Tools of the Colonizer
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Western countries throughout modern history have taken to systematically othering non-white peoples and cultures in order to subjugate them. By positioning themselves as “enlightened” and superior to these cultures, European nations have been able to justify the conquest and subjugation of non-Western countries and people. We can see this throughout pre-colonial and colonial history where non-Western groups have been labelled as savages and enemies of the state to rationalize their oppression. The Spanish did this to Muslims and Jews in their homeland, labelling them as perpetual outsiders and enemies and forcing them to give up their ways and convert to Christianity and subjecting them to tests of blood purity. This racism served as the basis for how the Spanish would racialize the Indigenous peoples of the Americas - seeing them as heathens and enemies of European ways of life. Indigenous peoples were often likened to Muslims by the racialization practices of the Spanish. This shows the connection between Islamophobia/Orientalism and anti-Indigenous racism - they were both based on Othering of Muslims and Indigenous people, labelling them as inferior so that Europeans could subjugate them.
Orientalism served to imagine a non-Western world that was unlike and even opposed to a Western one, with practices and people that were different from those in the West. The queering of Muslim/Indian men was one way they did this. By painting Muslim/Indian men as queer and/or effeminate they served to emasculate them and set them up against the masculine Western man. This categorization was not benign - as there was a clear hierarchy, the Eastern man was weak and effeminate and the Western man was perceived as dominant and strong, this justified the Western conquest of Eastern lands. Criminalizing queerness was also a tool used by Western colonizers to impose their sexual mores over non-Western cultures, where historically people had been more accepting of queer sexualities.