Native informers give empire’s anti-Muslim arguments false legitimacy from within

Evidence

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 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Why is it, then, that the term “Islamic terrorism” is a common staple of Western European and North American journalistic, policymaking, and even scholarly parlance, but not “Jewish terrorism” (or even “Christian terrorism”)? That is the issue I have sought to address in this book, in part via the instrumental category of native informers, people with brown skins and white masks and falsified consciousnesses, who I believe are significantly responsible for authenticating and corroborating this demonization of Islam and dehumanization of Muslims. … Israel, an entire state apparatus with a massive military machinery, massacres Palestinians by the hundreds and maims them by the thousands in Gaza, the whole world is crying out in protest—and yet Rushdie and his friends are nowhere to be seen. … Look closely at the tired, frightened, angry faces of the millions of people protesting the Israeli war crimes in Western Europe and North America! Not a single one of them can you imagine reading Reading Lolita in Tehran. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 555 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In the early 1970s there was a Festival of Islam in London, a great cultural event, organized with the cooperation of many Muslim govern­ ments which provided funds and lent objects. Among the ground rules for the Festival of Islam—the lectures, publications, exhibitions and the like—was a guideline laid down by the sponsors: Islam influences, Islam is not influenced. The discussion of possible influences on Islam was avoided. I have the uneasy feeling that a rather similar point of view is beginning to gain ground, I won’t say to prevail, in some circles in Israel. It is wrong and dangerous. For almost two millennia, Jews were a minority in a large, developing and relatively ad­ vanced civilization and society, and it requires no great effort of scholarship to detect influences going both ways. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 326 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Muslim ‘native informants’ authenticate the frame of an inherently violent Islam — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 348; Moderate-sounding native-born critics of their own countries reinforce imperial racism; Neocons recruit Muslim ‘native informers’ to delegitimize Muslim criticism of US policy — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 676 (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• Native informants leverage insider credibility to justify Western fears of Islam #corroborates (0.95) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 463
• Brown-skinned native informers authenticate the demonization of Islam while silence follows Israel’s crimes #corroborates (0.95) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 555
• Denying outside influence on Islam distorts historical scholarship #complicates (0.80) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 326
• Native informers’ writings help dehumanize populations that are then killed with impunity #complicates (0.80) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 636
• Native informers differ from collaborators by selling wars to domestic audiences #complicates (0.75) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 126
• Empire produces anti-Muslim racism which in turn sustains empire #complicates (0.75)
• Official rhetoric framing Islam as ideology licensed anti-Muslim suspicion #complicates (0.75) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 864
• Non-Western elites’ self-essentializing claims intersect Orientalist knowledge in tangled ways #complicates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 756
• Mediators deflect ethnic chauvinism by reframing claims in historical context #complicates (0.70) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 477
• Media spectacle turns native informers into embodied fantasies of Islam #complicates (0.70) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 459
• Anti-Orientalist polemicists made basic historical and source-language errors #complicates (0.70) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 594
• Anti-colonial movements disproved the mosque-state-fusion Orientalist stereotype #complicates (0.70)
• US and European hostility to Islam arises from distinct imperial versus racist sources #complicates (0.70) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 102
• Islamic intellectual history already contains every claim native informers recycle as new #complicates (0.70) — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 483