Islamists demonized the West because its consumerist temptation threatened tradition

Evidence

But fear of reprisals, though no doubt important, is not the only or perhaps even the principal reason for the relatively minor place assigned to the Soviet Union, as compared with the West, in the demonology of fundamentalism. After all, the great social and intellectual and economic changes that have transformed most of the Islamic world, and given rise to such commonly denounced Western evils as consumerism and secularism, emerged from the West, not from the Soviet Union. No one could accuse the Soviets of consumerism; their materialism is philosophic—to be precise, dialectical—and has little or nothing to do in prac­ tice with providing the good things of life. Such provision represents another kind of materialism, often designated by its opponents as crass. It is associated with the capitalist West and not with the communist East, which has practiced, or at least imposed on its subjects, a degree of austerity that would impress a Sufi saint. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1575

Categorization

• XREF: A key mechanism claim for the Islam-West representation cluster: the enemy is defined by its seductive appeal, not merely its power — relevant to analyses of Orientalism as moral panic over civilizational temptation.