Muslim precarity: Plagues of the mind and corona orientalism

Abstract By focusing on epidemics that cut across time and space, this article analyses William Wittman’s Travels in Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria: and across the Desert into Egypt during the Years 1799, 1800, and 1801 (1804); John Lewis Burckhardt’s Travels in Arabia, Comprehending an Account of those Territories in Hedjaz which the Mohammedans regard as Sacred (1829); and recent COVID-19-related media narratives. This article suggests that the orientalist agendas of the Eurocentric world towards the Muslim community are far from over, irrespective of geopolitical space. The article conceptualizes the everyday existential crisis of the Muslim community as “Muslim precarity,” exacerbating, as such representations do, the community’s life conditions, and making it more vulnerable and insecure. These Eurocentric views, racist as they turn out to be, can be termed as “plagues of the mind” that need a constant supply of stereotypical images to perpetuate their agendas and ensure their hegemony over Muslims.


Introduction
The scathing critique and institutionalization of Islamophobia in present times is far from anything new in the Western popular imaginary.The accrued racist views that frame Muslim culture across the world as threatening, diabolical, civilizational enemies, and irrational Orientals do not seem to have any easy diagnosis.The outcome of such racist views is the establishment, proliferation, even legitimization of "the Muslim world versus the West" dichotomy in our modern parlance, thus turning the entire culture into a supposedly monstrous one.The use of the term "West" here refers to the Eurocentric hegemony.Seen from this cultural hegemonic position, Muslim precarity is rendered an everyday existential crisis, a subsequent image perpetuated by the Eurocentric media and cultural discourse.No wonder, then, that Edward Said maintains that such stereotyped representations of Muslims render "a kind of a priori touchstone to be taken account of by anyone wishing to discuss or say something about Islam. . . .It enters the cultural canon, and this makes the task of challenging it very difficult indeed" (Said, 1997, p. 157) Said's idea of the canonization of Muslim stereotypes holds true even in the present-day context.The nub of the matter is that Muslim culture has become increasingly precarious, making the entire community vulnerable to racist attacks and inhuman treatment in the Western countries.Precarity as a critical concept is often linked to neoliberal conditions and the subsequent damage to social structures and life conditions as Dwivedi contends, "In the neoliberal age, perpetual thirst for self-expansion of capitalist societies has decimated our notion of social care" (Dwivedi, 2022a, p. 20).
The present article extends the critical purchase of precarity to analyse socially and racially induced vulnerability that underpins Muslim culture since long.As Kasmir (2018) avers, "Precariousness is also used to denote a general, pervasive ontological condition of vulnerability, displacement, and insecurity, not explicitly tied to the contemporary form of neoliberal capitalism or class relations, but instead characteristic of transhistorical and existential forces."This article, therefore, conceptualizes the notion of "Muslim precarity" as an existential crisis that envelops Muslim lives and cultures.By examining William Wittman's Travels in Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria: and across the Desert into Egypt during the Years 1799Years , 1800Years , and 1801Years (1804) ) and John Lewis Burckhardt's Travels in Arabia (1829), the article turns its gaze on these nineteenth century travel narratives and establishes the resurgence of the same racist attitudes towards Muslim culture during the COVID-19 pandemic.In so doing, it locates the rise of Muslim precarity within the discourse of two deadly diseases: the plague and COVID-19.

