Insider status rests on visible identity, not shared religion alone

Evidence

Imran has been investigating Islamophobia for the last decade. Although he is a Muslim, Imran has never experienced Islamophobic abuse in public, possibly because his Muslim identity is not ‘visible’. Therefore, although he could be perceived as an ‘insider’ based on his religion, he could also be seen as an ‘outsider’ on the basis of his non-visible Muslim identity. For Irene, being an Orthodox Christian female researcher meant that she was perceived as an ‘outsider’ by her participants due to her religion. — Irene Zempi and Imran Awan, Islamophobia, 79

Categorization

• XREF: Speaks to the wider qualitative-methods literature on insider/outsider positionality and ‘visible’ versus invisible minority identity.
• CANDY: A Muslim researcher who studies Islamophobia but has never been abused because nobody reads him as Muslim — a neat illustration that visibility, not faith, triggers the abuse.