The Image of Islam and Arabs in Western Literatures: A Critical Evaluation of the Oriental Writings of Leon Uris

The dominant image of Islam in the West conveys the idea that the religion of approximately one fifth of the world's population is an intolerantly ideological and prone to violence. Instead of taking critical analyses of Western attitudes toward Islam and Arabs seriously, many who claim knowledge of the Muslim world focus largely on threads of hatred and fear articulated through religious discourse, without reflection on the complex and deeply conflicting situations in which these sentiments emerge. In this context, the oriental writings of the American author Leon Uris represent a biased depiction of Islam and Arabs in the West. The general picture which Uris has for all Muslims and Arabs in his oriental works, such as Exodus and The Haj, is that they are backward, scheming, fanatic terrorists, cutthroats, liars, oversexed, hate-filled, brutal, swindlers, corrupt, among many other blemishes. Such depictions have been reiterated so frequently in his writings that they seem to reflect reality for many Western readers. The impact of these negative stereotypes has been very extensive because there are a few works in which Islam and Arabs are depicted in objective and fair terms.