Kemandirian Aparatur Sipil Negara (ASN) Melalui Literasi Keuangan Available online at: http://journal.uinsgd.ac.id/index.php/ijik IJIK, Vol. 12 No. 2: 103-113 DOI: 10.15575/ijik.v12i2.17592 * Copyright (c) 2022 Abdulazeez Muhammad Ashimiyu This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Received: April 2, 2022; Revised: May 15, 2022; Accepted: June 9, 2022 Idealizing a Dichotomy between Islam and Sharī‘ah: the Orientalist and Missiological Stereotype Abdulazeez Muhammad Ashimiyu Department of Islamic Studies School Of Secondary Education (Arts And Social Science Programmes) Emmanuel Alayande College Of Education, OYO, Nigeria Corresponding Author E-mail: thirdbornayinla@gmail.com Abstract The contacts between civilizations and struggle for domination are parts of human historical facts. Religion is seen as a major denominator in tracing cultural and traditional identity of a given community of people. Objective accounts of these contacts establish the tendency of collaborative orientalist and missiological prejudices separating Islam from Sharī‘ah through treatises and media misrepresentations. This study uses a qualitative approach by applying analytical and descriptive methods through the use of documentary evidence and literary works. Ideological prejudices and constructs against Islam and its law; Sharī‘ah are identified. Both enthusiasts and rejectionists of the two wings of the proverbial birds of orientalism and missionary evangelism reveals that the good image of Islam and Sharī‘ah is the consistent target, hence its distortion. It is submitted that hate authorship should be discountenanced to afford harmonious and peaceful co-existence among major faith-based adherents. Keywords: Islam, Sharī‘ah, Orientalism, Missionary, Stereotype. INTRODUCTION Preconceived stereotype characterizes the image presentation of Islam by non-Muslims (Heeren & Zick, 2014). This results from the deliberate linking of any act of terrorism to Islam rather than to Muslims. Media reporting is known for this deliberate attitude resulting from preconceived stereotypes devoid of verification. Though the cultural rivalry between the West and East is still in contention, this is not a new phenomenon. It owed its commencement to the 12th century when the crusaders from Europe resumed the militant approach to Islam. It became more manifest at the instance of the decline of the Ottoman caliphate. Scholars admit that the negative portrayal of Islam and its legal outfit was felt acutely after the First World War and particularly from 1960 onward. Sageman (2017) Through discovering sophisticated media technology in the West, the misinterpretation of Islam and its law on media resumed a new dimension that strengthened phony propaganda. Writing in the book titled Covering Islam, Al-Quaderi and Habibullah (2013) aptly argued that Western media coverage and interpretation of Islam are extremely influential. He attributed this to the political influence of those people and their media institutions; they are neither true nor accurate. It is also suggested that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, America keenly looked for a new frontier that could be fought for the total claim of supremacy. Heather J. Sharkey (2003) estimates the number of symbols used in the post-9/11 era, when Islam was associated with terrorism, to portray Muslims and Islam negatively in the media. For instance, Muslims are frequently portrayed as savage, anti-Western, and anti-Democratic, as well as terrorists, fundamentalists, radicals, and militants in various media outlets like television, movies, drama serials, talk shows, cartoons, and news reports. Western media ascribe certain violent occurrences and other extremist movements in Islamic nations on Islam. According to Marshall (2021), Muslims have perceived the western media as an enemy of Islam and its law. The increase in racial https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ IJIK, Vol. 12 No. 2: 103-113 Idealizing a Dichotomy between Islam and Sharī‘ah: the Orientalist and Missiological Stereotype Abdulazeez Muhammad Ashimiyu ISSN 2302-9366 ( Print ) ISSN 2302-9781 (Online) 104 │ violence and fear of the unknown bread the stereotype and drastic changes in governmental practices and policies against Islam. The inherent danger of the above depictions is that the religious role of shaping and enforcing social values and ideas and coveying the fundamental ideas of culture as stated by Islam is now being replaced by the media. Bayraklı and Hafez (2019) Giant corporations and conglomerates enormously took over the control of media by hegemonizing it. It is truly recallable that the western industrial world owns major news agencies, press unions, fully equipped movie-making studios, and television stations. The majority of these houses are either owned by the Jews or are under a powerful lobby of Jews and Christians who ignore greater achievements and positive transformations brought about by Sharī‘ah. The West justifies their colonial and imperial atrocities meted on Muslims as being viewed as superior to the