Islamophilia sustains the same politics of fear it claims to oppose.

Evidence

Islamophilia, understood as a generalized affection for Islam and Muslims, comes with its own political costs. 38 If, as some analysts would argue, Islamophobia has little to do with real Islam as practiced by actually existing Muslims, then constructing selectively positive images of Islam in response to Islamophobic propaganda will have less than helpful, and sometimes bizarre, results. One of these, now widely recognized, is the spread of “good Muslim/bad Muslim” binaries, in which the good Muslim (the friend) is the real Muslim, and the bad Muslim (the enemy) is a creature who violates the good Muslim code. 39 The “bad Muslim” can and should be vigorously opposed. Indeed, the most crucial task assigned to the good Muslim by the larger society is to oppose bad Muslims, to reject them, expose them, denounce them, reeducate them, turn them in, and apologize for their misdeeds. Failure to carry out this mission will turn good Muslims into bad ones. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 702

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends and complicates the ‘good Muslim/bad Muslim’ framework and the logic of the pivot from interrogating Islam to examining the frightened subject.
• DEFINE: Names and dissects the ‘good Muslim/bad Muslim’ binary as a mechanism of the frightened subject’s projection.
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that the counter-discourse (Islamophilia) reproduces the same epistemic violence as the phobic discourse — and that policing good Muslims is the very mechanism of subjection — resists easy summary.