The War on Terror weaponizes an invented Orientalist past to victimize Muslims today

Evidence

The clash of civilizations explanation reduced the conflict between radical Muslim terrorism and the West to something inherent within Islam (and thus something that can only be fixed within Islam). On this understanding, the irrational anger and hatred of Muslims toward the West leads some Muslims to use the teachings of Islam to justify their terrorist activities against innocent people. Neither the Bush administration nor the larger political establishment devoted much effort to reflecting critically on the history of Western involvement in the Muslim world, nor did they seriously consider whether the particular economic and political grievances toward the West articulated by many Muslims, not just the small minority of terrorists, might require a significant rethinking of foreign policy to minimize the chance of future attacks. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 266 (#expands, via linked claim)

The Orientalists who helped shape this strategy were convinced that the secular ideologies of nationalism and communism would hold little weight in the “Muslim world.” At a conference organized and sponsored by the government at Princeton University in 1953, Orientalists, policymakers, and various native informants concluded that the United States must use religion to win hearts and minds, ignoring the popularity of secular nationalist movements. US propaganda efforts at the time thus emphasized the Christian and religious roots of American culture in contrast to the godlessness of the USSR. The National Security Council reasoned in 1952 that the “three monotheistic religions in the area have in common a repugnance to the atheism of communist doctrine and this factor could become an important asset in promoting Western objectives in the area.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 226 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Abu Ghraib abuses stem from centuries of anti-Muslim discourse; The invented rape-of-the-Virgin-Mary fantasy persists in modern anti-Muslim discourse; Orientalist monsters shifted from animal hybrids to demonized Muslim men (+32 more)

Related

• Orientalism supplied the pre-existing tropes that the War on Terror redeployed against Muslims (similarity 0.89)
• The government sponsored Orientalist conferences to weaponize religion (similarity 0.87)
• The War on Terror draws its ideology from Orientalism’s invented past (similarity 0.86)
• The War on Terror recycled pre-existing Orientalist academic discourse into state violence (similarity 0.85)
• Neocons deliberately leveraged academic Orientalist authority to sanction their wars (similarity 0.84)
• The War on Terror was a globalized crusade recruiting nations for domestic political gain (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalist ideology preceded material anti-Muslim oppression until post-WWII empire enabled it. (similarity 0.83)
• Huntington repackaged Orientalist binaries into a new lexicon of civilizational clash. (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalist scholars supplied the transhistorical ‘Islamic terrorism’ narrative at the 1984 conference (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalist monsters shifted from animal hybrids to demonized Muslim men (similarity 0.83)
• Orientalist scholarship justified colonization by depicting Muslim men as innately abusive (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalists reframed Islam as a political system rather than a religion. (similarity 0.82)
• The Middle East itself is a product of Orientalist construction. (similarity 0.82)
• Said’s writings on orientalism capture the demonization of Muslims today, when political figures declare ‘Islam hates us’ and frame Muslims as a domestic problem, placing contemporary anti-Muslim… (similarity 0.82)
• Orientalist Muslim dehumanization legitimizes colonial and imperial adventures (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Clash of civilizations framing located terrorism’s cause within Islam itself #expands (0.75) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 266
• The government sponsored Orientalist conferences to weaponize religion #expands (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 226
• The global War on Terror legitimized China’s Han supremacist crackdown on Uyghurs #expands (0.70)
• The War on Terror metastasized into a global network of state crusades against Muslims #expands (0.70)
• The War on Terror racialized Muslim bodies to justify their surveillance #expands (0.70) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 29
• A shared dehumanizing logic links War on Terror crusades across hemispheres #expands (0.65)
• State-perpetuated fear racializes Muslim bodies as terrorist enemies #expands (0.65)
• Orientalism sustains the credibility of preexisting Muslim monster images #expands (0.60)
• Orientalism converted Muslim identity from a religion into a race. #expands (0.60) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 161
• Islamophobia’s growth is furthered by savagery attributed to Islam’s victims #expands (0.60)
• Postwar Muslim-majority nations embraced secular nationalism, contra Orientalist claims #contradicts (0.60) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 310
• Orientalist scholarship justified colonization by depicting Muslim men as innately abusive #expands (0.55)
• Even anti-imperialist Mark Twain reproduced Orientalist stereotypes of Muslims. #exemplifies (0.55) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 136
• Romanticism projected an exotic Orientalist fantasy rather than accurate knowledge #expands (0.50) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 89