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🪵 The Threshold

Denying that Muslims are enemies can itself construct them as threats

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tagsja-picks, xref, deepthinking, seed, define, causal_relationships, trade, corroborated, category/causal-relationships
aliases@kumar_islamophobia_2012, loc. 577

5 min read

Denying that Muslims are enemies can itself construct them as threats

Evidence

International relations scholar Clara Eroukhmanoff argues that “political actors can both securitise Islam and simultaneously declare that ‘Islam is not a threat’ or that ‘Islamophobia is a shame’.” Statements like “Muslims are not the enemy” effectively construct Muslims as the enemy, even though the literal meaning of the phrase indicates the exact opposite because such speech activates, Eroukhmanoff argues, “an Orientalist set of assumptions about Islam” without the speaker having to resort to blatant and overt forms of racism. It works in ways akin to dog whistle tactics where certain words stand in for fully developed racial meanings among racist constituencies. As she puts it, “pre-existing registers of meaning” are typically “activated when the codewords ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim’ are interpellated in more covert forms of speech.” She refers to this process as “indirect securitization.” Indirect securitizing speech inoculates the speaker and listeners from charges of racism. Thus, securitizing actors and audiences believe that they have not transgressed the bounds of a “post-racial,” multicultural society. In this way, she argues, indirect securitization produces the conditions in which white people are constituted as victimized subjects, while Muslims are constructed as racially securitized terrorist threats. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 577

International relations scholar Clara Eroukhmanoff argues that “political actors can both securitise Islam and simultaneously declare that ‘Islam is not a threat’ or that ‘Islamophobia is a shame’.” Statements like “Muslims are not the enemy” effectively construct Muslims as the enemy, even though the literal meaning of the phrase indicates the exact opposite because such speech activates, Eroukhmanoff argues, “an Orientalist set of assumptions about Islam” without the speaker having to resort to blatant and overt forms of racism. It works in ways akin to dog whistle tactics where certain words stand in for fully developed racial meanings among racist constituencies. As she puts it, “pre-existing registers of meaning” are typically “activated when the codewords ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim’ are interpellated in more covert forms of speech.” She refers to this process as “indirect securitization.” Indirect securitizing speech inoculates the speaker and listeners from charges of racism. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 577

International relations scholar Clara Eroukhmanoff argues that “political actors can both securitise Islam and simultaneously declare that ‘Islam is not a threat’ or that ‘Islamophobia is a shame’.” Statements like “Muslims are not the enemy” effectively construct Muslims as the enemy, even though the literal meaning of the phrase indicates the exact opposite because such speech activates, Eroukhmanoff argues, “an Orientalist set of assumptions about Islam” without the speaker having to resort to blatant and overt forms of racism. It works in ways akin to dog whistle tactics where certain words stand in for fully developed racial meanings among racist constituencies. As she puts it, “pre-existing registers of meaning” are typically “activated when the codewords ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim’ are interpellated in more covert forms of speech.” She refers to this process as “indirect securitization.” Indirect securitizing speech inoculates the speaker and listeners from charges of racism. Thus, securitizing actors and audiences believe that they have not transgressed the bounds of a “post-racial,” multicultural society. In this way, she argues, indirect securitization produces the conditions in which white people are constituted as victimized subjects, while Muslims are constructed as racially securitized terrorist threats. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 589

Categorization

  • XREF: Dog-whistle politics as discussed in post-racial discourse scholarship; parallels Stanley’s ‘How Fascism Works’ on coded racial appeals. — connects to: Denying Muslims are enemies can itself activate Orientalist registers and construct them as threats — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 589; Even denial statements about Muslim threat can partially activate anti-Muslim assumptions — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 589; Anti-terror and immigration policies become conflated in framing Muslims as foreign enemies — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 580 (+8 more)
  • DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that overt denial of prejudice can itself perform the racist speech-act — this inverts the commonsense understanding that refutation is opposition.
  • SEED: Could seed an essay on how ‘Muslims are not the enemy’ disclaimers function as deniable racial speech — well-meaning denial as a mechanism of securitization.
  • DEFINE: Defines ‘indirect securitization’ — speeches of inclusion activate exclusionary registers.
  • corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 577; Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 589

Broader Connections

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