Public awards and sales reward Muslim critics who perform defiance of their own community.

Evidence

As with Fallaci and Chesler, reviewers of Manji’s book, such as Andrew Sullivan of the New York Times, quickly bypass the book’s evident lack of scholarship, conceding that The Trouble with Islam is not the ‘most learned or scholarly treatise on the history or theology of Islam’ and that Manji is a little ‘naive,’ ‘haphazard in her geopolitics,’ and ‘a mite attention-seeking.’ Nonetheless, Sullivan concludes of the book: ‘Its spirit is undeniable, and long, long overdue.’ Manji is lauded for bravery in daring to criticize people well known for their murderous tendencies towards critics. Thus Manji, who considers herself one and the same as Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen, is admired for having dared to write a book that apparently endangers her life. Reviewers comment that Manji has installed bullet-proof windows in her home and is accompanied by bodyguards. Itemizing these measures in his review, Daniel Pipes observes: ‘And non-Muslims wonder why anti-Islamist Muslims in Western Europe and North America are so quiet.’ Not unaware of the currency of these images, on the eve of publication Manji’s publishers announced that it was just possible that Manji might be the subject of a fatwa, as Salmon Rushdie had been. They approached the federal solicitor general to grant ‘international protected person’ status to Manji, a request the Canadian government denied. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 239 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Muslim reformist celebrity dissenters profit from positions their silence on occupied peoples sustains.; Muslim critics of Islam are rewarded for dramatizing their own endangered status — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 239; A market exists that rewards fiction reproducing existing views of Muslims. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 24 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Muslim critics of Islam are rewarded for dramatizing their own endangered status #expands (0.92) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 239