The colonized were cast as both evil and childlike to justify western intervention

Evidence

From the beginning, Orientalism has been committed to political projects that require the dehumanization of Muslims, especially Muslim men, who have been “linked to elements in Western society (delinquents, the insane, women, the poor) sharing an identity best described as lamentably alien.” In addition to alienating Muslims from the human community, these mythologies have helped to validate numerous colonial and imperial adventures. Orientalist fantasies continue to sustain a vision that insists upon Western supremacy and everyone else’s inferiority—a useful paradigm in a neocolonial world. The same delusions have contributed to the ideological alienation of Muslims from normativity, leading to the ways in which Muslims are seen today, as characters in a story the West has created about itself. The Orient, like the Western-created category called mysticism, which is often employed to describe “good Muslims” (i.e., Sufis and secularists), is a concept both “uncompromisingly Western and Christian.” Both the Orient and the Muslim exist in the mind of the West, bearing little semblance to reality. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 44 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial powers impose a double moral standard demanding restraint only from the colonized; Colonial powers justified intervention by portraying colonized subjects as incapable of self-understanding — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 694; Colonized peoples must fight cleanly by double standards while colonizers freely use terror — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 65 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial government normalized its intervention by first describing the colonized population’s character as defective #corroborates (0.92)
• The Western image of Muslims dehumanizes them to enable colonial rule #exemplifies (0.90) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 44
• Europeans project their repressed evil onto the racialized Other #exemplifies (0.88)
• Colonial powers impose a double moral standard demanding restraint only from the colonized #expands (0.85)
• Colonial powers justified intervention by portraying colonized subjects as incapable of self-understanding #expands (0.82) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 694
• Colonizers constructed elaborate ideological justifications rather than confronting their seizure as banditry #qualifies (0.82) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 666
• Colonial officials caricature the colonized even as they depend on individuals among them #corroborates (0.80) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1391
• Colonial rule systematically instills an inferiority complex in the colonized #expands (0.80) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 59
• Colonized peoples must fight cleanly by double standards while colonizers freely use terror #expands (0.78) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 65