The Muslim monster trope persists through coded Orientalist imagery in popular culture.

Evidence

In Return of the Jedi, Jabba the Hutt keeps a harem of dancers, including the captive Princess Leia, who is chained like an animal. In 2013, members of Austria’s Turkish community were angered by the Orientalist undertones in the Lego Jabba the Hut play set, which include a model of Hutt’s fortress that bears a strong resemblance to the Hagia Sophia. These are hardly the only examples of Orientalist imagery in the Star Wars franchise, but they serve as evidence of the power of the aesthetic, and the many places in which it shows itself. However, the more important point for the purposes of this study is that these films employ Orientalist imagery and present characters that reflect the meta-narrative about Muslims as dangerous, villainous, and in many cases, monstrous. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 611

Categorization

• XREF: Jabba the Hutt as an Orientalist monster container connects to the reader’s own thesis about the manufactured ‘Muslim monster’ — Jabba is a classic case of image-without-object: a creature in a galaxy far away carrying the trope.
• SHARE: The Lego Jabba play set resembling the Hagia Sophia is exactly the kind of specific, nerdy detail a friend studying architecture or Ottoman history would appreciate.