Embracing inauthenticity can be a creative path to integration

Evidence

That is why he could make jokes about his conversion. I believe that on a deeper level it is also what is behind his trademark irony, which both ridicules and cherishes. This elusiveness is what makes his poetry. What Heine understood is that when it comes to processes of integration and assimilation, it does not help to be too strict on authenticity, and I think it is here that Hirsi Ali’s criticism of Islam misses the target. Yet their stories also show that for an immigrant pressed to integrate into a foreign society, it is easier to become a poet than an activist. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1674