Fantasies of both the Orient and Oriental tend to be strongly sensualized, situated in medieval ideas about the East and typified in portrayals of Muslim monsters. Male Muslim monsters are typically hyper-masculine—aggressive, overly sexual, and violent—characters that also function as tableaux of desire and fantasy. Descriptions of Oriental landscapes utilize a gendered vocabulary in which the land is romanced, conquered, and penetrated, like the symbolic "unveiling" of Muslim women, an act that has been linked to the rape fantasies of colonizing men. The bulk of studies on desiring the Muslim Other are focused on the male gaze and its fixation on Oriental females, harems, veils, and the like. However, other Muslim characters, including the monsters examined here, are also repositories of Western desires and fantasies. These fantasies range from the bestiality associated with medieval monsters like the cynocephalus to the homoeroticism and necrophilia evident in Gothic characters like Vathek and Dracula.

XREF: Connects to Edward Said's Orientalism framework about the East as an object of Western desire and domination.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 51