Muslim monsters are repositories of Western desires as much as fears

Evidence

Male Muslim monsters are typically hyper-masculine—aggressive, overly sexual, and violent—characters that also function as tableaux of desire and fantasy. Descriptions of Oriental landscapes utilize a gendered vocabulary in which the land is romanced, conquered, and penetrated, like the symbolic “unveiling” of Muslim women, an act that has been linked to the rape fantasies of colonizing men. The bulk of studies on desiring the Muslim Other are focused on the male gaze and its fixation on Oriental females, harems, veils, and the like. However, other Muslim characters, including the monsters examined here, are also repositories of Western desires and fantasies. These fantasies range from the bestiality associated with medieval monsters like the cynocephalus to the homoeroticism and necrophilia evident in Gothic characters like Vathek and Dracula. In the modern age, the desire for Muslim boys and men is evident in studies of gay tourism, when Western men “travel to Arab countries to fulfill their desires for Arabs.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 51

Fantasies of both the Orient and Oriental tend to be strongly sensualized, situated in medieval ideas about the East and typified in portrayals of Muslim monsters. Male Muslim monsters are typically hyper-masculine—aggressive, overly sexual, and violent—characters that also function as tableaux of desire and fantasy. Descriptions of Oriental landscapes utilize a gendered vocabulary in which the land is romanced, conquered, and penetrated, like the symbolic “unveiling” of Muslim women, an act that has been linked to the rape fantasies of colonizing men. The bulk of studies on desiring the Muslim Other are focused on the male gaze and its fixation on Oriental females, harems, veils, and the like. However, other Muslim characters, including the monsters examined here, are also repositories of Western desires and fantasies. These fantasies range from the bestiality associated with medieval monsters like the cynocephalus to the homoeroticism and necrophilia evident in Gothic characters like Vathek and Dracula. In the modern age, the desire for Muslim boys and men is evident in studies of gay tourism, when Western men “travel to Arab countries to fulfill their desires for Arabs.” Tunisia and other “Eastern” locales are popular with expats and tourists seeking “Eastern pleasures,” illustrating the continuing power of these fantasies in the Western imagination. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 51

Categorization

• XREF: This directly extends the reader’s guiding question about what the monster lets its makers avoid seeing about themselves — the monster as desire projection, not just fear projection.
• SEED: The ‘other as desire, not just fear’ framing could anchor an essay on how demonization and eroticization of Muslim figures are two sides of the same projective coin.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ in that both show Western projection onto Orientalized bodies — desire and moral panic as twin operations on the same fantasy object.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 51