British Islamophobia intensified only when Muslims ceased to be a safely declining power

Evidence

When Europe, spiritually united under the leadership of the Vatican, began to fracture along national lines, the focus shifted away from the Muslim enemy. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries therefore saw a turn away from polemic toward indifference—until the Ottoman Empire began to advance into Europe in the early sixteenth century, heralding a new threat. This time, however, the enemy was seen as a secular and political threat rather than a religious one. The Ottomans were presented as Europeans of sorts and admired for their many accomplishments; European rulers forged alliances with them against other European rivals. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 95 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Sympathetic portrayals of Islam during the Enlightenment may have problematized the medieval narrative, but they did not dislodge it. Islam lived on in the European imagination as a religion rooted in deceit, violence, and misogyny. Even if the theological arguments driving polemical constructions of Islam lost some of their potency by the end of the Enlightenment, they did linger into the modern era. The fear of the Muslim “Other” as an obstacle and threat to European power and hegemony did not fade but rather intensified in the face of Ottoman decline and Europe’s increasing interest in colonial expansion in the nineteenth century. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 166 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Diminished Muslim threat let British observers admire Mughal culture despite Orientalist negative stereotypes. — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear:…, 52; Mughal religious tolerance tempered some British Islamophobia before 1857 — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear:…, 57; British colonial ideology consolidated the essentialized idea of Islam as a homogeneous threat (+2 more)

Related

• The fear of Islam intensified amid Ottoman decline and colonial expansion (similarity 0.92)
• Diminished Muslim threat let British observers admire Mughal culture despite Orientalist negative stereotypes. (similarity 0.86)
• Ottoman decline opened non-hostile European study of Islam (similarity 0.86)
• The image of Muslims shifted with military threat, not with religion per se (similarity 0.86)
• British views of Ottomans mixed fear and awe without colonial designs (similarity 0.85)
• Western attitudes to Islam have shifted across history rather than forming a constant clash. (similarity 0.85)
• Ottomans were seen as a political threat rather than a religious one (similarity 0.83)
• Islamic exoticism differs from other cultures’ by being shadowed by threat (similarity 0.82)
• British colonial ideology consolidated the essentialized idea of Islam as a homogeneous threat (similarity 0.82)
• Western hostility to Islam shifted from theological to political rationales across the centuries (similarity 0.82)
• Stereotyping of Muslims was constrained by England’s inability to challenge the Ottomans (similarity 0.81)
• Europeans once considered the Ottomans ethnically European (similarity 0.81)
• Muslims were constructed as equals only while their empires could not be dominated (similarity 0.81)
• Elites mobilized Islamophobia to advance their political agendas across centuries (similarity 0.81)
• Mughal religious tolerance tempered some British Islamophobia before 1857 (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• The image of Muslims shifted with military threat, not with religion per se #corroborates (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 95
• The fear of Islam intensified amid Ottoman decline and colonial expansion #complicates (0.65) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 166