The fear of Islam intensified amid Ottoman decline and colonial expansion

Evidence

Sympathetic portrayals of Islam during the Enlightenment may have problematized the medieval narrative, but they did not dislodge it. Islam lived on in the European imagination as a religion rooted in deceit, violence, and misogyny. Even if the theological arguments driving polemical constructions of Islam lost some of their potency by the end of the Enlightenment, they did linger into the modern era. The fear of the Muslim “Other” as an obstacle and threat to European power and hegemony did not fade but rather intensified in the face of Ottoman decline and Europe’s increasing interest in colonial expansion in the nineteenth century. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 166

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Ottomans were seen as a political threat rather than a religious one — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 76; Contemporary anti-Western sentiment and Western Islamophobia both stem from the colonial legacy — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 182; Nineteenth-century Anglo-American observers feared a globally unified Islam centered on the Ottoman caliph — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear:…, 67 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Nineteenth-century Anglo-American observers feared a globally unified Islam centered on the Ottoman caliph #expands (0.75) — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear, 67
• British colonial ideology consolidated the essentialized idea of Islam as a homogeneous threat #expands (0.65)
• Contemporary anti-Western sentiment and Western Islamophobia both stem from the colonial legacy #expands (0.60) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 182
• Islam became the convenient enemy to mobilize Europe’s territorial ambitions #corroborates (0.60) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 60
• Ottomans were seen as a political threat rather than a religious one #contradicts (0.55) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 76
• Elites mobilized Islamophobia to advance their political agendas across centuries #expands (0.55) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 98
• Western hostility to Islam shifted from theological to political rationales across the centuries #expands (0.50) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 106
• Nineteenth-century Orientalism essentialized Muslims as intrinsically inferior during colonial expansion. #corroborates (0.50) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 201