Gothic literature framed Muslim characters as damned for sexual and violent sins

Evidence

Another way in which people experienced the Orient was through literature, exemplified in Bram Stoker’s adoption of a travel diary as a narrative device in Dracula. Stories were often set in an Oriental locale (also the case with Dracula, set in former Ottoman territory), exotic lands fraught with dangers, as in Beckford’s Vathek, whose central character is a Muslim ultimately damned for his numerous sins, including homosexuality and mass murder of a group of naked young boys. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 422

Categorization

• XREF: Dracula and Vathek as specific textual instances of the Muslim-monster archetype — enters the reader’s catalogue of fear-without-object evidence.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: why did the travel diary become the preferred narrative frame for oriental horror — is the ‘witness’ device part of manufacturing authenticity for the fantasy?