Muslim precarity
Precarity as a critical tool analysing social, economic and political conditions is linked to Guy Standing's The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011) and Judith Butler's Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004).While Standing conceptualizes "precarity" in terms of sociological conditions that lead to cultural-psychological vulnerability, Butler situates it within the ambit of politics (Standing, 2011;J.;Butler, 2004).She argues that "'precarity' designates that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support more than others, and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death" (J.Butler, 2015, p. 33).Without negating the provenance of the critical frameworks of these two critics, the article agrees with Om Prakash Dwivedi's claim that "Precarity, precariat and precariousness are theoretical tools, employed in a range of contexts ever since Judith Butler used the terms to denote a shared ontological condition of exposure and interdependency of bodies" (Dwivedi, 2022b, p. 9).The amorphous nature of the term "precarity" is also claimed by Ritu Vij in a recent article (Vij, 2019).Reflecting on the heightened "invulnerability to insecurity" (2019, 3), Vij claims that such ontological conditions are the driving force of the Eurocentric ideology as these suits their capitalist agenda as well as cultural prejudices.She follows the trajectory of R. B. J. Walker to sharpen the critical urgency of the term "precarity."Walker argues that the "subject of security is the subject of security, . . .predicated on the impossible dream of absolute invulnerability," where "modern accounts of security are precisely about subjectivity, subjection and the conditions under which we have been constructed as subjects" (1997,(71)(72)(73)(74)(75)(76)(77)(78).Vij extends Walker's international relations perspective, providing a new lens through which to view the discursivity of precarity.
Precarity as exposure to vulnerability is the spectre that haunts the liberal subject of security.Precarity is thus better understood not as a globally dispersed socio-economic positivity but as a dis-ordering experience of sovereign subjectivity, a breach of the regulative ideal and anthropology of self-mastery, whose principal referent is the liberal not global subject of security.(Vij, 2019, p. 3) While one wonders why Vij refuses to include the notion of "global subject of security" in her formulation of precarity and prefers to contextualise it in reference to "the liberals," this article is more interested in the "dis-ordering experience of sovereign subjectivity" as a phenomenon that relates to the everyday existential crisis of Muslim lives in the Western countries.It is through a systematic dis-ordering of other forms of Muslim culture, their lives, their representations, that a hegemonic order is established and sanctioned, thus framing them in dark codes.Such malicious representations have led to a lurking threat waiting for Muslims irrespective of geopolitical space: Despite their academic and economic measures of success that one might expect would provide them with a sense of security, these immigrants do not feel their livelihoods are secure.Rather, their racialized positionality combined with the stigma attached to their religious identity induce in them a sense of insecurity and vulnerability.(Shams, 2020, p. 654) In fact, such is the intensity of these stereotyped representations that other South Asians living in Western countries are often mistaken for Muslims and are subject to both mental and physical violence.Vijay Prashad sees this experiential condition as a "pillar of inferential racism" (Prashad, 2000, p. 170) because, as Shams rightly suggests, whereas this stereotype portrays blacks as a "problem," it presents South Asians as a "solution."To glorify South Asians as successful because of their hard work infers that blacks are unsuccessful because of their character, thus diverting attention away from structural inequalities.(Shams, 2020, p. 656) It can be claimed that Muslim precarity is very much an outcome of the racist model that reflects the colonial mentality and modes of hyper surveillance that follow Muslims wherever they are, thus causing them deep, irreparable social and psychic isolation; thus vulnerability to life and identity becomes a part of their existence.
Accordingly, Morey and Yaqin (2012) maintain that it is high time to "pay attention to the processes by which such images are constructed, those features that are used again and again, becoming a default signifier for the mistrusted Muslim, and how their circulation takes place within different cultural modes of practice and against particular political backgrounds" (2012,19).Although it is well-established that there has been a severe backlash against Muslim culture since the events of 9/11, yet the pattern of such negative circulation can be traced back a long way.The scope of this article is not to narrate a historical account of the processes of stereotyping and the subsequent Muslim precarity, however, but to establish a connection between Islamophobic attitudes during the present COVID-19 crisis and the period of the plague that hit the Arab land in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.Cultural misrecognition is deliberate and strategic, leading to a constant supply of narratives that contribute to the inferiorization of Muslims and the concomitant superiorization of the Eurocentric hegemony.As Judith Butler avers, "Images don't just postdate the event, but become crucial in its production, its legibility and its very status as reality" (J.Butler, 2007, p. 958).Butler's views on the spread and approval of cultural misrecognition are ostensibly central to the precariousness of Muslims.Hence, it comes as no surprise that Muslims have been subject to precarious conditions, treated as less than human to an extent that their lives and deaths are inconsequential to global power structures.The rules of the game remain the same and "hardship is the only language used here.Anybody who is able to die will be able to achieve happiness for himself, he has no other hope except that" ("'Witness Against Torture', n.d.).Latif's lamentation sums up the vulnerable positions that Muslims occupy.Their precariousness is linked to the orientalist project of dehumanization, deprived as it is of any normativity, and hence it remains vital to create tools to "open the restrictions on interpreting reality to critical scrutiny" (J.Butler, 2007, p. 952).

