By the end of the American Revolutionary War, a new monster dominated the imagination about Islam—the Barbary Muslim. Fantasies of African monstrosity, including sexual abnormality, contributed to the ways in which Africans, and later African slaves and African-Americans, were constructed in the American imaginary. Accounts of African apes and their great sexual organs were attached to the men and women of Africa, who were characterized as being “as libidinous as apes,” related to Satan, and the consorts of witches. Depictions of African Muslims incorporated the same ideas.

DEFINE: Explains how the 'Barbary Muslim' figure drew from existing racist constructions of African sexuality in the American imaginary.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 590