FROM HAREM GIRLS TO JIHADIS: THE DEPICTION OF 
MUSLIM WOMEN IN HOLLYWOOD  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
by 
MARYAM N. MOGHADDAMI 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A THESIS 
 
Presented to the Department of Cinema Studies 
and the Robert D. Clark Honors College  
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of  
Bachelor of Arts 
 
May 2022 
 
 
 
 
An Abstract of the Thesis of 
Maryam Moghaddami for the degree of Bachelor of Arts 
in the Department of Cinema Studies to be taken June 2022 
 
 
Title:  From Harem Girls to Jihadis: The Depiction of Muslim Women in Hollywood 
 
 
 
Approved:           Sangita Gopal, PhD                             
      Primary Thesis Advisor 
 
Think Muslims in films or television and you may recall Tasneem Qureishi from 
Homeland or, more recently, Nadia Ali from Bodyguard. Or you may recall a 
completely different Muslim woman (if you even can come up with one). The one thing 
that remains consistent is that the character is frequently a caricature or gross 
misrepresentation of Muslim women. In fact, as this paper will go on to argue, the broad 
majority of current female Muslim characters on-screen today can fall into one of two 
categories: the terrorist and the oppressed one.  
These narrow, primarily negative representations of a group of people is one of 
the defining qualities of Orientalism. Orientalism, in conjunction with imperialist 
motives on the part of Western nations, influenced the depiction of Muslims in popular 
media such as films and television series. This image of a Muslim has been shaped by 
eurocentric thinking that viewed Europeans and Americans as being superior to the rest 
of the world and, in turn, justified imperialist action.  
The paper will start with the advent of film in the late 1800s and discuss the 
orientalism evident in the films of the time and its connection to colonialism. This 
portrayal of the Muslim as the “exotic” would shift in the late 1940s as the U.S. began 
ii 
 
 
to play a greater role in the Middle East and once again in the early 2000s with 9/11 and 
the beginning of the Global War on Terror. Notably, the Muslim went from being the 
curio to the villain. A rise in Islamophobia led to Muslims almost without exception 
being cast as the terrorist, which helped strengthen popular perceptions of Muslims as 
such while also helping rationalize U.S. military and political efforts in Muslim 
majority countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.  
The main focus of this paper, however, is on Muslim women. In particular, this 
paper will look at the issue of veiling and show how the veiling and unveiling of 
Muslim woman in Hollywood films and television shows exemplifies the influence of 
orientalism. Specifically, the aspects of exoticism and assumed inferiority will be 
discussed. The issue of veiling also largely represents imperialist points of view, which 
use the veil to designate the Middle East as being backwards and to emphasize the 
“otherness” of Muslims. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
iii 
 
 
Acknowledgements 
This thesis would have been entirely impossible to start or complete without the 
inspiration and support of so many people who have been there throughout this process. 
I would like to thank Professor Irum Shiekh and Professor Allison McGuffie in whose 
classes I first formulated the ideas upon which this thesis is based. I would like to thank 
Professor Sangita Gopal, my primary advisor, and Professor McGuffie, my secondary 
reader, for helping me realize these ideas and express them in this thesis. I would like to 
also thank Dr. Elizabeth Raisanen for supporting me both during the writing of my 
thesis and in fact my entire time at the Clark Honors College. 
I would also like to acknowledge the people in my personal life who helped 
make this thesis possible. To my family, in particular my father without whose moral 
and intellectual support I would have found it difficult to even imagine completing 
research of this extent. To Sumayyah, although this acknowledgment is a poor 
redemption for the year you spent listening to my vague and inarticulate ramblings on 
this subject. To all the people for whom I lack the words and space to express the full 
extent of my gratitude for their influence and presence in my life.  
  
iv 
 
 
Table of Contents 
Chapter 1: Introduction 1 
Purpose 2 
Methodology 3 
Chapter 2: The Pre-Hollywood Years, Europe, and the East 9 
History 9 
The Crusades 10 
The Age of Exploration 12 
The Age of Empires 15 
Oriental Visions and their Underlying Assumptions 19 
Arabian Nights 21 
French Paintings 25 
British Travelers 33 
American Advertisements 36 
Circassian Slaves 37 
Chapter 3: The Orient in Film 42 
20th Century Imperialism and the Middle East 42 
European Imperialism 43 
Israel 45 
American Imperialism 46 
The Middle East and its Men in Hollywood 47 
Lawrence of Arabia 48 
The Sheik 50 
Middle Eastern Womanhood On-Screen 52 
Theda Bara and the Middle Eastern Vamp 53 
Female Sexuality: From Slave to Spectacle 56 
Chapter 4: “Jihadland” in Film 60 
Anti-Imperialism, Middle Eastern Nationalism, and Terrorism 60 
Middle Eastern Nationalism and Western Response 60 
Terrorism and the Resistance to Western Imperialism 62 
Sketching “Jihadland” and its Inhabitants: Middle East and Men in Film 65 
The Middle East of Hollywood Dreams and American Nightmares 65 
East vs. West: Middle Eastern Edition 66 
v 
 
 
The Jihadi and the Oppressed One: Women in Film 67 
Jihadi: Asexuality and Violence 67 
Oppression and the Muslim Longing to Breathe Free 68 
Conclusion 70 
Future Ventures into the “Bibleland” 70 
A Progressive Hollywood 73 
The Muslim Spectator 74 
Bibliography 76 
  
vi 
 
 
Chapter 1: Introduction 
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the representation of minorities in 
Hollywood films is far from perfect. For the many people who identify as being part of 
a minority group that moment of realization of the consistent misrepresentation varies. 
For me it happened one bright summer day when I had gone to the movie theater to 
watch the new Spiderman movie, Spiderman: Far from Home, with my siblings. We 
had only settled in when suddenly on-screen among Peter Parker and his classmates 
there She was. Her tan skin, flowing scarf… my heart sank when I saw her. Whatever 
interest I had in the film was gone. She pained me, because in her scarf which so clearly 
revealed her as Muslim I was forced to see myself and knew the audience that sat 
alongside me in that dark room would see her in me as well. From the first moment I 
saw her on-screen, I knew the plot and I recognized the villain and hated her with a 
passion impossible to understand by a viewer who has not experienced personal 
injustice at the hands of an on-screen villain. Superheroes were good guys and Muslims 
bad guys and she was Muslim. So I sat back and braced myself for the inevitable 
“Allahu Akbar” and consequent “boom” that somehow would startle me, all the more 
because I would expect it. It never came. She never blew anyone up or in fact anything. 
She remained nameless, silent, and thankfully unremarkable in any way, shape, or form. 
I was shocked by both the ending and my own shock. It wasn’t until that moment that I 
realized how accustomed I was to seeing Muslims, women looking like me, on-screen 
out to kill anyone God or their men would set them on. In the beautiful world of film, I 
was the “Other” who at best did not belong and at worst posed an inherent threat to that 
world.  
 
 
 
What this study aims to do is answer the very broad question of why Muslim 
women get portrayed so repeatedly in the negative way that they are and, in doing so, 
examine the Middle East as being the “Oriental Other” to Europe. This study hopes to 
introduce the familiar character of the Muslim woman and explicate the typical 
narrative arc her character is so frequently trapped in. 
Purpose 
In this digital age, the importance of popular media seems all the more 
pronounced with the distant parts of the world being more interconnected by media and 
information than ever before. Within this understanding of popular media lie films and 
television shows, arguably among the most popular and accessible forms of mass 
media. But films and television shows make no claim to impartiality and can only be 
viewed as the products of their makers. In the dismantlement of on-screen stereotypes 
created by filmmakers, it is important to be conscious of their existence and to critically 
examine these representations of people shown by Hollywood. Overwhelmingly 
negative and unduly simplistic depictions of a minority in popular media may lead to a 
broad misunderstanding of that minority and the birth of stereotypes. Given that 
stereotypes are an easy and convenient way to understand an otherwise complex group 
of individuals, an audience tends to rely on these stereotypes and thus popularizes them, 
incentivizing the film industry to continue using stereotypical characters in hopes of 
capitalizing on their popularity. Without an acknowledgment of these negative 
representations and an understanding of their background, the aforementioned cycle 
will not be broken.  
2 
 
 
This study is also significant in its focus on Muslim women and examination of 
the issue of veiling. As one of the most overt signs of a person being a Muslim, the 
veiled woman has long been reduced to being singularly defined by an article of 
clothing. This study hopes to show how the veil came to be seen as the barrier between 
a modern “civilized” society and a backwards one and how this made its way on-screen. 
In examining the relationship between veiling and imperialism, this study hopes 
simplistic depictions of Muslim women will be understood to be relics of an imperialist 
past that should be far behind us. Ultimately, the hope would be for more nuanced 
characters, however unusual it may be to see on-screen. 
Methodology 
This study will build upon existing scholarly work that looks at the orientalist 
underpinnings and political implications of Hollywood’s representations of Muslims. 
The argument for the orientalist roots of representations of Muslims on-screen will be 
narrowed by focusing on the topic of veiling. The orientalist view and politicization of 
the veil will be unpacked before delving into how these issues are reflected in 
Hollywood films and movies.  
There is no intention of doing an analysis of every film with a Muslim woman in 
it, so this study will build upon several key films and television shows that help 
illustrate the main argument. Additionally, in considering what would count as a 
Muslim woman character, this study has decided to disregard background characters 
played by extras and will focus primarily on characters that appear on-screen for longer 
than a minute. This time limit has been suggested given that one of the categories being 
analyzed is the oppressed-wife type, a character which generally has a very short screen 
3 
 
 
time but whose silent presence does have enough of an impact to be worth analyzing. 
The films and television shows used in this study are from “Hollywood” in the sense 
that they are American-made (and/or produced) and qualify as being designed for a 
larger audience, as opposed to “indie” films.  
  The terminology being used in this study should also be made clear. This study 
will largely lump “Muslim,” “Arab,” and “Middle Eastern” together. In making this 
decision to consider the depictions of Arabs and Middle Easterners I examine as being 
“Muslims” I hesitated and would like to take the time to explain this decision. This is 
not done with the intention to deny the diversity of Muslims in the world nor suggest 
that all Arabs or Middle Easterners are Muslim. It just happens that in popular culture, 
with only a few exceptions, “Arab” and “Middle Eastern” have largely been taken to be 
synonymous with “Muslim.” Even in instances when the religion of the character was 
not the raison d’etre of that character or even really discussed, it is still assumed. 
Harems and “sheiks,” for example, are so easily associated with Muslims that one 
doesn’t even need to explicitly state that the sheik with a harem is Muslim.  
Within the study of Islam, there are scholars who utilize a “civilizational theory” 
and divide the world up according to what they believe to be the major world 
civilizations. Islam is one of these civilizations which, by its nature, is set to enter a 
conflict or a clash with other civilizations, primarily the Judeo-Christian Western 
civilization. Political scientist Samuel Huntington argues that this “clash of 
civilizations” is inevitable because of Islam’s similarities to Christianity given that both 
are monotheistic religions that stress the existence of one true religion and the 
4 
 
 
importance of missionary work 1 while historian Bernard Lewis traces this clash to the 
very birth of Islam with it only growing stronger.2 Both theorists create a concept of 
Islam as a monolith and the people who belong to the civilization of Islam all see the 
world in the same way: as being split between the believers (i.e. “the House of Islam” as 
per Lewis) and the disbelievers (i.e. “the House of Unbelief” or “the House of War”) 
who must be converted and in no way can be allowed to rule over the believers.3  
Of course, this theory comes with its share of fair critique. Edward Said 
criticized the ideas of both Huntington and Lewis as not taking into consideration the 
plurality of civilizations and instead trying to make sense of an increasingly complex 
and interconnected reality through simplistic concepts such as “Islam” and the “West.”4 
Other criticism points out the essentialist nature of such theories that hold that these 
“civilizations” are distinct (having no overlap despite historical conflicts and 
connections), unchanging (time or contact with other civilizations have no effect), and 
can entirely account for the behavior and mentality of a person belonging to that 
civilization. Denying the interconnections between cultures also is also necessary, as 
Adeeb Khalid argues, to create a positive image of the West as the source of concepts 
such as freedom, democracy, human rights, and free markets.5 So dividing the world 
into the simplistic concept of civilizations untouched by their interactions with each 
 