Plagues of the mind
While epidemics may be man-made or natural, diseases of the mind are not.They are always directed at some object and linked to our desires, our fears, and our inability to adapt to new circumstances and ideas.This article, therefore, views the negative and, at times, exaggerated representations of the plague that hit the Arab land (the Middle East region, also known as the Islamic world) as an outcome of "plagues of the mind," to use a term from Bruce Thornton (1999).The Arab land experienced periodic incidents of plague during the medieval period.It needs to be stressed at this point that Europeans faced the same plagues; it is another matter that their accounts have not been narrated in dark tones.
The regions covered in the selected texts had a long history of plague, which was "well known to Middle Eastern peoples before the Black Death" (Dols, 2019, p. 13).In AH 599-600/AD 1202, devastation occurred in Taif when the plague frightened people into leaving their houses and villages to take shelter in Makkah.Their houses and belongings were left vulnerable to outsiders, but anyone who attempted to take anything was immediately afflicted with the plague (Al-Kmal, 2020, pp. 35-36).In AH 749/AD 1348, the plague again struck Makkah, Taif, Jeddah, and Hijaz, and only a few people survived its onslaught (Al-Kmal, 2020, p. 38).Frightening outbreaks of plague hit Egypt: "Justinian's plague (6th and 7th centuries), the Black Death (14th and 18th centuries), and the third plague pandemic (1855-1959)" (Lotfy, 2015, p. 551).People were dying in such large numbers that their dead bodies had to be queued for proper funerals and burials.Details of these plague outbreaks are provided by observers like Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalānī and al-Maqrizi for the 1430 plague and Ibn Taghrī Birdī for the 1460 plague (Borsch, 2015, p. 130).Dols pointed out how devastating the plague was in Egypt based on historical accounts by Ibn Taghrī Birdī and Al-Maqrizi : "mass funeral services took place during plague epidemics at the principal mosque of Cairo . . . the funeral prayers were recited over a double line of coffins that reached from the maqsurah or prayer enclosure to the main entrance" (Dols, 2019, p. 242).
The spread of the infection also led to social and political upheavals in Levant (Syria) and Hijaz (the western part of Saudi Arabia).The peasants fled from their villages to the cities, spreading the infection (Albazaz, 2002, p. 343).The movement of military forces from one city to another also played a significant role in spreading the plague (Albazaz, 2002, p. 346).There is also evidence to suggest that the plague spread from Hijaz to the Maghreb.The 1799 plague that raged in Tangier was triggered by infected pilgrims from Makkah; the goods and gifts they brought caused its rapid outbreak (Hadush, 2002, pp. 323-24).
Before analysing the texts, it needs to be pointed out that the available historical sources clearly claim that the Arab land followed strict quarantine measures: isolating the infected person (Al-Guzi, 2013, 19:355), not attending his funeral even by his family members n.d.,, and imposing security measures on the country's land and sea borders to prohibit any entries/exits (Albazaz, 1992, pp. 87-90).Ibn Katheer (died in 1373) documented that as people passed by, they only found empty markets and roads, closed doors, loneliness, and dreariness (Kathir, 1991, 12:71).From this one can see that the approach of the Islamic world towards the plague was not irresponsible, but was underlined with care for the community and society.In their article, Mashhor Abdu Al-Moghales and et.al. attempted to study "the dynamics of Western travel writers' representation of some Arab societies during the plagues between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries [and how they] portrayed the causes of the plague and the local people's attitudes and approaches towards diagnosing and managing its infection' (Al-Moghales et al., 2022, p. 9) However, the views of some Western travel writers who visited Arabian countries and documented their experiences of the society and people run contrary to the realities on the ground.For instance, William Wittman presented himself as an authority on the old Turkish nations (presentday Syria, Palestine, and Egypt), claiming that he "was certainly in a situation especially advantageous for observing the manners, customs, and habits of the Turkish nation" (Wittman, 1804, vii).As a medical surgeon attending the British army in Turkey, he had limited opportunities for excursions beyond his routes or camps, but he finds it very convenient to portray the entire Turkish land negatively.One may argue that as a medical surgeon of the British army he had access to information from different places; however, on examining his narratives about the Turkish nation, one can clearly detect his prejudicial attitude towards Muslims and their culture.
