Eighteenth-century rationalists recycled medieval Muslim stereotypes

Evidence

Leibniz depicts Muslims as an accumulation of “barbarous Mohammedans, lazy Turks, and lascivious Egyptians.” He also insists that Muslims are fatalistic, a result of Islam’s inability to deal with its foundations—what he refers to as the Fatum Mahometanum. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 363

Categorization

• XREF: Direct evidence that the manufactured medieval image persisted into the Enlightenment — supports the reader’s continuity claim that the monster imagery outlives its original theological context. — connects to: Vituperative anti-Islamic polemic persisted into the 1780s and 1790s.