Elite Islamophobia borrows intellectual authority to justify civilizational defense

Evidence

Among Sydney’s movers and shakers, Richard Cody articulates a slightly more sophisticated but nonetheless similar Islamophobic argument, echoing Ignatieff and Dershowitz, as he attempts to recover some prestige after his demotion at the beginning of the novel. “The era of sentimentality is over,” he opines. … “Our civilisation is under attack—why, even an afternoon such as this would be illegal under the new barbarians—neither wine, nor women allowed to dress as they wish, nor dancing …” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 369

Categorization

• XREF: Cody’s ‘era of sentimentality’ line maps onto the civilizational discourse Morey wants traced — relevant for distinguishing Hamid’s critique of such elites from narratives that ventriloquize them. — connects to: Neocons deliberately leveraged academic Orientalist authority to sanction their wars; the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”