Huntington repackaged Orientalist binaries into a new lexicon of civilizational clash.

Evidence

Huntington’s reductionist position enabled the attendant ideas, discourses, and propaganda that Muslims were backward, warmongering, and inclined toward terrorism. This flat characterization of Islam allowed the United States, and the broader “Western civilization” it which it belongs, to continue to uphold itself as the bastion of modernity, progress, and liberalism. Revitalizing the principal Orientalist binary of “us versus them” and “they are everything we are not,” Huntington echoes, “Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are.” Huntington appropriated the basic theoretical tenets of Orientalism, dressing them with new phrases like “bloody borders,” “civilizational clashes,” and “Islamic extremists” to explain the Middle East and the world as he saw it. — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 229

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 229
• XREF: connects to: Huntington defines non-Western peoples in religious rather than national terms — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 226; The Middle East itself is a product of Orientalist construction. — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 161; The clash of civilizations theory rearticulated the Orientalist binary of Islam versus the West. — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 217 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Huntington popularized a clash-of-civilizations thesis built on Lewis’s earlier Orientalist work. #expands (0.85) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 234
• Huntington’s othering logic scripted the War on Terror. #expands (0.75)
• Clash-of-civilizations rhetoric ideologically legitimized both foreign wars and domestic attacks #expands (0.70) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 421
• The clash-of-civilizations paradigm serves to prolong dominance #expands (0.70) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 233
• Orientalism supplied the pre-existing tropes that the War on Terror redeployed against Muslims #corroborates (0.70)
• The War on Terror was ideologically framed as a civilizational clash #expands (0.70)
• Emphasizing essential cultural difference feeds the clash-of-civilizations frame #expands (0.60) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 256
• The War on Terror weaponizes an invented Orientalist past to victimize Muslims today #expands (0.60)
• Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge #exemplifies (0.40) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89