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I don't know why people think this question is so absurd. Orientalism is a classic case of cultural appropriation. Religious iconography was taken and used with
by c3534l 6y ago
I don't know why people think this question is so absurd. Orientalism is a classic case of cultural appropriation. Religious iconography was taken and used without understanding it, to the point of hanging prayer rugs upside down and writing faux Arabic script. Whether you think this was a pressing issue for the medieval period is another thing entirely. My guess is the Islamic world would have happily continued selling us rugs if we weren't busy calling crusades against.
- Veen 6y ago> My guess is the Islamic world would have happily continued selling us rugs if we weren't busy calling crusades against. How do you think there came to be an "Islamic world" in the first place? Anatolia was Christian centuries before Muhammed was born. Persia was Zoroastrian centuries before that. The early Muslims were colonizing and building empires long before Europeans started crusading. You could just as plausibly castigate Islamic architects for "culturally appropriating" the Byzantine Christian design of the Hagia Sophia Church in Constantinople for mosques. But it's a limited, misleading, and uninteresting way to think about history.
- c3534l 6y agoHow did you twist my aside that it wasn't important all things considered into me castigating Europeans? I was pointing out how trivial cultural appropriation is as a problem while acknowledging its existence.