https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/saracens-and-turks-wests-troubled-relation-islam
This piece by journalist Soumaya Ghannoushi is a bit old, but nonetheless relevant to understanding the persistent distortions of the Middle East and NA. Islam’s designation as the ‘Other’ dates back to medieval Christian writings in the 7th and 8th centuries, wherein Muslims were given the role of the enemy under the reductionist label of ‘Saracens’. However, this Orientalist narrative was not thoroughly espoused in Europe until much later, with the appearance of the Ottomans. In efforts to deter the Ottoman’s growing following, the Roman Catholic Church’s framing of the adversary shifted; Turks and Saracens were made synonymous, and both were classified as the ideological opposition.
While the religious term ‘Christendom’ eventually transitioned into the secular cultural and political identities of modern European nations, Islam’s misrepresentation as the West’s antithesis has become a permanent depiction of the Middle East in Western rhetoric and mainstream media. Modern Europe and the US have continuously used this medieval illustration of Islam as a violent and backward threat to justify Western cultural and political superiority and imperialistic ambitions. Yet, Ghannoushi argues that the “Muslim threat” reveals more on the anxieties in European identity than anything else.
