Ottoman advances drove European study of Islam through fear

Evidence

Postel found much to admire in both Ottoman and Arabic culture, but his study of Islam was essentially driven by fear. Until late in the seventeenth century, Ottoman Turkish advances in the Balkans seemed to threaten the very survival of Christendom. He fearfully perceived that Islam already prevailed in ten twelfths of the known world. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 130

Categorization

• XREF: Precisely corroborates the corrective point already made: fear of the East, not a confident imperial gaze, fuelled early Arabic scholarship — a direct complication of Said’s Orientalism.

Related

• European study of Islam originated in fear, not curiosity. (similarity 0.85)
• European study of Islam originates in fear, not curiosity, and that hostility persists today. (similarity 0.85)
• Ottoman decline opened non-hostile European study of Islam (similarity 0.84)
• Western study of Islamic texts long ignored living Muslims and their culture (similarity 0.84)
• Europe’s historical fear of Islam derived from its military expansion reaching multiple continents (similarity 0.83)
• Even sympathetic European scholarship ignored Islam’s living devotional spirituality (similarity 0.82)
• The fear of Islam intensified amid Ottoman decline and colonial expansion (similarity 0.82)
• Seventeenth-century Europeans did not yet dream of dominating the Muslim East (similarity 0.81)
• Islam’s proximity to Christianity’s heartland produced a uniquely intense European anxiety (similarity 0.80)
• Imperial knowledge about Islam was colored by administrative anxieties and Christian concerns (similarity 0.80)
• European scholarship on Islam turned disinterested only once Islam ceased threatening Europe. (similarity 0.80)
• No era since the Middle Ages has discussed Islam outside prejudice and politics (similarity 0.80)
• The Ottoman advance west redirected European expansion and split East from West. (similarity 0.80)
• Eighteenth-century Europeans ranked Islam as a civilization on par with Christendom (similarity 0.80)
• British views of Ottomans mixed fear and awe without colonial designs (similarity 0.80)