Racial stereotyping of Muslims was absent from early modern English policy documents.

Evidence

I have not been able to discover any period in European or American history since the Middle Ages in which Islam was generally discussed or thought about outside a framework created by passion, prejudice, and political interests. This may not seem a surprising discovery, but included in it is the entire gamut of scholarly and scientific disciplines which, since the early nineteenth century, have either called themselves collectively the discipline of Orientalism or have tried systematically to deal with the Orient. No one would disagree with the statement that early commentators on Islam like Peter the Venerable and Barthélemy d’Herbelot were passionate Christian polemicists in what they said. But it has been an unexamined assumption that since Europe and the West advanced into the modern scientific age and freed themselves of superstition and ignorance, the march must have included Orientalism. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 145 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Seventeenth-century England did not yet racialize Muslims in official documents — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 140; Pre-modern anti-Muslim prejudice laid racial groundwork without full racial ideology; Anti-Muslim racism has no unbroken historical continuity from medieval to modern forms (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• No era since the Middle Ages has discussed Islam outside prejudice and politics #complicates (0.72) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 145