Arabs were denied the noble-savage innocence granted to Pacific islanders

Evidence

The fantasies generated about South Pacific islands situated in Romantic ideals like the uncorrupted man—the noble savage—emerged out of environmental determinism. In colonial accounts of Otahiete (Tahiti), beautiful men and women frolic in turquoise lagoons, greet foreigners with garlands of flowers, and have large sex orgies in public. The desire for Tahitian women resulted in the growing value of nails from European ships as an important commodity traded for sexual favors. In contrast to the numerous depictions of Polynesians as perfect, unspoiled humans, Arabs were seldom represented as noble savages. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 374

Categorization

• XREF: The asymmetry between Polynesian ‘noble savages’ and Arab ‘monsters’ is exactly the projection mechanism the reader is tracking - the same West that romanticizes one exotic body demonizes the other.
• CANDY: European ships’ nails traded for Tahitian sexual favors is a marvelously strange bit of colonial trivia.
• QUESTION: What made environmental determinism produce a flattering savage for Polynesia but not Arabia? Geography theory seems to have cut both ways.