The Muslim terrorist is rendered as a psychic vampire stealing life intimately

Evidence

The most obvious similarity between the vampire and zombie is that both creatures extinguish vitality and introduce a state of zombification, at times through biting their victim, and at other times by attacking the body in another way. We might think of vampires and mummies/zombies as “psychic vampires,” creatures who “flourish not by sucking blood but by draining vitality, will, and even experience from their victims.” The standard zombie narrative introduces a monster, or monsters, who steal life from the innocent, much like the Muslim terrorist who is the neo-dead, asleep to the vitality of the living, who takes life in an intimate, “deadly embrace.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 715

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘psychic vampire’ and ‘neo-dead’ — key analytical categories connecting the zombie form to the contemporary Muslim-terrorist figure.
• QUESTION: The ‘deadly embrace’ language echoes the intimacy of the Muslim monster’s attack — does this connect to older Western fears of the Muslim as a corrupting intimate (conversion, seduction) rather than an external army?
• XREF: connects to: Alien abduction lore mirrored vampire mythology by adding blood dependency — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 460