Anti-Muslim racism has no unbroken historical continuity from medieval to modern forms

Evidence

One of the arguments I make, which is supported by this claim, is that medieval notions of alterity continue to impact the ways in which the West thinks about Islam and her followers. Nickolas Haydock calls this the Saracen doxology: “The medieval portrait of the Saracen in general and of Mohammed in particular survives humanism, continues largely unabated through the Enlightenment, gains renewed and altered vigor during the nineteenth-century revival of chivalry and medievalism, and continues to surface unabashedly across Western culture today.” The Middle Ages is the era in which anti-Muslim rhetoric is founded, later to be resurrected by the Gothic movement and sustained and legitimized by Orientalism. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 76 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Eternalisation therefore must finally destroy the suggestion that history’s power be repudiated. Contemporary Islamophobia therefore cannot be new and unique to the current or recent setting because history and the eternalised nature of its stories, myths and narratives continue to substantiate and shape contemporary meaning about Muslims and Islam. This is not to suggest that both are identical, but instead to suggest that whilst today’s is relevant and valid for the here and now, so this has been and indeed continues to be, indeterminably shaped, influenced and informed by those eternalised, naturalised and ultimately reified meanings to have gone before. — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 888 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Modern racism against Muslims required European military supremacy over Muslim empires — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 82; Anti-Muslim racism is not continuous from the Inquisition to Abu Ghraib — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 92; Seventeenth-century England did not yet racialize Muslims in official documents — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 140 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• European anti-Muslim polemic images persisted virtually unchanged from medieval to modern eras #contradicts (0.92)
• Medieval anti-Muslim rhetoric survives unchanged through the Enlightenment and into today #contradicts (0.92) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 76
• Today’s Islamophobia is continuous with, not unique from, historical precedent #contradicts (0.90) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 888
• Anti-Muslim hostility is older than race as a modern category #qualifies (0.78)
• Anti-Muslim racism emerged from Old World-New World contact #qualifies (0.75) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 104