Romantic orientalism and security panic both derive from the same colonial imagination
Evidence
In British writings on the Wahhabis from the late-nineteenth century, orientalist fantasy inspired calls for lenient treatment for the Wahhabis, and identiļ¬cation with anti-colonial protest fuelled greater anxiety about the threat posed to imperial security. The construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of the Phantom Wahhabi in the second half of the nineteenth century highlight the complex and often unstable interaction between these strands of colonial ideology. ā Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 180
Categorization
- QUESTION: Does the same mechanism operate today, where sympathetic media coverage of a stigmatized group nonetheless intensifies state suspicion? Worth checking against modern security-discourse case studies.