East. According to Sharkey (2003), the negative construction of Islam and Muslims is traced back to western expansion and imperialism. The West is radically at odds when it serially promotes a framework leading to the limitation of knowledge of Islam and distortion of the fact about its law. A Spanish newspaper published fabricated caricatures of Prophet Muhammad suggesting that he was a terrorist, it is to suggest that Islam is the root of all armed attacks. Husain Aduan (2017) argues that the media regularly presents Islam negatively and the image of Muslims. This is being transferred to the public at large. In this situation, they are guilty of reinforcing anti- Muslim racism. Also another word for describing prejudice and discrimination against Sharī‘ah is Islamophobia. It denotes the deliberate non-reporting or non-disclosure of violent acts committed against the Muslim and failure to present the true message of Sharī‘ah. Similarly, Arjana, S.R. (2015) gives the equally strong impression that the portrayal of Arab in Holywood movies is negative, while the moviegoers are led to the belief that all Arabs are Muslims and all Muslims are Arab. McKenzie (2018) argues that western media deliberately ignored those terrorist groups unrelated to Islam. These include the Irish Republican Army, a Catholic terrorist, the Uster freedom fighters, the protestants, America's white Arban resistance, South Africa's A.W.B., Ugandan movement for the restoration of Ten Commandments. The media describes these groups as cults, after which the last on the list massacred 80 innocent followers. The media coverage of their activities does not include the religious affiliation of these violent groups. The position of the media bodies has exposed their claim of active promotion of universal standard for human and minority rights to doubt. The connection between western imperial intervention, missionary activities, and orientalist heft is undoubtedly acknowledged. The major concern of this alliance is to distort Islam, its law, and its culture through the formation of military intervention and missionary claims of humanitarian rescue. The basic elements of western modernization are differentiation, mobilization, industrialization, and secularization. These constructs guarantee high economic growth, stable democracy, and a capitalist economy. The goal is to overcome nature and become independent of its control. It helps attain constructive health care facilities, peaceful living, and prosperous society. To reach these laudable ends, the West must distort Islam by tarnishing its image through the missiological and Orientalist efforts, forming an alliance between military interventions and the claim of humanitarian rescue. This research departs from the arguments from the previous research above, where we feel that an in-depth study is needed to cover several issues that still do not have adequate facts. Therefore, the researcher will look at these Orientalist and Missiological Stereotype views. IJIK, Vol. 12 No. 2: 103-113 Idealizing a Dichotomy between Islam and Sharī‘ah: the Orientalist and Missiological Stereotype Abdulazeez Muhammad Ashimiyu ISSN 2302-9366 ( Print ) ISSN 2302-9781 (Online) │ 105 RESEARCH METHOD This study uses a qualitative approach by applying analytical and descriptive methods through the use of documentary evidence and literary works. The author uses the method Strauss and Corbin (1990) in collecting data. Namely by sorting data into small parts such as memos. Data that is considered relevant and primary is combined with primary data as well as secondary data. After the data is grouped into several parts, the writer begins to analyze it using interactive analysis Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña (2018). RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The Intellectual Heft of Orientalism and Its Assessment of Islam Divergent opinions were expressed among scholars on the precise meaning and application of the word Orientalism. There is a leading conviction that the term generally signifies the western tradition of intellectual inquiry into an existential engagement with ideas and values of the East, particularly in the field of religion. Looking at this position, the origin of the study is specifically linked to western scholarship. A more inclusive perspective sees this endeavor as the involvement of non-eastern people in the eastern languages, civilization, philosophy, literature, and religions. According to Slingerland (2018), this position sees the Orientalist as an expert in the eastern languages, literature, religions, and history. The word East (Sharq) is the core of the argument around Orientalism. Zunes and Mundy (2022) suggest that there are old and recent applications of the term as the word Sharq was formerly used in the ancient period to denote those regions around the world that were being territorially occupied by the eastern extractions. It covers those territories around Mediterranean international waters, while some part of eastern Europe could be added to it, this is justified by the old existing