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to European internal and external political and economic situations In the
16th century, when Ottoman Empire was consolidating its control over
Mediterranean trade routes, the resulting "rift" was projected back to the
first centuries of Islam, making a contemporary economic problem seem to
be the result of "age-old" conflict Any rift in the Mediterranean was
there long before Muslims came on the scene There was never any
trans-Mediterranean unity The Catholic Church, which inherited the
decaying Roman Empire, soon split into its Eastern and Western branches
Conventional history, such as is found in World Civilization textbooks,
overlooks this and continues to frame Muslims for sundering the imaginary
unity of European civilization Religious imagery had its uses as well
Christian disunity, which began long before Muslims came on the scene, was
blamed on Muslim hordes that exploded from Arabia, forever sundering the
unity of the Church
When the Ottomans were at the peak of their power in the 17th century,
European princes viewed them as a respected and powerful rival However,
with the waning of Ottoman power, the Muslim world was seen as a place of
exotic trials and espionage This newly exoticized Orient began to be loved
for its objects, while its people were despised or belittled By the 19th
century, race-based explanations for colonization had fully re-emerged As
Hentsch suggests, [17] some Muslims were considered by Europeans to be
civilized according to their criteria, but this was explained by the
presence of Aryan blood in some Muslim races In fact, as French travelers
saw it, the problem with Persians was that, despite their pure Aryan
roots, their blood was tainted because of mixing with lesser, darker
skinned breeds Before continuing this trend into the modern period, I want
to go back over this terrain and look at Christian and European obsessions
and insecurities with sex and violence, and the ways they provided
particularly fertile ground for images of Muslims.
Medieval Phantasms of Sex and Violence
And, if you desire to know what was done about the enemy whom we
found there, know that in the portico of Solomon and his Temple, our men
rode in the blood of the Saracens up to the knees of the horses (Daimbert,
Official Summary of the 1st Crusade) [18]
Those amongst the Saracens are considered most religious who can make
the most women pregnant they lie with their concubines and wives often in
times of fast, because they suppose making love and desire are so
meritorious, either to satisfy lust or to generate many sons to strengthen
the defense of their religion. (Bishop Jacques de Vitry on the 5th
Crusade) [19]
Count Roland gripped his sword dripping with gore he strikes his
valiant blows, shivering shafts of spears and bucklers, too, cleaving
through feet and fists, saddles and sides To see him hack the limbs from
Saracens, pile them upon the earth, corpse upon corpse, would call to mind
a very valiant knight. (Verse from the Song of Roland, 12th century
minstrelsy) [20]
Nor did Mahomet teach anything of great austerity. . . indeed, he even
allowed many pleasurable things, to do with a multitude of women, abuse of
them, and suchlike. . . many Christians change and will change to the
Saracen religion. (Dominican Friar Humbert of Lyons, c. 1300) [21]
These quotes are instructive in
their presentation of Western Christian foundational attitudes toward
Islam. In Medieval Europe, the Popes began to use Islam as a proxy to
convince backsliding Christians to return to the fold and to convince
themselves that Christians were chaste, denouncing Islam as a sexually
liberal and even licentious religion. Once the Europeans gained a foothold
in West Asia, one of the areas of greatest concern was miscegenation. In
the Crusader mind, even sex with one's own wife was a carnal sin; sex with
an infidel woman was punished by "castration for the Crusader and facial
mutilation for the woman." Muslim women were "viewed as defiled and wanton
whores and seductresses." To Christians, Muslim ease with sexuality was
seen as "offensively non-ascetic behavior." [22]
In fact, it seems that Medieval Christians could do nothing but condemn
the Muslim appreciation of sexuality, and
. . . therefore they attacked "Islam" as a religion that had been
directly set up to encourage promiscuity and lust. . . Biographies of
Mohammed by Christians describe the Prophet's sex life in a manner that
reveals far more about their own sexual problems than about the facts of
the Prophet's life. The Koran was said, quite incorrectly, to condone
homosexuality and to encourage unnatural forms of intercourse. One scholar
claimed that the foulness of lust among Muslims was inexpressible; they
were deep in this filth from the soles of their feet to the crown of the
head. Soon the Church would accuse any out-group in Christendom of
excessive and unnatural sexual practices and twelfth century Christians
stigmatized "heresy" of Islam by cursing what they considered its sexual
laxity. [23]To really grasp the utility of this
imagery, we need to look at sexuality in European history. In his
discussion of human sexuality, Foucault describes Arab-Muslim societies as
among those "which have endowed themselves with an ars erotica" in
which "truth is drawn from pleasure itself, understood as a practice and
accumulated as experience." [24] Western civilization, on the other hand,
possesses a scientia sexualis, the "procedures for telling the
truth of sex which are geared to a form of knowledge-power strictly
opposed to the art of initiations and the masterful secret." In the West,
the confession is "one of the main rituals we rely on for the production
of truth" and "Western man has become a confessing animal." [25] What needs confessing is the sin of
enjoyment.
