Such convictions presumed a singular Islam that required all adherents to act in prescribed ways. This helped make a pan-Indian conspiracy plausible in many British imaginations. The stereotype of the inherently intolerant, aggressive jihadi that informed British concerns for a potentially India-wide Wahhabi conspiracy rested on a reified understanding of Islam that pictured the religion as a self-motivating agent.

XREF: Connects to postcolonial studies on orientalist reification of religions and the construction of monolithic religious identities.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 174