Prejudice against Muslims is nothing new.
In recent years, there have been several incidents of Europeans depicting the Prophet Muhammad in cartoons or burning the Quran in acts that many have described as Islamophobic. Just last month, a far-right politician set fire to a copy of Islam’s holy book in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. Some Westerners believe these acts are covered by freedom of expression laws, but Muslims regard them as sacrilegious acts against their most revered religious symbols. Indeed, Muslims, who comprise about a quarter of the world’s population and constitute a majority in 56 countries stretching from West Africa to Southeast Asia, see burning the Quran as a direct personal offense.
They also view these incidents as a manifestation of the historical rivalry between Christianity and Islam, which, since Sept. 11, 2001, many observers have referred to as Islamophobia. But this concept misrepresents centuries of bitter conflict and domination, and masks hate as fear. Muslim scholars posit that the origin of the problem is attributable to the rise of Islamic societies and scholarship that challenged European supremacy in a number of critical spheres. They emphasize that enmity toward Islam better describes the negative perceptions of Muslims than Islamophobia, which presents the issue in terms of subjective opinions, not deep-seated hostility.
Origins of the Problem
The long history of European hostility toward Islam began in the Middle Ages, when Europeans sought to establish their Christian identity in opposition to Islam and the East, spreading the notion that being European meant not being Muslim. Medieval European identity combined Christianity with proto-nationalism, influenced by a growing awareness of race and bias against people with darker skin tones.
The West’s view of Islam today was born in a period in which Europe’s relationship with Islam was filled with fear and anxiety. Europeans defined Islam narrowly, as a religion of violence and lust, focused on territorial conquest and promises of sensual pleasures in the afterlife. Europeans also saw certain practices in Muslim societies as inconsistent with Islamic teachings. On the one hand, they viewed the veil worn by Muslim women as an expression of secrecy, oppression and gender segregation. On the other hand, they saw it as a reflection of the tendency toward promiscuity, which needed to be kept hidden.
Europeans’ collective consciousness regarding Islam is the product of cultural and military encounters over centuries. It goes back to the Muslim conquest of Spain in 711 and the Battle of Tours in modern-day France in 732, which ended Arab-Muslim ambitions in Western Europe. However, in the ninth century, Arabs established the Emirate of Sicily, which they ruled for two centuries and which ushered in the domination of Mediterranean trade by Arab merchants.
During the Crusades, Genoese and Venetian merchants took over the business from Arabs. Europe’s awakening was associated with Pope Urban II’s call on Christians to go to war against Muslims to capture the Holy Land. He was dismayed by the defeat of the Byzantines at the hands of the Seljuks in the 1071 Battle of Manzikert in Anatolia but also encouraged by the Muslims’ loss of Toledo to Alfonso VI of Castile in 1085.
Europeans began to fear Muslims after the Ottoman seizure of Constantinople in 1453 and their unsuccessful bid to capture Vienna, the capital of the Habsburg-Austrian Empire, in 1529 and 1683. The conquest of Constantinople is considered one of the most critical events in world history, especially the history of Europe and its relationship with Islam. European historians believe this event marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. The perception of Islamic armies marching from the Ottoman Empire sparked panic in the Christian West and a sense of danger that was encouraged by European poets and intellectuals who instilled fear and hatred of Muslims among European societies.
Europe’s royalty began preparing to take revenge on Muslims. After they mastered the use of tools invented by Muslim scientists, such as the compass and the astrolabe, studied Arab maps, and learned astronomy and oceanography, they set out to discover a short route to India, a turning point in the relationship between Muslims and Europeans. Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama discovered the Cape of Good Hope – the southern tip of South Africa – in 1498 with the help of renowned Arab navigator Ahmad bin Majid. He proclaimed: “Now we have surrounded the neck of Islam, and there is nothing left but to pull the rope, and it suffocates.”
However, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans did not have as devastating an effect on Europe as it would have had centuries prior because, by the 15th century, the economic balance had shifted in the West’s favor, driven in part by the European discovery of the Cape of Good Hope. The defeat of the Ottomans in the 1571 Battle of Lepanto, followed by their defeat outside Vienna in 1683, transformed Europe into a dominant military power.
