Muslims in the Western Imagination
Through research spanning 1,300 years, Sophia Rose Arjana presents a historical genealogy of monstrous representations of Muslims that haunt the western imagination and continue to sustain the contemporary bigotry of Islamophobia. The central question introduced in the first section, “Introduction:...
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International Institute of Islamic Thought
2016
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oai:doaj.org-article:a0cb76ac5e2f487e9948ae854fff94ed2021-12-02T17:46:22ZMuslims in the Western Imagination10.35632/ajis.v33i1.8852690-37332690-3741https://doaj.org/article/a0cb76ac5e2f487e9948ae854fff94ed2016-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/885https://doaj.org/toc/2690-3733https://doaj.org/toc/2690-3741 Through research spanning 1,300 years, Sophia Rose Arjana presents a historical genealogy of monstrous representations of Muslims that haunt the western imagination and continue to sustain the contemporary bigotry of Islamophobia. The central question introduced in the first section, “Introduction: Islam in the Western Imagination,” is “How did we get here, to this place of hijab bans and outlawed minarets, secret renditions of enemy combatants, Abu Ghraib, and GTMO?” (p. 1). To answer this question, Arjana highlights connections between historical representations of Muslims and monstrosity in imagery, literature, film, and popular culture to produce a volume she describes as “an archive of Muslim monsters” and “a jihad – an effort – to reveal Muslims as human beings instead of the phantasms they are often presented as” (p. 16). This work is a timely contribution that will benefit scholars researching anti-Muslim sentiment, Islamophobia, postcolonial and subaltern studies, the psychology of xenophobia and genocide, or who are interested in historical manifestations of Islamophobia, antisemitism, and racism in art, literature, film, and media. In the first chapter, “The Muslim Monster,” the author argues that cultural “ideas of normativity are often situated in notions of alterity” and that monstrous representations of Muslims have functioned as an enduring signifier of alterity against which the West has attempted to define itself since the Middle Ages. Through the production of dehumanized and monstrous representations, Muslims became part of a mythological landscape at the peripheries of Christian civilization that included dragons, giants, and dogheaded men. The grotesque and uncanny attributes of monsters reveal the anxieties of the society that produces such images, and chief among those is the fear of racial contamination and the dissolution of culture through intermingling with the foreign and the strange. Each of the following chapters focuses on depictions of Muslims as monsters in visual arts and literature within a particular era or context. The second chapter, “Medieval Muslim Monsters,” introduces Muslim monsters of the Middle Ages, many of which survived as tropes used to vilify Muslims, Arabs, Jews, and Africans for centuries thereafter. This chapter introduces monsters such as “the giant, man-eating Saracens of medieval romances and the Black Saracens, often shown in medieval art executing saints, harassing and killing Jesus, and murdering other Christian innocents” (p. 19) ... Brendan NewlonInternational Institute of Islamic ThoughtarticleIslamBP1-253ENAmerican Journal of Islam and Society, Vol 33, Iss 1 (2016) |
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Islam BP1-253 |
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Islam BP1-253 Brendan Newlon Muslims in the Western Imagination |
| description |
Through research spanning 1,300 years, Sophia Rose Arjana presents a historical
genealogy of monstrous representations of Muslims that haunt the
western imagination and continue to sustain the contemporary bigotry of Islamophobia.
The central question introduced in the first section, “Introduction:
Islam in the Western Imagination,” is “How did we get here, to this place of
hijab bans and outlawed minarets, secret renditions of enemy combatants,
Abu Ghraib, and GTMO?” (p. 1).
To answer this question, Arjana highlights connections between historical
representations of Muslims and monstrosity in imagery, literature, film, and
popular culture to produce a volume she describes as “an archive of Muslim
monsters” and “a jihad – an effort – to reveal Muslims as human beings instead
of the phantasms they are often presented as” (p. 16). This work is a timely
contribution that will benefit scholars researching anti-Muslim sentiment, Islamophobia,
postcolonial and subaltern studies, the psychology of xenophobia
and genocide, or who are interested in historical manifestations of Islamophobia,
antisemitism, and racism in art, literature, film, and media.
In the first chapter, “The Muslim Monster,” the author argues that cultural
“ideas of normativity are often situated in notions of alterity” and that
monstrous representations of Muslims have functioned as an enduring signifier
of alterity against which the West has attempted to define itself since
the Middle Ages. Through the production of dehumanized and monstrous
representations, Muslims became part of a mythological landscape at the
peripheries of Christian civilization that included dragons, giants, and dogheaded
men. The grotesque and uncanny attributes of monsters reveal the
anxieties of the society that produces such images, and chief among those
is the fear of racial contamination and the dissolution of culture through intermingling
with the foreign and the strange. Each of the following chapters
focuses on depictions of Muslims as monsters in visual arts and literature
within a particular era or context.
The second chapter, “Medieval Muslim Monsters,” introduces Muslim
monsters of the Middle Ages, many of which survived as tropes used to vilify
Muslims, Arabs, Jews, and Africans for centuries thereafter. This chapter introduces
monsters such as “the giant, man-eating Saracens of medieval romances
and the Black Saracens, often shown in medieval art executing saints,
harassing and killing Jesus, and murdering other Christian innocents” (p. 19) ...
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| format |
article |
| author |
Brendan Newlon |
| author_facet |
Brendan Newlon |
| author_sort |
Brendan Newlon |
| title |
Muslims in the Western Imagination |
| title_short |
Muslims in the Western Imagination |
| title_full |
Muslims in the Western Imagination |
| title_fullStr |
Muslims in the Western Imagination |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Muslims in the Western Imagination |
| title_sort |
muslims in the western imagination |
| publisher |
International Institute of Islamic Thought |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
https://doaj.org/article/a0cb76ac5e2f487e9948ae854fff94ed |
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