1 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, (New York: 
Simon& Schuster, 1996), 210-211.  
2 Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage: Why so Many Muslims Deeply Resent the West, and Why 
Their Bitterness Will Not Be Easily Mollified,” The Atlantic, 1990, 47. 
3 Lewis attributes conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims in areas as diverse as Xinjiang, Kashmir, 
and Kosovo to the view of Muslims that it is unnatural for them to be ruled by non-Muslims.  
4 Edward W. Said, “The Clash of Ignorance,” The Nation, October 4, 2001, 
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/clash-ignorance/.  
5 Adeeb Khalid, Islam after Communism : Religion and Politics in Central Asia, (Berkeley: University of 
California Press, 1999), 15-16.  
5 
 
 
other, these theorists allow for one side to be painted more easily as being “good” and 
the other side as being “bad.”  
Despite its controversy or, to be more precise, because of it, this theory of a 
“clash of civilizations” and its critiques will play a great role in this paper. First of all, 
neither Huntington nor Lewis were the first to view the Western and Islamic worlds as 
being two separate, distinct entities. As this paper will show, Western cultural 
perceptions of the Middle East as dutifully ignore the intersection of “civilizations” with 
people like Arab Jews and Christians in the Levant as do Huntington and Lewis. 
Additionally, this worldview was greatly popular during select periods of history for the 
ease with which it explained away conflicts and portrayed Muslims as being inherent 
enemies to the West. 
Secondly, the “essentialist” aspect which boils down each civilization to a few 
core defining elements is one that is evident in the literature, art, and films I examine. 
These depictions of Muslims ignore cultural and regional differences in favor of either 
the broad stereotype of the “Orient” which is defined by its exoticism or of the 
“terrorist” who is defined by his violence and religion. This broad understanding of the 
Middle East as being Muslim also fits in with the Eurocentric vision of the Orient as 
being the “Other” or different from Europe and the West. So, if Europe defined itself as 
having a Judeo-Christian background, the Orient could only be Muslim.  
Lastly, as Amira Jarmakani, points out in a critique of the “civilizations” theory, 
women are the markers of civilization by which traditionally the progress of a nation 
towards or away from modernity has been measured. Jarmakani argues the term 
“civilization” is rooted in a history that from the period of Enlightenment sought to 
6 
 
 
distinguish Europe from the “barbaric” countries by emphasizing the dedication to an 
idea of progress (i.e. modernity).6 So Europe and the “uncivilized” parts of the world 
differed in their acceptance of progress and the uncivilized world’s progression towards 
modernity was measured in part by the treatment of women.  
  Moving on to the terminology used. The terminology used to understand these 
depictions tends to vary even in the scholarly works I have examined and cite later in 
this paper. For some who tend to focus on more recent portrayals, the term “Muslim” 
was used as the terrorists depicted were not only Arab and Middle Eastern but also from 
Southeast Asia. “Arab” was used by other scholars such as Jack Shaheen and 
Jarmakani, who primarily focused on older depictions. Given the scope I intend to 
cover, the term “Muslim” is more fitting in that it allows for me to discuss the impact of 
European relations with the Ottoman Empire and Persia on the European understanding 
of the Middle East. While most of the Middle East was split between these two empires, 
neither the Turks nor the Persians are Arabs. What they do have in common though, and 
what tends to define most of their similarity in portrayal, is Islam.  
The term “veil” used is also a broad term used to refer to the numerous different 
types of hair or full-body coverings that Muslim women wear. It has been suggested 
that in its English form, the “veil” has an immediately negative connotation and implies 
something hidden and, therefore, possibly threatening. In the Arabic, there is no single 
equivalent for the term “veil” instead there is a plethora of words differing by the 
region, historical period, local dialect, and part of the body being covered.7 While in 
 
6 Amira Jarmakani, Imagining Arab Womanhood: the Cultural Mythology of Veils, Harems, and Belly 
Dancers in the U.S., (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 10-11.  
7 Fadwa El Guindi, Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance, (New York: Berg, 1999), 6-7. 
7 
 
 
any other instance it is important to use the correct terminology for the different types 
of hair, face, or body coverings worn by Muslim woman in order to emphasize their 
religious and/or cultural significance, in this case it is a bit different. It seems almost too 
perfect in a paper dedicated to discussing how the West simplified a complex Middle 
East to use the simplified English term for a complex Middle Eastern covering. The 
“veil” is truly the perfect term as it demonstrates both the Western inability to 
differentiate between different types of veils and their understanding of the veiled 
woman: she is alternatively hidden, and thus enticing, and hidden, and thus threatening 
or oppressed. 
Lastly, this study, despite opposing opinions of scholars, will use the working 
definition of “Orientalism” provided by Said. As this paper has cited the theories of 
Huntington and Lewis, the concept of Orientalism best explains these theories’ 
ideological background and practical use. Said offered a definition of Orientalism with 
three distinct yet interrelated parts: the first is Orientalism as an academic study; the 
second, is Orientalism as a worldview based on the distinction made between the 
“Orient” and the “Occident”; the third is Orientalism as a Western means of 
restructuring and dominating the East.8 The Orient is thus entirely a Western construct 
that exists in congress with itself and alienated from a reality of the Middle East. This 
Orient is inferior by nature and unable to describe itself, necessitating the West to 
describe the Orient for it. Consequently, the Orient exists in Western texts, culture, and 
discourse if not in reality.  
 
8 Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 25-27. 
8 
 
 
Chapter 2: The Pre-Hollywood Years, Europe, and the East 
History 
“Saladin, nous voilà.” (English: “Saladin, we are back”)  
– General Gouraurd, Upon the 1920 French takeover of Damascus 9 
 
This section begins with the era of Saladin and the Crusades before leading up to 
the era of empires when the French, British, and other European colonial powers took 
over the Middle East. Of course, the history of Europe and Middle East extends far 
beyond the Crusades but while some Europeans had certainly been aware of the Muslim 
Middle East, the broader European population first came face to face with Islam during 
the Crusades.10  
It should be mentioned that this is not a piece on the history of Europe and the 
Middle East but a brief introduction to Islam through the gaze of the average European 
and, as such, the following sections will not be detailed historical accounts of the 
periods they focus on but will emphasize key moments and their influence on how the 
Middle East was viewed by Europeans. The first section looks at the Crusades, 
specifically, the religious issues underlying the conflict between the Middle East and 
Europe and the growing interest in Middle Eastern products the returning Crusaders 
were bringing back to Europe. The second section continues the topic of Middle Eastern 
products and trade with Europe and questions how the “Oriental” brand was formed. 
 
9 James Barr,“General Gouraud: ‘Saladin, We're Back!" Did He Really Say It?,” Syria Comment, May 
27, 2016, https://www.joshualandis.com/blog/general-gouraud-saladin-back-really-say/.  
10 Sini Kangas, “Inimicus Dei Et Sanctae Christianitatis,” in The Crusades and the near East: Cultural 
Histories, ed. Conor Kostick,(Florence: Taylor & Francis Group, 2010), 132-133.  
9 
 
 
The final section is about imperialism and how Europe conquered and colonized the 
Middle East. This section highlights the racial and moral justifications for these 
European intrusions into the Middle East.  
The Crusades 
To sum up the Crusades in the briefest of descriptions, the Crusades were a 
series of religious wars in beginning in 1095 with Pope Urban II’s declaration of a 
crusade in order to recapture the “Holy Land.” Beyond this clash of two religions over a 
common holy site, the Crusades had a lasting impact on Europe’s understanding of the 
Middle East. The first, and most impactful, was the idea of an inherent conflict between 
Muslim and Christian worlds and, the second, the commodification of “Eastern” goods. 
Through this push of Europeans into the Middle East a duality in the perception of the 
Middle East can be seen. On one hand, the Middle East is the “Holy Land,” the cradle 
of the Judeo-Christian West. On the other hand, the Middle East is the “Orient,” the 
mysterious, fantastical land of violence, sensuality, and riches. 
The Crusades, in the opinion of people like Lewis, were an unsuccessful 
Christian venture and part of fourteen-hundred-year struggle between Muslim and 
Christian civilizations and an “attempt to recover by holy war what had been lost by 
holy war.”11 Thus, the Crusades were a military conflict in addition to a political, 
religious, and cultural conflict between Christian Europe and the Muslim East. The 
early religious thrust of the Crusades and emphasis on the piety of the Crusaders saw 
the clear designation of one side as being the “good” side (with all the moral pretenses 
 
11 Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 20. 
10 
 
 
that word generally connotates) fighting against the bad side. From the point of view of 
the Europeans, they were in the right and the Muslim side were the heretics of whom 
the Holy Land needed to be cleansed.12  
The language surrounding much of the First Crusade emphasized this religious 
point of view, reframing the incursion into the Middle East as a sort of armed 
pilgrimage.13 Urban II himself in recruiting Crusaders used language that stressed the 
importance of a return of the Holy Lands to Christians, expulsion of infidel Saracens 
(Muslims), and framed the expedition as a sort of “penitential violence” by which the 
sins of the Crusaders would be forgiven in result of their efforts.14 Exploiting 
Europeans’ relatively small knowledge about the Middle East, Urban described a Holy 
Land in crisis where Christians suffered at the hands of their occupiers who polluted 
Jerusalem with their presence.15 If in the eyes of the Church and Christian laymen the 
Crusaders were on a pious mission in a continuation of Biblical events, then Islam and 
the Muslims existed as an opposite to Christianity.  
This concept of Islam as being the negation of Christianity can be seen in the 
Medieval writings about the Muslim prophet, Muhammad. In these writings, 
Muhammad was first and foremost a heretic, one condemned to one of the lower levels 
of Dante’s hell,16 and, secondly, a perverse individual whose teachings existed to 
 
12 Kangas, “Inimicus Dei Et Sanctae Christianitatis,” 139. 
13 Christopher Tyerman, The Debate on the Crusades, 1099-2010, (Manchester: Manchester University 
Press, 2011), 2.  
14 Christopher Tyerman, The World of the Crusades, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 69-70.  
15 Düzgün Şaban Ali, "Oriental studies and the Conception of Islam During the Crusade Period," Ankara 
Üniversitesi İlâhiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 42, no. 1 (2001): 153-154. 
16 Michelina Di Cesare, The Pseudo-Historical Image of the Prophet Muhammad in Medieval Latin 
Literature: A Repertory, (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, Inc., 2011), 479.  
11 
 
 
promote his own sexual desires 17 and whose heaven was defined by its sensual 
offerings.18 This emphasis on Muhammad as depraved and the teachings of Islam 
feeding into this depravation both distinguished Islam and Muhammad from the 
Catholic Europe and Jesus (who was believed to be celibate) and equated Muslims with 
sexual perversion. 
Trade between Europe and the Middle East had existed prior to the Crusades, 
mainly through the Byzantine Empire and increasingly Sicily,19 but the Crusades would 
be crucial in reopening trading routes to and from the Middle East and creating an 
appetite in Europe for Eastern goods.20 In their travel to and from the Middle East and 
Europe, Crusaders established sea trading routes from Italy to the Middle East, 
bypassing the lands of the Byzantine Empire. Luxury products such as silk, spices, and 
porcelain stimulated economic growth in Europe. As Eastern goods made it to European 
markets, the demand for them grew as did Europe’s interest in what the Middle East had 
to offer.21  
The Age of Exploration 
The Age of Exploration is a term loosely describing a historical period of 
several centuries during which European explorers, traders, and conquerors traveled the 
world in search of new lands and exotic commodities. This period began in part because 
 
17 Di Cesare, The Pseudo-Historical Image of the Prophet Muhammad, 31, 85, 121, 190, 221, 261, 345, 
350, 366. 
18 Di Cesare, The Pseudo-Historical Image of the Prophet Muhammad, 52, 337, 446. 
19 Tyerman, The World of the Crusades, 57.  
20 Lisa Blaydes and Christopher Paik, “The Impact of Holy Land Crusades on State Formation: War 
Mobilization, Trade Integration, and Political Development in Medieval Europe,” International 
Organization 70, no. 3 (2016): 551–586. 
21 Şaban Ali, "Oriental studies and the Conception of Islam,” 171. 
12 
 
 
of an interest in Eastern goods which were then making their way to Europe through 
various trade routes and ended with the rise of colonialism. These European traders and 
explorers sought to break the stranglehold the Muslim Ottoman Empire had on trade 
from the East and to lay claim to these lands of mythical riches themselves. These goals 
led to a spate of European colonizing efforts in Asia, Africa, and the newly-discovered 
Americas. In order to justify this land grab, Europeans leaned heavily on conceptions of 
moral superiority, citing the backwardness of natives and the need for Europeans to 
enlighten these indigenous people, primarily in the matters of religion.  
Products from the Middle East and beyond had long made their way to Europe 
via land trade routes such as the Silk Road. The growing interest in these products from 
the East as well as the growing Ottoman dominance over trade routes drove European 
powers to seek trade routes in the Atlantic.22 In new lands that they discovered, 
European explorers established colonies, seeking to reap benefit from the resources that 
they found there. For these explorers and traders, the East represented an untapped 
potential and promised fairytale riches for those who willing to go and take them. Of 
course none of the lands these Europeans traveled to was truly “terra nullius” and in 
every location there were already existing people with whom the newcomers had to 
contend with. 
The European settlers and their governments found that they needed justification 
for taking the land and resources from the natives. If the Crusaders rationalized their 
actions in the Middle East by stating that they were recovering and defending Christian 
 
22 Kerem Nisancioglu, “The Ottoman Origins of Capitalism: Uneven and Combined Development and 
Eurocentrism,” Review of International Studies 40, no. 2 (2014): 346. 
http://www.jstor.org/stable/24564276.  
13 
 
 
lands, these new colonies were almost certainly not Christian so a new justification 
needed to be found.23 They found this justification in religion and their colonizing 
efforts were legitimizing through their purported evangelizing mission. The 
colonization of the Spaniards was then reframed as a godly mission and a valiant effort 
to bring the heathens to God.24 
In conjunction with the conversion mission was the civilizing mission. These 
new colonies were portrayed as being the opposite to Europe and at an inferior stage of 
development and civilization which both explained Europe’s dominance and gave the 
responsibility to help in the process of development. Since the Renaissance and through 
the Enlightenment, the theory of social evolutionism came to be popular. This theory 
held that all societies in the world existed at one of three stages of development: wild 
(i.e. hunter-gatherers), barbarian (i.e. nomadic but conquering), and civilized (i.e. 
sedentary). This was tied with ideas of progress and modernity and Europeans 
increasingly saw themselves as having already passed the “wild” and “barbarian” 
stages.25 26 Being further along in this development process, Europe took on a 
paternalistic role as the natives were deemed too backward to be able to rule 
themselves.27  
Here it is important to note how the European viewed the native: the native had 
childlike qualities requiring the guidance of parental figure (i.e. Europe), was a heathen 
 