historical relationship in the areas of religion, language and the like. However, the above line of thinking draws our attention to the centrality of certain historical events, which included the conflicts between Muslims and Romans, the wars of a crusade, the confrontations between Europeans and the Islamic regimes of Ottoman, the contact between Africa and Asia, each of these separate events reflects in the argument surrounding the precise definition of the word Orientalism. This strength defines Orientalists as those western authors that write about Islamic thoughts and civilization (Sageman, 2017). The major objectives of these stressful intellectual efforts are to stop and end the study of Islamic knowledge, its spread among nations of the world, conversion of Muslims to Christianity, and secure the trust for Hebrew translation of the Bible instead of other translations in European languages. The third goal is to rival the Holy Quran, which is universally uniform in its texts among Muslims. The Orientalists became fluent in the Arabic language owing to the envious strategic geographical position of the Arab and the need to know their language and history to be able to control them. The intellectual heft of the Orientalists became manifest in their study of Arabic scripts, organization of indexes of literary as well as historical works, the study of the Holy Qur'an verse by verse, and the history of Islam day by day. These were diligently organized through the preservation of original manuscripts in their libraries. Summarily speaking, the above contacts passed through certain notable periods. It started from the first Muslim contact with Europe in Andalusia. Citizens of European communities were busy expressing their dismay about Muslims' rapid development and brilliant performances in their administration and the promotion of scholarship, democracy, and religious freedom. Authoritative IJIK, Vol. 12 No. 2: 103-113 Idealizing a Dichotomy between Islam and Sharī‘ah: the Orientalist and Missiological Stereotype Abdulazeez Muhammad Ashimiyu ISSN 2302-9366 ( Print ) ISSN 2302-9781 (Online) 106 │ sources note some aspects of the 8th crusade campaign events in the Egyptian town of Almonsurah, where Muslims captured the French emperor. After his release, he warned Christians that no military means could suppress Muslims or turn them against the defense of their religion and holy sites. After that, the intellectual war was considered the effective alternative to the failure of military struggle. Their authorships are characterized by distortions and deliberate confusion. Latin language, which was largely seen as a language of science, was used to translate Islamic manuscripts in different fields of study. Recalls with interest those institutes, schools, and units of oriental studies established by European leaders to vigorously conduct studies on Islam and Muslims for intellectual conquest (Eickelman & Piscatori, 2018). This second stage of European conflict with Islam was considered a milestone in the relentless effort of outspending Islam and forcing it to extinction. The period of 18th-century European colonization is regarded as the third stage of orientalist intellectual confrontation against Islam and its legal system (Ziadeh, 2020). The period is widely seen as the peak of European colonization of the Muslim world and the control of its resources. Distortions of Islamic creeds and Sharī‘ah appeared in their journals and periodicals, using those manuscripts authored by Muslims in their libraries and archives for an onward store. These materials were either brought from the relations of the original authors who did not know their values or, in other situations, stolen. At the beginning of the 19th century, more than 250,000 volumes of such materials had been collated and processed in book form. Distorting articles in weekly newspapers column, the magazine provided an avenue for confusing innocent readers. The resultant blemish had led to the conversion of Muslims to Christianity or lacking passion for Islam. However, the imperial regimes provided the required financial aid to fulfill this strategic plan by the orientalists. It assisted in convening conferences and seminars within the major European cities with different themes around Islam, Sharī‘ah, and its history (Andersen & Sandberg, 2020). The orientalists in their presentation stayed away from objectivity with their self-designed methodology, which was deliberately made for hate portrayal of Islamic creeds. Part of a strategy employed in this direction is the establishment of departments that specialize in oriental studies in their universities, colleges, and institutes. Under this arrangement, post-graduate students were wrongly guided through research methodology and references to their authorships. This overarching style of thought is based on a unique history and antiquity based on an epistemological and ontological distinction between the rival Orient and the occident. It is the image of the Orient represented by the antagonist occident by dealing with it, describing it, making