During the colonial era (1882-1960), Europeans organized their relationship with Eastern societies through a series of intellectual dichotomies. They viewed the people of the East as ignorant and poor, in contrast to rich and educated Westerners, and as dark and weak, compared to the strong and white people of the West.
The West took a vengeful stance toward Eastern and Muslim groups that deviated from this dichotomy by attempting to possess the instruments of Western power, such as military might and a developed economy. In the early 19th century, Ottoman control of Egypt became nominal, and its ruler, Muhammad Ali, launched an ambitious economic, cultural and military modernization plan with France’s help.
He also aspired to create an empire on the ruins of the faltering Ottoman Empire. In 1832, an Egyptian army led by his son Ibrahim defeated the Ottomans in the Battle of Konya in Asia Minor. Seven years later, he defeated them again in the Battle of Nizip and decided to conquer Istanbul. The British and Austrians stopped his advance and forced Muhammad Ali to sign in 1840 the Convention of London, which ended his imperial ambitions. Were it not for this, Egypt could have risen to the ranks of world power.
Prejudice Persists
Muslims and Arabs had a remarkably positive impact on European society, having translated and enriched Greek philosophy and sciences. In the Dark Ages, Muslim Spain and the Emirate of Sicily were the most important centers for transmitting science and civilizational production to Europe. Cordoba was the capital of Muslim Spain and the most modern and prestigious city in Europe. Its libraries contained about 400,000 books, while the libraries of European monasteries and churches carried no more than several hundred.
But the historical contributions of Arabs and Muslims were consistently denied in European literature and art. Nineteenth-century Orientalism came to complete what the Church began by seeking to produce a series of dubious ideas about the authenticity of Islamic culture and its contributions to the world.
During the Renaissance, the West sought to control Islam, not understand it. Martin Luther, the leader of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, viewed Islam as a violent movement serving Christ’s enemies, who could not convert to Christianity because they were closed to reason. These misperceptions became only more ingrained in European institutions as colonial rulers sought ways to control the Islamic peoples.
Author Henry de Castries said in his book on Islam in 1896 that European thought in the Middle Ages was full of hatred against Muslims, which was entrenched not only in the minds of ordinary people but also among the elite. When British Gen. Edmund Allenby entered Jerusalem in December 1917, he said, “Only today have the Crusades ended.” In 1920, French Gen. Henri Gouraud entered Damascus. He headed to the tomb of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, who defeated the Crusaders in the Battle of Hattin in 1187 and recaptured the city of Jerusalem, saying: “Here we are, O Salah al-Din.” Religious reformer and theologian Hans Kung noted there could be no peace between peoples without peace between religions.
Even more recently, many Western public figures have displayed misconceptions about Islam and prejudice toward Muslims. In November 2001, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said: “Islam is the religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him, while Christianity is the faith in which God sends his son to die for you.” This statement contradicts the fact that Islam forbids its followers from killing themselves in war.
Those who carry out suicide missions are actually violating Islamic teachings. Former President George W. Bush described the war on terror as a crusade, a reference to the eight religious expeditions waged by Christian Europe against Muslims between 1095 and 1291. In 2005, former Congressman Tom Tancredo suggested bombing Mecca and Medina, which house Islam’s holiest sites, to deter terrorists.
American popular culture also displayed prejudice against Muslims and Jews in the 18th and 19th centuries, seeing them as disbelievers in Christ, backward and unreliable. After World War II, however, the wave of anti-Semitism in the U.S. subsided as Americans began to view Jews as Westerners. Muslims, meanwhile, were still perceived as enemies of the West.
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Hilal Khashan is a Professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. He is a respected author and analyst of Middle Eastern affairs. He is the author of six books, including Hizbullah: A Mission to Nowhere. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019.) He is currently writing a book titled Saudi Arabia: The Dilemma of Political Reform and the Illusion of Economic Development. He is also the author of more than 110 articles that appeared in journals such as Orbis, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Middle East Quarterly, Third World Quarterly, Israel Affairs, Journal of Religion and Society, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, and The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.
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