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The Middle Ages are the most fertile and most influential period in making powerful and negative stereotypes or representations that were attached to Islam, its Prophet, and its followers in the Western Christian world (Christendom). These accumulated Western stereotypes contributed to the emergence of a phenomenon which has become known as Islamophobia in our contemporary time. This paper aims to trace the medieval historical impacts on which these representations were formed and compiled in the manner that eventually created anxiety and fear that reached the point of phobia. This is due to the conviction that this intense hostility towards Islam and everything related to it is not a result of the events of 09/11/ 2001, but it extends to the previous long centuries, and these events have no role other than that they revived what was forgotten in the media and public mind for a short period, but academically it has been always present, especially through Orientalism, which is considered as an extension of the history of medieval European knowledge of Islam. In this context, the two authors of this paper believe that the nullification of the distorted negative representations that has been attached to Islam and Muslims undoubtedly goes through working to deconstruct the medieval texts that established and supported them. These texts, while establishing excessive hatred, did establish at the same time, a Christian religious centralism, which later entered a process of systematic formation of European and then Western centralism, which have had serious consequences on the level of human relations. This approach will help in understanding the phenomenon and make it much clearer, in order to interduce ideas that enable the reduction of the risks of conflict, and then move to collaboration in the circle of differences. This certainly requires courage in flipping through the sheets of history and reading them comprehensively and critically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper scrutinizes Paulo Coelho's novel The Alchemist (1988). It sheds light on the serious and hazardous relationships between the Western and Eastern Worlds. These relationships are full of stereotypes which are dependent on ancient orientalist generalizations and simplifications which mostly show Muslims as fanatics and irrational, and Arabs as primitive, barbaric, violent and aggressive. Hence, this paper provides a critique on the authenticity and accuracy of the Orient's fabricated images and distorted notions presented in Coelho's novel The Alchemist (1988). This paper includes an introduction, two sections and a conclusion. The first section tracks down the history of Orientalism from its first emergence until the 9\11 attacks on the USA. The following section provides an oriental analysis for some of the images and scenes found in The Alchemist. The paper concludes that The Alchemist is a real example of a neoorientalist piece of literature that still shows the Islamic East as the Western dangerous ‘enemy right door’ and it, then, can never be considered reliable in presenting the Islamic East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]