a statement about it through assiduous intellectual exploration, and translations with detailed commentaries. These afforded them the most-required recognition by presenting highly-ranked lectures in those universities and institutes of high repute. In Haeri's (2003) account, the above efforts produced some notable intellectual giants that include Gibb, Weusink, Masingou, Pederson, Kutani, Jotihel, and several others. One of the major highlights of their collaboration was the production of a standard encyclopedia of Islam. These learned scholars assisted their gladiators from imperial regimes in missions or chancery buildings, serving as envoys and spies against Islamic countries and Muslim communities. The collaborative strategy was seen as effective means of exercising control on Muslims, not militarily alone but in the area of intellectual slavery. The special position of honor being enjoyed by these orientalists was utilized to establish a dichotomy between Islam and its law in the sights of innocent readers of their publications. These are manifest in their postulations or contentions about the origin of the Holy Qur'an, Hadith, Sharī‘ah, the personality of Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.) and his message, the spread of Islam and its sovereignty, the conquests and settlement of Muslim authorities, the level of applicability of Islamic law to the current trend of human development in scientific IJIK, Vol. 12 No. 2: 103-113 Idealizing a Dichotomy between Islam and Sharī‘ah: the Orientalist and Missiological Stereotype Abdulazeez Muhammad Ashimiyu ISSN 2302-9366 ( Print ) ISSN 2302-9781 (Online) │ 107 and technological discoveries, the rule of law and democratic institutions, its compatibility to another secular idea of human rights, religious rights of non-Muslims living under Islamic governments, the concept of a community under the Sharī‘ah and other contentious issues. Each of the above topical themes attracted the intellectual attention of the orientalists with the minimal exercise of fairness and objective evaluation of the legal positions of Islam on them. Evidence abound supporting deliberate manipulations as well as distortions of facts with misrepresentations. Though some incidental benefits were noted, these are adjudged to be very minimal and infinitesimal. Literature Review of Missionary Works and Cultural Sensitivity The word tasofihi, which means defamation or denigration, is being applied by Muslim observers to describe the missionary works of evangelism in the Muslim population (Awad, 2020). Through the activities of evangelism, the Westerners at large planted doubt in the minds of Muslims. The capacity of Islamic society for social progress was put into question. This relates to the relevance of Sharī‘ah to the development of the modern world. The evangelistic movement's message and propaganda is an urgent endeavor to raise awareness of how difficult life has become in the Islamic world. This contrasts with earlier historical events when the Islamic empire had experienced a golden period of intellectual brilliance, military prowess, and cultural vitality. The Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia, which had been enslaved by the West in the twentieth century, gives off the sense that the tide has turned against them. Muslim learned scholars wrote heart-breaking books full of screaming revelations about missionary works and their cultural and emotional sensitivity. Writing under the title al-Tabshīr wal Isti'mār fī al-bilād al-‘arabiyyah (Evangelism and Imperialism in the Arab World) 1957, the duo of Khalidi and Faruq (1957) make an in-depth analysis of the image of evangelical missions. Khalidi was the head of the Lebanese National School of Nursing and a former obstetrics professor at the American University of Beirut. Faruqi was also an expert in Sufism, ancient Arabic poetry, and early Islamic history. According to the two learned authors, Christian missionaries are the most potent and dangerous representatives of western imperialism, and missionary institutions like schools, hospitals, and book stores serve as vehicles for the west's claim to political and economic hegemony (saytarah) over the Middle East. They believed that missionaries' religious motivations were only incidental or perhaps a cover for their likely worship of steel, gold, and oil over God as products of the materialistic West. They referred to missionaries as modern- day crusaders, defined by their great hate of Arab Muslims and their seeming antipathy toward the peoples of the East, which they claimed was motivated by a desire to destroy their cultural traditions. They came to the conclusion that missionaries are imperialist western agents with a destructive cultural agenda that endanger Arab-Islamic civilization. They based their arguments on a variety of missionary texts written in both English and French. These included biographies from the 19th and 20th centuries as well as reports, journals, and conference papers. These citations gave the work an intimidating intellectual weight that successfully drew