23 Tyerman, The World of the Crusades, 430. 
24 Gabriel Paquette “Justification for Empire, European Concepts,” in Encyclopedia of Western 
Colonialism since 1450, ed. Thomas Benjamin, (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007). 
25 Antoon De Baets, “Eurocentrism,” In Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450, ed. Thomas 
Benjamin, (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007). 
26 During the Enlightenment, “wild” was substituted for “primitive,” “pagan,” and “traditional” while 
“barbarian” was changed to “premodern.” (See. De Baets “Eurocentrism”) 
27 Paquette “Justification for Empire, European Concepts.” 
14 
 
 
and needed to be saved, and lived a backward and uncivilized life to his own detriment 
(which was proven by how easily the native was conquered). The economic and 
political benefits of the European powers taking over these lands were explained away 
as rewards for their efforts in their colonies with some even believing that the riches of 
the New World were rewards for the Christians’ proselytizing efforts.28 This idea of the 
“White Man’s Burden” also brought up questions of biological, racial, and cultural 
superiority which will be discussed in more detail in the following section. 
The Age of Empires 
From the empire upon which “the sun never set” to the numerous other 
European colonies around the globe, European nations established themselves through 
their claims to foreign land. The justifications here were similar as Europeans 
denigrated the indigenous people in their colonies, suggesting that these people were 
developmentally, morally, culturally, and biologically inferior to Europeans.29 30 The 
Middle East was no exception and the weakening of the Ottoman Empire saw France 
and Great Britain vying for control in North Africa and the Levant. Both countries 
looked to benefit economically and the Middle East served as the platform upon which 
their European rivalries could play out. This period also saw the politicization of the 
 
28 Rachel Winchcombe, Encountering Early America (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021), 
71-72. 
29 Tyerman, The World of the Crusades, 430.  
30 This conviction in the racial inferiority and barbarism of indigenous peoples reflected previous 
European humanist descriptions of Ottoman Turks (See. Tyerman, The World of the Crusades, 431), 
showing how while the subject changed, the language and attitude of European imperialists remained 
very similar. 
15 
 
 
issue of veiling as European countries attempted to prove Muslims as backward and 
thus justify the intrusion into their lands.  
Needing as always to justify their takeover of new lands and subjugation of 
native people, Europeans increasingly viewed civilization and development as being 
linear and that Europeans were further along in the process. The concept of the colonies 
as being less developed helped reframe European colonialism as a “civilizing mission” 
and viewed Europeans as enlightening the backward natives and allowing them to 
achieve a level of development they would not have previously achieved. This view 
allowed numerous atrocities to occur as many Europeans believed that whatever horrors 
Europe may bring to its colonies, these indigenous people were in such a poor state that 
any European effort was better than what these people already had. The violence of the 
Europeans was also viewed very differently in part thanks to the assumption of that the 
native was at the core different from Europeans and this “Other” needed a more 
disciplined approach in order to learn.31  
The “Otherness” of the native is defined by several perceived differences. The 
cultural and developmental difference was a major one as Europeans saw native 
societies as being less civilized. In particular, the way of living and interactions were 
scrutinized and deemed to be worse than Europeans. European colonizers emphasized 
things such as clothing (the nudity of some native peoples), religion (native religions), 
living environment (the mud or wood homes), and language (the different sounds and 
speaking styles that were rough on the European ear).  
 
31 Dierk Walter, Colonial Violence: European Empires and the Use of Force, (New York, NY: Oxford 
University Press, 2017), 166.  
16 
 
 
Arguably, the most harmful of these perceived differences were biological ones. 
Following in the steps of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, Europeans saw their 
colonization of natives as inevitable and proof of their superiority along the lines of a 
“survival of the fittest” narrative.32 Eugenics also took off as European scientists harped 
on physical differences and did things like measure the skull of natives in a comparison 
of them with animals. Scientific advancement was weaponized to prove the long-
existing belief in European superiority. Racism also played a role with an emphasis on 
the darker skin color of many of the natives. Darker skin was seen in biblical terms as 
being descended either from Ham, the son of Noah, or Cain, the son of Adam. In both 
instances, God’s curse upon the individual extended to his descendants who were 
subject to “eternal slavery.” This concept of “natural slavery” or that some people 
meant to be slaves by their nature,33 resulted in “blackness” being associated with 
slaves and some Europeans arguing that slavery improved the lives of the inherently 
inferior natives.34  
In general Europeans measured physical attractiveness of natives by looking at 
their physical similarity to Europeans. The treatment of native women proved this, 
notably the case of the “Hottentot Venus.” In this instance, a native African woman, 
Sara (Saartjie) Baartman, was brought to Europe and put on display for intrigued and 
horrified Europeans. The physical differences of the woman, her large posterior for 
 
32 Matt D. Childs, "Race and Racism," in Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450, ed. Thomas 
Benjamin, (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007). 
33 Bruce Baum. The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race : A Political History of Racial Identity, (New 
York: New York University Press, 2006), 32-33. 
34 Kevin D. Roberts, "Race and Colonialism in the Americas," in Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism 
since 1450, ed. Thomas Benjamin, (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007). 
17 
 
 
example, were viewed with both horror and interest.35 After her death, Baartman’s body 
was dissected by French doctor, Georges Cuvier, who assembled her bones and 
preserved her organs including her genitals, putting them on public display in Paris 
where they remained for over a century. Cuvier used his examination of Baartman as 
part of his broader argument for the inferiority of Africans and their closer relation to 
apes and orangutans than Europeans.  
 
This case is also notable as after centuries of commercializing products from colonies, 
this is an example of a native’s “Otherness” being commodified for the benefit of 
Western audiences. The European audience’s fascination with Baartman also shows the 
interest in native female sexuality.  
 
35 Nicholas Hudson “The ‘Hottentot Venus,’ Sexuality, and the Changing Aesthetics of Race, 1650–
1850,” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 41, no. 1 (2008): 20. 
http://www.jstor.org/stable/90011643.  
 
18 
 
 
Oriental Visions and their Underlying Assumptions 
“The special combination of unconstrained curiosity concerning the ‘Other’ and 
unforced respect for his otherness remains a distinctive feature of Western and 
Westernized cultures and is still regarded with bafflement and anger by those who 
neither share nor understand it.” 
-Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict 
 
Through their contact and interactions with the Middle East, Europeans, and 
Westerners more broadly, came to hold a certain set of perceptions. In the previous 
section, I tried to outline how these perceptions came to be and in what ways they were 
convenient for colonialist powers. In this section the focus will be on looking at these 
perceptions, their cultural manifestations, and the few key similarities that they shared. 
All of the following sections are similar in one area: they are largely defined by a deep 
Western fascination for people and items seen as being “Eastern.” The still very 
widespread lack of concrete knowledge about the Middle East allowed people to project 
and explore their fantasies in this exotic space. The label of “exotic,” “Oriental,” or 
“Eastern” connotated an “Otherness” that allowed Westerners to act in different ways or 
discuss different things which would be unacceptable in a European context. This draw 
to the foreignness of the Middle East was matched by a revulsion for that same 
foreignness. While the unfamiliarity of the Middle East was intriguing and represented 
potential, it also posed a threat to Europe and gave rise to a fear. In many ways the 
caricatures of the Middle East and its people allowed Westerns to enjoy their 
19 
 
 
fascination with the region to its full extent while also disarming its people of the threat 
they could pose.  
The perceptions of Middle Eastern women all at once reflect colonialist goals, 
“Orientalist” fascination, and European fear. The treatment of Muslim women by their 
men became a key issue. Abuse was assumed to be the rule rather than the exception. 
The discussion of this abuse and need to free the Muslim woman fit colonialist 
narratives and was used exclusively to the benefit of imperialist goals in the Middle 
East. The fascination with the Middle Eastern woman came in two forms: the first, 
Westerners were intrigued by the foreign appearance of Middle Eastern women much 
like one may be intrigued by the taste of a foreign fruit; the second, Middle Eastern 
women served as a canvas for Western male fantasies, sexual and otherwise. Thanks to 
this fascination, the Middle Eastern woman became synonymous with exoticism 
particularly in the form of advertising. This objectified her and turned her into no more 
than an Oriental curio. The fear aspect came from the danger the sexuality of Middle 
Eastern women posed to Europeans. Middle Eastern women (as well as men) were 
oversexed. The existence of their sexuality meant they posed a threat to the social 
norms of the virtuous Europe and the denial of this sexuality was thought to lead to 
crime and evil.36  
This attitude towards Middle Eastern women is evident in the European 
understanding of the harem and veiling. From the colonialist viewpoint, Middle Eastern 
men oppressed their women by locking them up in harems and preventing them from 
showing their face or hair. From the Orientalist viewpoint, harems were the ideal male 
 
36 Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 52. 
20 
 
 
fantasy. In fact, the treatment of their women by Middle Eastern men was a male 
Western fantasy. Veiling was very similar. Western men sexualized the veil, intrigued 
by what the veil hid. From the viewpoint of European fear, the harem represented a 
space in which outside men weren’t allowed, something that automatically threatened 
male dominance. The harem was also associated with lesbianism because in the 
Western mentality, men didn’t know how else to understand a female-only space. 
Lesbianism generally poses a threat to a phallocentric society because it suggests a 
possibility to do without men.37 38 For the veil, if the unknown it created was titillating 
because it suggested the possibility of a pleasant surprise, it had the equal possibility of 
being an unpleasant surprise – particularly, as anti-colonialism took off, and veiled 
women began being viewed as a threat.39  
Arabian Nights 
One Thousand and One Nights or, as it is otherwise known, Arabian Nights, is 
perhaps the greatest example of an Orientalist piece of literature. The influence of this 
piece on Western perceptions of the Middle East to this day cannot be stressed enough. 
And yet in so many different ways Arabian Nights does not represent a singular culture 
or nation from the Middle East and prior to the piece’s translation and arrival to Europe 
there is in fact little evidence that Arabian Nights existed in the form that we know it 
today. The stories, for one, come from a variety of different cultures including Arab, 
 
37 Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement, Nancy Myron and Charlotte Bunch, (Baltimore: Diana Press, 
1975), 33.  
38 Middle Eastern lesbianism was also a Western sexual fantasy that seemed then almost too 
inappropriate to associate with Western women and not within their range of capabilities. (See. Rana 
Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 52-53) 
39 One of the first instances of the conflation between a veiled woman and terrorism was during the 
conflict between Algeria and France for Algerian independence. 
21 
 
 
Persian, and even Indian, although the original collection was Persian but translated into 
Arabic at the end of the 8th or beginning of the 9th century CE.40 The inability of the 
piece to distinguish between these individual nations and cultures is what makes it an 
Orientalist piece of literature as opposed to an Arab one or even a Middle Eastern one. 
As Said points out, the Orient, as was created by Westerners, is broad and conveniently 
does not distinguish between individual cultures as they all fit within a Eurocentric 
understanding of an Eastern “Other.”  
The Arabian Nights was first translated by Antoine Galland between 1704 and 
1717. Galland not only translated the original Arabic version which he had but added 
some stories. Two of the most best-known stories, Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty 
Thieves had not been previously recorded in written form even in Arabic – Galland is 
believed to have heard them from an Syrian storyteller and added them to his version. 
Additionally, Galland added to the stories, expanding Ali Baba from six pages to thirty-
six.41 Like the Orientalists who would come after him, Galland was fascinated by the 
violence supposedly inherent to the Middle East and the sexuality of Middle Eastern 
women.42 However, the version which Galland published was greatly edited to fit the 
societal norms and tastes of the time. In particular, he cut down on the number of sexual 
themes in the collection (e.g. descriptions of the sexual intercourse between the queen 
and her slave),43 a choice which would be almost entirely reversed by the English 
translator of Arabian Nights, Richard Burton.  
 
40 Jaap Van Ginneken, Screening Difference: How Hollywood’s Blockbuster Films Imagine Race, 
Ethnicity, and Culture, (Lanham: Rowman &Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 23. 
41 Van Ginneken, Screening Difference, 23. 
42 Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 25-26.  
43 Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 28.  
22 
 
 
Burton expanded extensively on Galland’s original translation and criticized it 
as being an “abbreviation.” While Galland tried to appease conservative societal 
sentiments, Burton, who wrote primarily to a private audience within the space of 
gentlemen’s club, had no such qualms about sexuality. The references to sex were taken 
to the maximum in Burton’s translation which included extensive footnotes on the topic 
of Middle Eastern sexual practices.44 For him and his fellow members of the 
gentlemen’s club, Burton’s Arabian Nights envisioned sexual fantasies that were not 
considered acceptable to discuss in Victorian society.45 Unsurprisingly, Burton’s 
version was not allowed to be published more publicly. Arabian Nights became even 
less of an accurate representation of any culture in the Middle East and more of a way 
in which sexuality could be discussed outside of the constrictive realm of Victorian 
society.46  
The stories that exist within the different versions of Arabian Nights tend to 
range so this paper seeks to focus on a few thematic elements that appear broadly. The 
first is the idea of fantasy. The Arabian Nights is absolutely a work of fantasy and yet as 
the later section on travelers to the Middle East will show, it was frequently not 
understood by Europeans to be entirely fantasy.47 For Westerners then, the Middle East 
was so far from the reality of Europe and the Western world that it could realistically 
contain genies, flying carpets, and magicians.  
 
