Why is there such a huge breadth of Orientalist literature? Why do hundreds of kafir scholars dedicate their entire lives to studying hadith? Sun Tzu puts it very well:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

Knowledge of your enemy helps to understand how they will behave and react, but another important benefit is that understanding the religion of your enemy can help to sow dissension within their ranks. You can find especially critical points of differences of opinion, and then covertly provide support to different factions holding those conflicting viewpoints as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy. The remedy to this state of affairs is leadership, listening, and obeying.

This is why attempts at establishing leadership are fought more intensely than anything else. One of the roles of the khalifa is to make judgments when it comes to differences of opinion and to maintain unity. This also points to the importance of awareness as to the source of funding and support of both scholars and Islamic groups. When you watch Islamic lectures, look at the equipment, production quality, and scholars’ freedom to travel. All of this requires resources.

How did someone gain the citizenship or visas necessary to travel? How did they afford high quality cameras and media editing? If the source of this wealth cannot be determined clearly, the discourse being produced should be treated with caution.

Just because an Islamic scholar or da’ee is sincere does not mean he is not being used as part of a stratagem. Muslims may be used to advance enemy agendas without even realizing it. They may be approached by someone who appears to be a sincere Muslim with offers of support. This applies not only to scholars and public speakers, but also to groups working to establish Islam through military means. They may not even have any major mistakes in their creed— in some cases, it’s enough to focus on certain aspects of the religion more than others. Orientalism is what enables the kuffar to devise policies so as to manipulate currents within the Muslim ummah in order to advance their policy goals.

This is part of why it’s wise to have a strong rejection of Western journalists, academics, and researchers, just as we would reject enemy soldiers invading a Muslim land. It is through the work of these individuals that the kuffar devise policies to turn the Muslims against each other and to distort the religion in the hearts and minds of the masses.

وَیَمۡكُرُونَ وَیَمۡكُرُ ٱللَّهُۖ وَٱللَّهُ خَیۡرُ ٱلۡمَـٰكِرِینَ

But they plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of
planners.

8:30