readers in. Their contribution is better characterized as an inclusive or ideologically centrist stance that allowed for multiple and unbiased readings. Other authors are encouraged by the book to elaborate on imperialist and missionary themes. Muhammad al-Sayyid al-Junayd (1999), in his treatise titled al-Istishrāq wal-Tabshīr: Qirā' āt Tārikhiyyah Mu'jazah (Orientalism and Evangelism: A Concise Historical Reading shares the impression that Christian evangelism and western imperialism have the inextricable link in this modern era, and that Christianity that enjoys the support of foreign missionaries is a western cultural product. He argues that Christianity sought not only to turn Muslims to Christianity but also to import alien values capable of IJIK, Vol. 12 No. 2: 103-113 Idealizing a Dichotomy between Islam and Sharī‘ah: the Orientalist and Missiological Stereotype Abdulazeez Muhammad Ashimiyu ISSN 2302-9366 ( Print ) ISSN 2302-9781 (Online) 108 │ acculturating Muslims to western values. This, according to him, takes several forms that include dulling religion with secularism, promoting unfettered interaction between men and women, and other tactics which take the forms of accentuating the western of Christianity, preserving, remembering or idealizing the harmonious co-existence that characterized the earlier relation between Muslims and indigenous Christians of the Middle East. In light of this, he has a strong conviction that the name of the missionaries' religion should be solibiyyal (crusaders) rather than mashiyyah (Christianity). By referring to Christians as nasra instead of masihiyyun and Christian missionaries as munaşşirn (Christianized) rather than mubasshirn (spreaders of God's news to humankind), he expresses his contempt for foreign missionaries and the locals who support them. Similarly, Cordey (2019) that the American C.I.A. frequently used a large number of missionary agents who were skilled in stirring up trouble during operations. Ghazal, a secular leftist (Arab nationalist), asserts that missionary linkages exist among international non-governmental organizations, including as Doctors Without Borders, the United Nations, and World Head Organizations. They mostly serve as cover for Jewish crusader organizations and Christian preaching. He shows disdain for western-instigated human rights attempts to improve freedom of religion and conscience, viewing them as an integral part of the long-running scheme to destroy Islam by establishing rights for Christian proselytism and Muslim out- conversion. An anthropological study conducted by Haeri (2003) thorough discussion of western attitudes toward the Arabic language. This was covered under the heading Sacred language, common people: Culture and political dilemmas in Egypt. He maintains that when creating Arabic slang publications, missionaries had two objectives in mind. The primary goal was to give translations of the Bible in the vernacular for people who lived in rural areas and in the Orban lower classes (i.e., those who did not have access to extended academic education). This goes against the fusha, the original high Arabic of the scholars. The missionaries' use of this strategy damaged the Arabic language. The Holy Qur'an was written in this language, which is often regarded as the foundation of Arab identity. He takes issue with the way certain missionaries working in the early 20th century created printed educational materials using everyday Arabic rather than the sophisticated literary form known as alfusha, which was used for official Arabic reading and writing. According to his narrative, missionaries developed regionally distinct dialects for publication purposes as part of a colonial plot to split the Arab peoples by erecting hurdles to communication. In estimating the arc of missionary activities, Francis (2018) describes how missionaries stoked interfaith conflict and heightened sectarian tensions. Academic historians, Middle Eastern Christians, as well as missiologists and missionaries, were all in agreement that in some situations (such as Lebanon and Sudan), missionaries exacerbated local ethnic or communal tensions while allowing their own national and denominational distinctions to foster competition between missions. The assertion that local Christians occasionally benefited from advantages in the fields of business, government, and education was also acknowledged. These are capable of stoking Muslim resentments in the long run. The practice lends credence to the feeling that missionaries collaborated with western imperialists by being complicit in establishing Israel and uprooting Palestinians. It was historical wrong-doing that gave strong moral support to Zionists in establishing a Jewish homeland in what had been an integral part of the Ottoman Empire before 1918. Finally, there seems to be a consensus regarding collaboration between missionaries al-Tabshīr and Orientalism, al-Istishrāq as a set of pernicious stereotypes devising their propagation against Islam through the medium of western scholarship. They portray Arabs and Muslims as being