44 Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 59-61.  
45 Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 55, 58.  
46 Burton is coincidentally also known as one of the first translators (or editors to be more fair) of the 
Kama Sutra. In that version of the Kama Sutra and in his later translation of The Perfumed Garden, 
Burton greatly emphasized sexual concepts even complaining that the sexual content was mild and 
limited. (See. Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 65) 
47 Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 25.  
23 
 
 
The second theme is that of female sexuality. While the stories told during the 
thousand-and-one nights vary, the frame within which these stories are presented 
remains the same. A king, Shahryar, finds out about the infidelity of the wife of his 
brother as well as his own wife. Upon this revelation he concludes that all women are 
evil and begins marrying virgins and having them killed the very next day. At one point 
he marries Scheherazade who escapes her death by telling the king a story so interesting 
he wants to keep her alive to hear more. Female sexuality then within the context of 
Arabian Nights is evil. The wives of Shahryar and his brother have uncontrollable 
sexual urges that are shown in a negative light. Shahryar concludes that all women are 
the same and will commit adultery the first chance that they have. This concept of the 
sexuality of Middle Eastern women is a trope that existed for many years past the first 
translations of Arabian Nights. Scheherazade, by contrast, is unusually asexual 
considering the type of stories she purportedly told. Her purpose is to please the male 
protagonist and through her telling of stories with wanton and evil women, she 
condemns and turns against her own sex to side with the male.48 Unsurprisingly, she is 
the heroine of the story, showing how within the European mentality being “good” was 
equated with being “virtuous.”  
In direct contrast to the women in the story, Shahryar is incredibly violent in an 
unexplained and ruthless manner. He has his first wife and her lover killed then 
proceeds to kill every single woman he marries after that until Scheherazade. Middle 
Eastern men and senseless violence is another trope that continues to pop up in 
depictions of the Middle East. Similarly, Shahryar is not particularly intelligent. 
 
48 Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 49-51.  
24 
 
 
Scheherazade is able to escape her fate by telling a story every single night, making 
Shahryar seem both gullible and infantile.  
French Paintings 
Now the Middle East has been extensively depicted in paintings by artists from 
numerous cultures, but for the sake of brevity, this study will focus on five paintings of 
the Middle East by different French painters. The time period during which most of 
these painters produced their work was heavily influenced by the movement of 
Romanticism. Romanticism was a rejection of the rationalism of the Enlightenment and 
provoked a deep interest in “nature” and emotion. For some, this artistic vision and 
fascination with the “uncivilized” aspect of the Middle East was reflected in their 
paintings of the Orient. As Europe became more industrialized, the Romantics escaped 
to their Orient which notably had no urban settings, extreme poverty, or societal ills. It 
was a place full of natural landscapes and inexplicable violence and sensuality which 
countered European rationalism so starkly.49 Once more, the Middle East became the 
European’s negation of Europe.   
The first painting is The Snake Charmer by Jean-Léon Gérôme which was 
painted in the late 1800s, believed to be around 1879.  
 
49 Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 29-30.  
25 
 
 
 
This painting was famously used by Said as the cover of his book on 
Orientalism. In many ways it is understandable. The painting is in clearly an Islamic 
country based on the tile work. The country portrayed is far from its prime, in fact it is 
in decline arguably given the mismatched and damaged tiles. Exoticism is very much 
front and center with the performance of a snake charmer. The snake charmer is here is 
the object of focus not only for the men watching him but also for the audience who 
sees this painting. Of course, the snake charmer is naked which adds an element of 
sexuality to the painting. While it has been credibly argued that snake charmers did in 
fact perform in some state of undress in order to prove that there was no trickery 
involved in the performance, this would undoubtedly not have been a fact known by the 
European audience who viewed this painting. For a mere audience member, a young 
naked boy is putting on a performance for a group of older men with the help of a prop 
in the form of the snake. The sexual undertone is impossible to escape. The sexuality 
26 
 
 
being portrayed also has a taboo aspect to it. The homosexual suggestion is one that 
would have not been considered acceptable in European society and yet in the “Orient” 
this painting depicts the taboo as a norm.  
Linda Nochlin notes in her analysis of this painting that there are certain notable 
absences in the painting: the first is of time and history as the paintings shows the 
Orient as being frozen in time, untouched by civilization or the colonialist powers then 
breathing down upon it; the second is of Europeans as the European is not present in the 
painting and yet his implicit presence is felt as his gaze is the what brings this Orient 
into being and for whom the painting is meant; the last is the apparent absence of art as 
Gérôme is known for being a “realist” or “naturalist” adding detail to his paintings for 
greater “authenticity” yet, in the process, distorting the authentic reality.50 
The next two paintings, one of which is also by Gérôme, both similarly depict 
female slaves. The Slave Market (1866) and The White Slave (1888) have female 
subjects.  
 
50 Linda Nochlin, “The Imaginary Orient,” In The Nighteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader, Vanessa R. 
Schwartz and Jeannene M. Przyblyski (eds.) (New York: Routledge, 2004), 290-292.   
27 
 
 
 
The first painting shows a slave market in which a naked female slave is being 
examined by her potential buyers. Her examination consists of the buyer looking at her 
teeth, much like one would check the teeth of a horse to get a sense of its health. The 
men in this painting treat the female subject no better than they might an animal. The 
slave herself represents an unusual type of beauty. With her dark hair, eyes, and slightly 
tan skin, she is exotic in a way that would differ from European women. And yet her 
skin tone is noticeably whiter than that of the men in the painting. She still looks 
European, “white” enough to be considered attractive. By contrast, her dark male 
counterparts come off as sinister. In many depictions of minorities, Westerners have 
often conflated skin tone with morality resulting in darker skinned people being evil and 
28 
 
 
lighter skinned and more European-looking people being good. This is evident in this 
painting as well, as the figure the audience is supposed to admire and sympathize with 
is physically the lightest person in the painting as opposed to the darker men who an 
audience would feel a repulsion towards. The issue of nudity is prominent in this 
painting as well. While it would seem repetitive to comment on the latent sexuality, the 
act of dress and undress is one of interest. Behind the female slave stands presumably 
her owner who holds a veil in his arm. The female slave was clearly veiled before she 
was undressed for the purposes of her male buyers and Western audience. Further 
behind the owner of the slave, more veiled women sit presumably waiting for their turn. 
The veil in this painting provides both an example of the exoticism of a veil and 
eroticism of that veil being removed.  
 The second painting is of a single slave woman who sits reclining with her back 
to the viewer. This painting was done by Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ. 
29 
 
 
 
To continue the discussion of skin color, the “white” woman at the center is a slave and 
yet she comes off as more fortunate than the two darker servants in the background. 
Darker-skinned women tend to feature in the background and are rarely depicted in the 
sexual manner that the white woman at the center of the painting is. The food, smoking, 
materials, and jewelry all suggest a life of idleness and excessive extravagance. This 
continues in the theme of the Middle East as a place of fairytale wealth and luxury.  
 The next painting is The Turkish Bath (1862) by Jean Auguste Dominique 
Ingres. This painting depicts a group of women bathing. 
30 
 
 
 
Like the previous paintings discussed, this painting with overt nudity is very clearly 
sexualized. The women are all naked, interestingly the only form of cover is the 
headdresses some of them wear. Like The White Slave, there is a clear distinction 
between the white females and the darker skinned ones. The white females exist in their 
nudity for the pleasure of the audience. The darker skinned females leave no doubt that 
they are servants and exist for their mistresses’ pleasure. While these darker skinned 
females are in some form of undress, they are not overtly sexualized in the way that the 
white females are. Their poses, the expressions on their faces all are devoid of any 
sexual connotation. Sexual attractiveness, once more, was defined by similarity to 
European beauty standards. Despite the title “Turkish Bath,” the women all appear very 
European, suggesting that Ingres merely used the context of the Ottoman Empire to 
make his interest in studying nude women more palatable to a European audience. Of 
31 
 
 
course, if the first painting of the snake charmer had latent homosexuality, this painting 
does as well. Harems and female-only spaces were frequently thought by Europeans to 
be places of female debauchery (i.e. lesbianism). In the front right corner, the two 
women lay on each other as one fondles the second. Again within this “Oriental” 
context, a European is able to explore the forbidden concept of same-sex relationships. 
 The final painting has nothing to do with women. Execution Without Hearing 
Under the Moorish Kings (1870) by Alexandre Georges Henri Regnault.  
  
In this painting a dark-skinned ruler towers over the headless body of a victim whom, as 
the title suggests, he executed without a hearing. The obvious emphasis here is the 
suggestion of senseless violence. This Oriental ruler is brutal and unmoved by his own 
32 
 
 
brutality. The blood he spilled fits perfectly within the warm color scheme of the 
painting, which suggested on its own an exotic location. The intricate details in the 
architecture and furnishing further promotes this sense of exoticism. While reveling in 
this exhibition of “Easterness,” the Regnault painting draws an immediate distinction 
between the king in his painting and Europeans. This king, after all, did not believe in 
due process or any form of court justice which one might expect in Europe or a more 
“civilized place.” Regnault’s king exists in an Orient that is beyond the laws of mercy 
and morality.  
British Travelers 
As the Western presence in the Middle East increased in the 19th century, so did 
the number of travelers who were able to visit the Middle East. In their letters home and 
writings, these travelers continued to perpetuate already existing tropes about the 
Middle East all while maintaining an air of European superiority that would made it 
practically impossible for them to have a genuine, frank conversation with natives. The 
presence of these travelers revealed the increasingly colonialist reality while their 
attitudes reflected the influence of an Oriental fantasy. 
For many of the travelers to the Middle East, their point of reference was 
frequently Arabian Nights. These stories were referenced so often that it would be 
practically impossible to cite all.51 One traveler, conscious of the frequency of literary 
references notes “the reader, perhaps, is weary of the frequent reference in travellers’ 
tales to the popular work just named [Arabian Nights],” but defends such references 
 
51 Judy Mabro, Veiled Half-Truths, (London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 1991), 28. 
33 
 
 
stating that “you are at every turn brought into contact with the facts of the ‘Arabian 
Nights’… almost every object you see illustrates some story, or clears up some 
difficulty. In fact, you are surrounded by the properties and dramatis personae of the 
‘Thousand and One Nights.’ The old familiar figures of your fancy have become 
realities.”52 For this traveler the fantasy of the Orient was not shattered by a trip to the 
Middle East but in fact confirmed. The use of the Arabian Nights as a point of reference 
reflects the human tendency to understand new things through the lens of what we 
already know. For travelers, the Middle East was the Orient – a land of decadence, 
eroticism, and cruelty.  
In conjunction to this wave of tourism was the colonialism. The travelers came 
not only as observers but as colonialists assessing the wealth of the Middle East and 
seeking to possess it. Scholars have argued that the Orientalist image of the Middle East 
is very female. The promise of riches, the warmth, the subservience, and inferiority all 
gave the Orient a distinctly female characterization. Unsurprisingly then, colonialists 
often equated accessibility to Middle Eastern women with access to the Middle East 
itself. Some travelers drew comparisons between an outsider’s relative inability to travel 
deep into the Middle East with the seclusion of the Middle Eastern woman.53 Others 
drew clear comparisons between the women and wealth of the Middle East: 
“sequestered within these inviolate walls are the two great mysteries of the East – its 
women and its wealth. Both are jealously guarded from the eye of the stranger.”54  
 
52 John Ormsby, in Mabro, Veiled Half-Truths, 29. 
53 Robert Hitchens, in Mabro, Veiled Half-Truths, 48.  
54 Roy Devereux, in Mabro, Veiled Half-Truths, 47. 
34 
 
 
Just as the veiled woman prompts a desire to unveil her and see what is hidden, 
the inaccessibility of the Middle East made it all the more tempting to colonialists. In 
fact, colonialists found it enormously irritating that the veil prevented them from seeing 
the Middle Eastern women. If the gaze of a viewer is a form of possession, then the 
inability of the viewer to see the veiled woman protected her from him while also 
allowing her to turn the tables and make him into the spectacle. A traveler visiting a 
house in the Middle East and noticing that him and his companions were the object of 
curiosity for several veiled women bitterly remarked “the house, in short, had been 
converted into a theatre, and we were the spectacle.”55  
This desire to possess the Middle Eastern woman also put the Western man at 
odds with the Middle Eastern man who, in the eyes of the Westerner, did in fact possess 
the desirable woman. In an interaction with an Algerian man and his “pretty little 
savage,” a Western traveler at first finds the man to be “respectable” before discovering 
the true relationship between the man and woman at which point he unhappily wrote 
“Yes, I had understood, my gazelle belonged to this jackal… she was his wife. Then I 
saw that I hadn’t looked very closely at him at first, for now I found him hideous with 
his large teeth and dirty burnous, his… When I departed I shook his hand; oh! if only I 
could have crushed it!”56 In these words, the Westerner clearly thinks of the Middle 
Eastern woman as being “his” despite having just met her and having no real reason to 
possess her. The revelation that the woman was the Algerian’s wife brought on a burst 
of resentment towards the Algerian who the traveler now imagined as being horribly 
 
55 Edmondo di Amicis. In Mabro, Veiled Half-Truths, 45.  
56 Paul Fagault. In Mabro, Veiled Half-Truths, 102-103. 
35 
 
 
“hideous,” despite his initial positive impression, and a desire to hurt the man seen by 
the confession that he wanted to crush the Algerian’s hand.  
American Advertisements 
This section will discuss the instances of Orientalism in American 
advertisements. America differed from Europe in that it made contact with the Middle 
East relatively late in the process and only developed real imperialist goals in the 
Middle East in 20th century. The perception of the Middle East then depended almost 
entirely on images inherited from Europe and uniquely American qualities such as 
religion and the manifest destiny. From the side of religion, the Protestant roots of the 
United States meant that many understood the Middle East in terms of the Bible. For 
them, they sincerely believed and refused to think otherwise that the Middle East was 
untouched by civilization and remained in the Biblical times.57 This tendency to view 
the Middle East as not having developed and not being touched by progress at all 
explained part of the Romantics’ attraction to the region. The second aspect of this was 
this search for “virginal lands.” As Jarmakani argues, despite Americans having reached 
the coast of the Pacific Ocean, the desire to keep in touch with their agrarian roots 
remained. Middle Easterners were often viewed in a similar manner to Native 
Americans.58  
As the United States modernized and progressed forward, the nostalgia for the 
past increased. This nostalgia was fed upon by advertisers for products such as 
 
57 Jarmakani, Imagining Arab Womanhood, 34. 
58 Jarmakani, Imagining Arab Womanhood, 36.  
36 
 
 
cigarettes. One specific brand, Omar, typically featured lush nature settings with typical 
Oriental scenes of luxury, usually including the rotund “Omar” and his concubine. 
 
