Lewis attributed Muslim brutality to a defect in Islamic religious culture itself.

Evidence

There is something in the religious culture of Islam which inspired, in even the humblest peasant or peddler, a dignity and a courtesy toward others never exceeded and rarely equaled in other civilizations. And yet, in moments of upheaval and disruption, when the deeper passions are stirred, this dignity and courtesy toward others can give way to an explosive mixture of rage and hatred which impels even the government of an ancient and civilized country-even the spokesman of a great spiritual and ethical religion-to espouse kidnapping and assassination, and try to find, in the life of their Prophet, approval and indeed precedent for such actions. (Lewis 1990: 59) Here Lewis’s argument reflects what Kundnani (2012) sees as a movement by scholars and the state to reduce an understanding of terrorism to the concept of radicalization, which is motivated by psychological and theological reasons rather than structural issues such as those caused by war and military intervention. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 29

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘something in the religious culture’ phrasing is a textbook example of racializing Islam by treating its adherents’ violence as an inherent cultural essence — a sharp quotation for an essay on how that rhetorical move enables surveillance.
• XREF: connects to: Zakaria and Lewis framed Islam’s failure through rival racist essentialisms. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 500