The figure of the Muslim transcends fixed ethnic and gender identity

Evidence

With the “faithful resignation” of the Muslims, we are also brought back to (and beyond) the problems raised by Nathan Blumenthal regarding Israel, Palestine, and Israeli literature and culture. To what extent has the word “Muslim” become “part of our cultural history”? What of “the Jew, the Arab,” then, what of Muslims in Israeli literature? By now, it should be dear that the question I have wished to raise can no longer maintain itself as the slightly more explored one of “The Arab in Israeli literature.” The enemy draws away, and indeed, the question raised by the Muslims has a pervasive, if vanishing aspect, since the “ferocious irony” of which Agamben speaks has made it impossible to know whether the Muslim is an Arab, a Jew, a Christian, and even a man or a woman. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 716

Categorization

• QUESTION: The vanishing, unlocatable aspect of the enemy figure suggests a research thread worth chasing further.