Ignatius, His Works, and His Mind about Islam and the Muslim World
included in the Western agenda to dominate or to colonize others. Although the colonization era is over, but neocolonization era is a real today, and it is what has
been suffered by the rest of the world including the Muslim world especially the Middle East.
Based on the postcolonialism idea, the existence of colonization itself is normalized by a thought style called as Eurocentrism which becomes a reason for
denying the existence of culture that is non White or non European as well as to place emphasize on either Western concerns, cultures, or values at the expense of
those of other cultures including Islam or the Muslim world so that those other cultures can be damaged and destructed. This thought style finds its way to works
out through the existence of Orientalism, constructing a series of negative image of Islam and the Muslim world in order to dominate and to have authority over it
and thus, this construction causes an impact to Islam, the Muslims, and the Muslim world as the persistence of Eurocentrism can damage intellectuality
which in turn influences the way people or the Muslims think and behave according to the Western desires.
Hence, to investigate Western view about Islam and the Muslim world as well as its efforts in colonizing the Muslim world in the 19
th
to 21
st
century portrayed in Ignatius Body of Lies, the researcher employs Orientalism, a
postcolonial theory developed by Edward Said; then she connects it to the understanding of Eurocentrism as a part of postcolonial anchors to get a strong
and sharper analysis from postcolonialism view. This is a means to answer the two research objectives mentioned in the previous chapter: to identify the
construction of Islam and the Muslim world as a way of colonization and to explain the effects of the construction in the novel. The theory of Orientalism
employed by the researcher is focused on the concept of binary opposition between the Orient and the Occident, power and knowledge as well as the proces
of Orientalizing the Oriental. The Occident is represented by Western characters who are mainly Americans, while the Orient is represented by the Muslim
characters who lived in the Middle East in the 19
th
-21
st
century where Islam and the Muslim world lived under Western neocolonialism. Therefore, the background
information related to the condition of Islam and the Muslim world in the 19
th
-21
st
century is used as the source of information to strengthen the analysis.
The following figure shows the analytical construct of the research: