American agents believed Muslim character is readable from civilizational texts

Evidence

Although they knew little about the local people and made less time to get to know them, these two American agents “believed that they could determine how Muslims think and behave. [That] their essential character could be understood from the texts of their civilization” and modern faux theories. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 141

Categorization

• QUESTION: Whose line is Beydoun quoting here about reading essential character from texts of civilization? Worth tracing the source.