Major European literary works encoded anti-Muslim Orientalist caricatures

Evidence

European literature also played an important role in Orientalism by depicting a corrupt, religiously zealous, exotic, and licentious Muslim world. John Milton’s Paradise Lost, published in 1741, for example, described Satan as an Ottoman sultan, and fallen angels were depicted as Muslim warriors. Voltaire’s play Fanaticism used the Prophet Muhammad and Islam as the representation of fanaticism and intolerance. … Said’s work demonstrates how European Orientalism portrayed Muslims as “fatalistic children tyrannized by their mind-set, their ‘ulama, and their wild-eyed political leaders into resisting the West and progress.” Deemed antithetical to the Enlightenment, Islam embodied the inferiority of the so-called Orient. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 494 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Western anti-Muslim writing from 1400 to 1900 recycled medieval images — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 63; Russian antisemitism and anti-Muslim hostility drew directly on Western European texts — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in…, 548; Elite literary institutions normalized grotesque anti-Muslim propaganda — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and…, 191 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• European literature encoded Muslims as satanic, fanatical, and antithetical to progress #corroborates (0.95) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 494