Confrontational Mutual Perceptions and Images: Orientalism and Occidentalism in Europe and the Islamic World

Europe's reactions to its recently-constituted Muslim communities reflect its implicit self-image of cultural homogeneity, despite a long tradition of cultural adaption. This, in turn, is a facet of the persistance of an Orientalist vision which stimulates its opposed mirror-image, Occidentalism or Orientalism-in-reverse, as those communities react with a sense of profound alienation. The two interact to generate the cultural and political confrontation that typifies inter-communal relations today, constructing a new inter-communal socio-political boundary that could harden into a permanent divide of mutual hostility. It is this, far more than globalised salafi-jihadism, that explains the political extremism confronting European states today.