Cultural forms can either reinforce or contest Islamophobia, not neutrally.

Evidence

Artistic and cultural forms can reinforce Islamophobia. But they can also expose it, dramatize its inconsistencies, or outright oppose it. Claims for Western superiority often carry within them, even when unnoticed, the bacilli of an unstated support for the notion of individualism, co-opted as part of the discourse of freedom that nowadays also often implies an endorsement of an inequitable globalized economic system. For every Martin Amis scurrying to rearticulate the truisms of Euro-American cultural superiority, there is an Abdul Rahman Munif addressing the human cost of the pursuance of Western greed and exceptionalism, but they do not enjoy equal exposure. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 71

Categorization

• XREF: The freedom discourse hiding economic endorsement connects to Home Boy’s narrator Naqvi threading manhood, economics, and belonging — the reader’s other novel. — connects to: Islamophobia must be treated as a neutral social-scientific concept, not a political term. — Erik Bleich, What Is Islamophobia and How Much Is…, 67