Anglo–American Literary Sources on the Muslim Orient: The Roots and the Reuiterations

Authors : Marwan OBEİDAT

Pages : 47-72

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Publication Date : 2001-04-01

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :The roots of the confrontation of Christendom with Islam go back to pre-medieval times. The nomads of the Arabian desert were seen by the Christian West as descending from Abraham’s wife Sarah; whence “Sara– cen”. The more the Saracens harassed the Eastern borders of the Christian Roman Empire, the more they acquired the reputation of being vicious raiders, enemies of God and Man. After their wholesale conversion to Islam in the seventh century, and especially after the Crusades began in 1095, “They came to represent non–Christian belief, which is no belief at all”[1]. The common basis of the Saracens being seen in the West as a vagabond, godless race rests on Abraham’s son Ismail from whom the Muslim Arabs descend, and who in Western lore is still depicted as a non–conforming outcast [2]. In Thomas Hardy’s novel The Return of the Native, for instance, the solitary, very odd, character Diggory Venn is described as an “Ishmaelite” [3]. From these earliest cultural and historical roots, Christian men of letters produced unflattering representations of Muslims that amount to a distorted image not only of Islam as a religion, but also of Muslims as individuals[4]. The descendants of the Ishmaelite were seen as embracing a religion of violence, that Muhammad was the author of a false religion based on deceit, and that Muslims were infidels identified with the devil.
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