Western scholarship constructed the East as savage to justify imperial conquest.

Evidence

Said’s Orientalism is not a book about the Orient per se. It is a book that analyzes Western discourse about the Orient, including Islam and Arab peoples, and how this discourse relates to Western domination over the Orient in light of the colonial projects of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 206 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

From the beginning, Orientalism has been committed to political projects that require the dehumanization of Muslims, especially Muslim men, who have been “linked to elements in Western society (delinquents, the insane, women, the poor) sharing an identity best described as lamentably alien.” In addition to alienating Muslims from the human community, these mythologies have helped to validate numerous colonial and imperial adventures. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 44 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Empires justify themselves by claiming superiority over prior empires; Orientalist scholarship justified colonization by depicting Muslim men as innately abusive; US post-war hegemony repurposed Orientalism and modernization theory to justify empire. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 28 (+17 more)

Related

• Said’s Orientalism changed the meaning of ‘Orientalism’ from benevolent human interest in the East to an apparatus of knowledge and writing aligned with western imperial power. (similarity 0.91)
• Orientalist binaries made imperial intervention in Muslim societies seem morally obligatory. (similarity 0.89)
• Western scholars controlled the academic study of the Orient even as late as 1927. (similarity 0.89)
• All Western writers treated the Orient as fixed, feminine, and needing redemption (similarity 0.88)
• Said defined Orientalism as scholarship tied to governing the Middle East (similarity 0.88)
• Edward Said’s Orientalism is considered one of the foundational texts for the study of Islamophobia, describing how Western imperial projects crafted a dehumanizing representation of ‘the Arab’. (similarity 0.87)
• The Middle East itself is a product of Orientalist construction. (similarity 0.87)
• European Orientalism was normalized into a coherent US scholarly consensus (similarity 0.87)
• Western scholarly discourse about the Orient was entangled with colonial domination (similarity 0.87)
• Orient studies served Europe’s needs, not Asia’s reality (similarity 0.87)
• The Westerner’s intimate estrangement from the Orient reinforces the Orientalist discourse built on it. (similarity 0.87)
• Western cultural discourse about the Orient is a formidable structure of domination. (similarity 0.86)
• The West required the Rest as a conceptual opposite to define itself. (similarity 0.86)
• Orientalist scholarship justified colonization by depicting Muslim men as innately abusive (similarity 0.86)
• A shared East-West binary grounds vast and diverse bodies of thought (similarity 0.86)

Broader Connections

• Western scholarly discourse about the Orient was entangled with colonial domination #corroborates (0.85) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 206
• Orientalist Muslim dehumanization legitimizes colonial and imperial adventures #corroborates (0.80) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 44
• Orientalist scholarship justified colonization by depicting Muslim men as innately abusive #expands (0.75)
• US post-war hegemony repurposed Orientalism and modernization theory to justify empire. #expands (0.70) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 28
• Orientalism functioned as fuel for colonial conquest before American independence. #expands (0.70) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 162
• Orientalist scholarship varied internally but shared the racial category #qualifies (0.60) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 132
• Middle East area studies served US government needs until 1970s liberation struggles spurred critique. #expands (0.60) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 149
• The clash of civilizations theory rearticulated the Orientalist binary of Islam versus the West. #expands (0.55) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 217
• Bernard Lewis reduced fourteen centuries of East-West to unchanging conflict. #expands (0.55) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 27
• Dependent countries had to westernize even when resisting the West #expands (0.40)
• Middle East oil control drives virtually every US regional intervention #expands (0.40) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 268