Western images of Muslims and Jews formed in inextricable conjunction

Evidence

At the turn of the twenty-first century we are painfully aware that in spite of growing globalization there remains in the world a split between the West and the rest. The manner in which this split has been imagined and represented in Western civilization has been the subject of intense cross-disciplinary scrutiny, much of it under the rubric of “orientalism.” The term orientalism has in this debate referred to the Western image of the “Orient,” usually with a focus on the worlds of Islam (and not, as the uninitiated might suppose, the Far East). In this book we maintain that orientalism has always been not only about the Muslims but also about the Jews. We believe that the Western image of the Muslim Orient has been formed, and continues to be formed in inextricable conjunction with Western perceptions of the Jewish people. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 66

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘orientalism’ in the Said-derived debate means the Western image of Islam and the Middle East, not the Far East.
• SEED: Article angle: how Western stereotypes of Muslims and Jews have functioned as two halves of one Christian worldview, shifting together over centuries.