Orientalists fabricated a transhistoric Islamic terrorism narrative from cherry-picked cases

Evidence

Lewis argued at the conference that the term “Islamic terrorism” was apt because “Islam is a political religion” and Mohammad, in contrast to other religious leaders, had “founded a state and governed it.” Lewis explained that it was “inevitable that when the Islamic world confronts the problem of terrorism, that problem, too, assumes a religious, indeed in a sense an Islamic, aspect.” Elie Kedourie began his speech by stating that there is “a prevalent—and justifiable—impression that an appreciable part of terrorist activities today originate, and frequently take place, in the world of Islam, and particularly in its Arab portion.” He then cherry-picked historical examples from various Muslim kingdoms, starting with the assassination of Ali, going on to the Assassins of the tenth century, and up to Khomeini’s Iran, which “exemplifies the idea of a ‘terrorist state,’” to knit together a narrative of transhistoric “Islamic terrorism.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 456

Categorization

• XREF: Serves the reader’s closing-gap question: this shows the enemy label bending to meet whoever threatens the imperial order — the label is positional, not referential. — connects to: Muslim ‘native informants’ authenticate the frame of an inherently violent Islam — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 348; Orientalist scholars supplied the transhistorical ‘Islamic terrorism’ narrative at the 1984 conference — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 444
• SEED: Angle: how a ‘justifiable impression’ asserted at a conference becomes ‘fact’ — the manufacture of permission to racialize.