.

If I continue to record the details of the lives of my research subjects down to minutiae such as their intimate confessions and daily habits, it is for the sake of posterity and to be able to say: This was what life was like there and then, though not under circumstances of my own choosing. I record the words, gestures, life-styles and life-worlds of my subjects in as detailed a mode as possible, trying to capture as much of the fleeting

Other as the pen will allow not to highlight what I may personally feel are faults and failures, but rather to illustrate what I think is a subject that is complex, sometimes contradictory and always engaged in the task of trying to reconcile the contradictions and uncertainties in themselves. This is the face of the Other who stood before me there and then, and in his words and gestures you will read the anxieties and concerns of the moment the age of terror and the American empire.

A scholar's dilemma in the terrorism age (Part I)