Historical memory of the Crusades drives Europeans’ anti-Muslim votes and stares

Evidence

By this point, however, Muslims were no longer one enemy among many; the other pagan raiders (such as the Normans and Magyars) that had relentlessly invaded Christian Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries had been converted and integrated. The only enemy that remained was the Muslims. This is not to suggest, however, that Europe was united and at peace. Rather, Islam became a convenient “other” to mobilize support for the territorial ambitions of various rulers. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 60 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

This myth has a long history. As we saw in chapter 1, its origins go back to the eleventh century and the start of the Crusades. One contemporary echo can be found in a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. This cartoon featured the Prophet with a bomb on his turban, implying that Islam came into being with violence at its core. Muslims around the world protested angrily, but thanks to the actions of a small number of Islamists, the protests were interpreted in the West not as legitimate offense against an ancient slur but as a dogmatic response to the publishing of an image of the Prophet. Liberal columnists endorsed this position, defending the cartoonists on the grounds of free speech, and many US newspapers carried the cartoon on the same grounds, without recognizing or acknowledging that the cartoon itself endorsed the myth of an inherently violent Islam. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 193 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: The Crusades were tied to enduring European xenophobia rooted in Greek thought; Unconscious anti-Arab bias kept a European open only to a fellow non-Arab’s call — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 546; Medieval theological justification for opposing Muslims has faded in Europe. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 88 (+13 more)

Related

• The Crusades were tied to enduring European xenophobia rooted in Greek thought (similarity 0.91)
• The violence-of-Islam myth traces to the Crusades and shapes coverage of the Danish cartoons. (similarity 0.85)
• European Islamophobia frames Muslim migration as soldiers in a renewed crusade. (similarity 0.84)
• The Crusades were less coherent religious triumph than convenient enemy-making (similarity 0.83)
• Direct exposure during the Crusades did not reduce anti-Muslim mythmaking (similarity 0.82)
• Many historians trace the structural distortions of Islam represented by modern Islamophobia to medieval Europe, and aversive portrayals emerged nearly as early as Islam itself. (similarity 0.82)
• Islam became the convenient enemy to mobilize Europe’s territorial ambitions (similarity 0.81)
• Crusades imagery actively shapes European Islamophobia more powerfully than in America (similarity 0.80)
• European travelogues about the Middle East resembled Crusade-era mythic returns (similarity 0.80)
• Majorities in Western countries blamed Muslims for the cartoon conflict. (similarity 0.79)
• European hostility toward Muslims exceeds even hostility toward other immigrants (similarity 0.79)
• Islam served as Europe’s constitutive outsider against which its civilization defined itself (similarity 0.79)
• The Crusades as holy triumph is a myth masking internal massacres (similarity 0.78)
• The Crusades introduced the figure of Muhammad as the anti-Christ into European thought (similarity 0.78)
• Medieval theological justification for opposing Muslims has faded in Europe. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Holocaust commemoration in Europe has intensified anti-Muslim prejudice #corroborates (0.50)
• Islam became the convenient enemy to mobilize Europe’s territorial ambitions #corroborates (0.50) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 60
• The violence-of-Islam myth traces to the Crusades and shapes coverage of the Danish cartoons. #expands (0.45) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 193
• Western hostility to Islam shifted from theological to political rationales across the centuries #expands (0.40) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 106
• The Crusades used religion to mask social and economic conflicts #complicates (0.35) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 61