The good Muslim bar rises so acceptance perpetually recedes

Evidence

To use the language of political scientist Carl Schmitt, shifting Muslims from the category of enemies (Islamophobia) to friends (Islamophilia) simply perpetuates the same essentializing logic, but with an equally distorted positive view of Islam. The shortcomings of the “good Muslim, bad Muslim” model are all too evident, since there are real differences among Muslims, and Shryock demonstrates this point with an amusing recital of the characteristics of the “good Muslim” stereotype. Requiring the “good Muslim” to be the unimpeachable US citizen automatically alienates any Muslim who has criticism of particular US policies. Islamophilia therefore is bound to be a failing proposition, for even as Muslims become more American, the bar for acceptance is set higher, since no one really believes that they have even denounced terrorism. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 55

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: The ever-receding acceptance bar echoes the reader’s project on functional fear, and the Schmitt friend-enemy framework connects to Grosfoguel chapter.

Related

• Reversing prejudice into its positive mirror image still dehumanizes its object (similarity 0.85)
• Islamophilia sustains the same politics of fear it claims to oppose. (similarity 0.80)
• Islamophilia constructs an idealized Muslim that harms rather than helps. (similarity 0.79)
• Islamophobia includes a latent assumption of Muslim cultural inferiority to the secular West. (similarity 0.79)
• Ambivalence that never risks making a Muslim character bad is just liberal evasion. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Even anti-Islamophobic Muslim novels indirectly accept the frame they oppose. #corroborates (0.60) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 25
• Individualist happy endings can quietly reinforce anti-Muslim opinion #complicates (0.55) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 182
• Optimistic endings that erase struggle can quietly trivialize ongoing Islamophobia #complicates (0.50) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 296
• Rare positive portrayals of Muslims cannot offset the dominant dehumanizing narrative #complicates (0.50) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 36