While today only those on the far right would claim that Islam is a false religion, it is often taken for granted that Islam is homogenous. This is in large part because Orientalists, like their medieval counterparts, propagated the myth that Islam is a monolith that can be fully understood through its classical texts. Only working from such an assumption can anyone make claims about a static entity called "Muslim civilization" with a core set of unchanging values, or about the "Muslim mind" (viewed, of course, in the singular, as though all Muslims shared a hive mind). It is only by denying the diversity of Islamic history and practices that one can then argue that Islam has certain inherent, unchanging characteristics that render it antidemocratic, violent, sexist, and so on. The myths discussed in this chapter emerge from this core assumption that Islam is a monolith.

XREF: Connects to Edward Said's Orientalism and broader critiques of essentialist portrayals of non-Western cultures.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 158