Medieval anti-Islamic polemic survives unchanged in contemporary writing about Arabs

Evidence

Books and articles are regularly published on Islam and the Arabs that represent absolutely no change over the virulent anti-Islamic polemics of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. For no other ethnic or religious group is it true that virtually anything can be written or said about it, without challenge or demurral. The 1975 course guide put out by the Columbia College undergraduates said about the Arabic course that every other word in the language had to do with violence, and that the Arab mind as “reflected” in the language was unremittingly bombastic. A recent article by Emmett Tyrrell in Harper’s magazine was even more slanderous and racist, arguing that Arabs are basically murderers and that violence and deceit are carried in the Arab genes. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 730

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s Islamophobia scaffold — this is the contemporary endpoint of the Orientalist tradition whose earlier development the book traces.
• SEED: The claim that ‘no other ethnic or religious group’ permits unchecked slander invites a comparative essay on which groups receive similar discursive license and why.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 730