European discomfort with sexuality in Medieval times gradually gives
way to a new outlook, still rooted, as Foucault stresses, in the old
insecurities, but now at least with an outward expression of enjoyment. By
the twentieth century, the alterity of sexuality has now been reversed,
suggests Karen Armstrong, with the post-Christian West seeing itself as
sexually liberated vis-a-vis a sexually repressed Islam:
At a time when many people in the West are liberating themselves from
the sexual repressions of their Christian past, Islam is constantly
denigrated as a sexually repressive religion. We have completely reversed
the old stereotype and not many people seem interested in the truth of the
matter or wish to find out about Islam itself. They simply want to bolster
their own needs against their long established counter-image:
Islam [26]Sex and violence continue to be
juxtaposed in disturbing ways in American culture. For example, American
pilots watched porno movies while preparing to carpet bomb Baghdad in the
1991 Persian Gulf Oil war, and they scribbled sexually explicit graffiti
on the bombs, labeling them as "Mrs. Saddam's sex toy" or "a suppository
for Saddam." [27] George Bush purposefully mispronounced "Saddam"
(which in Arabic has a heavy accent on the last syllable) so that it
sounded more like Sodom, evoking the Biblical city of wanton sexual
depravity, and thus sodomy. A wartime propaganda book produced by an
American public relations firm hired by the Kuwaitis was entitled The
Rape of Kuwait, adding another facet to the highly sexualized
justification for what amounts to a firebomb lynch-party of Iraqis
reminiscent of the same charge leveled at African Americans to justify
racist brutality. I'll come back to some of these themes in a moment, but
I first want to consider further some unique elements of the American
conceptualization of the Muslim other.
Orientalizing the American Way:
Most of the literature on Orientalist pursuits focuses on European
forms of Orientalism. Comparatively little has been written about the
peculiarities of American Orientalism. The latter is worth careful
attention, since the United States seems obsessed with becoming the leader
in a unipolar world, and some official policy circles list Islam as a
"new" but qualified threat to that supposed inevitability.
17th through 19th century American writings illustrates how Europeans
who invaded North America believed that they were God's chosen people,
that the land they were colonizing was the promised land, and that Native
people's were God-less heathen who were to be driven from their homes and
burned. [28] Sha'ban points out that religiously driven
settlers, Puritans in particular, imagined parallels between themselves
and the wandering tribes of Israel. These early roots were bolstered by an
emerging and increasingly strong, literal, and exclusive sense of a
relationship with their God, who had ordained pre-United States settlers
to be "a light in the West" that would shine over the rest of the world.
This expansionary, violent, and millennial sense of a divine mission
became known as "manifest destiny." [29]
In practice, manifest destiny initially meant bringing the "light" of
American style Protestant Christianity to the rest of the world. Americans
saw themselves as being placed in the "center of the world" by Providence
in order to carry out a Divine mission, as a writer in the American
Theological Review put it in 1859:
Indeed, radii drawn from our eastern, western, and southern shores,
reach almost all Pagan, Mohammedan, and Papal lands, or rather most of
them can be reached by nearly direct water communication. [30]
The American missionary enterprise-the vanguard of manifest destiny-
required information on "barbarians," "heathens," "savages," and "pagans,"
and especially "Mohammedans," "Turks," and "Saracens." Beginning in the
early 19th century, particularly when manifest destiny turned cast as well
as west, American writers took a strong interest in Islam and the Prophet.
