Handling Islamophobia in Edmund Spenser’s Poem The Faerie Queen

Abstract

Being a growing religion throughout the world, Islam isincreasingly becoming the ghost which threatens to shatter the establishednorms of the Western thinking. Islamophobia, hence, grew as a doctrine whichdesignates fear and antagonisms towards Islam as a religion and a system ofcultural behavior. It has been widely represented in English literaturethroughout various literary ages. This paper is concerned with Islamophobia inEdmund Spenser‟s epic poem The Faerie Queene (1595), which is rankedamong the greatest works in the history of English literature. Spenser employsthis work to represent his biased attitude to Christianity and to portray thetyrannous reign of Muslims. The paper argues that Islamophobia, as a concept,is recently conjured; however it is very old as an ideology in the history of thehuman race since it represents the Western mindset which is based on theprejudice and hatred of the „other.‟ The faerie Queen, which is set in themedieval ages, reflects a religious antagonism towards Muslims who achievedgreat victories over the Crusaders in Jerusalem. The paper, for this reason,questions whether the term of Islamophobia which is a modern one is fit todescribe the prejudiced tone against Muslims in a sixteenth century work. Itemploys Edward Said‟s discourse of the binary opposition, which has beentackled in his outstanding book Orientalism, as a theoretical framework. It alsocomes across his book covering Islam in order to argue that Islam has beenportrayed as a „form of heresy‟, synonymous with terrorism and religioushysteria.