Scientific representation of Islam historically precedes and enables Western military action

Evidence

That is one point. The other distinguishes a historical pattern in what would otherwise be an undifferentiated characterization of Orientalism. Whenever in modern times an acutely political tension has been felt between the Occident and its Orient (or between the West and its Islam), there has been a tendency in the West to resort not to direct violence but first to the cool, relatively detached instruments of scientific, quasi-objective representation. In this way “Islam” is made more clear, the “true nature” of its threat appears, an implicit course of action against it is proposed. In such a context both science and direct violence come to be viewed by many Muslims, living in widely varied circumstances, as forms of aggression against Islam. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 146

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Religious war imagery about Islam is revived for specific imperial needs

Related

• Religious war imagery about Islam is revived for specific imperial needs (similarity 0.84)
• Western ideological camps all reduce Islam to a scapegoat (similarity 0.83)
• Even antiwar critics defaulted to Islamic imagery for violence and unreason (similarity 0.83)
• Europe’s image of Islam tracked its political and military needs, not theology (similarity 0.82)
• Islam was reframed as a rival political civilization to justify imperial violence (similarity 0.82)
• Political frustration drives orientalists to produce reductive intellectual claims about Islam (similarity 0.82)
• Islamophobia is rooted in centuries of religion-politics-warfare conflict (similarity 0.81)
• Western discourse reduces all Muslim societies to a single malevolent essence (similarity 0.81)
• Interrogating Western-ness is required to expunge Islamophobia (similarity 0.81)
• Western hostility to Islam shifted from theological to political rationales across the centuries (similarity 0.80)
• Westerners encounter Islam only through pre-framed political and media channels. (similarity 0.80)
• Islamization flowed from the cultural realm into social and political spheres. (similarity 0.80)
• The reified notion of Islam has hindered rather than helped understanding of Muslim societies (similarity 0.80)
• Muslim-world upheavals are driven by social and economic factors, not by Islam (similarity 0.80)
• Islamophobia functions as a more potent global weapon than military force (similarity 0.80)