American Orientalism fused European notions of Islam’s alienness with new Arab stereotypes
Evidence
The second strand of the genealogy of Islam-as-race is a particular brand of Orientalism that developed in the United States in early twentieth century. American Orientalism is based on Edward Said’s seminal work on Europe’s relationship with the Middle East, Orientalism, and then on later works like Covering Islam and Culture and Imperialism which cover the United States’ encounter with that part of the world in the twentieth century. As it pertains to Islam-as-race, American Orientalism builds on the European historical episteme of Islam’s alienness and couples it with its own significant political and cultural production of Islam and Arabs as stereotypes of backward, lascivious, venal others. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 204
Categorization
- XREF: Sets up the second thread of her Islam-as-race genealogy (following the medieval-European one); relevant to tracking how her argument is structured versus Aziz’s historical account. — connects to: American Orientalism couples inherited European alienness claims with produced Arab stereotypes. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 204; Five orientalist perceptions of Arabs shaped distinct Racial Muslim categories; American Islamophobia inherited European tropes but without Europe’s deep historical memory — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 836 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- American Orientalism couples inherited European alienness claims with produced Arab stereotypes.
#expands(0.97) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 204 - Orientalist and anti-Black racial tropes of Islam merged in the 1920s
#corroborates(0.82) - American Islamophobia inherited European tropes but without Europe’s deep historical memory
#qualifies(0.80) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 836 - Western Orientalism is best studied as the Anglo-French-American encounter with Islam and Arabs
#expands(0.79) - Five orientalist perceptions of Arabs shaped distinct Racial Muslim categories
#expands(0.78) - Orientalism presents Arabs as static types rather than historical agents
#expands(0.78) - Western orientalism shifted its archetypal Muslim from Saracen to Turk to Arab across eras
#expands(0.75) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 99 - American imperialism, Orientalism, coercive assimilation, and White supremacy jointly produce racialized Muslim categories
#expands(0.74) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 80 - Orientalism operates like the creation of Blackness as projected white-American fear
#expands(0.73) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 217 - Islamophobia descends directly from Orientalism’s civilizational divide between Islam and the West
#corroborates(0.72) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 151