Barbary pirates were recast as monsters linking Islam to anti-African hatred

Evidence

After the age of exploration, US settlers introduced a new category of Muslim monsters that came from the Barbary Coast, a re-emergence of the Black Saracen in new clothes, described as the “monsters of Africa.” The Barbary monsters became stock characters in political discourse, adventure fiction, board games, and later, cinema, helping to establish Islam as a foreign religion that was initially connected to hatred against Africans and, later, African-Americans. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 33

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader thesis on how the Muslim monster image was manufactured in the Western imagination before real contact; this is a post-exploration re-installation of an older archetype (Black Saracen).
• SEED: The ‘monsters of Africa’ as a bridge from medieval Black Saracen to the later racialization that conflates Islam and Blackness — an essay angle on how anti-Black racism and Islamophobia co-evolved in American discourse.