This imagery created a sense of abundance at the same time that Americans were being 
to feel an anxiety over the disappearance of the American frontier and their distancing 
from the “rugged individualism” which shaped so much of American identity.59 In these 
advertisements then the consumer was fed imagery of the timeless, innocent, untouched 
by outsiders Middle East. The Middle East for American cigarette buyers offered 
something that they felt themselves beginning to lose. In terms of gender, the femininity 
of the woman was alluring and masculinity was nonthreatening to the buyer.  
Circassian Slaves 
Of all of Orientalist cultural products, Circassian women may be the best 
representatives of the stereotype of Oriental women that would dominate later years, 
 
59 Jarmakani, Imagining Arab Womanhood, 30-32.  
37 
 
 
albeit in a more extreme fashion. Where exactly the legend of Circassian beauty 
originated is unclear. Some suggest it may have been during the Medieval and 
Renaissance period while others emphasize the mid to late 19th century as being the 
peak of legends about Circassian beauty. Circassians are a North Caucasian minority, 
originating in what is now Southern Russia. During the Imperial Period of Russian 
history, the majority of Circassians were deported from the North Caucasus following 
the Crimean War. Most of these Circassians ended up in the Ottoman Empire and many 
went on to be sold as slaves.60 However, Circassian slavery had existed long before then 
as raiders captured Circassians and sold them on Ottoman slave markets.61  
The Caucasus within Western understanding during the 18th and 19th centuries 
was thought to be the birthplace of humans.62 For one, the Caucasus was mythologically 
where Prometheus was chained following his gifting humans with fire. Secondly, 
Noah’s Ark is believed to have landed in the Caucasus, meaning that all humans after 
that came from there.63 These two facts as well as the belief that Circassians were 
considered the most beautiful people led European anthropologists to categorize the 
White race as “Caucasian,” a term that exists to this day.64  
The association of the Caucasus and Circassians with “whiteness” and beauty 
led to greater sympathy when news of their suffering at the hands of the Ottoman Turks 
broke. This is where the story of the Circassians matches that which would define 
 
60 Ehud R. Toledano, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle: University of 
Washington Press, 1998), 83-84. 
61 Toledano, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East, 31-32.  
62 Sara Eigen Figal, Heredity, Race, and the Birth of the Modern, (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2010), 81. 
63 Baum. The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian, 82. 
64 Figal, Heredity, Race, and the Birth of the Modern, 82-83 
38 
 
 
Eastern women. Circassians were seen as beautiful because of their whiteness and their 
similarity to the standards of beauty Europeans strove for (to the extent that some 
beauty products marketed to women specifically used the term “Circassian” in their 
advertising). And yet European conceptions of Circassians exist primarily in the context 
of the Orient, harems, and slave trade. The allure of the Circassian women lay in their 
ability to balance Europe’s love of the Orient with racialized standards of beauty as they 
embodied the exotic, sensual East without being “unappetisingly dark.”65 
Circassian women were slaves in the palaces of Ottoman sultans and nobles, a 
fact that Europeans decried as “white slavery” and mourned the loss of these beautiful 
women to the “terrible Turks.” The association of Circassian women with the Orient 
added an appeal to them. The Orient, as was previously mentioned, represented luxury, 
sexuality, and cruelty. The Circassians were a luxury, often described as one of the 
treasures of Oriental rulers and unattainable for Westerners. Their sexuality was made 
possible by their widely-known beauty and their existence in the Oriental setting which 
by association added the element of eroticism. The cruelty was the possession of these 
women by their Turkish or Middle Eastern masters and their seclusion to harems, which 
Westerners viewed as a great oppression.  
Of course, the combination of all these elements made the Circassian women 
commodities in Western culture. Countless paintings were done of Circassian women. 
The image below is one done by Gérôme in 1876 titled Veiled Circassian Beauty.  
 
65 Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 81.  
39 
 
 
 
While being dressed, something unusual for a woman in an Orientalist painting, the 
beauty of the Circassian woman is still emphasized. The veil here serves more to 
highlight the features of her face than cover them. From the clothing to the other props, 
the colors and patterns reflect an Oriental setting that is more a figment of the painter’s 
imagination than a reflection of his actual travels through the Middle East.66 The 
woman herself manages to look both exotic with her dark hair and eyes and European 
with her light skin tone and there is both a solemnity and pathos in her gaze that would 
interest any viewer.  
The interest was such that famous American showman, P.T. Barnum, capitalized 
on it and featured “Circassians” in his shows. Barnum even gave them backstories to 
make them more fascinating including one of Circassian beauty Zoe Meleke who 
reportedly was part of the sultan’s harem and escaped sexual slavery after being rescued 
 
66 Jean-Léon Gérôme, ed. Laurence des Cars et al. (Paris: ESFP, 2010), 276.  
40 
 
 
by a good Samaritan.67 It should be noted that most historians agree that the “Circassian 
beauties” Barnum had on display were not Circassian and were merely Irish girls from 
New York, hired to play the part.68  
 This notion of the beautiful but unattainable Eastern woman suffering at the 
hands of the Eastern male is one that defines the stereotype of some Middle Eastern 
women to this day. In Oriental imagery, the beauty of the Eastern woman was paired 
with the repulsiveness of her male counterpart, creating an imbalance and space into 
which Europeans could insert themselves and save the woman from this injustice.69 The 
“saving narrative” in which a Westerner steps in to rescue the helpless Eastern woman 
is an even more prevalent trope and as we will see in the following sections, plays a 
huge role in films.  
 
67 Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit, 
(Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 236-239.  
68 Bogdan, Freak Show, 241.  
69 Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of Orient, 79-80. 
41 
 
 
Chapter 3: The Orient in Film 
20th Century Imperialism and the Middle East 
“History is written by those who win and those who dominate.”  
-Edward Said 
This section covers briefly the history of Western imperialism in the Middle 
East until the 1950s in the sections on Europe and Israel and 1979 for the United States. 
The reason for this categorization is that my next section intends to begin with 
nationalist, anti-imperialist movements in Middle Eastern countries and these 
movements began at different time periods. Great Britain would give up Egypt in the 
1920s and Iraq in the 1930s, but would hold on to Palestine until 1948. France would 
give up Morocco and Tunisia in the early 1950s but would fight to hold on to Algeria 
for several years. The United States had gotten increasingly involved in the Middle East 
since the 1930s but would face anti-imperialist backlash in 1979 during the Iran 
Hostage Crisis. The section on Israel will focus on pre-1948 history as the Palestinian-
Israeli conflict began almost immediately after the official recognition of the State of 
Israel in 1949, marking what this paper considers to be a nationalist uprising against a 
European nation.  
This section hopes to emphasize the actions taken by these Western countries 
and the drive to modernize the Middle East that accompanied much of these actions. 
Naturally, the presence of Western countries in the Middle East was about more than 
just political power. The riches of the Middle East and its oil had become a new draw 
for the imperialist countries. 
42 
 
 
European Imperialism 
By the beginning of the 20th century, several European powers had become well-
entrenched in the Middle East. France had taken Algeria and Tunisia during the 19th 
century and Morocco in the beginning of the 20th. Italy had a small presence with its 
control over Libya. On the other hand, the British Empire had the greatest presence. The 
British took Egypt in the 1880s and was beginning to chip away at Ottoman and Persian 
holdings. Following the end of the First World War, the lands of the losing parties 
(Ottoman Empire included) were divvied up by France and Great Britain. Iraq and 
Palestine went to Great Britain while France took Lebanon and Syria.  
For one, France and Great Britain differed in their approach to their colonies in 
the Middle East. Great Britain is argued to have been more accepting of local cultures 
and customs and was content to rule from afar. However, France was on a “civilizing 
mission” (mission civilsatrice) that resulted in more direct involvement with local 
governments. They practiced a form “intellectual imperialism” which sought to impact 
the mentality of their colonized subjects and to promote a more positive image of 
France. The French officials believed that the French language was somehow more 
capable of expressing “an innate logic” or “rationality” which thus made French 
superior to other languages.70 As the promulgation of this “rational” language was one 
of the defining characteristics of French colonialism in the Middle East with the 
establishment of French language schools almost as though the French believed that 
 
70 Mathew Burrows, “‘Mission Civilisatrice’: French Cultural Policy in the Middle East, 1860-1914,” 
The Historical Journal 29, no. 1 (1986): 127. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639258.  
 
43 
 
 
through an understanding of their language (which in turn gives the student of French 
access to French culture) the Middle East would become civilized.  
By the 19th century the Ottoman Empire which had for centuries dominated the 
Middle East was in decline, allowing European powers to come in. The Middle East 
saw a rivalry between French and British colonial powers as they sought to make their 
presence felt, particularly in Northern Africa. Like in their other colonies, French and 
British authorities saw the benefit in weaponizing perceived local inferiority in order to 
justify their rule. In Egypt, Lord Cromer, the British Consul-General of Egypt, 
vindicated the presence of his country (and access to Egyptian cotton) by emphasizing 
the mistreatment of Muslim women by their men. He argued that the practice of veiling 
and seclusion were evidence of the inferiority of the Eastern male and this 
“degradation” of women was what was preventing the East from becoming more 
civilized.71 While a concern for the rights of women would seem fair, Lord Cromer 
significantly excluded British women in his understanding of women who needed more 
rights. Lord Cromer was a founding member of the Men’s League for Opposing 
Women’s Suffrage back in Great Britain. Here the issue wasn’t Muslim women’s rights, 
but what the emphasis on this lack of rights would allow the British to do in Egypt.  
Following the example of the previous anecdote, this paper will attempt to cover 
the more expansive history of British colonial influence in the Middle East by focusing 
on three specific events: the Convention of Constantinople, the rise of the House of 
Saud in modern-day Saudi Arabia, and the Balfour Declaration. The Convention of 
 
71 Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1992), 152-
153. 
44 
 
 
Constantinople was an 1888 agreement signed between the Ottoman Empire (who then 
controlled Egypt through the Khedivate of Egypt) and all the major European countries 
concerning the use of the recently-constructed Suez Canal. The Suez Canal was an issue 
of great importance to European countries as it shortened trading routes and both France 
and Great Britain fought to control it. The Convention of Constantinople, signed 
without the participation of the Khedivate of Egypt, sought to guarantee the operation of 
the canal through periods of conflict. By this point, the British were in control of the 
canal and continued to control it until the Suez Canal was nationalized in the 1950s. 
From the point of the colonialist powers, the Suez Canal, given its great importance to 
European nations, could not be trusted to local leaders. This conviction in the 
incompetence of local leaders justified European presence and reflected itself in media 
about the Middle East.  
The rise of the House of Saud is another instance of British involvement. In 
order to weaken the Ottoman Empire, the British supported a local chieftain, Abdulaziz 
Ibn Saud. As a result, Abdulaziz was able to eventually take over most of the Arabian 
Peninsula resulting in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  This specific history (i.e. the local 
struggles against Ottomans) is significant because of how it would depicted in the 
history of Lawrence of Arabia and the later Hollywood movie, which will be covered 
later on.  
Israel 
The last aspect of British imperialism in the Middle East that will be focused on 
is the Balfour Declaration of 1917. In this declaration the British first officially declared 
their support for and intention to create a Jewish state in Palestine. At the time, 
45 
 
