It is a simple proposal. I am saying that the vampire myths are an expression of a dark mythology that comes out of Christo-Islamic demonization of religious opponents; in this case, a product of Romano/Turkish tensions. Almost all of the various motifs that assemble around the figure of the vampire can be explained in this way. This is on top of the historical and geographical elements that form the basic structure of the thesis.
The vampire, I maintain, is a complex of ideas and motifs growing out of Christian demonization of the Muslim Other. It is a mythology about Otherness. It was this before it was developed into its familiar form by Bram Stoker, but I maintain that his agenda - conscious or unconscious - was counter-Islamic too. Stoker was close friends with Gladstone. It was Gladstone, let us recall, who turned British foreign policy against the Ottoman Empire. Gladstone and his circle, among them Stoker, were viciously and axiomatically anti-Turk. Stoker's myth grows from anti-Turk soil.
Some basic points:
Vampires come from Transylvania
Geographical proximity. These myths come from the border of Christendom and the Islamic world. They are the product of the tensions between the two civilizations. The vampire legends move into western Europe from the Balkans and other eastern European Christian/Islamic borderlands.
The Vampire myths are based on Vlad the Impaler
The history behind the myth points to Christian/Muslim origins. Vlad's infamous cruelty was dedicated to the protection of Christianity in Eastern Europe from the Turks. This cruel figure is projected onto the vampire. The demonization of the victim.
No reflection in a mirror
Vampires have no reflection in a mirror because they are already reflections. This mythology is about Otherness and projection. One thing going on here is the demonization of Islam's similarities to Christianity. The Christian response is: whatever the Muslims have in common with us is a diabolical inversion. Inversion of symbols is a key move in this mythology.
Vampires hate Crucifixes
Plain enough. Vampires are antithetical to Christianity. The Muslim conceived as the exactly anti-Christian.
Burnt by Holy Water
Plain enough.
Vampires come out at night
This important motif concerns the Muslim fast of Ramadan. The vampire sleeps all day and emerges when the sun goes down. So do Muslims during the fast, or so it can seem to outsiders. In Islam, the darkness of night (and night vigil) is characteristic of piety. Here we see that element of Islamic spirituality cast as satanic.
The Black Cape
Muslims - both male and female - wearing black capes is a common sight in traditional Islamic culture. Travellers often describe them as bat-like. Indeed, I have seen this myself. At Ramadan, the movement of women (and men) draped in black around the streets. In a Turkish context, see the capes worn in the Mevlevi Order, for example. The Sufi murid is often described as "dead" and, indeed, as "living dead" and wears a black cape (hirka) to signify the tomb. The distinctive Mevlevi fez (kulah or sikke) signifies the tombstone, as Rumi and other Mevlevi authorities tell us. The vampire as the "living dead" is specifically counter-Sufi in this context.
The gnostic elements in vampire mythology, to which some like to point, should always be understood through the mediation of Sufism here.
Vampires drink blood
A play on the idea that the Turks are "blood-thirsty" but also a parody of the fact that Muslims don't drink blood. Blood is forbidden under halal food laws. Thus do vampires drink blood. More generally, this motif reports the actual savagery of battle in such borderlands; war often degenerates into cannibalism (vampirism is a type of cannibalism, after all), even in our own times.
The metal silver
The metal silver appears in many vampire motifs. Silver is the characteristic sacred metal of Islam. (Muslim men, for instance, are forbidden from wearing gold. Silver is much more common.)
There are, of course, deeper pre-Christian foundations for the idea of the vampire - a vitality-sucking demon is a common motif in mythologies everywhere, no doubt; I am talking about the specifically Western manifestations of this mythology in relatively modern times.
I have much more to say about this. Another time. In general though, if you don't appreciate that the historic Christo-Islamic tensions are "a battle raging in a single system", as Hichem Djait put it, then you are only considering half of the equation. Any account of the underside of Western mythology that neglects the construction of the "Saracens" and "Turks" as Other and ignores the impact of that upon "occult" themes in Western culture is naive.
Importantly, this argument shouldn't be seen as just another recital in liberal Islamophobia apologetics - the argument is that the vampire myths are myths of the borderlands, the fault lines. So, for example, it suggests that Islam and the West do not mix as readily as the multiculturalists suggest. There are real, structural divisions. These border myths reveal the darker side of these tensions.
On a personal note, this thesis is important to me. I've spent thirty years as a Westerner exploring Islam. This is not a thesis formed on a whim. The mutual demonization of Islam and Christendom (to say nothing of the Jews) is potent and forms the substrata of our entire psychic make-up. Islam is what is on the other side of the mirror.
This thesis should not be construed as just an instance of "Islamophobia". On the contrary, it admits the deep and fundamental, visceral, unconscious tensions that operate in Christian/Islamic discourse - these are tectonic pressures. These are myths of the fault line.
- Harper McAlpine Black
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