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Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Choice of Liberalism -- 1. The Democracy Offensive and the Defenses of "Islam" -- 2. Women and/in "Islam": The Rescue Mission of Western Liberal Feminism -- 3. Pre-Positional Conjunctions: Sexuality and/in "Islam" -- 4. Psychoanalysis, "Islam," and the Other of Liberalism -- 5. Forget Semitism! -- Works Cited -- Index.

This paper reflects on the memory of Freud in relation to the history of Semitism from the end of the 18th century, as a foundational moment in orientalism, anti-Semitism and the representation of Arabs, Muslims and Jews in the 19th century. It reprises the analysis of Edward Said, who connects it to the ongoing ecumenical liberal attempt to bring Judaism, Christianity and Islam together under the broad umbrella of 'Abrahamic religions,' a concept evoked by Jacques Derrida towards the end of his life. Much of the liberal equivalence of these three religions is predicated on an insistence on forgetting their differences, one the histories of Semitism and anti-Semitism constantly recall. Adapted from the source document.

In his review of my book, Andrew Shryock asserts, "The interpretive key to Colonial Effects is located in its first paragraph," in the preface, where I state that I am a "Palestinian Jordanian." Indeed, this discovery—namely, that my national identity is the determining factor of my scholarship—is the interpretive key to Shryock's own grossly misrepresentative review. All his subsequent observations follow neatly in its footsteps.

This essay examines Edward Said's philosophy of intellectual life and what an intellectual vocation entails. Said's major contribution, Orientalism, is discussed in light of his own concept of ""traveling theory"" and its impact on various disciplines, especially postcolonial studies. Said's views on Palestine and the Palestinians are also elaborated and contextualized in his own oeuvre. Finally, the essay discusses Said's interest in musical performance and attempts to read his work ""musically,"" showing how all his interests are part of a larger whole that constitutes his intellectual legacy.

This article surveys the history of songs about Palestine from 1948 to the present, examining how the changes in musical style and lyrics correspond to the changes in the exigencies of the Palestinian struggle itself. Tracing the primacy of revolutionary Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s, the central role of Fayruz and the Rahbani brothers in the wake of the 1967 war, and the emergence of Palestinian groups and singers as of the late 1960s, the article provides historical and political analyses of these songs as central features of how Arab popular culture has dealt, and continues to deal, with the Palestine tragedy.