In his travelogue, Wittman documents various cases of plague, which were widespread and afflicted the members of the army he accompanied.He attempts to understand the nature of this fatal disease that claimed thousands of people in Egypt and Syria, while maintaining a superior status for himself and British culture throughout the book.Wittman had mandated quarantine for anyone entering Alexandria.He celebrates the thoughtfulness and professionalism that the British army maintained in managing the plague by recounting how a soldier was tried and sentenced to be shot because he had allowed two "Arabs who . . .had been engaged in an attendance on some persons suffering under the plague and consequently exposed to a great and manifest risk all those whom they might encounter in their flight" to escape (Wittman, 1804, p. 298).The casual approach of the Arabs towards quarantine is highlighted by claiming that they were quite indifferent even when handling pestiferous dead bodies (Wittman, 1804, p. 380).They wash the dead bodies, touch them whenever necessary for their last rituals and burials without any hesitation, and the "persons employed in the interments, are, however, said to catch the disease occasionally and die" (Wittman, 1804, p. 380).He also depicts how the people of Cairo paid no heed to the infection in their daily social interactions and personal contacts.They were living their everyday lives without taking any precautions and social distancing.He refers to two celebrations that took place in the very week when incidents of infections and deaths were reported, "the Arabs paraded the streets of Cairo in commemoration of the birth of the mother of Mahomed" (Wittman, 1804, p. 325).Further, he describes "a grand procession or cavalcade of the women of Cairo . . .[where] the females of Cairo to parade the town in this manner" (Wittman, 1804, p. 380).He also notes how the markets remained open and business continued during the plague-infected week (Wittman, 1804, pp. 291-92).
Of course, Wittman was narrating all these incidents-imaginative or otherwise-from a position of authority.The usual alibi of modernity becomes a vital tool to locate the backwardness of the Muslim people.No wonder, then, that he criticizes the use of old traditional methods for the treatment of patients.He juxtaposes the Christians' treatment of the plague with that of the Muslims: "In these pestiferous countries, the precautions which the Christians take, render them less subject to plague than the Mahometans" (Wittman, 1804, p. 381).In the same vein, he argues that the treatment procedures the Syrian Muslims followed are "as capricious and immethodical as confined within narrow limits.They place a great confidence in the use of the lancet" (Wittman, 1804, p. 167).He often refers to the Muslims' inability to devise new treatment methods for the plague and their overdependence on traditional and primitive methods.Actually, this dialect of modernity/antiquity continues to remain the driving force of the civilizing mission undertaken by prejudiced whites.As Lutfi Sunar maintains, "Civilization" is probably the most tragic subject of the last two centuries.With its emergence, implications, what it covers and leaves out, civilization has become an indispensable part of the debates about modern society.Once modernity is defined in terms of what is civilized during the Enlightenment, it remains impossible to talk about civilization as a distinct social phenomenon.On the other hand, civilization bears the heavy burden of the violence exerted upon other societies for the sake of civilizing them.(Sunar, 2017, p. 4) Likewise, Wittman employed the rhetoric of modernity while depicting the life, culture, and society of Muslims in Egyptian cities like Dahroot and Rosetta (Rashid).The images and metaphors used by Wittman to describe Muslim customs are profoundly derogatory, pejorative, and distortive.He naturalized the disease to the Muslim land and its people: "From the best information received, and observations recently made, it would appear that the plague is a native of Africa, and of Asia" (Wittman, 1804, p. 382).He continues: The streets of Rosetta are extremely narrow and very dirty.The manner in which the inhabitants live croudedly together, would appear sufficient, in a stagnant state of the atmosphere, in most of their towns . . . to generate pestilential or malignant diseases.
