African Muslims were sexualized and demonized through ape imagery

Evidence

Accounts of African apes and their great sexual organs were attached to the men and women of Africa, who were characterized as being “as libidinous as apes,” related to Satan, and the consorts of witches. Depictions of African Muslims incorporated the same ideas. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 590

Categorization

• XREF: Ties the Muslim monster to the simultaneously-built racial-savagism apparatus; the sexual-monstrosity theme recurs through the book and connects to Western anxiety about projection of lust. — connects to: Visual imagery reduced all black women to icons of deviant sexuality — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 874