The West valued Islamic mysticism over orthodox communal Islam as individualist escape

Evidence

The principal feature of mysticism was of course its subjective character, whose nonrational and even inexplicable tendencies were towards the singular, the individual, the momentary experience of participation in the Divine. All of Massignon’s extraordinary work on mysticism was thus an attempt to describe the itinerary of souls out of the limiting consensus imposed on them by the orthodox Islamic community, or Sunna. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 688

Categorization

• XREF: Exemplifies the Orientalist preference for the individual mystical over the communal/orthodox — a representational pattern carried into Islamophobia readings.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 688