Exploring the connections between British and American views of Islam over three centuries, they address enduring stereotypes and anxieties focused on Muslims, beginning with the standard eighteenth-century portraits of Muhammad by Humphrey Prideaux and Voltaire, which depicted him (with somewhat contradictory logic) as both an impostor and a fanatic. Perhaps, because of their limited contact with Muslims (outside of Tripoli and the Philippines), Americans tended to rely on the advice of the British, who claimed extensive experience with Muslim subjects in their Indian colony.

XREF: Connects to broader historiography about how colonial knowledge transfer shaped American orientalist thinking before direct American contact with the Muslim world.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 38