Islam’s proximity to Christianity’s heartland produced a uniquely intense European anxiety

Evidence

Doubtless Islam was a real provocation in many ways. It lay uneasily close to Christianity, geographically and culturally. It drew on the Judeo-Hellenic traditions, it borrowed creatively from Christianity, it could boast of unrivaled military and political successes. Nor was this all. The Islamic lands sit adjacent to and even on top of the Biblical lands; moreover, the heart of the Islamic domain has always been the region closest to Europe, what has been called the Near Orient or Near East. Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic languages, and together they dispose and redispose of material that is urgently important to Christianity. From the end of the seventh century until the battle of Lepanto in 1571, Islam in either its Arab, Ottoman, or North African and Spanish form dominated or effectively threatened European Christianity. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 194

Categorization

• XREF: Explains the structural ‘why’ behind Islamophobia’s intensity versus other Orientalist targets — the threat is proximate, familial, and rivalrous rather than distant.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 194