perverse, illogical, IJIK, Vol. 12 No. 2: 103-113 Idealizing a Dichotomy between Islam and Sharī‘ah: the Orientalist and Missiological Stereotype Abdulazeez Muhammad Ashimiyu ISSN 2302-9366 ( Print ) ISSN 2302-9781 (Online) │ 109 and backward. By undermining Muslims' faith in their legal system, it aims to accomplish a dual goal of political and spiritual conquest while allowing western domination. These authors argue, among other things, that Islamic authorities must stop those missionaries whose international schools serve as spies, restrict their activities, severely censor western media imports, and forbid the hiring of non-Muslims, especially Christians from South India and the Philippines. These organizations engage in dehumanizing, soulless, and materialistic behavior. As a result, narrative Jihad that calls for an impending clash of civilizations between the Islamic world and the West has been invoked, using rhetoric of battle and siege. The Social Service Network of Missionary Outreach Missionary prejudices were demonstrated through perfect camouflage and pretention facilitated by the existing alliance between imperial military intervention and humanitarian rescues. The missionary activities are more of western values and projects developed during the renaissance and enlightenment periods since the sixteenth century. Contributing to this assertion, Cleveland and Bunton (2018) I argue that the missionaries, who benefited directly from western influence in the Middle East, fit within this pattern of imperialism. He continues by saying that American and British protestant missionaries first arrived in what is now Lebanon in the early 1820s and then spread to North Africa, Asia Minor, and the Fertile Crescent. Their country's consults took advantage of their political and economic clout to defend their missionary efforts and ensure that they were protected. The current set of advantages sparked interest in the concept of quick world evangelism. Thus, under the protection of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both western imperialism and the missionaries were allowed to openly attempt to convert Muslims to Christianity, which was inconceivable in Islamic state lands. This broke the long- standing rule that Muslim rulers had to tolerate Christians as long as they acknowledged and honored Islamic hegemony. However, the missionary outreach designed certain social service networks, including schools, clinics, sports, clubs, and relief grants. These are tools for the western assertion of political and economic hegemony (Saytarah) over the Muslims. Besides the previous methods, the missionary outreach includes media and xenophobic representations in the form of press war in Newspapers and radio programs. They also called for the preference of the Persia language as a grammatical identity against Arabic as a Semitic language (Inoue & Havard, 2015). Efforts of the missionary are intensified largely among students of basic, primary, and post-primary schools. Centers for nurturing less privileged children were established where hate orientation against Islam, Muslims, and Sharī‘ah is being consistently masterminded. Food, cloth, shelter, and other relief materials are being given to victims of natural calamities like drought, resulting from heavy rainfall, windy and stormy weather condition, erosion, and the like. Hospitals and mobile tents were strategically provided and located. Beyond these grants, provisions were made for the aged with relief materials. The orphans and widows equally have their share of attention. The above gesture appears humanitarian. The primary intention and target is the conquest of Islam and Muslims; it is about winning the soul of the soulless capitalists. The beneficiaries of the relief packages are equally the victims of distortions and misrepresentations against Islam. The needs of the neediest were maximally exploited to either strip Muslims of their religion or disengage them from Sharī‘ah and its values. It is about the portrayal of Sharī‘ah as a legal system that contains stipulations that are not relevant to the yearnings and aspirations of a modern man. Part of their campaign against Islam is the claim of its spread through sward; its Prophet was a blood-thirsty leader, a womanizer, and that Muslim women are victims of exploitation and caged by a civilization that has no provision for their well- IJIK, Vol. 12 No. 2: 103-113 Idealizing a Dichotomy between Islam and Sharī‘ah: the Orientalist and Missiological Stereotype Abdulazeez Muhammad Ashimiyu ISSN 2302-9366 ( Print ) ISSN 2302-9781 (Online) 110 │ being. This is a summary of what takes place within orientation camps and missionary schools. These are parts of social services and missionary outreach being employed to warm the hearts of innocent Muslims to disengage Islam from Sharī‘ah. Stereotypical Media Coverage of Islam and Sharī‘ah One of the major consequences of collaboration between orientalism and missionary activities is Islamophobia. In the account of Bayraklı and Hafez (2019), In the post-cold war era, there has been a long history