Neither concrete evidence nor scientific information are provided to prove his point.Despite this, he takes up the "white man's burden" of establishing an inherent scientific connection between the Muslim land and the epidemic.He depicts the natives as "nearly naked" and their houses "filthy in the extreme" and diagnosed that it may be "one of the remote causes of plague" in the region (Wittman, 1804, p. 291) The same orientalist attitude can be discerned in John Lewis Burckhardt's travelogue, Travels in Arabia (1829).In his critique of the natives' superstitions, Burckhardt writes that Zamzam water is considered a cure for all diseases: A man . . .was ill of an intermittent fever, repaired every evening to Zemzem, and drank of the water till he was almost fainting, . . . he was brought to the verge of death, he declared himself fully convinced that the increase of his illness proceeded wholly from his being unable to swallow a sufficient quantity of the water!(Burckhardt, 1829, pp. 144-45) Burckhardt's contemptuous approach visible in this quotation highlights his position as a gatekeeper of Muslim culture.No wonder such writers only engender the rules of stereotyping, paying no attention to alternative narratives or even engaging with the community members to understand the rich diversity of their culture.This is why Griffiths suggests, "Little or no attention was paid to the evidence in the narratives and texts of the peoples of those worlds themselves, their own accounts or histories, even when they were known" (Griffiths, 2012, p. 59).Similarly, Ayalon (2008, 224) remarked: "Foreigners had very limited exposure to a city's daily routine while sojourning there.They described what they saw, as well as stories they heard from others.Their sources were usually local Christian and Jews."Continuing with his orientalist approach, Burckhardt further states: As a great many foreign merchants were then in Djidda, property considerably increased Mohammed Aly's treasure; and I heard from eye-witnesses, that the only business then done in the town was the transport of corpses to the burial-ground, and that of the deceased's valuable property to the house of the commandant.(Burckhardt, 1829, p. 418) Colonial ideology, as Nigel Gibson (1999, 338) observed, drums "into the native the idea that all indigenous culture, customs, and traditions are the products of 'constitutional depravity.'"Burckhardt's narrative is replete with such features.He scoffed at the indifferent attitude of the natives regarding their medical and social systems at work.Unable to tear the veil of religion, Burckhardt started exploring the drawbacks within the community sense itself.He viewed Arabs as a failed society and squarely blamed the predestination concept for their tardy approach: "The belief in predestination, however, is so deeply and universally rooted in the minds of the eastern nations, that not the slightest measures of safety are anywhere adopted" (Burckhardt, 1829, pp. 318-19).
One can only pity Burckhardt for jumping to the conclusion that "the Arabs used no kind of medicine" (Burckhardt, 1829, p. 413) to deal with the raging plague.Perhaps he was not aware of (or chose to remain deliberately blind to) the well-established fact that several Europeans, including the famous Italian poet, Petrarch, abhorred the idea of modern medicine simply because it was introduced into Europe by Arabs.In fact, Petrarch even "refused to listen to the advice of 'modern' physicians because 'nothing good can come from those Arabs'" (Debeuf, 2020).
Burckhardt built his argument on a false but common belief that the Eurocentric knowledge system developed the premises of modern medicine from its traditions and practices, while other nations just borrowed from them.In its early efforts to develop medical inoculations and vaccinations, methodical Western science discovered the idea of using smallpox to fight smallpox in the folk medicine of the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Africa (Carrell, 2004, xvi).
