Enlightenment-era American statesmen framed Islam as implacably hostile to all Christendom.

Evidence

Many authors portrayed Muslims as more dangerous than just misled Christians: Islam and Christianity had locked into (im)mortal combat. When John Dickinson, delegate to both the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention, described the advancement of nations, he (mistakenly) noted that the Portuguese arrival in India disrupted the advent of Muslim power. This proved providential since “there [is] the least reason to question, that they would have strenuously employed the increase of wealth and power in their favourite design of reducing all Christendom to the same miserable slavery, with which by their oppressive superstition, so many celebrated parts of it, including the Birthplace of its religion, have already been overwhelmed.” — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 160

Categorization

• XREF: Shows how early American political founders inherited the ‘mortal combat’ frame — useful against the claim that Islamophobia is a purely modern, post-9/11 phenomenon. — connects to: American founders framed Muslim power as a mortal threat to Christendom — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear:…, 100