Mill demonstrates here a dynamic common among Britons in India: the identification of a specific characteristic supposedly unique to one religious group might be the reason that one Briton praised Muslims relative to Hindus and the reason another condemned Muslims in favor of Hindus. The manliness that Mill saw curtailing despotism would be viewed as the very engine of Muslim tyranny by others. However, as with Mill, few Britons considered either community superior to their own. In this manner, Britons often positioned themselves as the normative middle ground between two extremes of human behavior and belief.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 127