Europe’s self-identity depends on constructing Islam as its hostile other

Evidence

Then, to this carrier civilization is attributed an essence: an ingrained hostility to all non-Muslims. That attribution constitutes Islam as Europe’s primary alter. This alleged antagonism to Christians then becomes crucial to the formation of European identity. In this, as in other historical narratives of Europe, this oppositional role gives “Islam” a quasi-civilizational identity. One aspect of the identity of Islamic civilization is that it represents an early attempt to destroy Europe’s civilization from outside; another is that it signifies the corrupting moral environment that Europe must continuously struggle to overcome from within. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 820

Categorization

• XREF: Directly shades the vaulted Cooper argument: how putatively ‘secular’ European identity actually requires a religious/philosophical antagonist to define itself against — a mirror of how secular modernity quietly privileges Christian norms.
• DEEPTHINKING: Asad’s move — fusing the ‘carrier civilization’ narrative with an ‘attributed essence’ of hostility — is a dense two-step construction: Islam is emptied of intrinsic content first, then refilled with a purely relational enmity that does the identity-forming work for Europe.