A dominant group’s feminism can shut down solidarity by erasing Muslim women’s agency

Evidence

As feminists deeply committed to challenging racism and Islamophobia and how it differentially impacts black and Muslim (and black Muslim) communities, we wish to open up a dialogue about how to build solidarities across complex histories of subjugation and survival. This space is precisely what is shut down in this article. In writing this letter, we emphasize that our concern is not solely with Adele Wilde-Blavatsky’s article but with the broader systemic issues revealed in the publication of a work that prevents us from challenging hierarchies of privilege and building solidarity. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 574

Categorization

• XREF: Directly instantiates the ‘frightened subject’/‘us vs. them’ pivot the reader is tracking — white feminist rhetoric performs its own form of exclusion. — connects to: Bourgeois feminism can ally with corporations against Third World women. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 554; Political solidarity, not natural affinity, must ground feminist sisterhood
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that even well-intentioned opposition to Islamophobia can itself reproduce exclusion is a dense, multi-layered point worth sitting with.