Deciphering the 'othering' of Muslims

THE predominant Western view on Islam is very much informed by the orientalist discourse. In order to understand the “othering” of Muslims, we have to go back several centuries and situate the present state of affairs within the Western global/colonial designs. The relegation of Muslims as inferior in relation to the West began when Spain’s Christian monarchy, as one of Christian Europe’s frontiers with the Muslim world, fought a battle to conquer the Islamic side of Spain, better known as Al-Andalus. In 1492, when the Spanish Christian monarchy finally defeated the forces of Al-Andalus, they expelled Jews and Arabs not without its pogroms and massacres. From 1492 onwards, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim were defined on the basis of religious discrimination (praying to the wrong God). The Christian versus Islam struggle articulated the imperial difference, and historically, the expulsion of Arabs and Jews from Christian Spain in the name of “purity of blood” was a proto-racist process. With the onset of the colonial enterprise, however, a full racist perspective was put in motion, and the imperial powers started to characterise Muslims as “uncivilised” and “violent”