Many Orientalists, however, developed images of Muslim and Arab peoples that either perpetuated medieval stereotypes or else reflected more contemporary assumptions, bolstered at times by appeals to science, about the intrinsic cultural and even racial superiority of Europeans over Muslims. An example of the latter type of thinking can be found in the work of Ernest Renan, a French philologist and scholar of religion. In many ways, he represented the growing tendency in much of nineteenth-century Orientalism to move away from Enlightenment universalism, which tended to stress commonalities between all human beings (including Muslims), and toward a worldview that emphasized the fundamental differences between civilizations, with Western civilization seen as inherently superior to Islamic civilization.

XREF: Connects to Edward Said's Orientalism argument about the constructed binary between West and East.

Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 193