Whitewashing Islam

Whitewashing Islam is a term used in academic and public-intellectual discourse to describe the selective omission, marginalisation, or distortion of Islamic civilizational contributions and historical agency within certain Western historiographies, curricula, and cultural representations. Scholars who use the term typically situate it within broader critiques of Orientalism, Eurocentrism, and colonial knowledge production.^[1]^[2]

Definition and scope

"Whitewashing Islam" is not a neutral descriptive label in most usages; rather it denotes a critical judgment that certain Western narratives systematically downplay, misattribute, or omit the technological, scientific, philosophical, artistic, and institutional accomplishments of Muslim societies, or that they frame such accomplishments as merely derivative or incidental to a European narrative of progress.^[3] The term is used in historiography, education studies, media studies and post-colonial scholarship.

Historical and intellectual context

Scholarly critiques of Western accounts of Islamic history emerged within two overlapping intellectual currents: the critique of Orientalist knowledge production, most famously developed by Edward Said; and the later post-colonial and decolonial attempts to "provincialize" European categories of historical explanation and to pluralize narratives of modernity and scientific progress.^[1]^[4]

Marshall Hodgson and other historians of Islamic civilization argued that earlier Western scholarship frequently imposed teleological periodizations — for example, framing the medieval Islamic world as merely a conduit for classical Greek learning rather than as an active site of intellectual innovation in its own right.^[2]

Central themes in scholarship

Orientalism and representation

Edward Said's argument that Western literary and scholarly representations of "the Orient" were entangled with imperial power remains foundational; Said demonstrated how textual practices and institutional knowledge about the Middle East and Islam were enmeshed with colonial governance, missionary activity, and popular imagery, producing durable stereotypes and epistemic hierarchies.^[1]

Subsequent scholars have applied and refined Said's critique to ask how museum displays, school textbooks, film and news media contribute to continuing patterns of misrepresentation and selective attention toward Islamic societies.^[5]

Eurocentrism, attribution and omission

Researchers in the history of science and intellectual history have shown that medieval Islamic scholars produced substantive advances in mathematics, astronomy, optics, medicine, engineering and philosophy — work that both preserved and transformed earlier traditions, and which in turn shaped later European scholarship. Critics of conventional Western narratives argue that curricula and popular histories often represent these contributions as secondary or merely preservative of classical antiquity rather than as generative achievements in their own right.^[3]^[6]

Methodological biases and source hierarchies

Critiques emphasise how historiographical practice — e.g. privileging European archives and printed sources, untranslated primary texts, or colonial accounts — can create systematic blind spots. Post-colonial historians and historians of science call for multilingual source work, comparative frameworks, and attention to institutional contexts within Muslim societies (madrasas, observatories, libraries, commercial networks) to redress these blind spots.^[2]^[3]

Curriculum, pedagogy and the "absent curriculum"

Education researchers have documented how national curricula and popular school materials in some Western countries omit or marginalise Muslim contributions to art, science and global commerce. Wilkinson coined the phrase "absent curriculum" to describe a patterned omission of Muslim contributions from national history curricula and showed how such absence can influence pupils' engagement and sense of belonging.^[7] Policy analyses of Religious Education and history syllabuses also document variation across states and reform debates regarding inclusion and representation.^[8]

Case studies and empirical areas

Transmission of knowledge and the Renaissance

A substantial literature examines the transmission routes through which texts, instruments, and methods moved between Arabic-language environments and Latin Europe (translation movements, Iberian contact zones, Crusader and Mediterranean exchanges). Some scholars (e.g. George Saliba, Jim Al-Khalili) argue for a more continuous and interactive understanding of how Islamic scientific traditions helped shape early modern European science; other historians debate the mechanisms and scale of influence, producing a contested but active field of inquiry.^[3]^[6]

Archives, colonial collections and periodization

Colonial administrative practices shaped the creation and cataloguing of archives and archaeological narratives across the Middle East and North Africa. Scholars have shown that colonial-era periodizations and classificatory schemes often reified certain narratives (decline narratives, civilisational collapse) that later historiography has had to contest.^[2]

Media, museums and public history

Analyses of museum exhibitions, documentary film and press coverage illustrate how visual and material cultures participate in selective storytelling: for example, exhibitions that emphasise "exotic" religious artifacts while excluding intellectual or scientific histories can reproduce reductive public understandings.^[5]

Reception, critique and scholarly debate

The claim that Western historiography or curricula "whitewash" Islam is contested. Critics of the thesis observe that (1) contemporary Western scholarship contains a broad plurality of viewpoints, including many scholars who foreground Islamic intellectual traditions; (2) methodological rigour and source criticism remain central to historical practice; and (3) debate exists within non-Western historiographies as well concerning periodization and internal decline narratives.^[4]

Proponents of corrective historiographies argue that the burden of proof rests on historians to use multilingual sources, place Islamic institutions at the centre of analysis when appropriate, and to avoid teleologies that treat European modernity as the universal end point of development.^[3]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Said, Edward W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Hodgson, Marshall G. S. (1974–1977). The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. Vol. 3. University of Chicago Press.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Saliba, George (2007). Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262516150.
^ ^a ^b Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691049084.
^ ^a ^b Hoyland, Robert G. (1997). Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam. Darwin Press. ISBN 0878501258.
^ ^a ^b Al-Khalili, Jim (2011). The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance. Penguin.
^ Wilkinson, Matthew L. N. (2014). "The concept of the 'absent curriculum': the case of the Muslim contribution and the English National Curriculum for history". Journal of Curriculum Studies. 46 (4): 419–440. doi:10.1080/00220272.2013.869838.
^ Brookings. "Islamic religious education in Europe and the United States". Brookings Institution. Retrieved 2 January 2026.