Burckhardt tried to explain the source of plague epidemics in the indigenous communities on the Arab land.The source of transmission, in his view, was the Arabs' unhygienic conditions and careless attitude to social gatherings and customs.He demonstrated how dirty Arabs sitting down side by side with the best-dressed hajis (pilgrims) on the woollen carpets in Makkah Mosque, which had become the favourite abode of millions of animals less harmless than the sacred pigeons, were one of the sources of transmission of the plague to visitors, who transferred them to their private lodgings (Burckhardt, 1829, p. 348), thus increasing the spread of the plague.Another important source that he remarked on was the community get-together when people flocked to the house of a deceased person to console the bereaved: The women enter the apartments, embrace and console all the females of the family, and expose themselves every moment to infection.It is to this custom, more than any other cause, that the rapid dissemination of the plague in Mohammedan towns must be ascribed; for when the disease once breaks out in a family, it never fails of being transmitted to the whole neighbourhood.(Burckhardt, 1829, p. 414) In Burckhardt's view, the ravages of the plague were more deplorable at Jeddah than at Yanbu.People fled in large numbers to Makkah "thinking to be safe in that sacred asylum, but they carried the disease with them" (Burckhardt, 1829, p. 418).Even though the religion allows preventive measures, more often than not, he blames the belief in predestination which is so deeply and universally rooted in the minds of the eastern nations, that not the slightest measures of safety are anywhere adopted (Burckhardt, 1829, p. 414).He highlighted with special interest the customs that the people practised during the plague: When the plague had reached its height at Yembo, the Arab inhabitants led in procession through the town a she-camel, thickly covered with all sorts of ornaments, feathers, bells, &c.&c.: when they reached the burial-ground, they killed it and threw its flesh to the vultures and the dogs.They hoped that the plague, dispersed over the town, would hasten to take refuge in the body of the camel and that by slaughtering the victim, they would get rid at once of the disease.(Burckhardt, 1829, pp. 418-19) There is ample stereotyping in Burckhardt's descriptions of the people of Makkah.They, in his esteemed view, consider non-Muslims with "the most opprobrious and contemptuous epithets" subsumed under the general appellation of Káfer: "El Káfer" or "the Infidels" is used mainly for the English, "El Káfer fy'l Hind" for the Káfer in India, and "Merkeb el Káfer fy Djidda" always refers to the English (Burckhardt, 1829, p. 209).

Corona orientalism and precariousness of Muslim lives
While the COVID-19 was a global health crisis, its implications were more severe for select groups and communities such as the Asian and African communities, further maintaining and legitimizing what this article claims to be "plagues of the mind."The global epidemic only proved that longstanding cultural stereotypes, particularly when they are driven by racist and monetary agendas, are hard to break or shake.No wonder, then, that derogatory terms such as "Muslimvirus" and "jihadivirus" were deliberately raised and promoted to position the Muslims as threatening and backwards, while also catering to the racial Eurocentric desire for an endless supply of such images."Islamophobic online 'Cyber Hubs' were being formed which linked Muslims to the spread of COVID-19, spread anti-Muslim memes and shared fake news stories" (Birmingham City University n.d.).According to these two scholars led to these findings: • Mosques are responsible for the spread of COVID-19 • Muslims are super-spreaders of the coronavirus Such images only extend and strengthen the Eurocentric racial attitude towards Muslims.Not only do they refuse to acknowledge any alterity of this community, they exacerbate Muslims' precarious conditions by dragging them into the ambit of their racist radar.One can see that the civilizing mission of the imperialist countries deliberately externalizes Muslims, exposing them to vulnerability, albeit in different forms.In another instance of COVID-19 reporting, an article in "the Daily Mail contained 13 images, mostly of coffins.Massification was a key aspect of this narrative, where quoting numbers contributed to the wider media panic about the pandemic" (Poole & Williamson, 2021).According to Poole and Williamson (2021), the Daily Mail also reported "Mass graves for up to 10 bodies are being dug in Muslim cemetery where 13-year-old Ismail was buried as Islamic community is devastated by coronavirus pandemic."These were later found to be fake stories, a part of what may be seen as "corona orientalism."Aided and abetted by these supposedly global media houses, such images perpetuate the framing of Muslims in ways that are deplorable and condemnable.In response to such incidents that lead to the precariousness of Muslims, Kishore Mahbubani, the former Singapore ambassador to the United Nations, "called the West complacent and said this was the cause of the late European response to the pandemic.Mahbubani said it is still inconceivable for many Europeans that there could be something to be learned from some east Asian countries" (Debeuf, 2020).