 
Palestine had a Jewish minority but no such state existed. This declaration paved the 
way for the later creation of the state of Israel and marked a capitulation on the part of 
European powers to Zionist demands.  
Zionism was a Jewish nationalist movement that came into existence in the late 
19th century and centered its ideology on the dream of a return to “Zion,” or a Jewish 
homeland. Not unlike the Crusaders, Zionists felt a religious connection to the Middle 
East, particularly Palestine and encouraged Jewish immigration back to the Middle East 
as well as pushed for European countries to acknowledge their demands, an eventual 
acknowledgment of which culminated in the State of Israel. The creation of the State of 
Israel and support from Western powers including Great Britain and the United States 
was one of the key events that helped shift the image of the Middle Easterner from the 
Oriental oddity to the ruthless terrorist.  
American Imperialism 
While the United States lacked the long history of other Western countries in the 
Middle East, by the 1930s it was beginning to establish itself and had two primary 
goals: the first (and arguably more recent goal) was to protect the State of Israel and the 
second to protect its economic interests (i.e. oil) in the region. The United States’ 
history with Middle Eastern oil began in the 1930s with Saudi Arabia. The British and 
French control in the Levant had prevented American oil companies from working there 
but King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia allowed SoCal (Standard Oil Company of 
California, later Chevron) to search for oil, a search that was successful and American 
oil companies got a foothold in the Middle East. This need to protect oil reserves would 
incentivize the United States to get more involved in the Middle East. As the U.S. got 
46 
 
 
more involved economically, militarily, and politically in the Middle East, the 
perceptions of Middle Easterners would change in accordance to American needs. 
The United States support for Israel can be seen as stemming from two different 
but interconnected issues. The first issue was political as the United States got 
increasingly concerned by Soviet support for nationalist efforts in Middle Eastern 
countries and needed a close ally. At this point, the U.S. began providing extensive 
military and monetary aid to Israel. The desire to help would extend beyond that. Many 
Americans saw the need to support Israel as a moral duty. American evangelists 
promoted support for Israel in accordance to their religious convictions. Beyond that, 
Israel began to be understood as the final stronghold of Western civilization in an 
otherwise barbaric and Muslim Middle East. This conflation of Israel with the “West” 
in a struggle for existence against the “East” fell in line with earlier Orientalist 
understandings of the “West” and the “Other.” 
The Middle East and its Men in Hollywood 
“I'm gonna go where the desert sun is 
Go where I know the fun is 
Go where the harem girls dance 
Go where there's love and romance 
Out on the burning sands, in some caravan 
I'll find adventure, while I can 
To say the least, go on, go east young man.” 
-Elvis Presley, “Go East Young Man” 
47 
 
 
While their respective countries settled in to the Middle East, this Orient once 
more became the land of fantasy for Western men. Building upon the tropes of earlier 
cultural works, films similarly presented a greatly exaggerated “Oriental” Middle East 
to their audiences. The Middle East of Hollywood was a desolate land, miles and 
centuries away from civilization or anything of familiarity. And yet for men this foreign 
land allowed them to explore what they weren’t able to in their own societies. 
Hollywood’s Middle East was the place of adventure, presenting the opportunity for its 
male protagonists, and male viewers by extension, to go on a desert safari of sorts. The 
Middle East or the “Arabland” became instantly identifiable through a few old and 
repeating stereotypes: the sand, the riches, the violence, and the women. As extensions 
of their imperialist countries, these men took over the Middle East, claiming the film 
space as their own.  
Lawrence of Arabia 
The 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia had both the aspect of being an adventure for 
the Western male and the element of Western colonialism. T.E. Lawrence himself was 
famous for fighting against the Ottoman Empire in several regions of the Middle East. 
As a British army officer, Lawrence helped directly carry out the goals of the British in 
Levant and Egypt. He was a product and direct symbol of British imperialism. The 1962 
film cannot deny that fact so it instead emphasizes the adventure aspect of it.  
Lawrence travels throughout the Middle East, donning the clothes of the locals, 
and getting accustomed to the local customs and behaviors. But he never stops being 
European. The question of violence and bloodshed proves this. Lawrence kills several 
people throughout the film as well as leads brutal attacks on the Ottoman Turks. But he 
48 
 
 
is understood to struggle with this widespread violence. Lawrence’s ability to empathize 
and detest violence differentiates him from the Arabs with their blood feuds and 
constant killings. The East-West dichotomy is revealed here: the Arabs have no qualms 
with violence and conflict, in fact it seems they know nothing but it, resulting in their 
self-destruction by the film’s end; the European understands the need for violence but is 
repulsed by it.  
Despite Lawrence’s position on violence, the film glorifies violence and death. 
It is almost as though violence in the context of the Middle East is normal. The 
underlying implication of the Middle East being constantly violent is proven by Arab 
characters who are unable to make peace with each other. By the end of the film, the 
Arab characters lose Damascus to the British as a result of their constant infighting. It 
would seem as though Arabs are incapable of anything without the aid of a European as 
they only take Damascus because of Lawrence but when left to their own devices, they 
promptly lose it. The blame for the imperialism in the Middle East is then shifted to the 
locals who were unable to rule their own lands as opposed to the British who took those 
lands.  
The image of the senselessly violent, constantly fighting Arabs was inherited 
from earlier colonialist ventures into the Middle East and remains as effective. The 
inability of the Arabs to show logic or control in any capacity justifies British 
interventions while also promoting European supremacy. Lawrence is the paternal 
figure in this film who attempts to guide and help his Arab compatriots but finds that he 
is ultimately unable to. The loss of Damascus then is shown from the perspective of a 
European as the audience sympathizes with Lawrence who after fighting so hard for 
49 
 
 
them sees the Arabs lose everything. This is a failure on his part and audience mourns 
with him. The Arabs, who have now lost another part of their native land to the British, 
are left in the dust, far from sympathies of audience members. 
The Sheik 
Despite Arab dress, Lawrence was very European. The “Shiek” in 1921’s The 
Shiek was less obviously so. The enormous success of the film and popularity of 
Rudolph Valentino who played the eponymous character led to an interest in the Middle 
East and a wave of Hollywood films about the Middle East that continued all the way 
through the 1950s. The Orientalist fascination with the “exotic” could not be more clear 
with Valentino and his fans. The film consequently can be seen as a female fantasy of 
the Middle East and Middle Eastern men.  
However, as some scholars point out, the real audience was Western men who 
could project themselves onto Valentino and live out a desert “odyssey” that allowed 
them, among other things, to treat women in a way in which they would not have been 
able to do so in a Western context. The element of a “rape fantasy” and the treatment of 
Diana is all made acceptable by the male characters being Arab and thus being expected 
to some extent to act that way.  
Naturally the reason Western male audiences would be able to relate to the 
Shiek is because, as the end of the film reveals, the Shiek is of European origin. He is 
then merely by chance able to live out this fantastical life in the Middle East. If to view 
this film entirely from a male perspective, it is an exotic adventure film in which a 
European man through a twist of fate ends up the “Shiek” of a local Arab tribe, meets 
50 
 
 
the European woman of his dreams, and fights both figuratively and literally for both 
her and her love.  
The reveal of the Shiek’s true ethnicity reflects deeply-rooted racial standards 
that existed in the United States. Had the Shiek really been an Arab, there would have 
been a concern about miscegenation, or the relationship between two people of different 
races. Miscegenation was then illegal in the United States and was later banned on-
screen by the Motion Picture Production Code. The other element of interest is Diana’s 
comment about the Shiek’s hand which prompts the reveal. Diana states that the Shiek’s 
hand is “big for an Arab.” There is numerous ways in which to understand this sort of a 
comment but the obvious one is that there are biological differences between Arabs and 
Europeans that would be reflected in the size of their limbs. This mentality conforms 
with the principles of eugenics and the European’s hand generally being bigger would 
suggest a superiority to the Arab with the smaller hand.  
The film can also be viewed as a reflection of male Western fantasies, not of 
Middle Eastern woman as the harem imagery shows, but of Western womanhood.72 The 
1921 film was released during what is known now as the First Wave of Feminism. In 
1919, two years prior, an amendment to the Constitution was passed in order to give 
women the right to vote finally. In the androcentric society, these changes would have 
been a threat to centuries-long male dominance and every female who rose up sparked a 
male desire to “put her in her place.” The Shiek does just that. 
 
72 Ella Shohat, “Gender and Culture of Empire,” in Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film, ed. Matthew 
Bernstein & Gaylyn Studler (New Brunswick/New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 56-57. 
51 
 
 
Diana, at the beginning of the film, is independent of the men around her and 
rejects marriage, the typical way in which men are understood to try to control unruly 
women. Her reason is that it will limit her independence. She then is taken by a man 
who not only seeks to trap her in marriage but very literally controls everything she 
does from the clothes she wears to the places she goes. This type of behavior from a 
Western standpoint would be viewed as abusive, particularly since Diana is not married 
to the Shiek and initially states that she does not love him. Yet it is possible to 
romanticize this behavior because of the “Eastern” setting of the film. Arab men, by 
then, are expected to act in that way. Licentiousness, control, and violence are all 
characteristics associated with Arab men for centuries by then. It is physical 
attractiveness of the Shiek and the fact that he is exotic only in appearance that makes 
him so appealing to Diana (in the end) and to the female audience. It is in the costume 
of the Arab, that the Western man can reestablish control over the Western woman.  
Middle Eastern Womanhood On-Screen 
Compared to the condition of women of other religions, she [the Muslim woman] is a 
slave. A luxurious animal, a beast of pleasure to the rich; a beast of burden to the poor; 
she is nothing more than a poor creature sacrificed to the pleasure of the male.” 
-Andre Servier, L’Islam et la psychologie du musulman 
Like in previous cultural depictions, the Middle Eastern woman remained 
defined by the exoticism and sexuality she represented for Western men. The following 
section looks at the two predominant representations of Middle Eastern women: the 
“Vamp” who uses her sexuality to destroy men and the Victim who ranged in 
representation from an ordinary dancing slave decorating the elaborate “Eastern” 
52 
 
 
settings to the entrapped harem woman. The Vamp, as defined by the acting of Theda 
Bara, was one of Hollywood’s first femme fatales. She represented the doom of the 
Western men destined to fall in love with her. While the Vamp may dominate a 
narrative, the belly dancer is generally nothing more than a prop that as much as sand 
and camels helps define an “Eastern” setting. Yet the consistency with which belly 
dancer are used and how crucial they are to visual depictions of the Middle East makes 
them interesting subjects and worth covering in this section. Of course, there is an 
overlap between the belly dancer and the entrapped female. Occasionally, the entrapped 
female is one who is forced to perform as a belly dancer. But the entrapped female is 
more unique in the narrative in which she exists. She is a victim. Unlike the Vamp who 
uses her sexuality, the Victim is helpless before her sexuality which makes her the prey 
of the male character. The male character naturally is the Arab male who is the one 
victimizing her, while the Western male who is also affected by her appeal is not the 
oppressor but the liberator.  
Theda Bara and the Middle Eastern Vamp 
Theda Bara, a silent film actress, a Jewish woman from Ohio, and, more 
surprisingly, one of the first on-screen “Vamps.” Bara’s image was very much shaped 
by what Fox advertised as being her Eastern roots, although what those Eastern roots 
were was unclear. For her 1915 film, A Fool There Was, she was promoted as having 
been born under “the shadow of the Sphinx,” the daughter of a Frenchman and his Arab 
mistress. For her later film, Cleopatra, Bara was claimed to be the daughter of an Arab 
53 
 
 
Sheik and a Frenchwoman. Fox Studios also emphasized her name which they claimed 
to be an anagram of “Arab Death.”73  
 
Fox Studios clearly capitalized on her exotic image and persona for even films that had 
nothing to do with Arabs and the Middle East, all though she would consistently play 
the role of the femme fatale. In the image above from Cleopatra, the luxurious props 
and ostentatious costumes all suggested an “Oriental” setting, building upon the 
Oriental imagery of paintings.  
 The persona created by Bara was in line with existing opinions about the 
connection between the sexuality of Middle Eastern women and danger. In the early 
20th century, the Western world was still greatly under the influence of the sexual mores 
of Victorian society. Female sexuality was considered an abnormality both from a 
religious perspective and from a psychiatric perspective. Christian teachings valued 
chastity and discouraged lust. The Western standard for women included the 
 
73 Tania Kamal-Eldin, Hollywood Harems, (San Francisco, California, USA): Women Make Movies, 
2019.  
54 
 
 
characteristic of being “virtuous” for centuries. Sex, from a Catholic perspective 
particularly, was forbidden outside of marriage and allowed for the purposes of 
procreation within marriage.  
 Female sexuality was thus limited in its expression and exhibitions of sexual 
desire were considered unusual and tied in with female hysteria. People like Sigmund 
Freud connected sexuality and fantasies with a series of mental illnesses.74 Given that 
the exhibition of sexual desire in females overlapped with the diagnosed symptoms of 
hysteria, hysterectomy or institutionalization could be offered as solutions. A sexual 
woman was than an abnormal woman, an insane woman, and posed a threat. Just as 
Orientalist painters were able to explore female sexuality in the context of the “Orient,” 
depictions of female sexuality were more normalized within an Eastern setting. And yet 
when these Eastern women came in contact with Western men, they automatically 
posed a threat to them because of their sexuality. Generally, sexuality posed a threat to 
men, more specifically an androcentric society,75 but as Bara’s distinction as the first 
“Vamp” shows, this threat of sexuality was more expected from an Eastern woman as 
opposed to a Western woman.  
 The Vamp in many ways represents the duality of Western Orientalism. On one 
hand, there is a deep fascination with the sensuality on display. On the other hand, this 
very same sensuality scares the Westerner. If, as evidence suggests, Orientalists tended 
to view the Orient as being feminine, these feminine qualities were then defined by the 
 