of Orientalist stereotypical representation of Arabs, Muslims, and Islam itself, and this portrayal of Islam as a religion of hate has been a part of state policies. He named the state's institutions and apparatus as the first pillar of Islamophobia, followed by the far-right, which includes the counter-Jihad movement, the neo-conservative movement, the transnational Zionist movement, and various liberal organizations such as the pro-war left and the new atheist movement. The conflict of civilizations gives rise to Islamophobia. The issue of media stereotypical depiction and overemphasizing the Muslim subject is exacerbated by ideological warriors. It implies, among other things, that Islamophobia is an ideological construct that emerged during the post-cold war era with the primary goal of relying on Western society and American society at that time of perceived fragmentation in a vastly and quickly changing global system following the fall of the Soviet Union. It is postulated by Beutel and Khan (2014) that the threat of Islam to the western agenda of self-identification and its assertion to define, unify and claim the future for itself is real. Significantly speaking, the contemporary Islamophobia and stereotype trace their antecedent to the early medieval Christian representation of Islam, Sharī‘ah, Prophet Muhammad, and the Qur'an. It was part of the original cardinal means of the Church's attempt to provide a confusing explanation for the rapid rise of Islam and the loss of territories to the same by the authorities of the Byzantine and Persian empires. It was the negative construction of an image of Islam since that formative period of Islam that continues to manifest its trend steadily. Bazian (2018), newly arriving Muslims entering into Islam went as far as participating in wars against the opponents of Islam. This harped on the evidence that seventh-century Byzantine Empire Christianity was at best a fractured enterprise that severely marginalized the subservient Christian sects in the Levant, North Africa, and Spain. Despite elevating Christianity to the position of the state religion, these group of colonies maintained cordial relations with Muslim authorities. Islam's message contradicted the pre-existing Christian narratives about the world and their place in it as soon as it entered those territories. With little to no actual connection with Muslims on a theological, cultural, and philosophical level, early Christian ideas on Islam and Muslims were wholly and internally manufactured. Due to their endorsement of Jesus' Prophethood and denial of the trinity, Muslims are frequently portrayed negatively and inaccurately as being the object of God's wrath, pagans, the antichrist, and a particular category of Christian heretics. Similarly, another set of negative stereotypical images relates to the personality of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.), who is viewed as violent, lusty, and an imposter. The characteristics fit with a pre-existing story about the skewed beginnings of Islam and Muslims. According to Cook (2015), After the Crusades, this portrayal remained and gained increasing traction in Western Europe, even influencing how Turks were seen during the Ottoman era. Based on this, Dadoyan (2017) Reflects the complicated, diverse, and conflicting nature of the early relations between Muslims and Christians in the seventh and eighth centuries. Also, Arjana (2015) demonstrates how far back and before the present event cycle the development of Muslims' dreaded and monster image. She argues that an imagined Islam has evolved over many centuries rather than being a direct result of 9/11 and the reactions to it. She looked at how long- IJIK, Vol. 12 No. 2: 103-113 Idealizing a Dichotomy between Islam and Sharī‘ah: the Orientalist and Missiological Stereotype Abdulazeez Muhammad Ashimiyu ISSN 2302-9366 ( Print ) ISSN 2302-9781 (Online) │ 111 standing demonization of Islam and its created image in western discourses have been intertwined, with fear of Islam serving as its focal point. The duo of Mustafa, K. and Umar, F. (1957) give a decolonial historical perspective on Islamophobia. Four alternative strategies can be used to conceptualize our response to Islamophobia: (1) Islamophobia as a type of cultural racism, (2) Islamophobia as a form of Orientalism, (3) Islamophobia as a form of epistemic racism, and (4) Islamophobia as a kind of racism from a world-historical perspective. They are convinced that Islamophobia, a type of racism against Muslims, is present in the global economy, the global war on terrorism, the labor market, and the public sphere. It is also present in the epistemological debate over how to define the priorities in the modern world. Similar to this, the stereotyped media campaign against Islam is explained by the emergence of Islamophobia in public policies. Following President Obama's election, Islamophobia has increased in intensity. This is not a follow-up to the 9/11 terrorist attack. According to a media report by the New America News Agency, there have been 757 anti-Muslim incidents