Muslim extremists themselves, not Western polemicists, drove the negative image.

Evidence

This false and libelous picture of one of the great religions of the world and of the rich and original civilization that grew up under its aegis is a major tragedy of our time. The wide dissemination of this picture is due not to anti- Muslim polemicists or dissident Muslims, whose impact on world opinion would have been minimal, but to the self-appointed spokesman of Islamic purity. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1691

Categorization

• XREF: Lewis here inverts a core Orientalist-claim: the damaging representation originates from Muslims, not Western producers — a claim that complicates Said’s framework of Western knowledge production as the driver.
• QUESTION: To what extent does this causal claim about Muslim rather than Western authorship of the image hold up, and does it underestimate prior Western framing that gave these spokesmen their platform?