The secular map flattened sacred Muslim geography into profane coordinate space

Evidence

Cairo and Mecca were beginning to be visualized in a strange new way, no longer simply as sites in a sacred Muslim geography, but also as dots on paper sheets which included dots for Paris, Moscow, Manila and Caracas; and the plane relationship between these indifferently profane and sacred dots was determined by nothing beyond the mathematically calculated flight of the crow. The Mercatorian map, brought in by the European colonizers, was beginning, via print, to shape the imagination of Southeast Asians. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 653

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The profanation of sacred space by map-coordinate abstraction is a quietly paradigm-shifting mechanism: the modern cartographic gaze replaces sacred order with indifferent geometry, reshaping how a whole population imagines itself.
• XREF: This is the representational machinery behind ‘the imagined community of the nation’ — print + map reconfigure sacred geography into bounded secular space, scaffolding the reader’s foundational concepts. — connects to: Media mapping erased the distinction between real and imagined Muslims — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 240; Media mapping equates imagined Muslims with physical proximity to the West — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 240; Medieval accounts imagined Muslim lands as sunless devil-haunted spaces — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 119 (+1 more)

Related

• Maps can precede and shape territorial reality rather than merely reflect it. (similarity 0.84)
• Media mapping equates imagined Muslims with physical proximity to the West (similarity 0.81)
• Precolonial Thai maps encoded cosmology and locality, not abstract territory (similarity 0.81)
• Media mapping erased the distinction between real and imagined Muslims (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval theologically-oriented maps placed monstrous races farthest from Jerusalem. (similarity 0.81)
• Maps transformed village-centered sacred space into abstract conquerable space (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Muslim monsters occupied map edges alongside other monstrous races. #exemplifies (0.80)
• Media mapping equates imagined Muslims with physical proximity to the West #expands (0.78) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 240
• Medieval accounts imagined Muslim lands as sunless devil-haunted spaces #exemplifies (0.78) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 119
• Media mapping erased the distinction between real and imagined Muslims #responds-to (0.75) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 240