reported in the U.S. since 2012, including violence, threats, and discrimination on a local level. After gathering, the report's data was divided into five categories, namely: (1) hostility to Shariah law; (2) opposed to the resettlement of refugees (3) hostility to mosques, cemeteries, and schools with Muslim students (4) Remarks and actions by elected and appointed officials that are anti-Muslim (5) Accounts of anti-Muslim violence and crimes in the media. McKenzie (2018), a senior fellow at New America, concluded that: “The statistic shows that the rise in these incidents is tied to the election cycle. Indicating political rhetoric from national leaders has a real and measurable impact”. Hussain (2017) elaborates on the aforementioned statement by stating his firm belief that recent elections in the U.S.A. and Europe have seen an increase in Islamophobia and the exploitation of categories or wedge issues to incite fear and influence voting behavior. These categories may help anger and fear win an election battle and take control of their respective institutions. Muslims are simply used by far-right politicians as a sound-producing drum during the election campaign to turn out large numbers of votes in order to properly secure their seat of power. Beutel and Khan (2014) Bewail the stereotyped efforts of American politicians to undermine Islam, whereby they systematically restrict Muslims' voting rights. They claim that from 2011 to 2013, six issues dominated the legislation in the 50 U.S. state legislatures: (1) Limitations on access to and rights to abortion; (2) Defense of Marriage Act and other measures against same-sex unions; (3) Right to Work laws; (4) Anti-immigration plans; (5) Voter ID laws; and (6) Anti- Shari'ah/anti-foreign law bills. In well-known European nations like Austria, France, the UK, and others, this type of campaign and political approach are used. In conclusion, Islamophobia and the demonization of Muslims have become successful electoral strategies. Islam, without a doubt, is believed to be on a collision course with the contemporary, progressive West, and this distortion is the only thing that is thought to be effective in preventing that catastrophe. This is because Islam, which is seen as the adversarial antithesis of the West, which has positive and forward-thinking characteristics, is blamed for the collision. CONCLUSION It is blatantly obvious that Orientalism is primarily about ideological biases purportedly created to benefit the Orient. Missionary endeavors, which serve as the crusaders' immediate heirs, are another wing of the same bird. Instead of pursuing political objectives through the conquest of souls, they changed strategies after failing to militarily defeat Islam and began distributing aid. Today's anti-mission feeling in the Muslim world is a result of this obscure reality. The actual reality is that while the West preaches IJIK, Vol. 12 No. 2: 103-113 Idealizing a Dichotomy between Islam and Sharī‘ah: the Orientalist and Missiological Stereotype Abdulazeez Muhammad Ashimiyu ISSN 2302-9366 ( Print ) ISSN 2302-9781 (Online) 112 │ democracy, it actively promotes dictatorship in the Middle East by combating internal pressure organizations while continuing to publicly call for peace and tranquillity. This reiterates the view held by western powers that they have the authority to directly intervene militarily in the Arab world for foreign policy reasons. Additionally, their advocacy for universal standards for human and minority rights is motivated by the widespread conviction that western democracies are more ethically and practically better, necessitating the need to misrepresent Islam. Finally, Muslims have increasingly become more suspicious of missionary activities, orientalist collaboration, western imperial interventions in Muslim countries, and the unholy alliance between military intervention and humanitarian rescue or their claim of being on civilizing missions. Islam will hardly work at Pa under the western agenda with its basic elements of modernization. The elements are passionately premised on a change in social structure through science and technology as a diversion from the old traditional society of religion, magic, and superstition to a modern and post-modern society free from the religious matrix and traditional norms. This change will afford mobilization, differentiation, industrialization, and secularization. It will equally guarantee economic growth, stable democracy, capitalist economy. Through this, nature will be overcome, and man will be independent of its control and move toward constructing a healthy, peaceful, content, and prosperous society. The above elements are inherent in the legal texts of Islam with declarative Qur'anic and prophetic precepts; however, Islam is absolutely against secularization, which puts reason above and over revelation. This is the primary factor for the clash of civilization and the western missiological and orientalist stereotype against Islam and Sharī‘ah. REFERENCES Al-Quaderi, G. 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