74 In fact, Freud believed that women were born bisexual (i.e. capable of having a libido) but repressed it 
resulting in the frigidity of the average European wife (See. Mernissi, Beyond the Veil, 38-39). 
75 (See. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen16, no 3, 1975). 
55 
 
 
allure of the riches of the Orient (among which were women) and the apprehension 
about what more this unknown land could bring.  
Female Sexuality: From Slave to Spectacle 
 In direct opposite to the Vamp was the “Victim.” The term victim here is fitting 
for two reasons. The first being that these women were, from the Western perspective, 
victims of their sexuality. If the Vamp was conscious of her sexuality and used it to 
attain her goals, the victim couldn’t help being beautiful and instead sought to limit the 
danger of her beauty by entering a monogamous relationship with a man. The second 
reason was that these women were frequently shown to be victims of the violent Arab 
men in their lives.  
Both Western and Middle Eastern women fit within this Victim category in 
relation to their treatment by men. For the Western woman, the society’s concerns over 
white slavery continued. These Western women were shown to be, in the worst-case 
scenario, kidnapped and sold to a sleezy Middle Easterner, and, in the best case, victims 
of attempted seduction by a Middle Eastern male. If Middle Eastern women were 
“riches” that the Western man hoped to attain, then the Western woman was his 
property which he hoped to retain. This once more put the Western and the Eastern man 
at odds. Despite this Western female victimhood in the Oriental context, given that this 
project is about Middle Eastern women, the focus will be on Middle Eastern women.  
The Middle Eastern woman, despite her beauty, had no rights. The men in her 
life, deprived her of them forcing her to live in a harem or marry a repulsive tribal man. 
She was seen as existing entirely for the purpose of the pleasure of the men in her life, 
56 
 
 
an idea that both horrified and thrilled Westerners. The lack of female rights was 
something that Westerners since the colonial period were quick to point out as being a 
sign of Eastern backwardness. It was a measure by which Westerners could prove Arab 
male inferiority with the idea that since their women were treated no better than 
animals, Arab men themselves were beasts. Yet, this concept of a fully subservient 
female was fascinating to Westerners who through the medium of films imagined 
themselves in these settings in which they might have access to these women.  
The James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me was significant in this aspect. 
Bond is the perfect example of a “man’s man,” a masculine-type hero who lived the life 
that every ordinary man was supposed to dream of. In this film, Bond is offered access 
to the harem of a tribal leader he meets in Egypt. Bond accepts. 
 
57 
 
 
There are no questions about morality or ethics. These women are understood to be no 
better than the slaves of the Arab, but Bond has no qualms about having a sexual 
interaction with them at the invitation of another man. The Middle East is so far from 
Europe that European standards of ethics and right and wrong do not constrain Bond. 
The fact that the Middle East has historically been seen so distinctly different from 
Europe and the West allows Westerners to function in lieu of Western norms and ethics. 
Interestingly, the image of Bond with these harem girls was advertised in film posters 
although the actual scene took less than a few minutes.  
 Bond’s harem girls are not named, and neither are many of the other dancing or 
harem girls in films about the Middle East. These girls serve two main purposes: they 
situate the audience within the Oriental setting (much like props do) and promote ideas 
about the sensuality and sleaziness of the Middle East. Unsurprisingly, some 
Hollywood producers would refer to films with these types of girls as “T and S” films 
or “Tits and Sand.”76  
 Within these narratives of Middle Eastern female victimhood, the Western male 
frequently plays the role of a liberator. The narrative arc is simple enough and one that 
will be repeated, albeit in a different manner later. The female is the victim. In this case 
she is forced into a sexual role, be it a belly dancer or concubine, that she detests. Some 
of these women yearn for true love (since the atmosphere of the Arabs was one of 
“sensuality without seduction”77) and others just for freedom, but what unites them is 
the desire to escape the East. They are then liberated by the Westerner. Aside from 
 
76 Kamal-Eldin, Hollywood Harems. 
77 Edith Wharton, in Veiled Half-Truths, 178. 
58 
 
 
perpetuating ideas about Middle Eastern female victimhood, this narrative serves an 
imperialist purpose. Let us return to the metaphor of the Middle East being a female. 
This female has suffered at the hands of the Middle Eastern men and needs the Western 
ones to step in to free her. And step in they do, century after century. 
59 
 
 
Chapter 4: “Jihadland” in Film 
 In a wave of post-World War II anti-colonialism, Middle Eastern nations began 
asserting themselves and rejecting their colonial masters. For a Europe which had 
grown content to determine the Middle East for ages, self-determination and 
independence were dangerous. A resentful Middle East turned to religious and political 
terrorism to establish itself and fight in the face of outside imperialist pressure. The 
threat of the Middle East which had long hung in the back of the minds of Westerners 
manifested itself. News media broadcasted the Middle Easterners’ hatred of Americans 
to every living room. In the face of all these changes, Hollywood shifted as well. The 
allure of the Middle East was overshadowed by explosions and terrorist attacks and the 
Muslim terrorist debuted on the silver screen.  
Anti-Imperialism, Middle Eastern Nationalism, and Terrorism 
“Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are.” 
-Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations 
Middle Eastern Nationalism and Western Response 
As European countries began to let go their colonies overseas, Middle Eastern 
countries, some for the first time, began to build their nations. Strongly influenced by 
Western ideology and schooling, many post-colonial leaders in the Middle East pushed 
for secularism and to modernize their nations. The colonialist mentality of Middle 
Eastern backwardness had been internalized by the natives many of whom saw that they 
could only become independent of the West if they became more like the West. As part 
of the efforts by these leaders, a modernist view of Islam was developed which rejected 
60 
 
 
centuries of Islamic scholarship and societal structures in favor of an ideal that was 
more in line with what they believed the Prophet Muhammad and Quran promoted.  
An example of this is seen in their approach to women. Islam did not oppress 
women, modernists argued. Islam liberated women and promoted female education; it 
was centuries of corrupt Muslim leadership that prevented the practice of this. A similar 
approach was taken towards the veil. Veiling was actively discouraged in several 
regions of the Middle East as it was seen as a sign of backwardness. The modern 
Middle Eastern woman was thus an unveiled woman. Interestingly, it seems the concern 
here wasn’t so much over the liberation of the modern woman from the necessity to 
veil, but more an understanding on the part of Middle Eastern men of how their veiled 
women reflected on their own “modernity.”  
Despite their evident inability to rid themselves of colonialist thinking, Modern 
Middle Eastern leaders were eager to break free of colonial economic holds over the 
Middle East. Two prominent examples of this can be seen in Egypt and Iran. In 1956, 
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company and 
Egypt took control of the Suez Canal. The canal was a colonialist project and had long 
existed as a point of contention between European nations, so the nationalization was 
hard for European countries to accept. Late that year, prompted by Great Britain and 
France, Israel attacked Egypt sparking what is known as the Sinai War. Among the aims 
of the invaders was to remove Abdel Nasser and take back the canal for Western 
powers. From a military perspective, the Western nations won and yet Abdel Nasser 
remained in power and Egypt retained control of the Suez Canal. 
61 
 
 
The second example comes from Iran. The Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed 
Mossadegh took steps to nationalize the Iranian oil industry. The Iranian oil industry 
was then controlled by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later also known as British 
Petroleum, BP) which had been present in Iran since 1913. This move and the possible 
precedent it would set threatened Great Britain and the United States, so the CIA and 
MI6 collaborated in order to orchestrate a coup which ultimately saw Mossadegh 
removed from power. However, they were not entirely successful. After the removal of 
Mossadegh, the king of Iran, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, took more power and 
nationalized Iranian oil anyway.  
Terrorism and the Resistance to Western Imperialism 
Post-colonial Middle Eastern leaders relied heavily on the narrative that Middle 
Eastern backwardness had made them a target for imperialist powers, but as Middle 
Eastern countries modernized and Western imperialist efforts in the Middle East didn’t 
go away, these leaders found themselves under question. The modernist policies of 
these leaders had always been unpopular with a select portion of the traditional religious 
society and leaders, whose influence they were seeking to diminish in favor of a more 
secular state. These groups resented modernist leaders whom they accused of going 
against traditional Islam and striving to be more like the West. Partly in a reactionary 
wave to modernist leaders, Islamist groups began being formed and increasing in 
popularity. These groups felt that trying to emulate the West was undesirable and 
pointless. In light of modernist leaders’ public inabilities to prevent Western imperialist 
meddling in their countries, for many it seemed like they were right.  
62 
 
 
Abdel Nasser’s policies saw the increase in popularity of groups such as the 
Muslim Brotherhood who would attempt to assassinate him. While this assassination 
failed, Abdel Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat would be killed by a member of another 
Islamist group who opposed Sadat’s recent peace treaty with Israel. In Iran, the 
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was overthrown. Given that Pahlavi had gained power after 
two Western-led coups (the first being against his father Reza Shah during the Second 
World War and the second against Mossadegh), he was seen as a Western puppet ruler. 
In 1979, Iranian college students took over the American Embassy in both a show of 
anger against American actions in Iran and a demand that Pahlavi (who was in the 
United States undergoing medical treatment) be returned to Iran to face trial. The 
infamous 444-day-long Hostage Crisis which ensued and was broadcast on national 
television shaped the opinions of Americans for decades to come.  
If modernist Middle Eastern leaders took steps to rid themselves of imperialist 
powers, Islamists proposed the most radical solution. They would reject not only direct 
Western influence in their countries, in the form of Western-owned companies and 
organizations, but also indirect in the form of Western ideology. Secular government 
(i.e. “division of church and state”) was a Western conception and had no place in the 
Middle East. Sharia and traditional Islamic “emirates” and “caliphates” were the 
solution. Modernists blamed the Western control of the Middle East on the 
backwardness of Middle Easterners. Islamists would blame this Western presence on a 
deviation from the true principles of Islam, a deviation which modernists were 
contributing to.  
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At the center of this battleground were women. Colonialists justified their 
occupation of the Middle East by pointing to the treatment of women, using it to 
promote an argument about the inferiority of Middle Eastern men. Modernist Middle 
Eastern men endorsed women’s rights, using it to argue against the inferiority of Middle 
Eastern men. Islamists argued against women’s rights, dismissing it as a Western 
invention that had no place in a Middle Eastern. To be more specific about the position 
of Islamists, their position was not that women had no rights, but that they were 
rejecting Western ideas about women’s rights (e.g. right to education, clothing, etc.) in 
favor of Islamic ideas of women’s rights. Additionally, Islamists tended to see women’s 
rights as the path to sin and believed that societal sins were the cause of the suffering of 
the Middle East.  
The argument over veiling illustrated this. Colonialists made the veiled woman 
synonymous with the oppressed woman. Modernists liberated the veiled woman by 
removing her veil. Islamists reinstated the veil in a show of a complete rejection of 
Western ideology and influence. Returning to the metaphor of the Middle East as a 
female, a veiled woman was a Middle East closed off to Westerners. Colonialists sought 
to “unveil” her so as to benefit from what she had to offer. Modernists did unveil her, 
instituting Western reforms and ideas on their own terms. Islamists would re-veil her to 
cut her off from the West. 
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Sketching “Jihadland” and its Inhabitants: Middle East and Men in Film 
The Middle East of Hollywood Dreams and American Nightmares 
 Building on previous ideas about the Middle East being frozen in a past century, 
the Hollywood depiction of the Middle East looks not much different from the Middle 
East of 19th century paintings. Modernity has not touched Hollywood’s Middle East and 
in every way possible, the Middle East contrasts what one sees in Western societies. 
The poverty is one big aspect of this depiction. While previous Orientalist depictions 
emphasized the wealth of the Middle East with bright colors and patterns, this Middle 
East is all one-toned with identical short houses built of mud and dirt streets. Where the 
Middle East is modern, Hollywood film makers go to the extent of changing the 
appearance of Middle Eastern locations to make them look more “Middle Eastern.” An 
example of this is evident in the television show Homeland. A scene featuring Hamra 
Street in Beirut was so incorrectly portrayed that Lebanese authorities complained about 
the depiction. 
 
