Muslim monsters change across eras as symbols of particular anxieties

Evidence

The monster is a protean character. “The body that scares and appalls changes over time, as do the individual characteristics that add up to monstrosity, as do the preferred interpretations of monstrosity.” The Muslim monsters of the Middle Ages are not the same creatures featured in post-apocalyptic zombie films, even those that exhibit post-9/11 imagery. For this reason, monsters need to be seen as symbols of particular fears or anxieties. These creatures emerge from a particular milieu: “Monsters must be examined within the intricate matrix of relations (social, cultural, and literary-historical) which generate them. A mixed category, the monster resists any classification built on hierarchy.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 63

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the monster as a protean, historically-contingent symbol emerging from a specific social-cultural matrix rather than a stable type.
• XREF: connects to: Humans deflect death anxiety onto cultural symbols, and defending those symbols produces real-world evil — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory: Implications…, 25; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”