In various treatises, they dwell on the Prophet (upon whom be peace) as an
impostor and portray Islam as a deviant Christian heresy. Some of the very
few instances where this does not apply tend to romanticize the Prophet as
a hero, but these views also had at bottom the intention to defeat Islam
and convert Muslims to Christianity. An equally important goal of 19th
century religious writings on Islam, as Sha'ban notes, was to describe the
alleged depravity of Islam in order to assert the imagined purity of
Christianity, a tendency inherited from Medieval European
Christianity.
Commercial, diplomatic, and military contacts with Mediterranean Muslim
lands, coupled with evangelical revivalism in the late 18th and early 19th
century, led to a "shift of the American myth of God's Israel from the New
World to the Holy Land." [31] But the imaginary world of Biblical Zion
constructed in the parlors and parishes of the United States soon had to
be reconciled with the realities on the ground in Palestine.
Unfortunately, this reconciliation did not entail rethinking the vision of
Zion-it meant imposing that vision on Muslims and non-Protestant
Christians who happened to be in the way of the American sense of
Providence.
Americans were also motivated in their dealings with Islam and Muslims
by a complex amalgam of Oriental fairy tales. Making use of a body of
literature largely ignored by other critics of Orientalism, Sha'ban takes
a particular interest in Orientalism as found in popular American
literature. He notes that one of the most often printed books in the 19th
century United States was a translation of the Arabian Nights. That
collection of fables and fairy tales, often translated in the West subject
to the sexual whims of the translator and marketed to titillate readers,
was taken as an accurate portrayal of a timeless, exotic, and mystical
East. Tales of harems, genies, and magic carpets found their way into most
American homes and libraries. These stories often provided the criteria by
which secular travelers to the East would judge their own
experiences.
Sha'ban's detailed analysis of travel literature reveals that, time
after time, American men traveling to the East were both aroused and
repulsed by Muslim culture. One American traveler to Istanbul in 1858 was
so mystified and aroused by a veiled Muslim woman that he offered $50 to
buy her, but soon realized it was not possible since he "was no
Mohammedan." [32] While often envying the Turks for their "harems,"
some travelers also looked for signs of distress so that they might
heroically rescue "oppressed" women from the clutches of the Turkish
"barbarians." These expectations were founded upon what Sha'ban calls the
"dream of Baghdad", and he aptly demonstrates that such dreams abound in
early American Orientalism. This dream of Oriental splendour was picked up
by Hollywood in its early years, with Rudolph Valentino epitomizing the
Romantic lover in Arab garb. Similar Oriental fantasies permeated American
entertainment all through the 20th century, ranging from cartoons like
"Popeye meets Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves," to "The Adventures of Sindbad"
and "Lawrence of Arabia," and right on up to the 1989 Disney Orientalist
extravaganza "Aladdin.'
Corporate American Phantasms:
The dual image of luxury and bellicosity, as suggested by Daniel above,
can be illustrated through looking at the incredible popularity of the
Arabian Nights-type themes in American corporate culture. Though its use
as literature has declined somewhat in recent times, the Arabian Nights,
as noted above, was once among the most popular books in America.
Hollywood has capitalized on this American obsession with things Oriental
in its recent production of "Aladdin," a phantasmagoria of Orientalist
cliche, complete with a menagerie of harems, genies, magic carpets, and,
of course, murderous barbarians.
A promotional documentary about the making of Aladdin boasts of
authenticity in its producers' emulation of "Islamic design" and "Persian
architecture," showing scenes of animators carefully drawing images of
mosques and calligraphy from photographs; they appear to use great care in
detailing their drawings to the minutest degree. But one thing is missing
from all this careful attention to detail-people. Characters in
Hollywood's Aladdin are compound stereotypes, grossly racist caricatures
of the worst Western phantasms-villainous sorcerers in turbans, sensuous
harems, sumptuous feasts, hordes of fat ugly thugs with swords (ready to
chop off hands for stealing bread), flying carpets, genies. All this is an
alterity of the hero, Aladdin, who speaks and acts as if straight out of
an American suburban high school. [33]
Sometimes, American media wizards ram together luxurious and bellicose
images to create the classic American phantasm. A recent example is the
1995 American football Super Bowl half-time antics, an extended
commercial-like foray. First, crooner Tony Bennett sings "Desert Caravan"
against a backdrop resembling a mosque. Then Indiana Jones (who shot up
many a Muslim barbarian in his Hollywood films) swings into the scene and
rescues the football-shaped Super Bowl trophy from hordes of turbaned
Muslims with swords (or were they Arabs? or Turks? Moors?). Jones makes
short work of these generic barbarians, retrieving the trophy, along with
a blonde heroine for good measure. This is followed by a song and dance
routine, featuring gyrating women wearing costumes right out of the 1960s
American Orientalist situation comedy "I Dream of Jeannie." Other women
are draped in black or white chadors; some of these women doff their veils
and swing them along with their hips, as if reveling in their new found
"liberation." Of course, it is the American hero Jones who has rescued
them from their oppressive Muslim masters. The show climaxes with a flashy
display of fireworks, and the fans erupt into a jingoistic frenzy, the
likes of which rivals similar outbursts when the national anthem is
played. Clearly, such Oriental fantasies are part of America's national
heritage, which can be utilized by production designers for all sorts of
entertainment and commercial purposes.
