Fiction’s false symmetry between Muslims and Islamophobes distorts real power imbalances

Evidence

This structuring liberalism is apparent elsewhere, too. Among those Muslims supporting Mo are MACC members and their leader, Issam Malik. MACC’s interest in co-opting Mo for its other, related campaigns is seen as intrusive and reprehensible, and Malik—whom Mo views as “an unctuous phony” (173)—ends up on the lecture-tour circuit, butting heads with Debbie Dawson in a grotesque form of political gladiatorial pantomime. Yet aligning MACC with the multiple, interconnected forces of Islamophobia tearing into Mo implies some kind of parity—as well as impugning the work of MACC’s real-life counterpart, the Council on American–Islamic Relations—when it is surely disingenuous to suggest that the two sides are equivalent in terms of reach, media access, or influence. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 295

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the reader’s contest-vs-reinforce criterion: parity framing as a liberal failure mode. Relevant when weighing equal-weight treatment of Islamists and anti-Muslim voices in Naqvi and Hamid. — connects to: the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”