A fixed polemical image of Islam served Western needs better than firsthand observation did.

Evidence

The invariable tendency to neglect what the Qur’an meant, or what Muslims thought it meant, or what Muslims thought or did in any given circumstances, necessarily implies that Qur’anic and other Islamic doctrine was presented in a form that would convince Christians; and more and more extravagant forms would stand a chance of acceptance as the distance of the writers and public from the Islamic border increased. It was with very great reluctance that what Muslims said Muslims believed was accepted as what they did believe. There was a Christian picture in which the details (even under the pressure of facts) were abandoned as little as possible, and in which the general outline was never abandoned. There were shades of difference, but only with a common framework. All the corrections that were made in the interests of an increasing accuracy were only a defence of what had newly been realised to be vulnerable, a shoring up of a weakened structure. Christian opinion was an erection which could not be demolished, even to be rebuilt. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 166 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Western polemicists even at peak ignorance converged on Islam as an easier religion — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 851; Positive Muslim images are trivial against the dominant Western narrative of Islam — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 36; Received portrayals of Islam resist correction and reabsorb facts into a fixed framework (+10 more)

Related

• The Western view of Islam was fixed by 1350 and persists today (similarity 0.89)
• Christian polemists preferred their own readings over traditional Islamic interpretation (similarity 0.85)
• Representations of Islam ignored Muslim self-understanding and resisted factual correction (similarity 0.84)
• The West defined itself as the mirror opposite of the Muslim world. (similarity 0.83)
• The West’s polemical image of Islam was self-serving rather than descriptive (similarity 0.83)
• Essentialized views of Islam make any Islamic reform a betrayal of the essence (similarity 0.83)
• Christians misread Islamic ritual by assuming it mirrored their own (similarity 0.83)
• Long-running Christian polemics congealed into one fixed hostile portrait of Muhammad (similarity 0.83)
• Medieval Christians understood Islam only as a distorted copy of Christianity (similarity 0.82)
• People chose distorted versions of Islam even when accurate information was at hand (similarity 0.82)
• The Western canon on Islam outlived religious unity and the Reformation itself. (similarity 0.82)
• Vituperative anti-Islamic polemic persisted into the 1780s and 1790s. (similarity 0.82)
• Western scholarship on Islam grew from positions of colonial dominance. (similarity 0.82)
• A coherent internal image of Islam survived because it was internally consistent (similarity 0.81)
• The Western canon of Islam was fixed by 1350 and endured for centuries. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• People chose distorted versions of Islam even when accurate information was at hand #corroborates (0.92)
• Received portrayals of Islam resist correction and reabsorb facts into a fixed framework #corroborates (0.90)
• Representations of Islam ignored Muslim self-understanding and resisted factual correction #corroborates (0.90) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 166
• Medieval polemicists answered Islam with slander rather than substantive refutation. #exemplifies (0.85) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 794
• Western polemicists even at peak ignorance converged on Islam as an easier religion #corroborates (0.82) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 851
• The Western view of Islam was fixed by 1350 and persists today #corroborates (0.78)
• Closer contact with Islam quickly dispelled the idolatry image #contradicts (0.78)
• Islamophobia should be analyzed as power-relations rather than as error about Islam. #expands (0.78) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 828
• Positive Muslim images are trivial against the dominant Western narrative of Islam #complicates (0.75) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 36
• The US needed Islam as a foil to define itself as Western #expands (0.75) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 154
• Orientalism’s gendered images legitimized Western colonialism of Muslim lands. #expands (0.75) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 28
• Western identity is constructed through contrast with Muslim bodies. #expands (0.72) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 402
• Western scholarship on Islam grew from positions of colonial dominance. #expands (0.72) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 349