Religious war imagery about Islam is revived for specific imperial needs

Evidence

Islam was more than just a religion, and more often, in the minds of Orientalists, not a religion. Rather, oldand especially new-guard Orientalists framed it as a competing political system—a totalitarian system made in the mirror image of the West, or what Said labeled the “Occident.” Islam, therefore, was a rival “civilization” mangled by Western hands to facilitate their imperial ambitions and justify the violence they inflicted on masses of Muslims who—far from the shores of Europe—were painted as imminent threats. The imminence was not physical or even geographic, but tied to memory and lucid in the imagination; namely, the memory of those old and original Crusades, always present in the collective psyche of Europe, and later, the United States. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 272 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

A pitiless secularism and monoculture is enforced in the name of modernity and not in the name of capital, invasions, occupations, and the structures of unequal citizenship they sustain. I have shown that if we reject the introduction of ‘sharia’ into the law, for example, it is easy to make the claim that we only do so because we are committed to secularism and not because a marking of Muslims as pre-modern serves the interests of empire. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 400 (#expands, via linked claim)

When Europe, spiritually united under the leadership of the Vatican, began to fracture along national lines, the focus shifted away from the Muslim enemy. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries therefore saw a turn away from polemic toward indifference—until the Ottoman Empire began to advance into Europe in the early sixteenth century, heralding a new threat. This time, however, the enemy was seen as a secular and political threat rather than a religious one. The Ottomans were presented as Europeans of sorts and admired for their many accomplishments; European rulers forged alliances with them against other European rivals. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 95 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Islam was reframed as a rival political civilization to justify imperial violence — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 272; Scientific representation of Islam historically precedes and enables Western military action — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the…, 146; Secularism serves as cover for imperial interest in marking Muslims pre-modern — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 400 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Islam was reframed as a rival political civilization to justify imperial violence #corroborates (0.90) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 272
• Secularism serves as cover for imperial interest in marking Muslims pre-modern #expands (0.80) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 400
• The image of Muslims shifted with military threat, not with religion per se #expands (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 95
• Scientific representation of Islam historically precedes and enables Western military action #corroborates (0.78) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 146
• Manifest Destiny persists as a living imperial ideology applied against Muslim populations #expands (0.78) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 228
• The Islam-is-violent frame deflects attention from empire’s violence #corroborates (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 345
• The War on Terror functions as an imperial project spreading Islamophobia globally #expands (0.75) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 43
• Even antiwar critics defaulted to Islamic imagery for violence and unreason #expands (0.72) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 266