In the nearly 30 years since Edward Said published the hugely influential Orientalism, his indictment of racism and imperialism in Western scholarship on the Orient has had its share of plaudits and condemnations. Now Robert Irwin, the Middle East editor of The Times Literary Supplement, has reignited the controversy with his broadside against the late Columbia University professor. In Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents (published in Britain as For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies), Irwin defends the work of 18th- and 19th-century European scholars who wrote about the East and denounces Orientalism as "a work of malignant charlatanry in which it is hard to distinguish honest mistakes from wilful misrepresentations." This article presents a debate among Said's longstanding critics and staunch defenders. (Contains 5 resources.)