Orientalism is a European invention

 The concept Orientalism is mostly associated with the American

palestinian schooler Edward Said through his book of the same title "Orientalism" , through which Said argued that cultural geographical entities such as the "Orient" are not inert facts of nature, but rather should be grasped as historically specific discursive constructions that have a particular history and tradition. Thus "The Orient" has been constituted by an imagery and vocabularly that have given it a specific kind of reality and presence within the western culture. 

So for Said, Orientalism was a general group of ideas impregnated with European superiority, racism and imperialism that are elaborated and distributed through a variety of texts and practices.

In recent years a great deal of news coverage in the west has been devoted to such matters as the states of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Libya (terrorism) mainly after Osama Bin Laden and the tragedy of 11 September 2001. Thus we may note a certain imbalance in the cultural representation of Islam within the West. There's a clear concentration on the violence of some Islamic fundamentalists but little exploration of the reasons behind this hostility towards the west and the part played by western cultural and political actions in fuelling conflict, nor it is often reported that Islam is seen by most of its adherents as a philosophy and religion of love and peaceful cooperation.

Said shows in his approach to Orientalism that the west represents the Orient not as it is but as the west Imagine it. Therefore, according to Said, The Orient is a western construct and fantasy, the Orient we watch on TV and Hollywood movies is being fantasized , orientalized, constructed and forged by western consciousness discourse.

On the one hand, women are portrayed as decile bodies, oppressed by men and the Oriental men are represented as fanatic, irrational, impulsive, savage, and obsessed with sex (lustful) . On the other hand, the western men are represented as being enlightened which means human, rational and elite and the could establish a smooth with Arab women.

Said insists that to understand and analyze western representation of the Orient we need to take into account the politics of power, how western sense of power and superiority shapes Its discourse on the Orient.

"The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony"