Vampires, mummies, and zombies trace to anti-Muslim and anti-African fears

Evidence

As we have seen, the vampire originated in the anti-Semitic and anti-Turkish/Muslim discourse that was a result of British preoccupation with racial purity. The mummy, a creature that represents the mystery and darkness associated with both Africa and Islam, is a product of Orientalism and Egyptomania. The zombie’s genesis was formulated by the fictionalization of African religion and was inspired by the mummies of Egypt. These monsters of modernity, including the Muslim monsters identified in the following pages, express the “social anxiety toward Islam and Muslim cultures that is largely unexamined by, yet deeply ingrained in, Americans.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 643

Categorization

• XREF: The single strongest synthesis for the reader’s core thesis: the monster canon of modernity was manufactured from Muslim and African difference before any real contact.
• SEED: Direct article angle: a genealogy of the horror monster canon showing Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the mummy genre as disguised Islamophobia.
• ADDENDUM: Extends the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ article’s method—cross-cultural moral panic as disguised identity politics—into the horror genre as disguised racial anxiety.