Nineteenth-century missionary rhetoric predicted a civilization-versus-barbarism framing of Islam

Evidence

In The Mohammedan Missionary Problem, published in 1879, the Presbyterian missionary Henry Jessup depicted Muslims in present-day Lebanon as wild beasts and thirsty for the blood of Christians. Jessup presciently declared that “in the conflict between civilization and barbarism Islam must be the loser.” The same narratives would resonate among Americans in the years following the attacks of September 11, 2001. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 512

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: tracing the ‘civilization vs. barbarism’ frame for Islam from 1879 missionary pamphlets to post-9/11 discourse — showing the trope predates any modern geopolitics.
• XREF: Echoes Huntington’s clash-of-civilizations thesis, and the book’s own argument that anti-Muslim rhetoric cycles back after crises. — connects to: Missionary ‘defence of the faith’ rhetoric paralleled Crusade justifications; Claimed cultural crisis rhetoric drew on a shared vocabulary borrowed from earlier sources — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 533; Late-nineteenth-century Darwinian race science underpinned homo islamicus typologies