European literature encoded Muslims as satanic, fanatical, and antithetical to progress

Evidence

European literature also played an important role in Orientalism by depicting a corrupt, religiously zealous, exotic, and licentious Muslim world. John Milton’s Paradise Lost, published in 1741, for example, described Satan as an Ottoman sultan, and fallen angels were depicted as Muslim warriors. Voltaire’s play Fanaticism used the Prophet Muhammad and Islam as the representation of fanaticism and intolerance. … Said’s work demonstrates how European Orientalism portrayed Muslims as “fatalistic children tyrannized by their mind-set, their ‘ulama, and their wild-eyed political leaders into resisting the West and progress.” Deemed antithetical to the Enlightenment, Islam embodied the inferiority of the so-called Orient. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 494

Categorization

• CANDY: Paradise Lost describing Satan as an Ottoman sultan and fallen angels as Muslim warriors is a vivid, shareable tidbit.
• QUESTION: Milton’s Paradise Lost is dated here as 1741, which is actually the year of a later edition — worth double-checking the publication chronology.
• XREF: connects to: The Eurabia conspiracy theory about Muslim demographic domination has circulated widely through bestselling authors — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion: Race,…, 50