Even distinguished literary novelists voice crude anti-Muslim prejudice

Evidence

This is not a policy statement from one of those right-wing populist politicians who seem to have multiplied in recent years. These words come from the distinguished British novelist Martin Amis, interviewed in 2006 about community relations in Britain and the “threat” from Muslims. The unliterary lack of measured reflection in this comment is symptomatic of the heated debate about Islam and Muslims as it occurs today. Where once one might have expected a discussion informed by some degree of sophistication and historical awareness, now the Internet and social media provide an immediate platform for intemperate views to be aired and every ill-informed opinion to be rehearsed. Worse still, violent anti-Muslim rhetoric has become commonplace. When politicians start to articulate prejudice in much the same terms, you know society is in trouble. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 14

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Connects to treating Hamid and Naqvi as counter-examples — distinguishes novelists who rehearse prejudice from those who contest it.
• SEED: Possible essay angle: the prestige-literary face of Islamophobia, contrasting Amis with Hamid and Naqvi as evidence of a fracturing literary field.

Related

• Novels encode their stance on Islamic identity through form as much as content. (similarity 0.84)
• Anti-Islamophobia novels can themselves profit from trading in Muslim stereotypes. (similarity 0.84)
• A novel can expose stereotypes yet trap its own character within them (similarity 0.84)
• Islamophobia in literature can reside in universalist reading practices rather than overt denunciation (similarity 0.83)
• A Protestant-derived aesthetic of understated realism now underwrites ‘rational’ anti-Islamic prejudice. (similarity 0.83)
• Western literary criticism’s perceived openness contrasts with a misread notion of a closed Quran. (similarity 0.83)
• The novel’s liberal individualist form inherently limits what it can contest (similarity 0.82)
• Muslim-authored novels are read as collective representative documents rather than individual explorations (similarity 0.82)
• Judging novels by sympathy toward Muslims misses how form determines ideological effect (similarity 0.82)
• Literature, drama, art, and cinema sustain a habitus about Islam built on Muslim monsters (similarity 0.82)
• The liberal novel reaches a boundary in accommodating Islamic political identity claims. (similarity 0.82)
• Novels contesting Islamophobia are enmeshed in the very market that trades on it (similarity 0.82)
• A liberal-humanist stance toward novels can itself smuggle in Islamophobic assumptions (similarity 0.82)
• A novel can undermine its own polyphonic argument by monolithically portraying Muslims. (similarity 0.81)
• Literary criticism should read Muslim texts as intercultural negotiation, not alien-mind keys (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Islamophobic novels can still reproduce the stereotype of the oppressed Muslim woman #expands (0.60) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 292
• A liberal-humanist stance toward novels can itself smuggle in Islamophobic assumptions #expands (0.60) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 239
• A novel can undermine its own polyphonic argument by monolithically portraying Muslims. #expands (0.60) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 179
• Rare positive portrayals of Muslims cannot offset the dominant dehumanizing narrative #expands (0.60) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 36
• Novels that aim for evenhandedness can leave the good Muslim-bad Muslim binary intact #expands (0.60) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 294
• Publishing and reviewing reinforce novels that rehearse existing Muslim stereotypes. #expands (0.60) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 24
• Liberal novels often center non-Muslim protagonists in Islamophobia stories #expands (0.55) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 355
• Even anti-Islamophobic Muslim novels indirectly accept the frame they oppose. #expands (0.55) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 25
• Evenhanded novelistic treatment can falsely equate anti-Islamophobia activists with Islamophobes #expands (0.55) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 295
• Islamophobia in literature can reside in universalist reading practices rather than overt denunciation #expands (0.55) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 229
• Novels encode their stance on Islamic identity through form as much as content. #expands (0.55) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 149
• Secularist novelists freeze cultural evolution to make Islamophobic nostalgic purism #expands (0.55) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 144
• Liberal humanist fiction erases Muslim difference by staging conversion through canonical English verse #expands (0.55) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 618
• Novels contest Islamophobia by foregrounding characters’ internal divisions #expands (0.50) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 792
• A global literary market for Muslim writing constrains how novels contest Islamophobia. #expands (0.50) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 440