Interestingly, accounts that reflect on the alterity of Muslims are ignored.The leading United Kingdom newspaper, the Daily Mail, pushed its orientalising agenda: "All Muslims intending to travel to Islam's holiest sites to perform the hajj should delay making plans this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, a senior Saudi official has said" (R. Butler, 2020).One can be misled by this article until one notices the accompanying images of mass prayer below the title, and its reaffirming tone of orientalism, "A thronging crowd of Muslim worshippers"(R.Butler, 2020).Just two weeks later, the Daily Mail spread a note of warning to its readers, "Ramadan could lead to rise in coronavirus cases when UK's 3 million Muslims celebrate holy month" (Williams, 2020).
To link the cause and spread of COVID-19 epidemic to a particular community and religion is certainly a disease of the mind.Viruses do not recognize religions when they spread, nor do they recognize any geopolitical boundaries.They are the result of various factors such as the intrusion of humans into the zones of animals and the degradation of the environment to name a few.How do we make sense of such racist responses to a particular community in the wake of an epidemic disease?Dwivedi (2020 n.p.) responds to this racist gaze: "to see this pandemic through a racial lens alone would be naïve, as it obfuscates the larger issues that have unfolded from the present crisis."The configuration of "corona orientalism," then, is a systematic formulation of racial hegemony and the subsequent cultural superiority, which continue to operate in heightened forms even in the much-celebrated age of globalization.By examining this fixing of the gaze on the epidemic and the Muslim community through a single lens, one can recognize the age-old gatekeeping exercise by imperial forces operating in modern times in new ways, thus affirming the play of power and privilege that the gazer enjoys over the gazed upon.Such psychological framing of power positions leads to the precarious conditions of the Muslim community.As we have seen, such precarious lives are an extension of the plague period, although in slightly different ways.
One cannot afford to ignore the after-effects of COVID-19 as well.As Dwivedi and Alakesandr Wansbrough (2022, p. 148) rightly suggest, "There is, then, a myriad of potential after-effects of COVID-19: economic, political, and psychological, not to mention the consequences for individuals' health."While we have seen the racist response of the White supremacist media towards the Muslim community, we also need to understand the after-effects of such distorted and negative framing exercises.The psychological damage rendered to the targeted community is too serious to be understood.Inferiority, threats, vulnerability, and insecurity become defining features of their everyday precarious lives: Psychological risks and vulnerabilities generated by structural injustice, social disparities and multiple disadvantages simultaneously invisiblise and hypervisiblise Muslims through marginalisation/exclusion and blaming/scapegoating.These create individual and group stigma and a socially devalued identity.(Shahid & Abid Dogra, 2022, p. 10) The implication of "corona orientalism" is the overexposure of Muslim lives to daily scrutiny, resulting in inequality and job insecurity that further exacerbate existing inequalities that they have been subjected to for many years.

Conclusion
The analysis of the two epidemics has stoked and spread Eurocentrism and racism that continue to cast aspersion and suspicion towards Muslims, whether the gaze was on the Arab land or on any other part of the Muslim world.Such inflated racist narratives of Muslims continue to provide a select view of the entire Muslim culture.These instances of structural racism need to be challenged with counter narratives to expose the racist plagues of the mind.Despite all the glorification of the connecting features of globalization, orientalist attitudes have not changed.In fact, as the incidents of COVID-19 reporting discussed earlier clearly indicate, racist attacks have become more ferocious and rampant, refusing to acknowledge the alterity of Muslim culture.In the wake of such power plays, Muslim precarity has multiplied to an extent that may be irreparable if we do not become more sensitive and responsible to other cultures.Learning to live with the Other requires a constant engagement and dialogue, and both remain conspicuously absent in Eurocentric discourses on Muslim culture.

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Police give favourable treatment to Muslims out of fear of being accused of racism • Muslims are not observing social distancing rules.(Birmingham City University n.d.)