Rewarded Muslim dissidents ignore dissent inside the Islamic world entirely

Evidence

These accolades, and the fact that The Trouble with Islam has been on the best-seller lists for several months and is being translated into several languages, suggest that the journey thus far has not been, as one reviewer sympathetically predicted ‘a rough ride’ but, rather, highly rewarded. Only one reviewer, Justin Podur, notices the irony of Manji’s claim that she is likely to be targeted by Muslim extremists and to pay dearly for daring to criticize the Islamic world. While Manji styles herself a Muslim refusenik, Podur points out, she profits handsomely from her position, while the real Israeli refuseniks who are conscientious objectors, who refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza and whose actions Manji does not mention, are jailed for theirs. Indeed, Podur notes, dissent in the Islamic world or among Palestinians goes entirely unmentioned throughout Manji’s book. If the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) were actually mentioned, it would be less easy to characterize Afghanistan as filled only with the Taliban and victimized women. For RAWA too is the Islamic world. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 240

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The contrast between a performatively endangered celebrity dissident and an unnamed jailed conscientious objector is a ready-made dramatic tension for fiction — two forms of refusing, one profitable, one imprisoned.