The relationship between Islam and the West has frequently been subject to misunderstanding and mistrust and recent events in the international arena have only deepened this perceived divide, culturally and politically. The West often views the Islamic world - and the Islamic world the West - through a prism of mutual suspicion. In such conditions conspiracy, theories can flourish on both sides of the cultural fence, but these highly complex and important global phenomena have been the subject of surprisingly little investigation. "Orientalism and Conspiracy" explores fully for the first time the relationship between the sometimes controversial concept of Orientalism, as developed by Edward Said, and contemporary conspiracy theories, and includes Robert Irwin's fascinating survey of the role of secret societies in orientalist mythology. The authors offer a comprehensive and ground-breaking study of the conspiracy theory and Islam. It is essential reading for those seeking to understand historical and contemporary relationships between the East and West as well as the enduring and controversial legacy of the concept of Orientalism.

Arndt Graf is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Frankfurt. Previously he taught at Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang and at the Asia-Africa-Institute of the University of Hamburg. He has also held visiting positions at Cornell University, the State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah in Jakarta and the University of La Rochelle. He has published widely, mainly on rhetoric, media and communication in Southeast Asia. Schirin Fathi is Assistant Professor in the Asia-Africa Institute at the University of Hamburg. Her publications include Jordan - An Invented Nation?: Tribe-State Dynamics and the Formation of National Identity and the Lexikon des Nahostkonflikts. She has further published and taught on issues relating to the Middle East conflict and democracy. Ludwig Paul is Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Hamburg. His main areas of research include Iranian linguistics and the history of Persian. He is the author of Persian Origins: Early Judaeo-Persian and the Emergence of New Persian as well as numerous articles on Iranian linguistics and cultural studies.

Preface
- Arndt Graf, Schirin Fathi and Ludwig Paul
Sadik al-Azm - Speaking Truth to Power- Stefan Wild
Sadik al-Azm
- Gernot Rotter
I. THEORETICAL APPROACHES
Chapter 1: Orientalism and Conspiracy
- Sadik al-Azm
Chapter 2: Occidentalism as the Political Unconscious in the Literary Construction of the Other
- Lorenzo Casini
Chapter 3: Edward Said and Bernard Lewis on the Question of Orientalism: A Clash of Paradigms?
- Mohd Hazim Shah
II. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Chapter 4: An Orientalist Mythology of Secret Societies
- Robert Irwin
Chapter 5: A Cultural Sense of Conspiracies? The Concept of Rumour as Propaedeutics to Conspiracism
- Karin Hörner
Chapter 6: Political Culture, Political Dynamics, and Conspiracism in the Arab Middle East
- Matthew Gray
III. CONTEMPORARY DISCOURSES
Chapter 7: Polemics on 'Orientalism' and 'Conspiracy' in Indonesia: A Survey of the Public Discourse of JIL versus DDII (2001-2005)
- J.M. Muslimin
Chapter 8: Structural Orientalism, Contested Orientalism, Post-Orientalism: A Case Study of Western Framings of 'Violence in Indonesia'
- Arndt Graf
Chapter 9: memri.org - a Tool of Enlightenment or Incitement?
- Schirin Fathi
Chapter 10: The Tragedy of Iblis
- Sadik al-Azm
Annex
Personal bibliography of Sadik Jalal al-Azm
- Tanja Strube/Karin Hörner
Notes on the Authors