Often, Islam was employed as a symbol of Catholicism (or religion in general), a way to disguise contempt for Christian dogma: "the encyclopedists used Oriental difference as a structuring trope to criticize their own society."

DEFINE: Clarifies that Orientalist references served as rhetorical camouflage for criticizing Christian dogma, not as genuine engagement with Islam.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 362