Saharanism, which I defined as a universalizing imaginary about desert spaces, has created the platform and the ideational blueprint for all sorts of extractive activities to take place in deserts. Globally, deserts are depicted as spaces for extraction of minerals, petrol, sand, and, in some cases, even rare species. Their life and environments are conceptualized differently, compared to the fragility and sensitivity associated with seas, oceans, and forests. As a result, the dissemination of the idea that deserts are dead and barren stands in the way of a better articulation of their ecological liveness and socio-cultural significance. Scholars have certainly engaged with the impact of the discovery of oil on oil-producing societies, but there has not been a systematic effort to theorize how and through which process desert resources have been constructed as extractable. Drawing on a plethora of historical and literary sources from the nineteenth century to the present, this paper will develop the concept of Saharanism and explain its underlying extractive ideology. From the Sahara to the Arabian Peninsula to the Sonoran Desert, desert resources are extracted by local and transnational companies without heeding the interests of indigenous people nor the environmental impact of their extractive activities. By reading extractive endeavors in deserts against a long history of invasion, securitization, and exploitation that unfold in desertic spaces, the paper will reveal how the resulting environmental violence and extraction are intertwined in their origins in Saharanism as a desert-focused ideology. While mining or oil-drilling are only the visible part of the physical acts of extraction, conceptualizing Saharanism will demonstrate how it makes these actions and more possible in deserts.