Our sense of the Arabs in our understanding of ourselves. Of studies on Arabs and Muslims in Portugal

Abstract

Without seeking to conduct an exhaustive analysis of the field of studies on Arabs and Muslims in Portugal - which only now are being undertaken -, this article seeks to monitor the political uses which have moulded that field over time. Traditionally associated with ethno-genetic concerns and archaeology, studies on Arabs and Islam today continue to inspire the persistent and widely disseminated myth of multicultural/luso-tropicalist tolerance (in an Islamophile version of Orientalism) - for example by way of that which is here described as the «Mértola effect» - atavistically celebrated in the ethno-genealogy of the Portuguese.