Anti-Muslim racism denies individuality by marking all Muslims as a blameworthy collective
Evidence
What was at work was the phenomenon that the French-Tunisian writer Albert Memmi has called the “mark of the plural.” This racist logic denies individuality to those seen as part of a colonized collective. All Muslims and those who “look Muslim” were produced as a “race” of people who were collectively to blame for the actions of the few. Since then, Muslims have had to apologize not once but repeatedly for every attack perpetrated by Muslims on Western targets. White people are never asked to do the same, much less atone for the violence of people like Anders Breivik, Wade Michael Page, Dylann Roof, or other neo- Nazis and white supremacists. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 62
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Defines Memmi’s ‘mark of the plural’ as the mechanism of collective attribution underlying Islamophobic demands for apology.
- XREF: Directly parallels the collective-victim/collective-blame structure that Aziz and Razack describe in state surveillance and securitization discourse — a usable definitional anchor for the cluster.
Related
Broader Connections
- Treating all Muslims as suspect constitutes cultural racism by homogenization
#corroborates(0.92)