Gibb roots Muslim anti-rationalism in an alleged inherent Arab trait.

Evidence

It is this, too, which explains—what is so difficult for the Western student to grasp [until it is explained to him by the Orientalist]—the aversion of the Muslims from the thought-processes of rationalism.… The rejection of rationalist modes of thought and of the utilitarian ethic which is inseparable from them has its roots, therefore, not in the so-called “obscurantism” of the Muslim theologians but in the atomism and discreteness of the Arab imagination. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 297

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘atomism and discreteness’ of the Arab imagination is the psychological-essentialist move that later Islamophobia literature inverts and contests.
• QUESTION: Worth tracing how ‘atomism’ as an Orientalist trope echoes down into contemporary claims that ‘Islam’ structurally resists modernity.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 297