Media channels reward native-informant Muslims who reproduce imperial Islamophobia

Evidence

Another regular feature is the prominence of “native informants,” self-proclaimed Muslims or ex-Muslims (often women) who offer insider denunciations of Islam to eager audiences in best-selling books and lucrative appearances on the lecture circuit. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 50 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

These developments have coincided with the phenomenon Guy Debord diagnosed in 1967 as The Society of the Spectacle (La Societe du spectacle), in which a widespread commodity fetishism has moved into the age of globalized mass media and endemic alienation has metastasized into the absolute visuality of everyday life. The native informers demonstrate the factual dementia of reality, the overcoming of facts by visual fantasy upon a spectacular stage where the self-loathing Muslim partakes in and mutates into the image of Islam that has taken root in the globally alienated mind. The more outrageously the native informers can posit this dangerous Islam as the enemy of the humanity at large, the better they will have inhabited the collective psyche of the global hatred they at once invite and welcome. Through this mental metempsychosis, the native informers become the collective consciousness of the race and the faith they at once personify and loath. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 459 (#expands, via linked claim)

A final group of individuals whose careers and fame depend on denigrating Islam are referred to by scholars as “native informants.”native informants: Muslim and ex-Muslim “insiders” who draw on their personal knowledge and experience of Islam to promote the belief that Islam is at odds with Western values and to reassure Western audiences that their fear of Islam is justified. Native informants are Muslim “insiders” who either have become disgruntled with Islam or have rejected it altogether. They draw on their personal knowledge and experience of Islam to “inform” the West about Islam’s “true” nature and to air the dirty laundry of Muslim communities. Native informants acquire considerable authority because their insider status gives them the credentials necessary to speak “authentically” about Islam. While they sometimes appear to address other Muslims in their writings and speeches, by and large their audience is the non-Muslim majority in the West. Their overall purpose is to reassure non-Muslims that Western misgivings and anxieties about Islam are justified, that Islam really is as bad and as dangerous as many Westerners suspect. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 463 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Native male collaborators such as Qasim Amin reproduced colonial stereotypes of Islam; Muslim ‘native informants’ authenticate the frame of an inherently violent Islam — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 348; Media spectacle turns native informers into embodied fantasies of Islam — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 459 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Ex-Muslim ‘native informants’ profit by denouncing Islam to Western audiences #corroborates (0.95) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 50
• Media spectacle turns native informers into embodied fantasies of Islam #expands (0.90) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 459
• Native informants leverage insider credibility to justify Western fears of Islam #expands (0.88) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 463
• The media’s attraction materially amplifies professional Islamophobes’ reach #expands (0.85) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 493
• Electronic mass media reinforce and standardize inherited Orientalist stereotypes #corroborates (0.80) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 99
• Islamophobia operates as a marketable commodity across media forms #complicates (0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 354