Fictional violence against Muslim monsters sanctions real violence against Muslim bodies

Evidence

When we consider Muslim monsters as a corpus—a genealogy of images that are related, at times closely, and at times through several degrees of separation—it is evident that they contribute to the ways in which Muslims are conceptualized today—as interruptions that disturb normative humanity, civilization, and modernity. … The pejorative statements made about Muslims in the public sphere are largely tolerated—a tolerance that is unthinkable for other communities. The dehumanization that occurs at the level of speech is carried further in fire bombings of mosques, verbal and physical attacks on muhajabat (Muslim women who veil), and other hate crimes. When unrestrained violence against Muslims is promoted and sanctioned by governments, as documented in cases of abuse and homicide at Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Base, and Guantánamo Bay (GTMO), it makes more public abuses acceptable. The opposite is also true. Herein lies the central concern of these pages—that the imaginary violence perpetrated by Muslim monsters, as well as the figurative harm inflicted on these villainous characters, affects real Muslim bodies. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 26

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s overarching thesis about manufactured monsters as projection containers; also links to the harm-of-representation arguments familiar from Said’s Orientalism.
• SEED: Could be the essay’s culmination argument: tracing the genealogy from medieval monster to Guantánamo torture as one continuous imaginary-permitting-violence thread.