Mispronouncing the enemy religion’s name is an act of ideological control

Evidence

“Mohammedan” is the relevant (and insulting) European designation; “Islam,” which happens to be the correct Muslim name, is relegated to another entry. The “heresy … which we call Mohammedan” is “caught” as the imitation of a Christian imitation of true religion. Then, in the long historical account of Mohammed’s life, d’Herbelot can turn to more or less straight narrative. But it is the placing of Mohammed that counts in the Bibliothèque. The dangers of free-wheeling heresy are removed when it is transformed into ideologically explicit matter for an alphabetical item. Mohammed no longer roams the Eastern world as a threatening, immoral debauchee; he sits quietly on his (admittedly prominent) portion of the Orientalist stage. He is given a genealogy, an explanation, even a development, all of which are subsumed under the simple statements that prevent him from straying elsewhere. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 178

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates how the choice of designation (‘Mohammedan’ vs ‘Islam’) is itself an Orientalizing act, a mechanism the Islamophobia field will need.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier notes on how naming and categorization discipline the Other; also echoes Foucault’s idea that taxonomy is control. — connects to: Horkheimer traced fascist language corruption back through Jewish religious prohibitions against naming God — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 701; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”
• SEED: Angle: how modern media’s misnaming of Muslim practices and figures (with deliberate mistranslations) repeats d’Herbelot’s ‘Mohammedan’ gesture.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 178