A major consequence of the fascization of postmodernArab-Muslim identities, which still influences thevery core of mainstream European Muslim ideologies,can be observed through the nature of intellectualproductions. Indeed, after the modern era, there isa correlation – or a unidirectional causal link –between censorship and the crisis of identity,especially sexual identity. In 1925, for example, atextbook on the history of Arabic literature,designed for use in secondary schools in Egypt,proclaimed for the first time that love poetry aboutmale youths was “a crime against literature and asource of shame in the history of Arabic poetry”(Al-Zayyat, 1925). Before this, Victorian moralityhad forbidden in most European countries thepublication of such licentious works, especiallypassages dealing with male homosexuality, alreadyconsidered in Europe as “levice contre nature” (Burton, 1886).

Arab-Muslim libertinism was perceived to be the mirrorimage of European puritanism. Arab-Muslimintellectuals who visited Europe, and France inparticular, were astonished that these Europeanpeoples resembled “Bedouins and their lack ofpredilection for the love of male youths or for thewriting of songs about them.” French translators ofArabic love poetry about male youths would oftenchange the object of these poems to being aboutyoung women. However, Joseph Pitts, an Englishnavigator who was captured and sold as a slave inAlgiers before escaping fifteen years later,remarked the following upon his return toEngland:

Similarly, the French traveller C. S. Sonnini, whovisited Egypt between 1777 and 1780, noted thefollowing: