Muslim males in Gothic horror are framed as essentially evil, deviant, and child-murdering

Evidence

Dark-skinned Muslims found in medieval psalters, paintings, poetry, and romances are not always monstrous, but their blackness indicates that they are evil. In an image from fourteenth-century France depicting a battle, the Muslim soldiers wear turbans and have dark eyes, but perhaps what is most interesting is the face on their shields—an African man. This is but one indication of how Muslims were related not just to Jews, but also to Africans. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 201 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In medieval texts, female Muslim monsters typically appear as black, blue, or purple-skinned giants, equally as frightening as their male counterparts. These characters exemplify the “hybridization of misogyny and racism through a triple confluence of representations: the wild woman, personified vice, and ‘death itself, la mort, feminized through grammatical gender.’ ” In contrast to later female Muslim characters, most of whom are desirable, most medieval monsters have zero sex appeal. Amiete, a Saracen giantess that appears in Fierbras, with her huge mouth and wide hips, is sexually monstrous but not “sexy”: Ce est une gaiande plus noire que peuree; Grant ot la fourceure et le quele avoit lee Les ex avoit plus rouges que n’est flambé alumee; Flohart, another Saracen giantess found in Aliscans, is even more terrifying. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 189 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Film transformed a gentlemanly captivity into a Muslim-monster fantasy; The authentic Muslim monsters in early cinema are grotesque, subhuman figures.; The Muslim terrorist is cast as a neo-dead psychic vampire draining vitality (+13 more)

Related

• Muslim monsters are marked by toxic hyper-masculinity or sexually toxic femininity. (similarity 0.88)
• Medieval female Muslim monsters fused misogyny and racism (similarity 0.88)
• The dark-skinned Muslim monster persisted from medieval iconography into American imaginations (similarity 0.87)
• Medieval Muslim-monster imagery persists today through Gothic horror and Orientalism (similarity 0.85)
• Gothic Muslim villains transferred feminine evil onto their female victims (similarity 0.85)
• Gothic Muslim monsters are sexualized figures carrying displaced Western anxieties (similarity 0.85)
• Blackness itself, not monstrosity, signified Muslim evil in medieval imagery (similarity 0.84)
• Gothic Muslim monsters are imagined as uncontrollably sexual and perverse. (similarity 0.84)
• Muslim monsters were depicted as cannibals who ate their enemies. (similarity 0.84)
• Muslim monsters are repositories of Western desires as much as fears (similarity 0.83)
• The Muslim female’s imagined allure helped shape the Arab male villain (similarity 0.83)
• Gothic Muslim monsters distinguish themselves by crossing borders into Christian Europe (similarity 0.83)
• Hell’s paintings filled with Jewish, Muslim, and African monsters torturing humans. (similarity 0.83)
• Dark-skinned Muslim monsters encode Western anxieties about Africans and Muslims together (similarity 0.83)
• Gothic horror expanded Romantic vilification of Muslims into monstrousness as an anti-Enlightenment reaction. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Orientalist monsters shifted from animal hybrids to demonized Muslim men #expands (0.90)
• Blackness itself, not monstrosity, signified Muslim evil in medieval imagery #corroborates (0.85) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 201
• Medieval female Muslim monsters fused misogyny and racism #qualifies (0.75) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 189
• Church persecution as doctrine caused the emergence of Muslim monsters #expands (0.70)
• Ottoman proximity shifted Muslim-monster stories toward miscegenation fear #complicates (0.65)