Commercial television and its corporate advertising conglomerates from
time to time intensify their utilization of Islamic exotica in Popular
American culture. Interestingly, this often takes place side by side with
an increase in the vilification of Muslims and Islam. American corporate
news is full of talk about "Islamic terror," "Muslim suicide bombers,"
"the warriors of Allah," "the holy war of Islam," or "Iranian backed
radical extremist Moslem fundamentalist terrorists." Examples abound,
including a notorious programme in the Fall of 1994 called "Jihad in
America," which described a centrally controlled, top-down international
Islamic conspiracy to carry out terror in the US, or the more recent rush
to blame the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing on Muslims. These public displays
of jingoistic fury have real repercussions on the ground, with a series of
mosque- burnings and increased hate and bias crimes against Muslims,
including the tragic case of a new mosque in Yuba City, California, burned
to the ground by arsonists on the eve of its opening to the community in
September 1994. Imagery creates a climate within which such acts seem to
make sense.
Images of Muslims seem to ebb and flow with the American political
tides, and close examination reveals some connections. Following the
violent orgy of death and mayhem popularly known to Americans as "Desert
Storm," American corporate television began to feature advertisements with
an Arabian Nights motif. For example, a commercial aired on corporate TV
throughout 1991 and 1992 for "Near East Rice Pilaf" features scenes in a
Middle Eastern bazaar. The ad segues to an American family preparing to
gorge themselves on an exotic dish, as if eating Near East Rice Pilaf will
somehow transport the consumer into an Eastern fantasy world. IBM
computers, as part of its globalized campaign of superficial multicultural
inclusion, produced a similar commercial, which utilizes Arabic dialogue
and racist caricatures. In an exotic bazaar setting, two natives
thoughtfully extol the virtues of the latest American techno-excesses. A
similar commercial was produced by Isuzu automobiles, taking place
somewhere in North Africa, also with Arabic (as well as French) speaking
natives. It begins with a call from a minaret, a pseudo adhan
(which has always been an aural symbol for Islam in American film and TV),
and ends with the natives being dazzled by expensive leather seats and the
corporation's newest mobile contraption. These and other commercials share
the common theme of a utilizing a timeless fantasy world that is backwards
yet ready for the salvation of American consumer culture. Not intended to
sell computers and cars to anyone but Americans, these utilizations of
Orientalist imagery serve to make powerful connections for consumers,
especially between tradition and progress.
With increasing numbers of American corporations hopping on the
Oriental bandwagon, American Muslims have tried to form collective
responses. According to a series of press releases beginning in November
1994, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has mounted several
campaigns against greeting card corporations for cards that objectify
veiled Muslim women in degrading ways, or which feature nude women
juxtaposed with verses from the Qur'an. There have been beer commercials
featuring actresses with verses of the Qur'an emblazoned across their
chests, and the fashion industry has suddenly discovered the beauty of
Islamic calligraphy, using it in clothing designs modeled by voluptuous
women in public pageants. CAIR has also worked on a number of bias
incidents, many involving women barred from working because they choose to
wear the Islamic modest dress. It seems that in American corporate
culture, veils and other Oriental exotica are widely utilized to titillate
buyers, but that real women who wear the Muslim modest dress are despised
and rejected. Another phenomenon has also emerged since the Persian Gulf
Oil War. There is an increasing number of corporate news media programmes
about Muslims living in the US Some no doubt grew out of wartime public