The above image depicts the difference. Notice the tan color that dominates the 
Homeland image. This tan is very common in scenes in the Middle East almost as 
65 
 
 
though Hollywood filmmakers through the color scheme try to recreate the 
monochromatic Arabian desert. 
East vs. West: Middle Eastern Edition 
 The Middle East of Hollywood is different from the West as are its people, but 
more importantly, the people of the Middle East hate the West and only seek to do it 
harm. In basic matters like manner of dress and behavior, Hollywood films distinguish 
between Middle Easterners and Western people. Middle Easterners are more covered 
up, more likely to wear traditional garments or headdresses. Their behavior is 
aggressive even when it isn’t clear that they are talking about something violent. And 
they usually are.  
If the Middle East looks like a warzone, then its people certainly act as though 
they live in one. Middle Easterners are shown to always seek to do harm to Americans 
or Westerners. This desire to hurt the West is not limited to Middle Eastern men, but to 
women and children. In the film American Sniper, Chris Kyle sees a woman with her 
child walking down the street. He struggles with killing them but then ultimately does 
so when he sees that they attack U.S. Marines. This woman and her child are his first 
kills. The film justifies this killing by showing that the woman and child wanted to hurt 
Americans. The mentality created by these types of depictions allows for a general 
insensitivity towards the lives of Middle Easterners as it creates an “us versus them 
mentality.” 
Once they leave the Middle East, Muslims bring their hatred of the West with 
them. Seemingly moderate and modern Muslims get revealed to be terrorists as are 
converts. A Muslim convert, Nicholas Brody, in Homeland is shown to be working 
66 
 
 
undercover for terrorist organizations with the purpose of harming Americans. By 
showing that women, children, modern Muslims, and even converts who grew up in a 
Western society are all capable of terrorism, Hollywood designates Islam as the source 
of evil which would push the most unlikely of people to do horrible things. 
The Jihadi and the Oppressed One: Women in Film 
Jihadi: Asexuality and Violence 
The counterpart to the male terrorist is the female terrorist. For the female 
terrorist there are a few main distinctions between her and the male terrorist. For one, 
she rarely acts alone and is usually under the command of a male partner. An example 
of this is Nadia Ali from the Netflix show Bodyguard. Although Nadia is implicated in 
a failed bombing attempt, it is made clear that her husband is the main terrorist while 
Nadia is more of an accomplice. Even in a position where the Muslim woman is doing 
something as opposed to having something done to her, she is shown as being 
controlled by the men in her life.  
The female terrorist is also largely an asexual being, meaning that the violence 
she represents is no longer tied with an exhibition of sexuality. To understand this, one 
must realize that the Middle East is the anti-West. It is everything the West is not. Of 
course, culture and opinions change over time and the West’s attitude towards female 
sexuality has changed. If female sexuality previously was thought of as unusual, sinful, 
and a sign of a mental disorder, it is now understood to be normal. The sexual 
revolution in the United States is a prominent example of these changing norms. 
Women were encouraged to reclaim their sexuality and not feel ashamed of sexual 
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interactions. So, if overt sexuality became the norm in the United States, the Middle 
East (in its Hollywood depictions) became more conservative and asexuality developed 
to be the threat. After all, what is scarier than a woman who is devoid of sexual desire 
and thus cannot be controlled by the men around her?  
Oppression and the Muslim Longing to Breathe Free 
In more recent films, perhaps in a somewhat progressive twist, women have also 
been shown outside of the role of terrorist. These are women who we will refer to as the 
“Oppressed Ones” because their key defining quality is the restrictive nature of their 
Muslim surroundings and their desire to break free of it. Since this paper has already 
attempted to draw a comparison between the “Vamp” and the “Jihadi,” it will continue 
by drawing a comparison between the “Victim” and “the Oppressed One.” As with the 
Vamp and the Jihadi, the role of sexuality is reversed. The Victim has her sexuality 
imposed upon her while the Oppressed One has an asexuality imposed upon her.  
In Apple TV’s Hala, the titular character spends much of the film seeking to 
break away from her conservative mother. One way in which she does so is by having a 
sexual relationship with a boy in her school and attempting to initiate another sexual 
encounter with a teacher. This taking control of her sexuality in an arguably extreme 
form is how she rebels against the religious norms which would constrain her sexual 
expression. The role of Hala’s sexuality in this process and its clash with religion is 
almost unavoidable; the opening scene consists of Hala masturbating in a bathtub before 
being interrupted by her mother calling her to prayer. By the end of the film, another 
trope comes into play. Hala takes off her veil.  
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The taking off of the veil by that point had been viewed as a sign of liberation 
and evidence of modernization for near a century. British colonial authorities, as was 
previously mentioned, emphasized the role of the veil in the subjugation of women. 
Soviet authorities in the Muslim-majority republics of the Soviet Union went even 
further, forcing unveiling and holding public events in which women removed their veil 
and burned them. The Taliban’s insistence on the veil allowed for American leaders 
including Laura Bush, the wife of then President George Bush, to portray the invasion 
of Afghanistan as an effort to liberate women.  
Similarly, in a very public event, Oprah Winfrey removed the veil from a 
Afghan women’s rights activist in front of a crowd of 18,000 other people. It was a 
spectacle in which the removing of the veil by the Westerner, in this case Oprah, 
symbolized the liberation of that woman. The irony is hard to escape here. The woman 
clearly didn’t wear the burqa prior to this, so the wearing of the burqa was for the entire 
purpose of demonstratively removing it. As for liberation, that woman was a 
representative of RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan). 
She was fighting for her liberation prior to the spectacle with Oprah and Madison 
Square Garden. While criticizing the victimization of Muslim women at the hands of 
their men, Westerners tend to believe that the liberation of Muslim woman is only 
possible with their help. With this belief, the agency and power of the Muslim woman 
to fight for her own rights is limited even further. 
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Conclusion 
Future Ventures into the “Bibleland” 
One of the main places for improvement in this research is in the addressal of 
the dichotomy that exists in the Western perception of the Middle East. This paper has 
focused on looking at the Middle East as the Western world’s “Other,” as existing in 
direct contrast and opposition to the West. However, the Middle East is also the 
“Bibleland.” The Western world is built on Christianity which would make the origins 
of the Western world the Middle East. It is clear that because of this connection the 
Western world has had continued interest in the Middle East from an imperialist 
standpoint. During the Crusades, Europeans got involved in the Middle East because of 
a directly stated purpose of protecting the “Holy Lands.” Imperialist powers would 
similarly get involved in the Middle East to a lesser extent but with the same stated 
purpose: to protect sites of religious and cultural importance to the Western civilization 
that they felt they had a claim to.  
As the Western world has gotten increasingly secular in the past century, the 
influence of this desire to protect the “Holy Land” has similarly decreased. And yet in 
understanding the American support for and emotional connection to Israel, it is 
impossible to ignore the religious importance American evangelicals place on 
protecting Israel. Israel in a way connects the religious fervor of previous centuries 
which saw an interest in the Holy Lands with the secular civilizing goals of the 20th and 
21st centuries which saw Israel being portrayed as the last bastion of Western freedom 
and ideas in a backwards, violent, and uncivilized Middle East. The Middle East has so 
clearly been defined by the association with violence and cultural inferiority that 
70 
 
 
President Trump during a visit in Israel after having previously been in Saudi Arabia 
stated that he had just “returned” from the Middle East. Despite every geographic 
definition of the Middle East including Israel, Israel is still distinguished from the rest 
of the Middle East in that Americans don’t associate with Israel the prevalent violence 
and inferiority to the West that they do with the rest of the Middle East. If they do think 
of violence in relation to Israel, it is to see Israel as a victim of that violence.  
So now that the existence of this Bibleland has been noted, how is it connected 
with the Oriental Other which is the focus of this paper?  For one neither acknowledges 
the reality of the Middle East. In the section on American advertisements one element 
that was emphasized was the American fascination with the perceived primitivism of 
the Middle East. One reason for this was the desire of American Protestants to see the 
Middle East in the same way that it was described in the Bible, as an ancient, untouched 
by modernity land. There is reason to believe that this description of the Middle East 
which for some may be their first exposure to the Middle East would influence their 
perception of the Middle East and continued inability to see the Middle East as being 
modern or progressive. More research should be done in this realm.  
However, the question that arises here is how do Muslims fit in? Modern-day 
Christians are unlikely to believe that there is any significant population of Christians in 
the Middle East (despite there very much being so). Crusaders went to free Christians as 
well as Christian lands from Muslim oppression, something which wouldn’t have the 
same draw for Christians today. So how do evangelical Christians come to terms with 
their understanding of the “Bibleland” and the Muslim-dominated Middle East?  It may 
very well be that these two different concepts of the Middle East are entirely unrelated, 
71 
 
 
but then why do they seem to overlap with Israel so consistently? Evangelicals are very 
likely to view supporting Israel as being connected to religion, but this support is also 
crucial in helping protect Israel from being encroached upon by the rest of the Muslim 
Middle East, which is frequently portrayed in civilizational terms.  
Another element that could be examined is the persistence of Oriental 
stereotypes in biblical adaptations in films. The film Intolerance by D.W. Griffith and 
practically any film by Cecil B. DeMille would work here. The ostentatious wealth and 
sexual perversion that gets depicted in these films (generally in the context of sins of 
course) are both qualities that are associated with the Middle East, so it would be 
interesting to examine more closely whether the connection between the Orient and this 
Middle East of the Bible was linked in anyway either purposely by the creators or 
consciously by the viewer.  
Depictions of female biblical figures such as Salome would also be fitting here. 
Salome is both important in the biblical sense in that she was directly responsible for 
the decapitation of John the Baptist, yet she also fits into the Orientalist concept of 
Middle Eastern women as she uses her sexuality to cause evil. The overlap between sex 
and danger in her character is signature to the “Vamp” which this paper discusses. In 
fact, Theda Bara had also played the role of Salome showing that there was an overlap 
between Bara’s performance of Orientalism and a biblical figure. Additionally, Salome 
performs what is known as the “dance of the seven veils” in which during her 
performance she gradually removes the said veils. Because of this she can be seen as a 
predecessor of the Middle Eastern belly dancer and more directly feed into the Western 
fascination with unveiling, which has been previously discussed in this paper. This 
72 
 
 
dance of the seven veils and how frequently it has been recreated in the West is only 
another testament to the interest of society in undressing the veiled female.  
A Progressive Hollywood 
Increasingly as Hollywood has taken steps to become more diverse in the face of 
criticism for a lack of diversity, more filmmakers from Muslim backgrounds have enter 
the field. As a result, the representation is becoming increasingly better. In fact, the very 
first film that I start with, Spiderman: Far From Home, is something I would consider 
to be a positive representation of a Muslim women merely because it does not 
perpetuate already existing harmful stereotypes. Of course, ideally Muslim female 
characters would play a greater role but this is a start.  
As more films with positive portrayals of Muslims come out, interestingly the 
fixation with the veil remains. Hala, as I previously mentioned, ends with the titular 
character taking her veil off. However, she is shown to be praying, implying that she is 
still a Muslim, with or without the veil. In Grey’s Anatomy, Dahlia Qadri, was largely 
considered to be a positive depiction of a Muslim woman, but in one episode she takes 
her veil off in order to use it as a torniquet for a patient. Qadri emphasizes that her faith 
is more than a veil. It would seem in instances like this that Hollywood needs to address 
the anxiety surrounding veils by unveiling the female at some point and stressing that 
Islam isn’t only about veiling. The problem here would be the giving in that pressure of 
the veil anxiety and seeking to consciously address when there is no need to address an 
issue that exists only within the Western perception of the veiled woman, and 
particularly there is no need to address this by unveiling the character. This unveiling 
only continues the trend of an unveiled woman being seen as the more positive woman. 
73 
 
 
This critique of the unveiling of Muslim women is not to diminish the fact that 
there are Muslim women who do unveil for various personal and other reasons. 
Similarly, there are Muslims who commit terrorist acts and who hold negative opinions 
of the West. Muslims are a diverse group and a religion that over a billion people 
identify with, so no film representation will ever perfectly represent every Muslim. And 
it shouldn’t have to. The concern is that certain stereotypes about the Muslim 
population are disproportionately overrepresented in Hollywood films making them 
almost seem like facts and painting the entire community with one brush. Simply more 
representation is needed that way a few bad depictions of Muslims can be fairly 
balanced out by a more objective an truthful portrayal of Muslims on-screen. 
The Muslim Spectator 
Now that the depiction of Muslims on-screen has been addressed from the seat 
of the filmmaker, this final section will deal with the consequences these portrayals 
have on the Muslim spectator. There are obvious ties to Islamophobia as an 
overwhelmingly negative depiction of Muslims in films would shape how Muslims are 
viewed and treated by their peers. But the main focus here is the choice that the Muslim 
spectator is faced with every time they see a negative portrayal on-screen. Here the 
Muslim spectator can choose to either dissociate themselves from the character or not.  
Dissociating from the Muslim character on-screen puts the Muslim spectator 
into the role of a sadist. The Muslim spectator is now consciously dissociating from the 
Muslim character and is trying to be more like the Western (i.e. American or European) 
character who is actively harming the Muslim character both as the creator of this 
caricatured character and as the on-screen hero who will ultimately do away with the 
74 
 
 
Muslim character. This Muslim spectator takes a sadistic pleasure in the harm being 
done as they don’t identify themselves with the Muslim character and by helping harm 
the Muslim character, they are confirming their difference from that Muslim character.  
By not dissociating from that character, the Muslim spectator is forced into the 
role of a masochist. Here I purposely avoid saying that the Muslim spectator identifies 
with the Muslim character on-screen because really it is practically impossible to go 
into a movie theater and leave somehow identifying with the irredeemable villain and 
terrorist. However, Muslim spectators who realize that this Muslim character on-screen 
does not represent them and for whom their religious identity is too important to 
dissociate from, are forced to accept this narrative pushed upon them by the Westerner. 
The Muslim spectator is forced by the absence of a relatable Muslim character to accept 
that Muslims are not compatible with Western society, an idea that the “clash of 
civilizations” theory has promoted all along. By being forced to identify with that 
absence of a Muslim character, the Muslim spectator sees themselves as not being part 
of the Western society. If film is a reflection of society, through the absence of a 
Muslim character, the Muslim spectator is forced out of this society and has no choice 
but to content themselves with it. 
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